Self-seeking – to seek a self. Addicts and pathologically self-centered people in general devote most, if not all of their conscious lives towards self-seeking behavior. Put simply, we want to look a certain way. In fact, we need for other people to see us that way. We need you to see how cool we are, how tough we are, how confident we are, how beautiful we are, how popular we are, how artistic we are, how altruistic we are, how heroic we are, and the list goes on seemingly forever. When I became a phony, the only way for me to feed my self-esteem and ego was for others (or myself) to see me a certain way. Why? Because I’m NOT that way. If I was, I wouldn’t need to seek a self now, would I?

     Guess how bad it was? After sniffing heroin all day at work, I used to go to the gym late at night after work in a pathetic attempt to lift some weights and run on the treadmill. Then I’d sit in the steam shower to try getting my skin looking all red and vital. Even though I was completely emaciated with a nice jaundicy hue to my skin, I wanted to appear normal and healthy when I got home to my wife. In fact, I was so deranged that I would look at my sickly body in the gym mirror and think I was huge, and really good-looking of course… except for the gouges on my face that I so generously gave to myself from the dope itches. It was that important for me to try to fake out my wife. So I put a lot of effort into getting others to see me a certain way. How ridiculous is that?

     A month before my wedding I was writhing in bed in full blown Methadone withdrawal. I was freezing cold and wore multiple flannel shirts in the middle of the summer. Unable to eat, I tried swallowing protein shakes only to puke them back into the cup, then re-drink what was left, then puke, then re-drink again and again until the shake was finally gone. That’s as close to food as I got for about two weeks. But the point is that I only stopped doing Methadone because my wedding was a month away and I couldn’t bear for everyone to see me weak and emaciated. There is no way in hell I was going to look like a pathetic loser. I would fool them all. So I kicked the Methadone at home alone, went to the gym everyday, tanned on the beach, ran morning and night, smoked tons of pot and wrote songs on my guitar to serenade my wife and impress everybody at the wedding. As if I’m some highly successful, brilliant, artistic stud who was about to take over the world…

     The most embarrassing thing about this sort of nonsense? I used to go around thinking that everybody was looking at me, that everybody cared about what I said and what I did. In fact, this is a common problem with a) addicts and alcoholics b) narcissistic and borderline personalities, and c) teenagers. And the truth: Nobody cares. That was like a revelation to me. Nobody is looking at me. Nobody cares about what I’m doing. Nobody cares about what I’m saying. Newsflash: Other people don’t focus on me 24/7. They actually have their own lives to focus on.

God, show me when I am self-seeking, and rid this poison from me…