These Two Things MUST Occur to Become Recovered

1. The mental obsession must be lifted.

2. Our conscience must be restored to the point where we care more about not hurting others or hurting ourselves spiritually than we do about comforting ourselves with drugs or alcohol.

     If we become so disgusted by drugs and alcohol, by what they do to us and to others, we will repel them viciously as instruments of pure evil and never even think about picking up again. All we have to do is care deeply and profoundly about the consequences of our actions and we will be free from drugs and alcohol forever.

     If these two things occur, addicts and alcoholics will never use again.

     If these two things don’t occur, it is a certainty we will use again and cause more pain. In every person who continues to relapse and struggle, neither of these two things has occurred, especially #1, regardless of how much treatment we’ve had.

     Treatment, therapy, meetings or meds of any sort are completely useless if they fail to lift the the mental obsession. This you absolutely must understand. If your spouse or child comes home from rehab and still wants to use and thinks about using, trust me, relapse is on the way and the entire exercise has been a complete waste of time and money.

     One of the most important variables in lifting the mental obsession and restoring one’s conscience is a sincere desire to change and to get better. Nothing will help an addict more than really wanting it. I am convinced that if a person truly wants to change, the universe will conspire to make it happen. Nobody who wants it more than anything fails.

     Nobody.


God, please remove from me the obsession to drink alcohol and use drugs. Please restore my conscience that it may grow unimpeded, illuminating the way…

If You Want To Recover, Reject Selfishness

     People miss the point of addiction & recovery entirely. It has little to do with science or chemistry or genes or how we were hurt in our lives. Sorry. The very cause of the illness is selfishness and the very nature of the illness is spiritual… so the only way to truly recover is to be unselfish and get closer to God.


     In other words, no thing and no one can undo what we did to ourselves. We can only recover from addiction if we have faith and do the work while rejecting what got us into trouble to begin with, which was our self-will and our self-worship, our belief that we can control it and our belief that we can control the world around us.  


     If any addict still believes they can get themselves better, they will never recover. Until we understand that we are powerless and need spiritual help, we will remain quite ill and subject to relapse. 


Also see: ResentmentResentment Inventory & “How It Works”

"How It Works"

From Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 58-63: 
   

     “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of be­ing honest with themselves. There are such unfortu­nates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasp­ing and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.
     Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now! 
     Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.
     Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol— that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than our­selves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to im­prove our conscious contact with God as we un­derstood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
     Many of us exclaimed, “What an order! I can’t go through with it.’’ Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like per­fect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
     Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have re­lieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.
     Being convinced, we were at Step Three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him. Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do?
     The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with some­ thing or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each per­son is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. In trying to make these arrange­ ments our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest. But, as with most humans, he is more likely to have varied traits.
     What usually happens? The show doesn’t come off very well. He begins to think life doesn’t treat him right. He decides to exert himself more. He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. Still the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when try­ing to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?
     Our actor is self-centered—ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired business man who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; poli­ticians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. What­ ever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?
     Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Some­times they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.
     So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alco­holics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical con­victions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or try­ing on our own power. We had to have God’s help.
     This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn’t work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom. 
     When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became con­scious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.
     We were now at Step Three. Many of us said to our Maker, as we understood Him: ‘God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!’ We thought well before taking this step making sure we were ready; that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to Him.”


About the Meds…

     One of the reasons people read this blog is because I don’t care to appear a certain way or to censor my voice, and so I will do you the service of continuing not to care.

     The people who say how harmful I am cannot indicate anyone who has actually been harmed, including themselves. So it’s not that I’m harmful to others, it’s just that that is the argument people use when they disagree, which of course means they are lying. To think something is harmful and for something to actually be harmful is the difference between fantasy and reality. Do you know how many emails I get from people who say (to put it lightly) how much this has helped them? I have no idea because I can’t count them all. Do you know how many emails I get from people who say how much this has hurt them? None.

     TO NOTE: Non-addicts can do whatever they want to do, so don’t bother me about that, because this blog is really about drug addiction and alcoholism, in case you missed that part. But my strong belief is that no mood-altering drug, whether substitution or psychotropic, is good for drug addicts, which may be difficult to understand, but trust me, we are that fucked up. For some reason addicts lack the capacity to think straight about using drugs when we are taking mood-altering substances of any kind. Even if it seems like we are okay for a while, deep down we are not okay. We cannot truly become sane, and if we cannot become sane on the deepest level, then we cannot truly get better. You will never be able to convince me otherwise, and I have seen it hundreds and hundreds of times over the past ten years.

     I know it’d be great if there were some magic pill for all of our problems, but there isn’t. Addicts are cursed (or rather, not cursed) to only achieve freedom and health through rigorous hard work guts, honesty, humility, fearlessness, service and selflessness.

      So I written had a few pieces about the dynamics of psychotropic conditioning, but if nobody wants me to post them, I can just not write anything and we can continue to live in this culture of conformity and collectivism. Actually, screw all of that, here is the first one I wrote the other day after I received some accusations that my story and my writing and my life experience was hurting children.

                                                        *

     Many don’t understand that addiction and mental illness cannot actually be cured with science and medication. These ailments are not purely biological and nuero-chemical, as much of our core problem is deep-seated and intangible and occurs on a spiritual level…

     How dare I be so irresponsible and awful and say that medication fails miserably to fix an addict?

     First, um, so everyone out there who has a problem with what I say is qualified to make decisions for other people when it comes to their brain chemistry? I can think some in particular who think it’s right to med-up small children and rewire their brains with powerful and untested drugs. See, now I think that is irresponsible, and sorry, but that sounds a little dangerous and a little elitist and is quite a bit different than what I do, which is simply to share my life experience honestly, but I forgot that under the current regime it is wrong in this country for people to think and speak for themselves. And secondly…

     Because I have seen it hundreds, if not thousands of times and it all ends the same. I know of and have worked with hundreds of people, all who have tried to half-ass their recovery on methadone, suboxone and different concoctions of psychotropics and every single one of them has relapsed, some have died. None of them are sober and none of them have any sort of worthwhile condition or attitude, nor have any of them given back to their families properly, and by properly I don’t just mean respecting and helping out, but taking care of themselves and recovering mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually to the greatest extent possible.

     I wrote my book and why I write this blog because I was considered one of those mentally ill, severely chemically imbalanced, med’d up zombies who some ‘top notch’ psychiatrists (lol) were convinced needed to stay that way because of an ignorant and false belief that chemical imbalance is static, i.e. permanent, and would always necessitate meds, and guess what? I failed every time, habitually lapsing back into depression and addiction. I never changed as a person. I knew in my heart of hearts that medication was never going to truly get me better from anything.

     That’s what they don’t understand. If we don’t change, we die, and I believe medication doesn’t change addicts in the way we need to be changed because that’s what I have witnessed, and I have never witnessed a recovered and truly honest addict on drugs. Drugs often prevent the kind of change necessary to effect lasting recovery. But look, I really don’t care what you do. Do whatever you want. I just write my experience. I also don’t understand why one person can say what they want to say and another person has to be muzzled. Do people not hear how authoritarian and insane that sounds? So should I not share my 15 year journey of failures (of hell) and the sudden miracle and resulting change of attitude that saved my life?

     Medication doesn’t cure mental illness or chemical imbalance, it simply manipulates them temporarily. Sorry, but that’s the truth, and how is that so different from drug addiction? If we effectively rewire our brains with artificial doses of dopamine or serotonin, what do you think happens when we remove them? Our brain chemistry goes f’ing haywire, to put it softly, which then sort of enslaves us to our pharmacological regimen. Have we really solved our problem? Are we not still the same person?

     Underneath the medication resides the totality of our pain and poison and spiritual illness. It rots us slowly as it bubbles and grows, ready to explode when the drugs are removed, at least it does for me. And all we have to do to see how profound our addiction and psychosis become when we go into withdrawal from these drugs is to read the label. Do you know how many psychotic breaks we could have in this country if supply chains were suddenly disrupted in an economic collapse and millions of people on psychotropics were suddenly robbed of their artificial neurotransmitters? Yeah, it wouldn’t look good at all, and I would def stay inside your house as the ‘purge’ begins.

     What’s so sad is that the Establishment has managed to convince everyone that mental illness, chemical imbalance, and even addiction now cannot be fixed without pharmaceutical intervention, which is the one of the most tragic lies in the history of mental illness and addiction. Your brain chemistry is not static – it changes all day long, all week long, all year long, all century long…  kinda like the climate.

     So why did taking medication and sitting in therapy (key word sitting) fail me so completely and why can we reasonably assume that it will also fail your drug addict?
     It’s really simple. It’s because I have addiction, which nobody seems to understand. When you have addiction, that is your dual-diagnosis. Addiction will present us with a host of mental disorders, which is in itself a debilitating term, especially since the APA just makes shit up and pushes it as hard science when it is actually just soft science, i.e. not really science, i.e quack psychology, i.e. nonsense. But much more important than understanding the truth behind the system we live in is that if you treat the addiction wholly, if you treat what lies underneath the addiction, you address everything, you address ALL of our problems – you address our addiction, our mental illness, our chemical imbalance, and our life malady, as it were.

     What we really have is a life problem. Those who suffer from addiction and other things can’t seem to understand, fathom, accept or adjust to the realities of life. Sure there are some whose brains are severely damaged and lack the capacity to reason, feel, or be honest, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about people who are being treated as if they are brain damaged when they really just need to change.

     And unfortunately, we have become conditioned by the hubris of doctors and therapists and teachers and other authority figures who don’t really understand human illness and believe we cannot fully heal ourselves by simply addressing the life/spiritual problem. They don’t really understand human suffering and healing. They also don’t understand the fact that God exists because they have become blinded by intellectual superiority and megalomania. 

     Addiction is a spiritual illness. The physical disease and mental component of addiction are symptoms of an underlying spiritual malady, NOT the other way around. The physical and mental disease of addiction does not bring on our soul sickness, our soul sickness brings on the physical and mental disease of addiction. Very few understand this. Nobody is born a drug addict. We turn ourselves into drug addicts. Nobody who is okay inside and okay on a spiritual level mutates themselves into a drug addict. Instead of blaming our genes like so many like to do to abscond themselves, perhaps we should take some responsibility.
     So we who suffer from addiction simply need a real, comprehensive solution for drug addiction. After fifteen years of listening to some truly nauseating clinicians who have no idea what they’re talking about, I finally arrived at a place where I was treated spiritually, took Steps, went home, worked hard, made amends, helped others, meditated everyday for a year, and have been chemically normal since. I have no depression, bipolar, mania, addiction, nothing. I am free from all of that and my life is incredible. I am successful and have grown a family of my own. And yes, most important of all, I have God in my life.

     In fact, once I removed the medication and the therapy and the victim bullshit, once I stopped being a fucking wimp and did some real work on myself, my entire life changed and countless miracles occured. I have been touched and I have God and I give less than a shit what anybody thinks about anything I say, because this is knowledge that I have been given, knowledge that I have about myself and about addiction, and I’m sharing it to try to help you. There are some who appreciate that and whose eyes have been opened when it comes to the dark and confusing subject of addiction.

     And finally, I care deeply about being totally honest as a person and about my experience, and therefore, these are facts and this is the truth. As well, I have written 339 previous posts, so there is tons of information here, and if you have suffered from addiction and alcoholism and mental illness as I have, trust me, you would understand what the hell I’m talking about.

God, please give me knowledge of Your will for me and the power to carry it out…

Intellectuals Are Clueless

     Oh the stupidity and the hubris of non-addict ‘professionals’ and ‘specialists’ who think they know with absolute certainty what will work and what addicts should do, as if they somehow understand the workings of addiction simply because they have a position of power and a few textbooks jammed inside their heads.

     The reason non-addicts fail so miserably to help drug addicts is because they think they actually know about addiction and what helps when they have ZERO real world experience. Memorizing textbooks and academic journals or the latest findings from whatever pharmaceutical company doesn’t actually mean you know what you are talking about. Do we not see how ridiculous it is to listen to someone who is really just imagining what it’s like to be an addict and how to treat addiction? 
     You can’t know something you don’t have any experience with. It’s like someone giving parental advice thinking they know what will work for your kids when they don’t even have kids. 
     Non-addict doctors, therapists, social workers, counselors, case managers, teachers, academics and intellectuals have no clue because nothing they say to us has actually been tested in reality. Addicts listen to recovered addicts because they know what works and what doesn’t work IN THE REAL WORLD. 
     In an article about my book last year, some ivory tower prestige argued that they have clinical facts about addiction and that the Twelve Steps are not facts. Let me help everyone understand what facts are. Facts are RESULTS. Facts are people who have recovered entirely from a seemingly hopeless condition. Facts are not people who are drugged up to maintain the facade of recovery and physical sobriety just to make data sets look good, or get parents of your back, or get the doctor paid, or get some drug sold by the pharmaceutical.  
     So please do not be fooled by the Establishment. They are worse than anybody. They are just pretending to know the workings of addiction and then reporting what they imagine as the truth with confidence… like that addicts have triggers and other nonsense that is just factually untrue.
God, please help non-addicts realize their limitations and have some humility when it comes to intellectualism…