Please feel free to request a blog entry on any particular subject or question. That being said, I don’t tell people what to do specifically, nor do I want to. It is much better to figure out the answers on your own (See Don’t Listen To Me). What I do here, despite some periodic and impulsive accusations to the contrary, is to share what I have learned through my own experience and you can take from that what you will.

Should addicts with mental issues not take anything? 

     Active addicts are going to present with any number of mental disorders, including but not limited to depression, hypomania, psychosis, anxiety, dissociative disorder, narcissism, ADD, PTSD and you name it, all of which may be entirely drug-induced. It is therefore crucial to achieve sobriety unmedicated and remain unmedicated until the fizz settles, if you will. Once sober, we must also embark on a rigorous program of action to determine what leftover mental skews, if any, may be dissolved without drugs.

     If an addict rolls into treatment, talks to a doctor, gets slapped with a few disorders and put on a pile of powerful psychotropics right away, we will never know how much of his mental illness was purely drug-induced and how much of it was residing separately from the addiction. You may end up drugging the living shit out of someone who doesn’t even need to medicated. Why make a zombie out a perfectly capable, talented and charismatic human being? We must let things settle and work on ourselves for a good a year or so in order to accurately determine if we truly cannot function without meds, and even then, the addict may be fooling himself and others about how dysfunctional they really are. How can we clearly see what’s inside if we do anything short of this?

Aren’t drugs that reduce cravings good for addicts who really want to work hard but just need a little help? 

     First of all, no addict taking Naltrexone etc really wants to work hard or go to any lengths. Addicts who half-ass any portion of their recovery will possess weak recovery or fail altogether. Addicts who really want to change and give 100% to their growth don’t need any help or hand-holding. Furthermore, any recovery that is assisted will have cracks in it. Think building a foundation. If someone lends you a few cinderblocks and then takes them away once you are done building, your foundation will have some rather large holes in it. The best chance to lay a solid foundation is to build it ourselves, and this is true for any of us, even the somewhat unimpressive and half-witted addicts out there.

     Second, there is no such thing as a drug that can effectively reduce cravings, or obsessions rather, as cravings refer to the physical process of withdrawal. Once we are cleaned out, there are no cravings. At that point it is purely mental, and nothing can prevent the mental obsession from occurring. The mental obsession is a deep-seated malady, a sort of random and sudden lunacy, the result of a profound spiritual illness. An illness of this sort can only be removed through the effort of the being in which it inhabits. No drug can do the kind of work that we can only do for ourselves [with God].

     There is no reducing obsessions via pharmaceutical intervention, and drugs that claim to do this are just placebos. It isn’t possible. It has always amazed me the degree of ignorance among the medical community when it comes to addiction. But much more important than getting too deep into that is the fact that any drug we take to aid our recovery will negate that portion of our recovery. In other words, we will fail to accomplish for ourselves what the drug has accomplished for us. Drugs of this nature in fact rob us of our recovery.

      Finally, it is pointless to simultaneously take some sort of ‘crave-reduction’ drug and reach out to God at the same time, as we cannot really expect God to fix us if we are also copping out with an easier, softer way. We cannot scam our way into becoming recovered, and isn’t that what you want for your child, to be fully recovered and free, as opposed to simply ‘in recovery’, struggling, and holding on by a thread? It doesn’t work that way. Half measures avail us nothing, and taking naltrexone etc. is a half measure. God doesn’t help bullshitters and addicts looking for an easy way out, and I bet you that any one of us on all sorts of meds to make us feel more comfortable are still lying through what’s left of our teeth and filled to the brim with bullshit.

What is the biggest mistake a POA can make? 

     There is actually no such thing as a “POA mistake” because addicts are 100% responsible for everything they do and everything that happens to them as a result of what they do. As well, no parent, regardless of how loving and wonderful and saintly they may be, can prevent a child from becoming an addict or fix them once they get there. That is crucial to understand. It is the truth.

     But I guess if I had to pick something, I’d say the biggest mistake a POA can make is buying our bullshit (NOTHING we say can be believed) as well as following the bullshit advice of sources such as Beyond Addiction and so forth. Kindness and science hurt as opposed to help addicts. How do I put this without sounding… fuck it, I’ll just say what needs to be said because let’s face it, that’s what you come here for. Showering an addict with love is equivalent to trying to kill them. Treat us instead like you would treat any addict who is robbing you blind. Look, it’d be great to have a normal relationship with us, but you can’t… until perhaps we find God and become free.

     OMG, why? How could you say such a thing? 

     Because we are pathological and narcissistic liars (even when we act vulnerable and open up about our feelings and turn into sad, little pity pots) and our #1 and only priority in life is getting high, so we will use you and manipulate your love and your compassion to the ends of the earth. If you let us, we will suck you dry in every possible way until you are nothing but a rotting carcass… unless, of course, we kill ourselves first. So just tell us that you love us but do not under any circumstance be a party to our suicide mission. See How Not To Help Addicts.

    I also wouldn’t follow the advice of 99% of mainstream addiction modalities or professionals, as treatment in America is a farce and really just business as usual. Academics, doctors and nearly everybody else seem to know next to nothing about addiction and what is really necessary to treat it, or rather, to free us from it.

     If you listen to snake oil salesmen like that joker on CNN that sells his Alcoholism & Addiction Cure book and a $78,560 stay in his Malibu hot tub, your child will most likely overdose at some point after relapsing repeatedly. His four points have simply been lifted or stolen from a Psych. 101 textbook and are absent a shred of originality or authenticity. To claim that a few very common and provincial strategies that have utterly failed drug addicts are a new and novel cure for drug addiction is definitely some sell-side bullshit. Plus, if this guy knew anything about addiction, he would know that nobody should ever be claiming to cure addiction because addiction cannot be cured with human methods and man-made remedies.

     You shouldn’t be surprised, though, that this guy would be pumping this shit on CNN, given that everybody reporting on CNN are total frauds and liars.