Don’t let us steal from you…
Trust me, addicts and alcoholics don’t care at all. We will suck you dry and leave you heartbroken and rotting away. We will steal your time, energy, love, patience, health, peace, serenity, money and sanity. The list goes on…
If you don’t stop us from robbing you, who will? We certainly won’t stop ourselves. We’ve gone insane. And please, you must know that insane people don’t care about you, whether it’s an addict, an alcoholic, a narcissist, or some other type of sociopath. Therefore, you must set an ultimatum and stick with it regardless of what happens.
We don’t care about you. We care about drugs. We care about alcohol. That’s it. Addiction is not contracting a brain disease that we so wish we didn’t have and never intended to give to ourselves. Nonsense. The idea that we are devastated to have been taken over by this evil force is pure fiction. Addicts want to become addicts. Addicts LOVE drugs. Alcoholics LOVE alcohol. We would rather have them then you… until we don’t. Addiction is a spiritual malady.
If we are educated about our addiction and how wrong it is, how we hurt others so, how much damage and harm we cause, that is the only hope we have to truly change. Through the Step process we begin to feel the depth and the consequences of our actions, of what we’ve done, and this slowly gives birth to the conscience within. Through right action, the conscience grows over time, just as the presence of God within grows over time. We can liken God in an addict to a tiny, dull, ball of brass. Through spiritual action, we polish it until it grows larger and shines brightly within.
We must agree that we must change and grow at any and all cost. If a moral compass is never smashed into an addict, he or she has no chance. Only when we begin to care more about what we’re doing to others and to our own temples (our bodies), than we do about drugs and alcohol do we have a chance to recover.
You really have to understand this about addiction. Adjusting some chemical arrangement in our brain doesn’t change the addict within. The core problem is still entirely in tact. The insanity is still there. The chip is still missing. Remove your pharmaceutical intervention and the addict will relapse, if not before. He or she is still buried under the weight of spiritual angst and darkness. He or she is still 100% preoccupied with themselves and their comfort. What sort of life is that?
So why settle for less? Push the addict to change who they are, who they’ve become. Educate them not on their brain changes, which just gives us an excuse to use, but educate us on how wrong action produces harm and discord and how by carrying on this way we will suffer in unimaginable ways, not to mention the suffering we inflict on those who love us and stick by us.
To note, I just had a third surgery without any narcotics or sedatives. Sure it hurts, but like anything else, it can be endured. To be honest, I look forward to these challenges. I told the anesthesiologist to think of me as the opposite of everyone else who comes in saying “yeah, give me everything you got.” I told him I wanted to wake up in the most excruciating pain possible. He pleaded with me to allow for just a small dose of some short-acting narcotic while I was under to help slow down my CNS so they could inert the breathing tube with greater ease and so forth. He also argued that I’d have no experience of it, as I’d be under before it was administered and clear of it before waking up. I told him it wasn’t necessary and waited until he crossed it off the list.
Why am I like this, you may ask? Because shouldn’t every addict who wants to actually change take this stuff seriously? You need to understand that the addicts who don’t make it are failing not because they can’t succeed, but because they don’t really want to change. So shouldn’t I serve as the best example I can to those I would sponsor, speak to or write to? I mean, what right do we have to impose ourselves onto others if we cannot even endure a little pain without whining and complaining until someone finally caves and gives us some painkillers. It really is outrageous. You simply cannot fall for an addict’s poor little me, victim bullshit. We are not victims.
Beware of like 95% of people who approach you at AA or NA meetings trying to sponsor you. If that person has not taken Steps as they are laid out in the Big Book and does not live by those principles (not saying I do) to the best of their ability, run the other way. If that person does not possess the internal qualities, the strength and wisdom that you desire, don’t waste your time, as you will most likely be led astray by just another joker. Remember: meeting makers don’t make it, they make meetings.