You gotta understand that before I recovered, I LOVED DRUGS AND ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTES WITH ALL MY HEART.
Yes, that’s right. Contrary to popular belief nowadays, addicts love drugs. Micro-brewed beer, vodka, weed, oxycontin and heroin were the loves of my life. I loved coke, benzos and every other thing, too, but opiates were at the top of the list. Actually, mixing coke and heroin was probably the best thing. The point is that there isn’t some evil force that takes us over or some disease that suddenly manifests itself. You really need to understand that people who become alcoholics and addicts love drugs and alcohol.
I know a lot of addicts tell their parents all kinds of shit like, “Hey, it really wasn’t my fault, I don’t want to be this way. If I hadn’t gotten injured in sports and the doctor didn’t prescribe me Vicodin, I’d be fine right now.” Sorry, but that is all bullshit. The doctor and the Vicodin and the companies and the system and the lack of funding and blah, blah, blah have nothing to do with it. The kid wants to go through life high. He wants to get jammed and he wants to stay that way. He loves opiates and would have found them sooner or later. He wants a false and easy solution for the problem of life and he will find one.
*Note: Please don’t tell me that he organically needs opiates and that is why he seeks them, and because of this completely natural bio-chemical need we should actually prescribe him regular doses of opiates… oh and that poor little him in fact deserves to be taking opiates everyday because of his blameless chemical deficiency. People are actually saying this now and it is LUNACY. This is what addiction neuroscientists are pumping into the brains of parents. Sorry, but just listen to how nuts that sounds. It’s much better to find a way of being okay without some adjusted homeostasis, without needing above-normal levels of dopamine. Increasing dopamine production is not a solution, and it is actually one of the primary causes for addicts failing in recovery.
Anyway, enough of that. Let me briefly explain in the simplest possible terms what the difference is between me as an addict and you as a non-addict: I would rather not even start drinking or using anything than to have only a small amount. In other words, drinking one or two beers and then stopping is absolute TORTURE. Same with drugs. I’m much happier staying sober than not having enough to become jammed out of my skull and enter a state of near paralysis. Yes, that is the truth, and it’s true for all of us. We don’t just want to drink or use. We want use until we pass out… and then wake up and have more and more and more.
Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking we don’t really like using, that it just happened, or if it wasn’t for those pesky wisdom teeth and that stupid doctor. That is nonsense. Anyone who becomes a lushbag or a junkhead is totally obsessed and in love with drugs and alcohol. I used to dissect kind bud under a microscope in complete awe. I honestly thought that God brought us these drugs and that I was put here on earth to drink and use. I really believed that Oxycontin was a miracle.
Drugs and alcohol are #1 in the life of any addict or alcoholic until they basically find God and start to care more about the consequences of their actions than they do about pleasuring themselves at the expense of others. This is without question a moral issue. Or let me put it this way. Addicts and alcoholics have obliterated their conscience. It has shrunk up into the size and the texture of an overcooked, wilted pea. Trust me, this is the truth. We don’t care. Addicts and alcoholics lack a conscience or they have pummeled one that was once in tact. We feel entitled.
Recovery is entirely dependent on the restoration of one’s conscience. Believe me, if we start to care enough, we won’t every use drugs and alcohol again. When the size of an addict’s conscience is greater than his obsession, he or she is recovered, most likely for good. And we nourish and expand our conscience with each right action we take (right action meaning moral or spiritual action). So the better you want to get, the more good stuff you will do. That’s the deal.
charlie i agree with you. it has been my experience in watching my son for the last 10 years. it's sad but true. but read this piece of literature that is read at ea and every Families Anonymous program. I love the program and it has saved my sanity but they clearly state that drug abuse is not a moral issue.
https://www.familiesanonymous.org/image/data/5003%202%20About%20Drug%20Abuse%2006%202012.pdf
charlie i agree with you. it has been my experience in watching my son for the last 10 years. it's sad but true. but read this piece of literature that is read at ea and every Families Anonymous program. I love the program and it has saved my sanity but they clearly state that drug abuse is not a moral issue. https://www.familiesanonymous.org/image/data/5003%202%20About%20Drug%20Abuse%2006%202012.pdf
Hey Janet, Thank you. I read the literature. Let me try to give you a good example.
Say you have a kid who goes up North as I did and he learns of the pain he causes his mom. He's also offered a solution and sees it working in other addicts who are doing the work, changing and staying recovered. Then let's say he decides to come home and relapse when he begins to feel some RID (restlessness, irritability, discontent) again, instead of pushing through and doing the work, but all the while knowing of the pain he will cause you. He is choosing to do the wrong thing and in my view, that is a moral/spiritual issue.
Look, it's not that he is the worst, most evil monster to ever trod the earth, but we should call a spade a spade. It doesn't do anyone a service to avoid or deny what simply is, regardless of whether we also use drugs or drink to avoid discomfort, pain or some other issue, which, by the way, everybody has and somehow manages to get through without drugs. It's no secret that everybody, even non-addicts, drink and use drugs to take the edge off, but it's about growing up. That's what recovery is all about, and when children become adults, part of their development is indeed moral development… no?
By the way, you are the best. Thanks for writing as you do, Janet, and sending the link.
PS What I do know is my experience, and every time I achieved sobriety and then went back out, I knew what I was doing. I knew that what I was doing was wrong. There is no question on Earth that I suffered successive moral failures before getting better and starting to do the right thing. The things I did intentionally to loved ones such as purposely verbally assaulting my wife and starting a fight for an excuse to get out of the door in order to use the way I wanted to… I mean, how is that not a moral failure? How is that just some involuntary symptom of a blameless disease? Plus, it's really much better for us addicts to view our recovery and sanity through a moral compass as opposed as through some new age lens of moral relativity. That I am a sure, as well as my experience. Thanks again, Janet 🙂
PSS Also, if moral/spiritual action works so well to get us better, it sort of implies we have a problem in that department 😉 In other words, if our problem is spiritual, so must be our solution.
i so agree with you charlie. at some point in every single recovered addicts life they faced that moral question right? if not then no one would ever recover. but i've seen so many in recovery and doing so well and they have fixed their moral compass.
it's you who are the best charlie. i cannot wait for the new book!
i so agree with you charlie. at some point in every single recovered addicts life they faced that moral question right? if not then no one would ever recover. but i've seen so many in recovery and doing so well and they have fixed their moral compass. it's you who are the best charlie. i cannot wait for the new book!