Comment:
If addiction is not anyone’s fault, why are pill and heroin addictions an epidemic in America today? The drug companies and drug gangs coming through the border are not at fault at all? So are you saying that if there weren’t pills and heroin, then all these people would be addicted to alcohol or something else? Just trying to understand why the blame is only with the addict.
Response:
No offense at all, but people will believe what they want to believe to help ease the pain, channel the anger, and deny what their child or spouse is doing to themselves. Nobody is forcing us to become addicts and nobody is preventing us from getting better.
So there have always been drug gangs, synthetic drugs and so forth. Sure drug dealers are scum, but no, they are not to blame. Without evil there is nothing to oppose it. In other words, if people didn’t take the freaking drugs, there would be no more drug gangs and OxyContin to speak of. It’s called supply and demand. So if we are going to poison ourselves and mutate ourselves into addicts, then there will always be some evil scumbag who will continue to produce them, sell them, and exploit our weakness.
The point is that nothing outside of the addict is to blame for what he or she ultimately does or doesn’t do, which is also a much better attitude for the addict to have. If he even partially blames big pharma or drug gangs, he is rationalizing his drug use when there is no rationalization, and perhaps even using this as a reason or excuse for using or relapsing. How is that acceptable for anyone serious about recovering and conquering their drug addiction? The fact is there are no external reasons. We make ourselves into who and what we become regardless of what drug gangs, big pharma or the CIA are doing (the CIA buys most of the hard drugs coming into the US, but that is a whole other subject. All you need to know about that is the more doped out and dependent a population is, the easier they are to control and manipulate).
But the issue is, how does the availability of something actually cause the addict to pick up? I don’t get it. Are we not ultimately responsible? The availability of heroin and pills does not cause an epidemic, just as the unlimited availability of alcohol does not cause an epidemic of alcoholism. There is booze everywhere but not everybody is an alcoholic. The booze doesn’t crawl it’s way up my throat any more than the heroin shoots itself into my vein, so how is it Belvedere Vodka’s fault that I went and bought it and drank it like a fish until I became alcoholic?
Of course (some) doctors and drug companies and (all) drug gangs are doing the wrong thing, but nobody is forcibly shoving a needle in our arm. There have always been problems with drugs and alcohol. Before this current wave of opiate use, there was a wave of meth use sweeping the country. Before that, there was a wave of alcohol abuse among youth and on college campuses. So there have always been problems, but usually when the government calls something an “epidemic” it is just an excuse to expand government, tax people more and spend more, which of course means more money and more publicly funded jobs for them.
I personally believe that addicts will use just about anything if they want to get high. Most of us drink and use because we love drinking and using. Macro rises in drug use probably has to do with, if anything, the spiritual destitution (indifference/moral relativism/hatred of God) and economic depression sweeping the country, as well as the entitlement mentality that the morally corrupt establishment is promoting. Today kids are being coddled and taught that they should always feel comfortable 24/7, that everybody deserves a trophy. I don’t think people realize how destructive and dangerous this is to de-individualize the child and relegate them to the ash heap of mediocrity.
Look at college campuses today, where if the way the Asian food prepared in the cafeteria is not culturally authentic to the liking of non-Asian students, they are taught to be offended by this form of jaw-dropping discrimination and to fight for menu justice, lol. They are taught that anything which violates their ‘safe space’ should be muzzled and criminalized, even a simple and harmless disagreement (which is especially ridiculous given there are actual victims suffering actual atrocities in the world). Yup, that’s what you’re paying for. That is the useless and skill-set-less education they are becoming debt slaves for. Economic illiteracy and social hypersensitivity. And guess who gave students unlimited access to student loans and then made them unforgivable in bankruptcy court? By the way, unlimited access to student loans is what drives up tuition costs. I did an old post about ‘student slavery‘ for anyone who is interested.
But is this not the exact mentality of a drug addict, the ridiculous notion that he or she has the right to protect one’s conform zone at all costs, and that using drugs affects no one other than themselves? You cannot control the world. No matter how hard you try to control things, it will be ripped from you like a thief in the night. If a kid wants to self-destruct, he will self-destruct. So instead of blaming external things, we addicts should be focused on what really drives our addiction, which is pathological self-absorption. To counter this, we need to focus our attention outward. We need to first remove the obsession to use and then go and think about others, join the world, engage in service and grow along spiritual lines, as the Big Book states so beautifully. We need purpose and a moral compass. We need God.
100% agree.