So everybody’s wrong, right? Uh, no, I don’t think so.

     Regardless of what changes may occur to the brain from abusing drugs and alcohol year after year, the root of our problem is selfishness and the root of our recovery is unselfish action. Whether you want to believe that or not doesn’t change the truth. Whether you want to explain away an illness by blaming others, blaming environment or blaming genes doesn’t change the fact that addiction is acquired through selfish action and it is vanquished through unselfish action.

     I tracked some more searches for you over the course of the last two days. Hopefully this will help to illuminate the nature of our malady. Addicts can be likened to children who refuse to grow up, as growing up means shedding the ignorance of youth and the fantasy of adolescent narcissism. Growing up means hard work and personal responsibility. Growing up challenges us and pushes us out of our comfort zone – the one thing addicts don’t want to do – feel uncomfortable.

     With addiction, we need to challenge conventional wisdom. What you think will work for you or your addicted loved one may be the last thing you want to do, so consider trying the opposite. In fact, since nothing and nobody can stop an addict, we should probably do nothing at all. Blasphemy! Actually, it’s not. It’s common sense, which tends to be uncommon. People usually choose to get better on their own as opposed to someone telling them to. Left alone, we are much more likely to change than if we are followed around, coddled and so forth. Huh?! Why! Charlie, you dumbass!

     Cool, no problem. Do whatever you want. However, the people who tried to intervene and shower me with pamphlets, doctors, pills and even love and friendship simply delayed my recovery. Allowing me to sink lower into the depths of darkness and despair was what closed the gap between me and God. The lower we go and the worse we get, the closer we get to God, one way or the other.

     Sure you don’t have to lose all your teeth and become a walking STD before recovering, but trust me, most addicts won’t stop using until they want to stop. To be more accurate, most addicts won’t change until they want to change, short of some miracle… and yes, those occur as well, though not usually while we’re sitting on our asses nodding off after a trip to the methadone clinic. 

01/23/15 – 01/24/15

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God, please rid us from the spiritual disease of selfishness, the preoccupation with self, and the addiction to comfort…

We can simply refer to the Big Book for answers…

“Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible.” -Alcoholics Anonymous, p.62Or the Bible…

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

All of the posts from last fall have now been published so the blog is now up to date. New stuff will be posted as time permits, although I have several important topics in mind. Have a good night.

      I recently spoke to a struggling opiate addict today who desperately cried out for help and emphatically claimed that she can’t live like this… but then when I asked her if she’s willing to drop everything and give all she has towards getting better, she said something standard like, “Oh no, I can’t go away, even for a day. I have to go to work. I’ll lose this or that…”

     We addicts become deluded, almost brainwashed, falsely believing we need all sorts of things to be okay – a job, business, girlfriend or boyfriend… whatever the case. I told her plainly that if she doesn’t get better, she will lose everything anyway, including time. I guarantee it.

     Part of this is that we associate these fleeting external things with comfort, so the truth is we are afraid of stepping outside of our comfort zone. We fear that if we go away, we won’t be comfortable anymore, but this is precisely what we need. Comfort is the very thing that brings us down. If you want to get better, start doing that which makes you UNcomfortable, not more comfortable.

     Speaking of comfort, I also told her that if she is really wants to get better and stay better, she is going to have to be willing to suffer. Addicts want to feel good 24/7, so we must destroy the notion and the demand that sobriety must also feel good. It’s okay to suffer. In fact, that is what human life is. Addicts are essentially children in adult bodies, but adult life involves not feeling good sometimes. It involves pain, suffering, discomfort, anxiety, stress, loss and a slew of other challenges. Sure it also includes laughter, joy, fun and adventure but life was fundamentally designed to be up and down, right and left, light and dark. Getting better, therefore, is in many ways just the process of growing up.

     Addicts love to declare that nobody understands, that we are the only ones feeling and suffering to the extent we are, which is just one of many convenient delusions. Our experience certainly isn’t novel at all, and with the exception of having the mental obsession, can be addressed. All seven billion people on Earth suffer, but they have sufficiently maintained their conscience or their relationship with God not to voluntarily evolve into junkies.

     So to get better, we must do what’s hard, not easy. We must be willing to work extremely hard taking right action. We must be willing to drop everything and let go of our job, our business or our relationship if it means the choice between that or getting better… if it means the choice between that or life. We must be willing to feel some pain and walk through it without complaining about it, without broadcasting our entire inner/emotional experience on a megaphone. It’s okay to suffer and not talk about it. As we get better, we learn that we can suffer without wearing it on our sleeve. We can even suffer and ask others how they are feeling, how they are doing, how things are for them.

     We should understand that suffering is part of life. We must not fight it, but rather sit down beside it and embrace it, knowing that our thoughts and feelings, while uncomfortable at times, are just thoughts and feelings. They won’t kill us, and they don’t have to rule us. We must be willing to do anything it takes to get better. We must be willing to put our spiritual/mental health before everything and everyone, because without it, we die… and more importantly, we shatter everyone who gives a shit about us.

     There are no excuses not to get better. Who cares about a job or a business or a relationship if you just end up shooting dope again? You will lose it all anyway, so the truth is that nothing else matters but our spiritual health and our relationship with God.

     So after speaking on the phone, I pulled over and prayed deeply for her to actually reach lower depths of despair that she may she the futility of using drugs as a solution and be left with no choice but to reach out with all that she has, find God and embrace spiritual growth. Then, despite her refusal of my initial recommendation, which was to remove herself from her environment so she could focus solely on the work involved in getting better, I set her up with local recovered sponsor to attempt the Step process out here in the real world. If she does the work and recovers, she’ll be all the more stronger for it, but some of us need to be removed from our environment as we tend to relapse before the mental obsession is actually lifted, so to take Steps out in the world, willpower comes into play. 

     Let’s get something straight.

     The disease model sure isn’t what it used to be.

     Today you are taught that we addicts are born addicts and then wake up one day and just start pounding booze non-stop and speedballing five times a day. Worse yet, today’s disease model has not been constructed to help addicts recover. Quite the contrary. Though well disguised as compassion and cutting edge miracle science, it is used to subsidize drug companies and promote the devious and immoral sale of so-called addiction drugs, because, well, everybody knows more drugs is such a sane, logical, reasonable, scientific and intelligent solution to a drug problem. The disease model is also used to take moral and personal responsibility out the equation. Why? Because God must be removed from any discussion, regardless of facts. God must be removed period. And any reference to God and personal or moral responsibility should be met with the words “stupid and/or hick” and delivered with the stench of moral and intellectual superiority.

     Right.

     In the ‘The Doctor’s Opinion’ at the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous (which every addict and family member must read), Dr. William D. Silkworth, once the director of the Charles B. Towns hospital in NYC wrote to AA that the chronic alcoholic indeed seems to have developed an allergy to alcohol. What does this mean?

    Physically, the body of an alcoholic responds differently than the body of a non-alcoholic. Upon drinking, the alcoholic (that is, the person who has over time BECOME an alcoholic) experiences the “phenomenon of craving” once he starts drinking. His body craves more and more. He seeminlgly cannot stop, nor does he want to. Once he starts, something happens, and it becomes nearly impossible for him to stop, “nearly” meaning, not impossible. The mind is the issue, and one that can certainly be repaired.

     While the body of an addict (once again, the body of a person who has used so much that he has crossed the line) begins to crave abnormally, the mind of an alcoholic is the only problem which needs to be addressed, especially since it is the only problem that can be addressed. The body of an addict cannot be fixed, nor does it have to. The body an addict is irrelevant anyway, because so long as the alcoholic refrains from drinking, it doesn’t matter how his body reacts, so it’s quite useful for addicts to believe in the danger or using and drinking, even once. Powerlessness or loss of will is an entirely different issue and one that can quite easily be addressed and restored.

     However, once the addict achieves physical sobriety, the only thing causing him to relapse is a what the Big Book calls a “strange mental blank spot” or phenomenon, whereby the mind essentially goes insane and fails to respond rationally and reasonably to thoughts about drinking or using, despite the horror that is our drinking/using careers and our lives.

     Back to the disease model.

     This is no disease like the child with juvenile leukemia. Quite the contrary. If you want to call it a disease, you must distinguish our illness as one we gave to ourselves voluntarily by indulging in drugs and alcohol past the point of no return. Sure we may like to get jammed much more than the next guy, but the idea that we wake up one day and we are suddenly addicts is willfully ignorant. And while we may have damaged out bodies, perhaps permanently, in the way they respond to drugs, we don’t start off this way.

     As well, all mental, emotional and spiritual components to our “disease” such as willpower, are by no means permanent. If they were, nobody would recover. Why is it that I never think about drugs and alcohol anymore? Why am I repulsed by them and the mere thought of anything that pulls me away from God? Where has my disease gone? Sure I am still a vastly flawed human being who can certainly be an asshole sometimes, but my drug problem is gone. So long as my mind is clean and sane, I have power over any thoughts to drink or use. The mind and soul can be healed, and should that occur, it matters not what happens to the body or chemistry of an addict. Despite what you’ve been told, brain chemistry is not static. In fact, it changes all day long. And it can be easily changed through a myriad of different actions or practices, especially repeated actions. To claim that our bio-chemistry is static is just bad or fraudulent science. As well, to claim that chemistry can only be altered and therefore addressed with psychotropic medication is also false. Clinicians or social workers who tell you that are engaging in false science. Besides, what do social workers know about anything? Kidding, kidding…  

     Furthermore, have the new age slew of cocky disease pumpers actually stared into a petri dish and observed the alcoholic allele? Let’s even say you found yourself in a lab one day observing the DNA of an addict – please don’t tell me you have any clue what you’re looking at.

     So the “disease model” in reality should be strictly confined to how the body responds to drugs. The body craves drugs once they trigger the release of excess dopamine in the reward system of the brain (which is actually quite normal even for those of us who haven’t mutated into basket case junkies). Craving, therefore, is a normal physical event, not mental. All the talk of psychological craving and mental triggers is a hoax. Pure nonsense. If an addict never picks up, there is no physical craving. It really is all mental. And if he puts the drug down and his body is fully detoxed after a few days, give or take, there is no physical craving either. Physical craving ends with physical withdrawal. It is the mind of an “addict” that is so disturbed, not the body. It is the person we are and it is the person we become.

     Everything besides the physiological process of withdrawal occurs in the mind, which is not a disease at all. The mind is malleable and fluid. We can change our minds at any point in time. And we don’t need more drugs to do it. The mind of an addict can well be healed through right action alone. Engaging in prayer, meditation, inventory and service to others can repair the mind with haste. More importantly, our sincere desire to change and out earnest effort induces the will of God to remove our mental obsession and restore us to sanity. And it really doesn’t matter whether you believe in God or not. He is there regardless of what you believe. He is part of our fundamental make-up.

     Therefore, when we use the disease model to justify a relapse after physical sobriety has been achieved, that is bullshit. When we use the disease model to justify our insane behavior, that is bullshit. When we use the disease model to justify lying, deceiving, manipulating and abusing others, that is bullshit. When we use the disease model as a reason why we cannot get better, that is bullshit. When we use the disease model to fund pharmaceuticals that claim to reduce cravings and such, that is bullshit. When we use the disease model to rob taxpayers to promote and fund substitution drugs like suboxone and methadone, that is bullshit. When we use the disease model to excuse the addicts in our lives as innocent creatures that were suddenly taken over and victimized by the demonic entity of addiction, that is bullshit. We turned ourselves into drug addicts because, guess what, we love using drugs, and guess what, we have a very troubled conscience. By all accounts, we have a rather grave spiritual malady.

     So the current, bullshit disease model exists (like many things) to subsidize big pharma and big government with tax dollars from the few people still left in the private sector, dressed up with the facade of some righteous, compassionate cause, and that my friends, is bullshit. It’s also not real compassion, because you are robbing the addict of truly changing. You are also relegating them as some permanently damaged creature, and believe me, they love it because they use it to excuse everything they do. How have so many fallen for this and why is there so much hostility and hatred towards anyone who even questions this nonsense? I guess it’s the trendy thing now to smear anyone who disagrees… even though I have actually recovered and therefore my very own experience sort of blows a gaping hole in the permanently powerless thing.

     I once loved drugs and alcohol with all my heart. The idea that we addicts somehow don’t want to be addicts and never wanted to be enslaved by some drug is a myth. Sure, perhaps deep down somewhere we want to truly be free, but you have to understand that addicts love drugs like a soul mate (btw “soul mates” don’t exist except in absurd Hollywood movies). That’s why we’re addicts. We’re not addicts because whoops, we woke up one day and became addicts, or whoops, we wimped out and took a Vicodin for some minor procedure and now we can’t stop. We don’t want to stop. We loved taking the Vicodin. We love anything and everything that gets us high, changes the way we feel, triggers the release of dopamine in our reward system and saturates our CNS with pleasure thus preserving our comfort zone. Short of shedding the mortal coil and floating off into lala land, free from the predicament of existing in a human body, drugs and alcohol (like power) serve as the great deception and false solution of both internal and external freedom and peace. We believe the drugs are washing us with some holy elixir, though nothing could be further from the truth.

     And this is why there are so many false solutions for the slavery of drugs and alcohol. This is also why there are so many theories of addiction, the most recent and by far most destructive being the idea that addiction is a permanent disease that the poor addict didn’t give to themselves (even AA has been infected by this nonsense, but to be sure, the Big Book refers to addiction and alcoholism as an illness or malady, further stating that our main problem centers in the mind, not the body). I tried just about everything one can try – from the excuses/reasons invented in talk therapy to mind-numbing psychotropics to substitution drugs like methadone and suboxone that kept me chained and almost killed me as swiftly as heroin (subs can be likened to the devil, for sure). I tried wilderness trips, rock-climbing, art, music and acting. I tried self-help nonsense and listening to a slew of Godless new-age heretics. I tried visualization, crystals, polarity, acupuncture, acupressure. I tried some ridiculous homeopathy to patch holes in my aura and a St. John’s Wart tincture for my depression. I tried driving across the country, having relationships, socializing more, socializing less, and on and on and on… but the thing is…

     I loved drugs the entire time, and it doesn’t take a prodigy to deduce that’s not gonna work. So why have I now finally stopped loving drugs as much as a narcissist loves self?

     Because I love God now.  Loving God more than drugs is probably the only solution for any long-term, hopeless addict or alcoholic. Why? Because loving God more than drugs is the only thing powerful enough to replace my addiction. While worldly remedies have little or no power to alter the entire course of our lives, the power of God is limitless. It can restore a man to sanity in an instant. It can drive a man each and every day to wake up and give his life over to Him, to guide and steer him throughout the day, the change his heart to begin to love what is right and clean more than what is wrong and filthy, to change the make-up of a man, his character and his entire attitude and belief about life and what life is about.

     What people must also understand is that our primary poison is not drugs and alcohol, it is our selfishness. If we do not become willing to replace our selfishness with a desire to instead be closer to God, we cannot and will not recover. Most addicts only want to get sober if it feels good, but in order to get better, we must rise above our pathological preoccupation to the more banal and primitive pleasures of the flesh, the senses and the nervous system. Beware of carrying the preoccupation with comfort into recovery. Beware of carrying the deep-seated narcissism into recovery. Beware of continuing to hold the outside world responsible for how we feel and for what happens in our lives.

     The solution of spiritual action and putting God first does not guarantee we will never suffer. It’s not supposed to. What it guarantees is that that drugs and alcohol won’t ever be a problem again. Why? Because it restores our conscience and keeps our selfishness in check, thereby keeping us close to the Lord. If our conscience burns inside, we will refuse to use because we now care too much about the consequences of our actions – of wrong action. We cannot have success by carrying our selfishness into sobriety and continuing to demand the preservation of our comfort zone 24/7. But if we submit to the will of God and trust He won’t bring us anything that we cannot handle and endure, we can and will remain free until we draw our last breath.

     And trust me, despite all the constant whining you hear today, we humans can endure a great deal.

     Truth be told, therapy (fee for friend?) is more of a luxury exclusive to the affluent and the intellectual (and the bubble in which they preside), which makes sense given it was designed by academic elitists and has evolved over the years to fit the business models of pharmaceutical and insurance companies. There is also an issue with corruption in government, but we can leave that for now.

     Look, most people are busy surviving and working 70-80 hours a week and don’t have the time nor the immaturity or entitlement to go whine about micro-aggressions, like, the business down the street has a flagpole and on top of the flagpole is an American flag. Can you imagine? A flag?! No doubt an abusive, violent assault. Unforgivable. Most people are concerned with unsophisticated peasantry such as paying the bills and putting food on the table. How ironic that they are in fact representative of the solution!

     Many of us who engage in regular therapy probably have too much time on our hands, as least that was my own experience. In the past, I only sought therapy when I was idle and depressed. Now that I face challenges like it’s a new addiction and push myself to stay busy most of the time, I am much more even and content. The last thing on my mind is therapy. Why? Because I don’t let feelings stop me. I personally believe many of our problems would evaporate if we chose to get busy and fill our lives with work, friends, family, hobbies, exercise, service, etc. When you’re too busy working, serving and doing things all day long, you don’t have the time to complain, let alone think about your feelings 24/7.

     We give far too much attention and significance to our feelings. Trust me, they really aren’t that important. When it comes to addiction especially, hyper-focusing on our feelings is the precise opposite of what we need. Feelings don’t matter. To get better, we need to focus not on our feelings but instead stop thinking and just take action. So with a sponsor, I really don’t care how they feel. I care about what they do. Feelings are no reason not to act appropriately and quite frankly, they can easily become excuses not to act. How many times have you heard an addict refuse to treat themselves because of some way that they feel, whether sad, depressed, angry, anxious, victimized, blah, blah, blah. Trust me, if you want to really help an addict, do not validate their awful feelings. Being anxious to get better or go to treatment is not a reason not to go. In fact, it’s a perfect reason to go.

     One of the myriad of brilliant Mad Men episodes is when Don calls up Betty’s psychiatrist to inquire why she has only become increasingly unraveled since the beginning of her sessions. Not coincidentally, Betty has ample idle time all day long to sink down the rabbit hole. The shrink replies with something like,  

     “Well, Don, we’ve only been engaging in regular psychoanalysis, but if you really want her to make any progress then you’ll need to go with advanced psychoanalysis, which is three sessions a week instead of one, and double the time per session. Oh, and you should probably talk to someone, too. I have an opening later today.”

     Lol. Don knows what a quack this guy is and, of course, that his primary goal is to take Don to the cleaners.

     Sure there are a few therapists with a backbone who can tell patients what they don’t want to hear, even if they run out of the office never to return, but that is the exception to the norm. No psychologist or psychiatrist will disagree with you if you walk in and tell them you have a problem. I would. Sometimes people call to assess a supposed addict and it’s basically just a kid who doesn’t want to grow up. End of story. Get a job, move out, engage with others, find a girlfriend, help others, stop smoking pot, create a purpose and a meaning to your life. Nobody is ultimately going to hold your hand and take care of you except yourself. This is what we should be teaching kids today and yet, they grow up and all they do is whine and demand free stuff. Ridiculous. This is the problem with the “every kid gets a trophy” mentality, as we are essentially relegating unique and talented children to the ash heap of mediocrity. I wrote an old piece about the trophy thing, I believe the title was the phrase in quotes. 

     So in this era of collectivism, therapy is often reduced to unaccountable friendship and validation. But when we become so hyper-focused on SELF and SELF-IMPORTANCE – on our feelings, thoughts, identities and endless wants – on what other people are doing us as opposed to what we are doing to them – and when we are so coddled that it becomes okay to find external reasons for self-created problems, little change occurs… which then cleverly necessitates a lifetime of therapy. There is no profit in true recovery. In fact, there is no business at all in recovery. I also wrote a piece about big business recovery – Recovery Inc.

     At least psychologists actually talk to you and pretend there is something meaningful or useful going on besides telling you what you want to hear (which is especially dangerous for addicts, for we simply use all of our “discoveries” as a perfect excuse as to why we used and why we need to continue using). Psychiatrists simply experiment on you like a guinea pig and pretend to be real doctors. Right, thank you so much for rewiring my brain. Thank you for not having the faintest idea what you’re doing or what you’re talking about. Thanks also you for patronizing me and arrogantly trying to convince me that I need to be medicated for life. Shameless. Neuroscience is, at best, a budding experiment.

     America has become drug and disorder obsessed, another natural side-effect of the nanny state and the explosion of pharmaceuticals. Thus the industry, both academic and in professional application, revolves around an ever-expanding DSM monstrosity. In other words, the entire field simply revolves around categorizing every possible skew known to mankind, even the most subtle of tweaks like being bummed out (aka normal behavior), and calling it a disorder. Psychology has turned garden variety human feelings, skews and idiosyncrasies into some disorder, no doubt caused by some profound damage (that can also be categorized) rooted in historical trauma. It’s insufferable. The more disorders, the more meds. The more damage, the more sessions. Business. I speculate that  millions who engage in regular therapy and those prescirbed some concoction of psychotropics everyday (like children – see Ritalin article) actually need them.
    
     So let’s face it, similar to big business recovery and the corruption we’ve seen of late in the addiction industry), if people actually change and change fast, there is no business. Only when people remain weak, sick and dysfunctional can the industry continue to breathe. Why would they want anybody to actually recover, especially with nothing more than a Big Book and another fuck-up in a coffee shop? Recovery hurts business. The sad truth is that there is really only money in relapse, heartache, chaos and destruction. Idiotic slogans such as “relapse is part of recovery” basically tell the addict to go relapse and then come back for another 3 month stint. Wash, rinse, repeat.

     But let’s look at the issues of weakness and dysfunction. My contention is that psychology and psychiatry often procure the opposite of their stated goals. Instead of strengthening and empowering the individual, I see quite the opposite. I see people being coddled and becoming victims of others (often false victims, as victim has become a state of mind, not reality – yes there are real victims but that’s not what I’m not referring to), digging deep into their past and unearthing every possible injustice done to them. Nothing is your fault, and the number of injustices is no doubt proportional to how screwed up you are. What exactly is the benefit of that?

     First, engaging in hyper self-focus and self-importance, not to mention substitution drugs, takes people inward as opposed to outward into the world. It weakens and cripples people from becoming strong and courageous, from finding the guts to walk through their pain instead of around it, from running towards life challenges, not away from them. 

     Second, believing all of these people have wronged us makes us increasingly ineffective and dysfunctional. With all of the so-called trauma I have endured, now I can justify and rationalize not doing anything. No doubt I will be branded some horrible thing by the pc trolls and hysterics for simply describing my own experience, my own failures and successes with illness and recovery, but please just try to see beyond ideology and pc lunacy and assess things by asking if it makes sense? And if not, why not? If so, why so? By the way, that’s why I write – to simply share my own personal experience with failure and success. I don’t want followers. I don’t want people to listen to me. I want people to think for themselves. This blog is not intended to be case-specific advice, as we must all find our own answers. These are mine.

     For me, the therapy/medication model kept me weak and further crippled me from taking care of myself and functioning in the world. What helped me was just the opposite. I stopped taking my feelings so seriously. I realized that my near hysterical preoccupation with my feelings and myself didn’t really matter so much. So screw your feelings. Try to stop focusing so much on everything that occurs internally. For me, the key to recovery was basically to stop whining and get to work. Be uncomfortable. Get used to it. And for addicts, try adjusting to less dopamine instead of believing that you have some divine right for more.

     And guess what? Nobody cares. It’s called adulthood. It’s called the real world. It’s called Life of Earth. Go get busy. Go help others all day long and you will soon forget all about yourself and your myriad of self-created problems. The solution for me was to get over my feelings. I once looked in the mirror while I was in the process of getting better and realized I wasn’t a child anymore. I was a man. Addiction gone.

     Finally, it seems to be that the modern age of psychiatry is more of a business model dependent on normalizing a mass culture of victimhood. I don’t see it as a true service industry. I also don’t see psychology as a true service industry. I see them as a byproduct of the nanny state, a microcosm of our culture, dependent on promoting an obsession with mental disorders and psychological terms that people can use to remain self-interested and preoccupied with identity. When I let go of this obsession with self, with my narcissism, I found that success lies in quite the opposite. Success lies in focusing on others, on action, on God and His will.

     Ayn Rand said, “You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”