Let’s briefly define sugar-coated. Now, I don’t usually do this but in the spirit of brutal honesty and illumination, let’s look at a comment I saw on some other blog from an active addict trying to explain why the blogger’s son (I presume) is still using and can’t stop. She offers an ingratiating apology for not “sugar-coating” it, but, um, this is precisely what sugar-coating is when it comes to addiction. Look, she’s probably a sweet kid and I honestly bear no judgment on her individually, but these types of comments are representative of addicts-at-large. They could come from anyone for all I care.

     She says, “We wouldn’t tell someone to stop being diabetic. They don’t choose it.” Addiction is the opposite of any other disease that is beyond our control. We are not born addicts. We mutate ourselves into them. People with diabetes or better yet, say juvenile leukemia, are the ones who have no choice. But to drink like a fish until you become an alcoholic or to bang dope until you become a junkie? Sorry, you have made yourself an addict. You only lose control after voluntarily evolving into a junkbox.

     She also says, “it’s rare that anybody gets better.” Well, that is true, but not because they can’t. Anybody can get better, it’s just that they won’t because they are addicts. Addicts are perhaps the most immature and selfish people in this world and won’t so much as lift a finger if it means stepping out of their comfort zones.

     She goes on to say, “Why is he worn out and sad? Not because he is indulging a want… no he is ill and he doesn’t choose to be ill.” Sorry, NOPE. He is worn out and sad FROM USING, so it is really quite the opposite, as he has quite clearly chosen to be in pain. In fact, addicts, like codependents, actually become pain-dependent. We choose pain. We would rather have problems and chaos because it is familiar and feels more in control than the alternative. For addicts, that alternative is actually being in control. For codependents, that alternative is not controlling what is outside of themselves and letting what’s inside rise up, which is perhaps more frightening than dealing with someone’s addiction.

     This comment reminds me of the comment from Jackie X from the UK who wrote that my theory/philosophy failed to have enough intellectual “nuance” to have any value. Intellectual nuance is precisely the problem, as addicts will talk you into circles to try to rationalize and justify their using. Furthermore, if this new trend of the use of the word “nuance” isn’t stomach churning, I don’t know what is. Today any dissent, authentic/free thought or deviation from the status quo leaves one incessantly bombarded by progressive intellectuals using this word to appear sophisticated (no doubt aroused by the opportunity to tell you how stupid you are) while having absolutely no clue how to defend their positions coherently, let alone offer facts, common sense or historical literacy. Why is that? A) because they tend to sound smarter than they really are, and B) because they don’t understand the real world and how it works, let alone the economy or inter-connectivity. No matter how hard you try to engage in social engineering or manipulate the economy, it only makes things worse.

     At any rate, the comment was,

     “Being a junkie and coming up with 100 bucks for your habit everyday is a harder grind than many working adults have ever experienced.” – by JACKIE X

     Wow. Poetic.

     So that is a more nuanced theory? Sounds like standard addict nonsense to me. It is delusional. Working hard are two words that are absent from the addict’s vocabulary, and two words that would serve us and many others more than words can describe.

     Addicts fall prey to the victim narrative that we see so easily adopted and defended today. Sad really, but this is what addiction and recovery have come to, and to be sure, the addict mind and attitude is but a microcosm of our social character.

     Trust me, only active users talk like this. Recovered addicts are fully accountable for turning themselves into addicts, for their previous selfishness, and for causing themselves the totality of the pain they are in. Recovered people have put down the pity pot and have understood that their ultimate destiny in life is up to them. Who we are and what we become is up to us and us alone. Our entire lives are but a canvas that we paint ourselves. Sorry if that isn’t nuanced enough.

    Where have all the adults gone?

     When did common sense become so demonized?

     Active users also remind me of many physically sober alcoholics I used to hear in meetings. “Just bring the body” sums it up, because let’s face it, if all you do is bring the body, I can speculate with near certainty that you will probably fail, and you will never get to experience the spiritual solution, which requires a tad bit more than bringing your body somewhere and doing absolutely nothing.  I’m pretty sure that just bringing the body isn’t going to write a thorough and mind-bending 4th Step inventory of your entire life, nor will it give you the power to face every soul you have wronged and courageously make amends to them all. Nonetheless, it will make you eligible for story time and snack break… oh, but you can’t speak until you have 90 days or chair until you have a year. Lol.

     Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you are an alcoholic or an addict and some airhead at a local meeting tells you to “just bring the body” and “just keep comin’,” don’t walk but SPRINT the other way, as this advice may well end your life when the obsession to use again hits you like a brick and you go on the run of a lifetime. Sponsorship, needless to say, has also been reduced to near oblivion, which is why we now have both active and sober users running around absconding themselves from any responsibility whatsoever. That said, all this appears to have evolved naturally as but a microcosm of our ever-expanding and destructive culture of entitlement and immaturity.