The cliche‘ goes, “Relapse is part of recovery.”

     This sort of waiting room wisdom is exactly the kind of nonsense I had to toss out of the window in order to recover from addiction. Adopting this type of attitude, accepting relapse, and letting yourself off the hook is a recipe for death. One obvious reason why such a platitude is so harmful is because addicts LOVE this slogan. Dead giveaway. They love knowing that relapse is part of their recovery, that they can always get jammed if need be. Ridiculous. What a deranged avenue for addicts to rationalize using.

     This pile of bullshit is brought to you by the powers that be, the mainstream addiction authorities, the status quo of treatment centers, academics, doctors, therapists, social workers and wannabe addiction specialists & counselors who have decided what we are to believe about addiction. I like to call this, ‘academic addiction’ – that is to say, addiction understood and declared by those who have zero experience, those who sit in classrooms, convinced they know everything, even more than the addict himself, even more than the addict who has suffered, changed, and recovered entirely. Indeed, removed academics are cerebral narcissists. They really believe they know it all, and they have peddled this twisted notion that relapse is somehow part of recovery.

     This clever slogan is meant to brainwash you, folks. Think it through for a minute and don’t let it.

     Um, relapse has nothing to do with recovery. That’s the whole point of recovery: YOU DON’T RELAPSE. Why? BECAUSE IT’S WRONG. Because you’ve given up the right to use and to continue hurting others. And presumably because you’ve recovered, which, even though you’ve been told the opposite, is entirely possible.

     But hey, we are all free to be enslaved by the belief that we will never truly be okay, that we will always be struggling, that we will forever be teetering on the edge, that we are constantly at risk to relapse. This is the best shit that the status quo can come up with, pamphlet cover catch phrases…?

     “Relapse is part of recovery.” LOL.


     “Hey, don’t worry kid, relapse is part of recovery… so if you go off the deep end, steal all your mom’s jewerly, speedball for a month straight, destroy everything and rip your family’s hearts out all over again, don’t sweat it. No big deal, kiddo, because relapse is part of recovery. Here, let me put my arm around you and embrace you. Just make sure to call us up for another round of detox, treatment, therapy sessions and methadone, all subsidized by the impoverished taxpayers you’ve been stealing from as an addict for the last 15 years.”
    
Please.

 Right, and I have a bridge I’d like to sell you in California. 

Comment:

     Also, if moral/spiritual action works so well to get us better, it sort of implies we have a problem in that department ;-) Said another way, if our problem is spiritual, so must be our solution. 

Saw this comment on another blog. Presented (almost) without comment:
      
     “Some cases of ‘addiction’ are actually attempts to replace what is naturally missing in their bodies. In the case of opiate addiction, some, not all, are using it for legitimate mental health treatment. While I do not advocate taking illicit substances to solve this, there exists a growing mountain of evidence supporting the notion that a lack of endogenous opioids inside of our bodies can lead to many illnesses, including depression. While not necessarily the case and knowing nothing of your situation, if your child has been suffering from depression for some time it may be worth looking in to.”

     “…using it for legitimate mental health treatment”???????????
   
     “…legitimate”??????????

     Wow. Um, yeah, opiates work for depression because they get you high as shit. Are these people serious?

     This is probably one of the more insane things I’ve ever read in my life, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that doctors are now telling you that our brains actually need prescription opiates organically or constitutionally. Okay folks, I think it may be time to pack it in, as it is now commonly accepted that more opiates serve as a legitimate mental health treatment strategy for people addicted to opiates. What an absolute travesty that this is what we’ve been reduced to in the nanny state of America.

God, please help us…

The new solution for depression & opiate addiction: more opiates.

     Being an addict is not an excuse to continue being an addict. Despite the insufferable “fight the stigma” PC nonsense you hear 24/7, we are not victims. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that addicts turn themselves into addicts and NOTHING is to blame for that but ourselves. More than anything, our parents and those who love us, of course, as well as our genes, have zero culpability in us drinking or using drugs to the point of addiction, and then maintaining our addiction year after year. I have a question for the victim peddlers…

     What exactly are we victims of? Addiction? What, did addiction just fly through the air and infect us? Is addiction some intangible evil force that chose to possess us? Uh, no. Did we not ourselves drink and use drugs over and over and over and over again until we literally broke our bodies and minds and souls? Yup.

     But then the victim peddlers – those obsessed with victimhood and assuming zero personal responsibility – will say that negative external forces “made” us pick up, that we had no choice but to use drugs? Oh really? So how we respond to life events, circumstances and relationships is not our choice, let alone our responsibility? Really? Sure, okay.

     So let’s assume for a minute that this delusional nonsense is actually true. What is the point? Rather, what purpose does it serve to infect the addict with the belief that they are victims of addiction? What you’re telling them is that it’s okay to use, that’s it’s not their fault, that they can’t help it. Worse, you are excusing them from any moral failure whatsoever. You are excusing their abusive and heartbreaking behavior. You are excusing their narcissism. You are excusing them from having to recover and from relapsing on the way. You are basically saying that it’s okay for us to be addicts and alcoholics because we were somehow victimized by addiction, and thus, should be aptly coddled.

     This class of excuse is the worst of them all. It is worse than the excuses psychologists feed us in therapy. You will say, no, they are not excuses, they are “reasons” why we use and it’s useful to dive in and explore that. First, reasons are excuses. Second, it is not useful. Moving forward, not backward, is useful. Third, that sort of moral relativity is dangerous. Logic such as this, if you can call it that, implies that no matter what we do, if there is some reason for it, we can somehow excuse ourselves from responsibility.

     This disturbing construct is being used to demonize those with opposing viewpoints while excusing the behavior of those doing the demonizing. Those claiming to be victims are now justified in victimizing others. “Well since we’re right and you’re dumb and evil, it doesn’t matter what we say or do. We can say and do anything we want while you must be muzzled and stopped at all costs.” Oh really? How tolerant.

     Moving on, while the problem of addiction is much simpler than we are taught to believe, the solution is also very simple…

     Grow up.

     Addicts are essentially children, who whine and complain at the slightest discomfort. They somehow believe that nobody suffers the way they do, and thus are perfectly justified in plying themselves with drugs and alcohol. The don’t understand that it’s okay to suffer in life, to feel bored sometimes, to feel sad and angry and depressed and anxious and yes, even desperate. All that is just called life on Earth, and if every adult did what we do when we feel uncomfortable, we’d have an entire world full of heroin addicts and crackheads and lushbags.

     Those who suffer and have bad days are no different that we are, it’s just that they matured and became responsible adults with a moral compass. They simply care about the consequences of their actions. We are no different from the seven billion other people on the planet. We just think we have the right to respond differently to stress and pain than they do. Suffering isn’t novel to addicts. We wear this badge of honor that we are somehow different than everybody else, and herein lies the problem.

     Until addicts understand that they are not victims and have given up the right to drink and use, there is no hope. Until we are taught that we make ourselves who and what we become in life, there is no hope. Until we are stop making excuses for why we are addicts, there is no hope. Until we stop making excuses as to why we cannot recover, there is no hope.

     How did I recover? Simple. I grew up, took responsibility for my life and reached out to God. That’s all. No liquid handcuffs, psychotropics, hot tubs or massages at Passages needed. 

     Willingness to be uncomfortable = drug problem gone.

From “Fight the Stigma??? Lol”…

     “All stereotypes are stereotypes because there is some truth to them, otherwise stereotypes wouldn’t exist. Do you think it’s a stereotype that addicts are selfish? Sure. And isn’t that stereotype true? Obviously. So the fact that we attach a stigma to addiction means there is probably a good reason to attach it, like perhaps the fact that it’s wrong to use drugs. We attach a stigma to things that in our hearts, minds and guts just don’t feel right. There is nothing normal about a drug addict wasting away after living so selfishly and causing so much pain to so many. Addiction is twisted, so of course there is a stigma attached to it. There should be. And there are a million good reasons to do so.

     Fine disagree, but you can’t disagree that having a nasty stigma associated with addiction certainty gives us a good reason NOT to be an addict, or rather, to go get better. Nobody wants to be that dirty jammed shithead everybody is repulsed by. Nobody wants to be that guy. So maybe the fact that we find addiction selfish and repulsive is a good thing. In fact, that perception is what saved my life.” 

And from “Break the Stigma? Lol”…

     “Stigma’s exist for good reason. We place stigma’s on things that run contrary to certain moral principles we collectively agree on, and thank God we do, as they raise us out of our more banal, selfish, Godless nature and push us to become better human beings.”

Read this.

    Everything I know about how I became recovered from drug and alcohol addiction – as well as depression, mania, fear, anxiety, boredom, angst and so forth – boils down to this:

     Nothing happens without ACTION.

     You can learn everything humanly possible about addiction and it won’t change you at all. You can discover every psychological insight about yourself and again, it won’t change anything. You can be loved by others and it won’t change anything. You can get the best treatment and all the latest and greatest cutting edge meds and it won’t change anything. You can go on methadone or suboxone and it won’t change anything. There is no knowledge, no belief, no relationship, no group, no meeting, no doctor, no shrink, no pill and no science project that can turn an active addict into a recovered addict. Only the addict himself can change, with the help of God. He or she must actually get up off of the couch and work hard. Laziness breeds cowardice and cowardice breeds addiction and failure and death. The AA slogan “Just sit down, shut up, and wait for a miracle to happen” is truly one of the most asinine, let alone lethal, of them all.

     Addicts must engage in constant right action all day, every day. This is what the medical establishment doesn’t seem to understand, despite all of the degrees and the science and what have you. The addict is a special case. He is completely addicted to his comfort and pathologically focused on himself – his feelings, his thoughts, his life, you name it. It’s not even about the drugs and alcohol, despite what the behavioral neuroscientists and geneticists will tell you. That is the truth, despite what you may believe or want to believe. It’s about the person, not the drugs. The drug addict must change who and what he is. He must change his fundamental attitude and the way he sees the world and others. He must change the way he sees and approaches suffering and human life. He must change his entire perception of pain, responsibility and personal challenges.

     If an addict does nothing, than his addiction (or rather, his obsession to use) will never go away. If an addict does nothing than nothing will he become. The addict alone will make himself into who and what he is. If he fails, it is no one’s fault but his own. If he succeeds, his success can be credited to action and God. So you must understand that self-knowledge and science projects are useless. Yes, that includes this blog. Completely and utterly useless. Words are but dormant seeds, but the more an addict does, the better he will get.

     This isn’t cerebral. The isn’t academic. Intellectuals think that you can solve every problem with academics, the same way politicians and lawyers think you can solve every problem with more government and more laws. For instance, they just passed some opiate law in Massachusetts. Useless. More laws and more academics won’t solve anything, but they are blind and will never understand something they have never experienced. They are also programmed to think inside of a box, and thus there is no hope for you there. Listen to me, drug addicts don’t use because there are drugs being made and prescribed by doctors. Addicts are addicted to self, to selfishness, and ultimately, to self-destruction. Drugs and alcohol aren’t the main show. It is what lies underneath that causes the symptom of addiction.

     So the day you see your addict DOING things… that is the day you are seeing your addict begin to recover. Without consistent action and 100% sobriety (including all mood-altering substances and yes, POT. Don’t let your half-wit teenager try to tell you that pot is not a drug), there is no such thing as recovery and change. Trust me on this. You can just tell if someone is okay or if he is still filled to the brim with bullshit. Recovered people glow whereas sick people do not. Recovered people are willing to do anything to grow and get better whereas sick people aren’t willing to do much of anything.

     Do yourself a favor and observe him or her. Are they doing productive things? Are they waking up at 5:30am before work to pray and meditate for an hour? Are they writing and reading inventory? Are they helping you? Are they trying to really listen deeply, to be present, to love you and understand how to love you better? Are they going out and helping others? Do they care about little else but growing spiritually? Bottom line, are they doing the right thing and changing internally? Are their glaring character defects subsiding – the narcissism, anger, judgment, jade, verbal abuse, frustration, depression, discontent, dissatisfaction and on and on? To note, I’m no freaking angle but I no longer ignore my conscience and therefore I no longer struggle with self-destruction.

     All you have to do is observe and listen to your gut and how you feel and you will know everything you need to know. There is but one recipe for change, and that is action – right action. Remember that recovery is NOT a function of time, despite what some knucklehead will tell the newcomer at the meeting. Time spent untreated is frightening. If time gets you better then you are not an addict or an alcoholic. There is no neutral gear for people like me. If we are not moving forward then we are moving backward and becoming sicker. Addiction is not about drugs and alcohol, it is about a person who is spiritually ill, and a spiritual illness calls for a spiritual solution. Sorry, but recovery never has been and never will be a theory.

Also see ‘Pot’ & ‘Words are Just Dormant Seeds’.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” -Neale Donald Walsch

     There is a solution… it’s just that most addicts don’t want to do any work, and there is no solution without work. Sadly, as a society, we are becoming programmed to reward and even glorify failure and dependency while demonizing hard work, success, independence and free thought/speech.

*  

      When you ply an addict with more drugs, when you validate an addict in therapy, and when you subsidize an addict with government programs (aka the money you work so hard for), you are essentially telling them that they are too weak, sick and stupid to truly get better and recover, and to make things worse, you are doing it under the guise of compassion, under the guise of science and the disease model.

     This is of course the very idiocy and lie of the nanny/welfare state – sold as compassion and self-empowerment, yet in truth it condemns, dis-empowers, disenfranchises, dis-incentivizes and enslaves. It is also theft, and generally exists to buy votes and exert greater state control. If someone came to me for a fish, I wouldn’t give him one only to see him return the next day with his hands out. I would teach him how to fish so he can feed himself and free himself from the slavery of dependency. He could then feel proud and worthy as opposed to helpless and ashamed. This kind of help is true help, and while it would sustain him, it would also restore his own dignity. 

     What you must understand is that this new “compassionate” approach only further cripples addicts and relegates them as weak, diseased failures. So while some think that this blog is harsh or negative or unproductive, you’ve got it all backwards. Honesty and service restore a man’s soul and give him real strength. What you think is strengthening and helping addicts/alcoholics is in fact doing quite the opposite. As Ayn Rand said, “you can ignore the truth, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring the truth.”

     This new age thinking on addiction is really just a microcosm of an entire shift in our culture, and a dangerous one at that. As a society, we are shifting from a free, prosperous and democratic republic to more of a socialist-collectivist, 5th column monster that seeks to limit freedom, limit wealth, and convince you that the never-ending expansion of government has any purpose beyond government officials and employees retaining power at all costs and stuffing their pockets with as much of your money as humanly possible.

     The worst propaganda is that which convinces you that freedom and prosperity are evil while control, impoverishment, unemployment, debt and more government are good. If you think about it, it’s very clever. Rally everyone around a host of supposedly “righteous” causes when in reality what you are doing is screwing the living shit out of them. Sadly, the masses are often blind and gullible sheep that will do anything and believe anything. Most people will let you shear them on a daily basis and even thank you for it in the name of some fraudulent cause. Problem, Reaction, Solution. Works every time. 

     At any rate, the common thinking out there is that addicts and alcoholics are doomed. The best anyone can hope for is to get us off of our drug of choice and desperately substitute it with methadone, suboxone, vivitrol, naltrexone, seroquel, and perhaps some basket of psychotropics… and let’s give them a bag of weed, too, because that’s not really a drug and it’s, like, the healing of the nations bro. Let’s also do some therapy and role play so we can whine about mommy and daddy and fabricate some reasons (otherwise know as excuses), and then follow it all up with some quack science just to make sure we can abscond ourselves from any and all responsibility whatsoever. The idea is to blame anything but ourselves.

     You see, when we as addicts do this, and when the status quo now promotes the notion that our destructive behavior, personal failure and “incomprehensible demoralization” is nothing more than an involuntary symptom of a blameless disease, then yes, we are doomed. When you tell addicts and alcoholics that it’s not their fault, when you put your arms around them and validate their present construction of self, when you appease them with more mind-numbing drugs after telling them they are basically too weak to truly recover, you are indeed dooming them.

     Even though it is sold and made to sound in the exact opposite way, the current thinking on addiction doesn’t give addicts and alcoholics any credit, nor does it assume we can ever develop or reclaim our character or personal strength. Bullshit. Each and every one of us can recover completely and never think about drugs and alcohol ever again, but we have now brainwashed mainstream addiction & recovery from understanding the true nature of addiction and we have ripped the spiritual teeth right out of recovery.

     So yes, we are doomed, but that is because the establishment has managed to convince us that we are incapable and somehow justified in using, drinking, lying, stealing and living lives based on pathological self-absorption and the compulsion to seek comfort and dopamine 24/7. The addiction activist types fall for it and scream about this nonsense on their blogs. There is no constitutional and organic need for opiates, nor any brain disease that causes us to become addicts. Addiction is but a temporary state of ‘acquired’ powerlessness until the addict finds some guts and faces life. Sure we may respond differently to drugs and alcohol than a sane person, but that is irrelevant if we simply do the work and regain our willpower.

     And by the way, becoming physically dependent on something isn’t novel to addicts and alcoholics. Anybody in the world can become physically dependent on a substance.