It’s been a while, but a very dear and wonderful friend has encouraged me to continue writing and speaking, so here I am. To note, the summer is non-stop work-wise, so I should have more time to write as things slow down a bit during the colder months. Time is the central issue, especially with the children, and once the day is finally done, I often have nothing left, such as creative energy, aka fuel for inspiration.
However, this should be part of daily life, like eating or sleeping, especially given the purpose behind it all, let alone the increasingly desperate need for truth and real solutions. It is so easy to become misinformed regarding addiction and recovery. So allow me to address a few memes that made their way across my email…
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The notion that no “child” ever wanted to become a drug addict or an alcoholic, that he or she was afflicted by an evil disease that forced them to use and steal and cheat and lie, is all, well, total bullshit.
Addicts and alcoholics LOVE to drink and use. In fact, not only do we love getting addicted but we love being addicted. When you cross that line and become addicted, it makes using and drinking all the more worthwhile, as the ecstasy of getting more drugs or booze once we fall back to earth, feel human again and enter withdrawal, all while becoming increasingly bored, restless and nuts, is like no other (false) ecstasy. Remember the first time or first few times you do anything? If you’ve never used an opiate before and one day throw down 6 or 7 Vicodin, chances are it’ll just make you sick. But if you use enough and form a habit, then the real pleasure begins – if you’re lower than par, the drug will propel you higher. Their is nothing quite like being sick and then feeling instantly better. Normal people can know this by analogy.
Now of course, it’s not real pleasure or peace, which for an addict comes disguised in the instant after you get what you want and for a brief period you stop wanting. And needless to say, this is false, too, as the momentary, fleeting peace you feel of not wanting and needing is driven by gluttonous want and addiction. True peace lies in not wanting once everything is removed.
But anyway, the meme says, “Alcoholism is an illness and it’s not my fault.”
Um, yes, it’s definitely your fault. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said this and believe me, one of the reasons I don’t always feel like writing about addiction is the consistent repetition. But common sense being uncommon and simple truths and concepts being so difficult to comprehend these days what with the advent and stupidity of new-age, relative intellectualism, it is what it is.
So sorry, but who wakes up one day and is suddenly a fully blown heroin addict? Nobody. Becoming an addict or an alcoholic requires an almost sociopathic phase of selfishness and self-absorption – a phase with zero regard for the personal or inter-personal consequences of our actions. Since all of us begin sober at the beginning, it requires that we ignore our conscious with purpose, that we violate our moral compass. When a human being first goes to drink booze, sniff coke, smoke meth or shoot heroin, he or she knows it’s wrong on some cellular/gut level. So sorry for the bad news but before we cross the physical line, we cross the moral one. Fact.
Another disservice and one with far more implications on a macro-cultural spectrum, is how these ads are used as propaganda. The idea today is to separate everybody into different groups and convince us that all “chosen” groups are victims merely by their existence. Addicts have now been added to one of the many concocted victim classes, and perhaps the most devastating effect of this is the elimination of the truth – the truth of how we got ourselves here and how we pull ourselves out. When an addict comes to believe (which is ironically just how an addict mind thinks) that he is a victim, you have promoted the worst mindset possible. Not only that, but when we disregard personal responsibility from the cause, we also eliminate it from the solution. What depths will the addict in recovery plumb when he or she wholeheartedly believes they are a victim?
Yup, that’s right, none.
Remove personal/moral responsibility and accountability, and you have removed any hope of real and lasting change and recovery. Have the progressive intellectuals no shame? You see, this is what happens when you think you know everything and everybody else is wrong. Chilling.
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| Billboard in Southie. |
Addiction is not a choice? LOL. Then why I am okay?
Sure choice/control can be lost temporarily when an active addict is on the run of a lifetime. This simply means his willpower has been shredded beyond belief. But choice can be regained. We call that being recovered. I no longer suffer from thoughts to drink or use and I haven’t since I recited the 7th Step prayer before God late one night in the chapel up North. That was over 13 years ago.
Any one of us who comes to want spiritual growth and God more than drugs has solved the problem. He will come to naturally repel drugs as a poison that simply prevents him from growing and pushes him further away from his Creator, which to him is now the most hellish thing imaginable.