Category Archives: Therapy

Don’t Care How You Feel & Don’t Care What You Believe

Posted on by under Action, Beliefs, CBT, Feelings, Talking, Therapy, Whining
Spirituality isn’t about trying to achieve constant rapture. It’s about facing reality and being human. 
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     Charlie, we really don’t care how you feel. Getting better has nothing to do with feelings. It’s all action…

     That is by far the most helpful thing anybody has ever said to me. Often when I start working with someone, they go on endless rants about how they feel – “Yeah but this, yeah but that…” It’s always that somehow their addiction makes sense because of how they feel. And the best is that I don’t understand. I don’t understand how they feel so screwed over by someone, so unheard, so misunderstood, so alone, so weak, so useless, so depressed, so not living up to their potential, so blah, blah, blah. Um, yeah, I get it. I whined too about how nobody understands. I justified using drugs and alcohol like an absolute pig because of the way I felt. “Well, you would be drinking and sniffing heroin too if you went through what I went through!”
     Um, no, sorry. Most people don’t do that. And yes, they even suffer, too.

     This is why therapy is such a joke. Addicts who I sponsor say, “Yeah bro, the Steps are great but I also want to dig into my stuff, my feelings. You need to know how I feel, man!” No, I don’t. And fine, call me a sociopath but I really don’t care. CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) has it completely backwards. Addicts and alcoholics are so fucked in the head, we can’t think our way into right action. We just need to shut up and start acting our way into right thinking…

     I also don’t care what you believe. It really doesn’t matter compared to what you do. You can believe in the most noble, lofty principles in the world and still be a useless sack. You can believe in every good thing in the world and never truly evolve or grow spiritually. You can have your doctrine of choice memorized front to back and never really change at all. You can be one of those religious show-offs who throws passages around like no other and still be a deranged monster. What matters is what we do, not what we believe.

     Bottom line: Getting better has nothing to do with our feelings. In fact, our feelings quite often prevent us from getting better. The most important thing any addict wanting to get better can do is to drop his preoccupation with SELF. Stop focusing on how you feel because the truth is it doesn’t matter and nobody cares anyway. We need to walk through our feelings without broadcasting them on the nightly news. It is action, not feelings or beliefs, that will ultimately give us freedom.

God, please give me the willingness and the power to grow along spiritual lines…

Reasons Don’t Exist

Posted on by under Action, Reasons, Spiritual Problem, Spiritual Solution, Therapy, Triggers

     Just like triggers, reasons don’t exist either. The choice to use is a selfish one. Nothing makes us want to use. Regardless of what’s happened to us or how miserable we are, WE choose to use and therefore WE are the reason. Nothing else and nobody else is the reason. This is why therapy is useless for a drug addict. Finding reasons why we use just gives us excuses to keep using.


     Wanh… I’m sad, angry, depressed, hurt, abused, victimized, blah, blah, blah… so I HAVE to use. See, now you know why I do what I do. You would do the same exact thing! Wanh, wanh, wanh…  
     Drug addicts use because they are selfish and want to use. Go ahead, send them to a therapist to work out their emotional issues. Trust me, once they’ve got it all figured out, they are going to go get high. Addicts don’t need a reason, nor the resolution of a reason, to use. I’m telling you that even the happiest kid from a loving family will turn into an addict for no reason at all. He becomes an addict simply because he chooses to pick up and use over and over again until he or she is broken. It’s that simple.
     And it’s the same even if we have been hurt. Plenty of people have been hurt and don’t mutate into hopeless drug addicts. And once we become addicts, you are spinning your wheels trying to talk it out of us. We need to go from being insane (missing chip) to sane again (chip re-inserted), and the truth is that no amount of talking and no amount of medication can accomplish this. Addicts need nothing short of a psychic change via a spiritual experience. We need to replace our addiction with something as powerful as the addiction itself.
     Reasons allow us to sidestep responsibility, and believe me, if you give an addict a chance to avoid it, they will. Regardless of whether the reasons we discover and give to ourselves are true or not, drinking and using drugs is wrong if we have lost control. Instead, we should be told that we no longer have the right to use, no matter what happened to us, no matter how we feel or how we (with dramatic emphasis) ache so.
     I’m not saying therapists can’t help people, I’m just saying they can’t help drug addicts – the most manipulative, deceptive, dishonest, selfish and pathologically infantile group out there (besides borderlines and narcissists, or sociopaths). And we need to especially watch out for psychiatrists. Believe it or not, they actually have the balls to prescribe drug addicts more drugs. Great solution. What an absolute joke. See you in the next life after you overdose.
God, help me remember that if my problem is spiritual in nature, than so must be my solution… 

Triggers Don’t Exist

Posted on by under Addiction 101, Conventional Treatment Strategies, Therapy, Triggers

     Why does the mainstream treatment community tell us that relapse is part of recovery when it has nothing to do with recovery? Newsflash: It’s not okay to relapse. Doctors, therapists, social workers, and so-called addiction specialists blindly recite the false text book mantra that “relapse is part of recovery.”

     Why?

     Because they simply don’t know anything else. The sad truth is that millions of professionals out there don’t actually know what addiction is (spiritual ailment) or how to treat it. Why is it okay to relapse when relapsing means another long and destructive cycle of lies, theft, sadness, pain, heartache and damage to countless others?

     Treatment ‘experts’ say that triggers exist for addicts and alcoholics, and as such, treatment revolves around avoiding people or places or things that trigger us. Ah, you gotta be kidding me. First of all, triggers don’t exist. Flimsy excuses. Being alive is our only trigger. Nothing makes us want to use. We want to use ALL THE TIME.

     Secondly, what sort of solution is that for a drug addict? So my solution involves desperately trying not to bump into this person, or walk by that place, or keep all drugs and alcohol out of my sight? If that is my only hope then I should just lock myself up and throw away the key, because I am doomed.

     This sort of information is actually dangerous. To tell an addict that it is their triggers that make them use is to basically eliminate any personal and moral responsibility they might assume, which might then trigger them to go get better (pun intended). Furthermore, to teach an addict that it is someone or something outside of themselves that makes them go drink or pick up is unbelievably irresponsible and stems from pure ignorance. WE are the only reason. We drink because we like drinking and because we are selfish beyond belief. Nothing makes us want to drink. Our only trigger is breathing.

     If I buy this notion and take this advice about triggers, then I basically have prevented myself from recovering. The world will forever be a dangerous place for an addict. I will be walking around subject to relapse at any point in time. I am cursed to struggle and fight through each day to stay sober. I will forever crave drugs and alcohol and fend off urges day and night. Mainstream treatment tells us that there is really no hope, that the addict or alcoholic never really gets better, and thus we never can truly recover.

     That is complete and total bullshit.

     We can recover fully and forever. We can live utterly free from any urges or desires to drink or use. We can become free and happy men and women. And this freedom means we can walk by any store, down any block, or sit there and stare at a medicine cabinet full of juicy meds. This means we can hang out with anybody, regardless of how fucked up they still are. This means we can have wine in the house for guests. This means we can even buy our friend a bag of dope just to get his ass to detox or treatment.

     But Charlie, how can you say such things?!?!

     Because we can deliver ourselves from our insanity. Or rather, God can deliver us. We can grow new minds and remain permanently free from the mental obsession to drink or use drugs. We can travel, work, and enjoy life without having to drag ourselves to five meetings a day until the day that we die. We don’t have to merely live “in recovery”.

     We can become RECOVERED.

     Personally, I took Steps to recover. I am now a free man. And the same can be true for any drug addict or alcoholic out there. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Don’t feed yourself a bunch of excuses. Don’t let yourself off the hook. And always remember:

     Triggers don’t exist.

God, help me to remember that nothing outside of myself is responsible for my drinking or drug use…

Why Many Don’t Respond To AA

Posted on by under AA, Sponsorship, Steps vs Meetings, Therapy

     Many alcoholics don’t respond to AA for the same reason we don’t respond to therapy. The guy talking to us doesn’t really know what he’s talking about and has no solution to offer. Sure, the speakers in AA may have a slight affinity to us in that they drank alcohol. But sadly, it often ends there.

     In order for me to listen to you, you have to have felt and used the way I did. And yes, this is sometimes true in AA. But you also must be in the sort of condition I want to be in if I’m going to get sober and take your advice. I don’t want to be a sober mess, running from meeting to meeting, shaking, chain smoking, chugging coffee, restless, irritable, anxious, depressed, empty, lonely, miserable, selfish, and with no purpose whatsoever other than desperately trying to not drink.
     In fact, that was never the solution that AA offered us long ago. Alcoholics Anonymous says that we can recover by taking steps and then live in freedom and peace. But that’s not what you hear in AA. You hear stories, and the staple advice is “just keep comin'”, because this Group Of Drunks can keep you clean. Wow, that’s pretty shitty advice. I know plenty of people and believe me, none of them can keep me sober. For sure, there are two separate programs, both called AA. 
     Sorry, but I’m all set. I’m only going to listen to you if you’ve not only felt and used the way I did, but you are also standing there before me with internal strength, calm, centered, content, secure, stable, happy, productive and fearless. This is what you see when you meet and talk to a recovered person. You can’t tell they were ever some dirty heroin addict or some wreaking drunk on the street. They have been reborn. They are transformed. They have grown new minds and have been filled with the spirit and power of GOD.
     So that’s why people are turned off by AA. Because what you see in meetings today is not what AA ever intended. AA was a 12 Step program of action designed to expel certain spiritual poisons from us to allow for a new Power to come into us, thereby replacing our addiction with something that really works. So if collecting sobriety chips and cranking butts all day isn’t cutting it for you, do yourself a favor and find a recovered person to talk to. Trust me, it will be eye-opening.
God, teach us how to live Your solution and Your principles, that we may serve as examples of real recovery…