Category Archives: Whining

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…

Whining and Complaining

Posted on by under Addict vs Non-Addict, Complaining, Life Problem, Whining

     Normal people get up and go to work and don’t complain about it. They don’t need to remove the time-release coating from an OC 80, crush it up and sniff the entire thing in one line just to get in the shower. They also don’t need to get plastered to have a conversation with someone. They don’t need to whine and complain incessantly about everything. They don’t need to be so narcissistic as to presume that nobody else in the world suffers the way they do. So don’t even bother asking anything of an alcoholic or drug addict… or a narcissist for that matter. Their life is just way too tough to be giving to anybody else.

     Normal people have bad days too. Normal people wake up sometimes and feel depressed, or anxious, or angry, or sad, or even hopeless. It’s just that they don’t complain about it and drive to Happy Market in Dorchester to meet Pablo for a bag of dope. They just walk right through what they are feeling and do what needs to be done. They are adults. Drug addicts are children… with some additional issues. Why do I feel entitled to make myself comfortable every second of my life? For some reason, I thought that life was all about ME feeling good all of the time.

     Wait, you mean it isn’t? It’s about others too???

     I was such a baby when it came to life. The slightest discomfort would send me reeling, and a frantic search for comfort would ensue. Even if it meant I had to hurt people. Even if it meant I had to become a pathological liar. And most unfortunate, even if it meant I had to define what it means to be a selfish asshole. The sad truth is that we addicts can’t deal with any discomfort.

     Well, guess what?

     It’s okay to suffer a little bit. It’s especially okay to suffer and not complain about it. As grown adults, we have the responsibility to get up and work, take care of ourselves and our families, and be honest. We have the responsibility to do the right thing. It is the human responsibility. What we no longer have is the right to drink or use. We no longer have the right to whine about our feelings or broadcast them to the entire world (who really doesn’t give a shit anyway) in a fit of self-pity or despair. We no longer have the right to let our feelings of discomfort stop us from living life and living right.

God, please give me the wisdom and the willingness to be a better person, a responsible person…