Comment:

     Another topic for later that I would like to see is this Spiritually fit thing. Personally, I stay Spiritually fit, my behaviors may not always be something to write home about but I’m Spiritually plugged in constantly…many will throw daggers at my assertion and some just resort to simple minded name calling. One day, some of your insight would be helpful. Thanks

Response:

      First of all, these are precisely the sorts of comments you will hear from those whose programs start and end with meetings. There are many who believe that the meeting keeps them sober, when in fact many of them are keeping themselves sober because many of them are not actually alcoholics as they have not lost the power of choice (willpower). And for those who are alcoholics, the daggers and name-calling are made by people who still suffer from the mental obsession. It is much easier to avoid doing the deep, tough work on self or limit our program to meetings when we don’t sincerely want to change. Why? Because faux recovery always preserves us an excuse or rationale for relapsing. Think about it. If we take rigorous action and stay spiritually fit, we don’t have much of an excuse to relapse. Plus actually changing and finding God will kill your buzz for life, if and when you ever relapse. Many of us do not want our buzz to be killed for life.

     Staying spiritually fit is a direct quote from the Big Book, and the last time I checked the Big Book was entitled, “Alcoholics Anonymous,” meaning ‘the program of’. Spiritual growth, health or “fitness” is a requirement for all alcoholics and addicts to maintain not just their sobriety, but their sanity. Thus, the process of becoming and staying “spiritually fit” IS the very program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thus, if the tools who mouth off were truly part of this program, they wouldn’t be mouthing off to you at all. Rather, they would be immersed in a process built on adopting and applying the principles of God – love, strength, honesty, humility, courage, patience, tolerance, gratitude, joy, etc.
 
     Before the trolls attack me for this, let me assure them that I am by no means a perfect (far, far from it) or even good example of someone who consistently applies the principles of our Creator, but I know they need reassurance, so let me reassure them that, yes, I’m an asshole too.

     We addicts (along with narcissists, borderlines, power-addicts and many other types, even some of the more damaged codependents) engage in such things as pathological projection, blame, manipulation, dishonesty, emotional blackmail, emotional tyranny, verbal abuse, physical abuse, self-abuse, self-worship, self-indulgence, sexual misconduct, sloth, narcissism, pride and the list goes on. Along with the secular elites (who see everything through an ideological lens as opposed to the way things actually are, which, by the way, makes otherwise educated people seem either ignorant or just mentally ill) and many of the celebrities who worship darkness and promote vanity and sexual depravity and so forth (horrible role models for our children, by the way), are some of the most disturbed and destructive people in the world.
 
     We also become self-seeking vampires, loud and obnoxious, believing our stories, our lives, our feelings and thoughts to be oh so important that even the clerk at Dunkin’ Donuts needs to suffer our ranting and raving about every injustice committed against us. We suck every ounce of energy possible out of whomever we can without even thinking about shutting up for a second and listening to someone else. We suck people dry and then move on to the next person. We are shameless.

      Finally, some of the filth you hear from the socially inept types (who frequently get off on bashing God or Christ or the Big Book) are reflective of a different group of people. Many of these types are not alcoholics or addicts. They are rather social misfits. Court ordered after a DUI or referred to meetings by some colleague for being friendless and isolated, they grab onto it, recite the slogans, and chirp at newcomers with a built-in Holier than Thou megaphone. So I wouldn’t worry about the AA knuckleheads. Many of us simply project what we loathe about ourselves onto others. Sadly, that is the depth of their honesty and their connection to the Holy Spirit. Let us both just simply pray for us all to have and experience God in our lives.

Comment:

     To me the most liberating Concept in the big book is that my troubles are of my own making. It was not fun to confront that but it was essential to free myself from my victim’s cloak. It taught me to keep my mouth shut and do nothing when something is none of my business. It taught me that I don’t always have to put my opinion out for the world’s benefit. As the other big book says, sufficient unto today are its own troubles. It reinforces my third step decision, that I am no longer in the business of management of my own life. Much less anyone elses. And guess what — my family life, my business life, my social life, all got a lot better without my micro management.

Response:

     Another excellent comment from my friend, Richard.

     We are not addicts because of our genes, because our daddy or grandpa or the guy on the Mayflower was an alcoholic. We are not alcoholics because of the bully in school or because we suffered from depression. We are not alcoholics because of climate change, capitalism, social injustice, micro-aggressions, gender-specific bathrooms, Christmas trees, Dr. Seuss, white, cisgendered men or any other complete and utter bullshit. We are alcoholics because we mutated ourselves into alcoholics. Our lives are a mess because of the way we have chosen to perceive and respond to events. To see events as acting upon us as opposed to us causing or attracting the events to ourselves is a false belief. 

     “Existence precedes essence.” – Jean Paul Sartre

     And this is precisely why the Big Book so wisely asserts and tries to smash into our proud and self-obsessed minds that “our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.” – Alcoholics Anonymous p.62

     Seeing a therapist for me was an exercise in manipulation… 

     What an opportunity for me to truly act the part for an unsuspecting stranger who loves to find and fabricate reasons, whether real or imagined. I honed my skills as a pathological liar and in return, heard just what I wanted to hear: seemingly endless reasons (excuses) why I just had to use drugs and drink alcohol, that I was a victim of my Dad, Mom, this person, that person, psychic scars, my past life, unattended soccer games, Mom moving out, Dad getting sick, abusive babysitter, thrown out stuffed animals, stern grandfather demanding accountability, crazy grandmother renting Exorcist for me when I was 6, borderline x-girlfriend, peer pressure, 1st grade teacher, bully in school, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They dug in and magically uncovered a complicated psychological myriad of deep-seated reasons why I used.

     “Well you see, son, the ridicule you endured by your father, his emotional withdrawal…” and on and on and on. I was given free reign to blame all of my drug use and my voluntary failures and abuse of others on my parent(or other)-induced depression, apathy, anger, fear and insecurity.

     That is utter nonsense. Quite frankly, it’s dangerous.

     This is perhaps the worst strategy to treat an addict or an alcoholic. Addicts need quite the opposite of this ‘concerto de sentimiento’. The addict must be tactfully and lovingly roasted beyond belief, and then built back together one spiritual brick at a time. The therapist’s job is to simply start peeling the onion, and the addict must continue to peel off layer upon layer of bullshit they have fed themselves and stored up in the attic. The addict must be taught how to become accountable for his thoughts, actions and beliefs. He must own his Self and who he has become. Reasons and profuse analysis of all the players in his life is counter-productive. Sure we look at other players, but only to the extent of our own responsibility. We are the only player who matters. What did WE do? We clean up our side of the street and judge not the flaws of others, even those who may have hurt us.

     And how does the addict become an accountable human being? First, he learns that he or she, as an active or untreated addict, is a purely selfish human being. He must be honest about the effects of his actions, as the ripple effect is extensive and slowly annihilates all things precious in life. He must search himself fearlessly and come to understand how he himself caused his addiction, his resentments, his fears and his sexual or other misconduct. How was HE selfish? How was HE self-seeking? How was HE dishonest? How was HE fearful? Recovery is not an exercise in assessing what others did to us. It is an exercise in what we did to others. This sort of humility allows the addict become accountable for his life and his addiction, and then take responsibility moving forward. This humility allows the addict to have an authentic 1st Step experience as the truth of his powerlessness permeates throughout his mind, heart and soul.

     Once the bullshit has been well dissolved and the addict is humbled, he must take continuous and rigorous action to comprehensively repair his being. He must also and at once begin to repair his worldly life and his relationships, if possible. He must repair his reputation, his bridges and standing in his community. He must swallow his pride and fear to search for all those he has deceived, lied to, hurt, abused and stolen from to admit his wrongs, while also showing the willingness to make it right in any way he can. He must then reach out to others who still suffer and share both his experience as well as the solution. The more people he helps, the better. The more action he takes, the better he will get, and as a byproduct, the better he will feel.

     Finally, he must continue to draw closer to God through daily prayer, meditation and other activities which calm and cleanse him, whatever they may be. He must let go of his pathological need to control everything and plow his way through life, driven only by self-will.

God, please take my will and make it Your own…

     By the way, I have a friend on just about every entitlement there is, and she often lashes out and complains about wait times and not getting checks and what assholes they are. Not only does she not want to work, she refuses to work, even when jobs are offered to her. She has come to believe that the state owes her, failing of course to understand that when she refers to “the state,” she is referring to all of the working people of the private sector within the state. It is others with perhaps little more than she who owe her for some reason. She reminds me of an addict, as the mentality is quite the same. This is the problem with addiction, entitlement abuse and socialism – you eventually become entitled. When you should have gratitude the most, you have none. Why? Because you are just existing. If you’re getting free help or free tuition or free anything (free meaning taken from someone else), at the very least you should be thankful.

     Give a man a fish and he eats for a day and then comes back tomorrow expecting more, having done nothing to advance himself as spirit decays. Teach a man to fish and he eats for the rest of his life with dignity. He can also teach others to fish. He has a purpose. Below is a good anecdote I read on Martin Armstrong’s blog about the difference between capitalism and socialism:

     “Martin, A story I received: A guy looked at my Porsche the other day and said I wonder how many people could have been fed for the money that sports car cost. I replied I am not sure, it fed a lot of families in Bowling Green, Kentucky who built it, it fed the people who make the tires, it fed the people who made the components that went into it, it fed the people in the copper mine who mined the copper for the wires, it fed people in Decatur IL, at Caterpillar who make the trucks that haul the copper ore. It fed the trucking people who hauled it from the plant to the dealer and fed the people working at the dealership and their families. BUT,… I have to admit, I guess I really don’t know how many people it fed.”

     Believe me, you want people starting businesses, creating jobs and accumulating wealth to then either expand and create more jobs or voluntarily offer to charity. Nobody seems to remember that we are very compassionate financially as a country. But if you simply rob everyone who produces, you end up with no jobs and eventually the money runs out and you are right back to where you started, except now there is no money left and all those who were given something for nothing still have no abilities or will to support themselves. Margaret Thatcher nailed it when she said the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money. It doesn’t take very long before everybody loses.

     Many young people today don’t understand that there is no such thing as free. Government funds itself and its various programs by extracting wealth from the private sector, so the larger government grows, the more the real economy and real GDP shrink. Larger government is deflationary, despite whatever nonsense you’re being fed in college or on the news. Unfunded liabilities (meaning unfunded future entitlement promises) now exceed 220 trillion dollars. How is it that so many refuse to understand that when you borrow beyond your means, you bequeath that burden onto your children? Future generations will become debt serfs. As Hayek accurately noted, this is the road to serfdom.

     This has nothing to do with ideology. Both the Left and Right Establishment and the shadow government/globalist power structure who controls them are one in the same, corrupt and amoral to the core. They have been bankrupting, hollowing out and selling America down the river for decades. Both are pro-debt, pro-tax, pro-war, pro-big gov and anti- the people. This fundamental destruction of America is not achieved through capitalism as so many wrongly and tragically believe, but rather cronyism (corporate welfare) and socialism, which is the road to communism. All you have to do is read and study history and you will see.

     Socialism and the war on God, family, children and moral absolutes will utterly destroy us. I just pray that what comes after will be founded on the principles of freedom, truth and economic sanity. 

     Ohio police recently took this photo of two supposed parents overdosed in the front seat with their 4-year old sitting in the back:

     A friend posted this on FB and most of the comments read something like, “Oh those poor, suffering parents,” “I pray for those sick, suffering parents and the child,” “I hope those parents get the help they need,” “Oh the poor victims of the disease of addiction,” “I hope they get better.”

     Huh?

     The only victim is the child. The parents are not victims. The parents are depraved. They define what it means to be selfish. Yes, I was the same, but that does not change the fact that they are presently ruled by self-indulgence and cowardice. Imagine what the child is feeling as he sees his father behind the driver’s wheel unconscious and seizing from a heroin overdose. Then he turns to his mommy for help and reassurance and she is also unconscious and seizing. This child has been terrorized.

     I mention this story as a follow up to the last post where my buddy James referred to me as uncompassionate and showing no understanding for suffering addicts.

     So why do addicts refuse to get better? Is it because we have a genetic disease and cannot get better? If so, then how do we explain all of the addicts who do recover, change as people, and never use again? Recovery sort of blows a hole in the “victim of an involuntary disease” argument.

     The reason addicts don’t recover is a simple refusal to accept human life on the terms of human life. To recover, an addict or alcoholic must simply walk through his or her (sorry for not recognizing 31 different non-biological genders every time I need to use a pronoun) feelings of fear, anger, depression, boredom and angst. The addict must refuse to give in to his selfishness and fight for himself. He must never, never, never, give up.

     Last but not least, there is no room for whining and complaining. We are not victims. We make ourselves who we become. If we have become drug addicts, it is because we have made ourselves drug addicts. If we become heroes, it is because we have made ourselves heroes. Nothing external is responsible for our addiction.

     But Charlie, why you don’t understand how tough it is and you don’t understand what it’s like for me?

     Please. I do understand. But I also understand that to recover, you have to get off your parent’s couch, work hard and grow up into a responsible adult. Why is that such a terrible injustice? Why do we continue to make excuses to use drugs and drink like gluttons just because we are addicts?

     Being an addict is not an excuse to continue being an addict. This we must smash into our heads. The badge of honor that addicts dress themselves in during meetings that we are somehow different than everybody else is such nonsense. We are simply choosing to believe that we are different for the purpose of rationalizing the difficulty in recovering. We must not smirk with satisfaction because the nanny state has now excused us from our atrocious behavior. The PC lunatics are all too happy to declare us victims, excusing every facet of our behavior and compulsion as beyond our control. It’s as if we were somehow innocently struck by some plague blowing through the air.

     I just don’t see any excuse not to recover, for me or anybody else. We can manufacture all the excuses we want, but the truth is they are all just excuses.

     So there is no actual reason that prevents us from sitting with our horrible thoughts and feelings. There is nothing that actually prevents our from working on our selves thoroughly and fearlessly. There is nothing that prevents us from having enough courage to put our spiritual health above all. There is nothing that prevents us or anybody else from putting God first in our lives – only selfishness.

     Lol, check this one out:

     “Charles I used to listen to you like you had it all figured out, but really you’re just an obnoxious, spoiled rich kid that got clean and now looks down on everyone else who struggles to do so. Not everyone has the support that you have (or the means…sure you went to the highest end of rehab’s, pussy), so it’s not as easy for them/us. Stop acting like god and show some understanding. You’re not better than anybody, you’re a piece of shit drug addict just like rest of us. You seemed to have forgotten that b/c you wrote a stupid book and acted in some gay plays. It’s good to give advice, but stop fkn blasting your bullshit down people’s throat like you know you’re right and no one can be. I say “gay plays” b/c you’re on your own dick so hard you make the rest of us sick…” – by James Crawford

     A masterpiece, James. Your folks must be so proud.

     So let me get this straight, your problem is that I don’t have compassion on you? Because it’s not easy for you? It’s not my job or anybody else’s job to have compassion on you. You’re an adult now, James, and nobody is obligated to have compassion on you or your drug addiction. Nobody is obligated to hold your hand or give you a blanky. Yes, I decided to grow up and remove some self-hatred and self-pity. Sorry. You need to stop pretending you’re a victim.

     So you’re right, James, I don’t have compassion on you. Guess who I have compassion on? My family. Your family. The people I ripped the spirit out of without a care in the world. My comfort was all that mattered because I truly believed that nobody understood what it was like to be me. Nobody knew how tough it was to feel what I felt. Nobody suffered like poor Charlie, just like nobody suffers like James. Sorry but that is nonsense. We are not victims. There are real victims in the world, but you and I are not them. Talk to some limbless children in Aleppo or the mother and daughter in Iran who had their faces mutilated with acid. Gimme a break, James.

     “All figured out?” No, James, I don’t have it all figured out. I’ve never claimed to. Of course, deducing that would require some reading.

     “Looks down on everybody else?” Nope. The only person I look down upon is myself. That’s what got me better, James.

     “Rich kid?” Lol. My father worked every day until he was 52. That was when Raytheon laid him off, after which it soon became apparent his brain was degenerating. They called it early-onset atypical dementia, but regardless of the diagnosis, he died flat broke at 62 under a florescent light in a small, sterile room in a piss-wreaking nursing home with a soiled diaper, rotted teeth and not a spec of dignity to his name. My mother and I have been working full-time ever since to pay our own bills, as well as my sister’s bills, who has learning disabilities. Sure, some of my non-immediate relatives are bright and have worked their butts off to become successful. Many of them served and fought for this country. Do you have a problem with success? Do you have a problem with money? Do you believe you’re entitled to a free job with an exorbitant wage? Do you believe you’re entitled to free tuition, free housing, free food, free everything? If so, I’d like to put you in touch with my 5 year-old for a play date.

     “Highest end rehabs?” I went to one treatment center 12 years ago for about $1800, after which I worked full time as a cook to pay my mother and grandfather back. That isn’t exactly Passages Malibu territory at $92,000 a month. What’s so amusing and hypocritical is that your very complaint is that you yourself want to go to one of these “high end” places, but for what? A tune up? Tune up: hot tub, sauna, steak, a meeting or two, a watered-down NA workbook and maybe even a rub and tug on the final night. That is death for the addict, and that’s why I write. I want the opposite of that. I want to suffer. I embrace it now. That is the only difference between me and you.

     By the way, the reason I went to just one rehab is because I came to understand what I had done to my family. I then located my testicles and did some work – not exactly a horrible injustice to level against any active or inactive addict.

     “Gay plays?” You mean the comedy sketch show I produced, directed, partially wrote and performed in? Sorry for trying to do something creative and have some fun. What, did Dooch & Marco rub you the wrong way?

     “Blasting bullshit down people’s throats?” Lol. Am I in your home group blasting shit down your throat? Nope. I started a blog when I had my first child because I suddenly lost 90% of the time that I once had to drive around and run some group at night, speak somewhere or work with people outside of the home. I was scared of losing the tools that kept me healthy. I started a blog and began writing because I wanted to continue to serve in whatever way I could. I started a blog that you have voluntarily typed into your URL box and freely visited yourself. If you don’t like it, go read something else but nobody is forcing you to read this. I don’t care what you read or don’t read. Am I going to stop because some knucklehead becomes unhinged when he reads a post? Nope.

     “Wrote a stupid book?” Well, at least we can agree that you think books are stupid. Yes, I wrote a book. That’s your problem? Isn’t that what writers do? The book was an attempt to share my experience as well as the process I employed to get better. If that is stupid, I feel sorry for you.

     “Acting like God?” I’ll pray for you. There is no such thing as recovery and acting like God, so if I was acting like God, I’d be lit up like a Christmas tree right beside you. It is only active drug addicts, politicians and globalists who act like God. There is only one God, and only one man who was ever born of the Holy Spirit.

     “Obnoxious?” Dude, if this email you wrote isn’t “obnoxious,” I don’t know what is.

     The truth is you know nothing about me. You have no idea how hard I have worked to pull myself out of darkness and away from Satan. You have no idea how hard I’ve worked during my free time to help fellow shitheads. So no offense, but I don’t think you should be whining about anything, especially about ho hard it is for you to be jammed all day in an isolated bubble of pleasure while loved ones are left broken, shattered and heartbroken. 

     Compassion? I had compassion on myself and by extension on my mom and family. Do you believe your experience is somehow novel or unique to mine, that I have it easy, that I don’t also struggle, that I haven’t also been down, miserable, anxious, depressed, scared, vulnerable and filled with doubt? There is no difference between me and you as addicts except that I’m just a tad less of a “p***y,” and I’m not quite as verbally abusive to people I don’t know from a hole in the wall.

     I will do anything to get better and stay sober. Will you? Are you serving your family, your fellow addicts and the rest of the world by acting like a thug?

     This comment by a friend on an old post entitled “Never too Early” sums it up perfectly. I hate to even elaborate because it was delivered with such perfection. He writes,

     “I’ve got a progressive chronic and fatal illness but I can wait til I’m ready to find the solution! How many cancer patients say that?”

     Wow.

     The comment speaks for itself and should be presented without comment, but hey, since I’m so obnoxious, let’s comment anyway.

     What right do we have to complain about not having the guts to change when the “disease” in question is one we gave to ourselves by our own selfishness? Boredom is too much for us to handle? Some human discomfort is too much for us to handle? Frustration, disappointment and irritability is too much? Failing at this or that is too much? Somebody offended or humbled us and we have to become a full blown drug addict because of it? Gimme a break. Yes, I was a piece of shit drug addict, but that doesn’t change the truth that all of us simply refuse to become adults. Everybody feels the way we do, James. Everybody. 

     Addiction is wholly different from other non self-inflicted diseases, so no, we don’t deserve the same treatment. And does the sick adult man with a solution laid at his feet wait to employ it and get better? You should run, not walk towards the solution, forget about refusing to walk towards it at all. Sorry buddy, it’s gonna be painful. Life is painful. Get used to it. More importantly, we have no excuse not to recover when we leave a voluntary trail of heartbroken victims in our wake. 

     I had to do the same as anybody and take the pacifier out of my mouth. I had to start hearing what I didn’t want to hear and start doing what I didn’t want to do. And by now you may have deduced that I only generally care about addicts I don’t know to the extent that they get better in order to give peace to their loved ones and to find God, such that they may serve Him and and get on the right side of the trade, as it were. So the fact that I piss whiny addicts off but continue to receive letters of gratitude from parents and spouses tell me I’m doing something right… and if it’s not right, at least it’s moderately useful.

     Say anything you like about me, but at the end of the day, are you useful?

Comment:

     I would appreciate some input on the topic of CHANGE. Imo, we recovered alkis never really become different people, our behaviors are different and not self-destructive but my ability to self-destruct, never leaves. I’m still [so and so], just a polished up version. The old adage, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic see MN s to generically submit the same ideal as mine. If I truly became something or someone totally different, why would I need to enlarge and grow as a recovered alcoholic?

     Thanks Charlie for any insight you can offer.

Response:

     So let’s expand the question to first ask if alcoholics and addicts need to continue working on self all throughout life, and then if so, do we ever really change fundamentally?

     Many years down the road, the individual tools we may use in an isolated fashion early on hopefully become a part of our everyday life. That is, what we do becomes a living prayer or a living meditation – that is the goal anyway. In this sense, we stop doing so much work, but rather engage naturally with a new way of mindfulness or Godliness that begins to settle in more permanently, integrated into our lives, work, relationships. Believe me, this is no small task. It is a grueling, progressive, layered and lifelong process, and often when we think we have achieved some harmonious middle road, everything comes crashing down. That has well been my own personal experience anyway, and I continuously fail to live up to my own cherished principles with any consistency. I will keep trying though. One thing I do know is that drugs and alcohol will never be a problem for me ever again, so that’s a pretty good deal.
 
     Anyway, I think every activity can become sort of a walking/living prayer or meditation. Playing piano, drums, guitar, violin or the trumpet can be a living prayer or meditation. So can walking in the woods, climbing a mountain or swimming in the ocean. So can exercising or playing sports or going to the gym. So can simply interacting with friends or staying in the moment at work and focusing on the task at hand. So can simply being, breathing, sitting, standing or lying down. Anything and everything we do can be done in a mindful, deliberate or meditative way. When we focus solely on what we are doing without distraction and without wandering off mentally or trying to multi-task like our lives somehow depend on it, we might be at peace with some consistency.

     All this said, I tend to think that truly different people do continuously grow and enlarge their spiritual lives, addict or not. That is how they became that way, through hard work. I suppose the only difference might be that even as changed people, we addicts still retain the physical allergy, but retaining the ability to self-destruct I believe to simply be a human vulnerability, addict or not.

     Just think of the endless list of things to fall prey to – from drugs and alcohol, to sex and food, to anger and violence, to depression and fear, to power and control, to money and lack of empathy, to vanity and sociopathology. Look at those who run the country, or the shadow government rather, the 5th column – they are basically evil – self-interested, self-worshiping psychopaths who are disgusted by the common people and those who simply disagree with them. Have not these creatures fallen prey to the ultimate evil – the false and external power of playing God? Have they not become filthy, Godless tyrants?
 
     Finally, anything is possible. I’m sure there have been many such miracles where people with deeply rooted monsters or masochisms (not a word) or maladaptations have rid themselves through and through of even the capacity to crumble back into utter self-destruction or a total lack of goodness and love for others. 

     Great question. God bless you, my friend. I hope others comment on this…

Comment:

     I have more then one addiction I guess, I’m an alcoholic ,have anger and depression, and I keep hurting the people I care most about. I won’t let any female get close to me before I tell them every bad thing they have ever done in their life. I know I need help and something more than anything man made. 

Response:

     This is/was my exact experience as well. I was crippled with depression and anger and felt it would never end. I knew that addiction, while a monster itself, was sitting on top of a profound and deep-seated spiritual problem. I knew this in my heart. When I was finally on the verge of demise, I dragged myself to detox and somehow wound up in treatment up North. Within 24 hours, the fog had burned off and I knew I needed to do a mountain of work on myself and I knew I needed spiritual help. Miraculously, the recovered guys up there were only interested in giving me the tools to expel the life-sucking venom within, and they suggested that I place my full faith in God. The told to me to literally give it everything I have, that 99% might end up being ZERO. So I had to go for it, dig everything up and let everything go. As well, I was called on to have blind faith that something spiritual would happen, which it did. For some, it may be sudden. For others, it may be gradual, but what induced it was meticulously, thoroughly and fearlessly taking Steps as they are laid out in the Big Book.

Comment:

     I want to thank you for your honesty. I truly believe that it takes much more than just being sober to recover. You have helped so many family members gain insight into the addict . This insight allows us to stop the enabling. If one thing is true – the addict does not care about anything except their addiction. I suffered a silent heart attack in the midst of some of my addict’s drama last weekend. He has not even asked if I am okay. Instead he said we were terrible parents, that his son will hate us forever and that if we come to his house he will have us arrested. Why all this drama? Because we insisted he could not just take his son without being drug tested. In the end I am no longer talking to him. I told him in a text that I am done. So I am in day 9 of my withdrawal from his insanity. Thank you again for sharing your life. May God bless you and your family.

Response:

     Thank you for reaching out and God bless you. I have been touched and affected by this comment, and I’m thinking about you and praying. I will also pray for your son tonight during my prayers, that he in fact becomes even more hopeless as a means of breaking through the delusion and the great wall of denial, as a means of seeing some self-truth deep within, and most important of all, to see the terror of the abyss below and come face to face with a fear that might propel him to reach out with everything he has and grab onto the spiritual solution. If only we could feel the effects of our actions and reactions…

     I hope you are feeling better and remain in good health.

     …and yet today the common attitude and misguided belief is that addiction has nothing to do with character and that recovery is a simple pharmaceutical procedure.

     Honesty is the very essence of the Step process – to peel back layer upon layer of BS, pride and delusion in an effort to reach the promised land of honesty and purity, and then continue to dig and dig to embrace even deeper, purer levels of honesty. So regardless of whether some drug can manipulate a person’s bio-chemistry to mitigate the side effects of depression et al, there is no fundamental personality change without the ability to be honest with oneself. Until we can see ourselves clearly, recovery is out of reach.

     Let’s take mental illness…
  
     If I project my own behavior onto others yet am unable to see that I do so, if I take a jab at someone but see them as having taken a jab at me, if I am mean to someone yet see them as being mean to me, if I find someone to be annoying, disappointing, inadequate, immature or irresponsible but cannot see these things in myself, if I am miserable and depressed and I believe that it is all caused by someone I don’t like or someone whom I have chosen to demonize, and if I am passive-aggressive with others or manipulate others but I don’t see, believe or recognize what I am doing, then what good is a some science project?

     Designer drugs cannot fundamentally alter one’s character or personality disorder. Pills and injections cannot make an insane man sane again, nor can they miraculously turn a damaged person into a good person.

     More importantly, drugs do not magically give a person who is unable to be honest with themselves this earned ability. If we are so far gone that we cannot see or recognize anything in ourselves, if we are so far gone that we cannot remember anything we do, if we twist and contort what we do to minimize it, if we see what we do as perfectly appropriate but then see the same thing in you as cruel and inappropriate, if we cannot listen to anything which might trigger us, and if we become immediately defensive to anything we don’t like or find uncomfortable with no self-reflection, then there is nothing any drug can do to effect real change. The condition of being incapable of self-honesty is profound and requires rigorous digging and tremendous work before real change can even be seen off in the distance.

     Thus, without the ability to be honest, the individual is wholly lost. Without the ability to assess and recognize the character skews and negative emotional and behavioral patterns, habits and proclivities within, the individual is paralyzed and there is no movement forward into the light of mental health and spiritual recovery.

     Designer psychotropics and “anti-craving” drugs do not work is because honesty is not simply a switch that can be turned on. As well, there is such a thing as superficial honesty. Self-honesty and awareness is a lengthy and layered process. We engage in self-analysis to reach a thorough understanding of the effect of what we do and say has on others. The 4th Step is designed to be enormous and lengthy for a reason. As we search the truth of what we did to cause resentment after resentment, we peel back ever more layers, reaching deeper levels of honesty. As we search for our own self-seeking, selfishness, dishonesty and fear in a lifetime of resentments, fears and sexual misconduct, we are forced to become honest.

     Therefore, should an individual lack the capacity for honesty, there is no hope. You can “med up” all you like, but you will always be the same sick person.

     Clinicians who work with people that don’t have the honesty chip are spinning their wheels, as those who cannot get honest cannot get better. There is a reason why narcissists, borderlines and psychopaths do not change. They all lack the capacity for honesty, let alone the willingness to become honest.

     So this is the truth about addiction and mental illness. All recovery is based on the premise of the capacity for self-honesty. There is no sense in wasting money on expensive, overpaid therapists, lavish hot tub treatment programs and designer psychotropics for someone who cannot be honest. However, should this capacity exist, there is all the hope in the world.

     One of the things parents most want to understand is why we go down the path to addiction. I’ve often said that there are no specific reasons, especially none that are external, as ultimately nothing outside of ourselves actually MAKES us drink or use. Moreover, you have to understand that addicts love to use drugs and alcoholics love to drink alcohol despite whatever BS we sell you in a quiet moment just before we ask for more money.

     That said, it is useful to understand what lies beneath all addiction and other maladies of this nature.

     Before we begin, let’s briefly look at the two more surface or symptomatic components of addiction: physical and mental. Physically, through repeated use we develop a compulsion. At some point we step over that line, break our bodies (so to speak) and develop an “allergy” to drugs and alcohol, though we’re not talking about your typical allergy. Yes, using and drinking when allergic will certainly kill you, but ironically, we do not repel the substance we are allergic to but rather ingest more and more. Why? Because instead of breaking out into hives, fever or anaphylactic shock, we break out into ease and comfort. Whereas non-addicts generally detest being jammed to the point of catatonia or spinning out of control on a daily basis, we addicts feel more calm and comfortable that way. So we break out into more.

     Mentally, we have also broken our minds, so to speak, and have developed what we call the mental obsession. The mental obsession is a form of insanity. It involves recurring and sometimes completely random thoughts to drink or use that fail to respond to ration or reason. Trust me, the addict has gone insane. No normal person processes (or fails to process altogether) thoughts to use like the addict. We can literally crash our car going 90 and the next day when the thought to drink again hits us, we mitigate what happened the night before or forget about it altogether, easily dismissing it as no big deal. We truly think it wasn’t that bad and that it won’t happen this time around. And as noted, sometimes the action that follows a thought isn’t processed at all. Nothing at all can happen and then we see some Percodan in your medicine cabinet and the hand just reflexively reaches out to grab them. No thought at all. No analysis. No reason.

     Now… what lies underneath? Why do we take this path, an unholy path that leads to destruction?

     Part of my own catharsis many years ago was coupled with the sudden certainty that the core of any malady of this nature is profound spiritual illness. This was well confirmed for me in a variety of ways. For one, because it was a spiritual solution that worked so comprehensively, it was easy to deduce that my problem was also spiritual in nature. Since it was the fact that I dug deep and reached out with everything I had to somehow access the power of God, it was therefore God that I lacked. Finally, given the very sudden shift and flow of Power that moved through me briefly the night I read my inventory and then went to my knees to pray to my Creator, there was no doubt that what I was missing for the first 28 years of my life was a knowledge, faith, relationship and “conscious contact” with the Lord. I believe this to be true for all addicts.

     I was reborn that night. The rest is history.

     We can translate this practically to be a lack of purpose or meaning. Without a spiritual life and a connection to God, there is nothing but self-will to guide us – a vulnerable and precarious position to say the least. Without God and without purpose, it is easy to choose a toxic path, and even without drugs and alcohol, it is easy to fall into a path we were never meant to be on.

     In “Anybody Can Take Steps,” I wrote about the fact that I don’t buy into the psychological model of finding external reasons for self-created problems, but I tried to explain a more universal problem of a lack of purpose.

      “Finally, all of this begs the question of why we lose power to begin with? Sure anyone can let some habit eventually get the best of them, but is there something deeper? My personal belief is that addiction, depression, anger, boredom, anxiety and all of the rest are but symptoms of a LIFE problem, and I don’t just mean the addict’s refusal to live life on life’s term. The truth is that many of us begin to feel frustrated when we are not on our proper life path, when we have no meaning or purpose. When we fail to be who we are and do what we love or need to do, whatever that may be, we begin to suffer.

     If we do this work but something still nags at us, there may yet be something missing. Being on a life path that we resonate with might be one of the most important criteria for personal healing, growth and happiness.” – Anybody Can Take Steps, pp. 30-1

     Furthermore, some do not react well to hearing the vague and often meaningless self-help slogan of “just be spiritual, man,” and I couldn’t agree more. Spiritual talk and words on a page are just that, dormant seeds – devoid of power and actual results until cultivated and grown through rigorous and repeated action. Therefore, on a practical level, to grow or evolve spiritually dictates that we harness the strength and the courage to act spiritually, to strengthen and respond to our conscience. These actions include service to others, prayer, meditation, written inventory, self-care, care of our families, abiding by the truth, avoiding sin and again, listening to and acting on our conscience. Spiritual action is moral action, not new age, self-help, secular fluff designed to look spiritual.

     As well, to evolve and grow spiritually, we are called on to adopt an attitude or foundation of honesty, accountability, hard work, adult responsibility, emotional maturity and hard work.

     Granted, trying to assume accountability today is made all the more difficult when we have a culture that now feeds and promotes the darkness within, a status quo where we punish, shame, criticize and demonize success and faith while rationalizing victimhood and even glorifying it. More frightening is that when we become disconnected from our true selves and our own souls, when we become disconnected from truth and God, we blindly follow and accept tyranny disguised as righteousness, equality and social justice.

     Lastly, I hope by now you have deduced that our path of addiction has nothing to do with you – the parent, spouse, sibling or friend. It also has nothing to do with our town, our job, the minimum wage, micro-aggressions, or some asshole on the playground years ago. A spiritual malady develops from choices we ourselves make, and if there is no spiritual life in your home, then go and find one and ignore the criticism you may invite. Ignore those who will shame you for finding and choosing God. Just because your friends and family don’t believe or follow the principles of our Creator, that doesn’t mean that you have to follow them or be led astray by some other external force, of which I know there are many.

     Do what is in your heart. Do what you feel and know deep down is right. When you do, I think you will find that all along God was part of your fundamental make-up. There is nothing wrong with rejecting evil, regardless of how evil is disguised.