Back in 2012, I wrote a piece about why there is no way around the fact that using drugs and alcohol is selfish. Fundamentally, drinking and using drugs is selfish simply because we are doing so to feel good, to take the edge off etc. Sure there are degrees of selfishness, some markedly less or perhaps not destructive at all, such as the non-alcoholic having a few drinks at the dinner party on Saturday night.

     Then you have the selfishness of an addict, who continues to drink and use even as it comes at the expense of self, and more importantly, of others. In the older post entitled, “Selfish No Matter What,” I discussed the fact that there is no such thing as using or drinking excessively in a vacuum for two primary reasons. One, because there are people who love us. Love for a child, for instance, is a switch that cannot be turned off. Love for a child is cellular, it is in our bones, it is part of our make-up and thus, every time we do something that hurts ourselves, we are by extension hurting anyone who loves us. To see a child killing themselves rips a parent’s heart right out of their chest. It terrifies them to the core and can quickly rob them of their peace, joy and faith.

     I also tried to shred a common argument/belief I hear from the younger, cognitively narcissistic addicts – that if there is no one in life who loves them, then using is not selfish, or rather, that it doesn’t hurt anyone. This line of thinking brings us to the subject of human responsibility.

     Trying to get something existential through the head of a teenager is a challenge, let alone an addict, but I answered by suggesting we have certain built-in or required responsibilities simply because we are human. Upon hearing something so horrific and unjust, they often became indignant, confidently declaring they don’t have to do anything they don’t want!!! 

     At that point, all I could tell them was whether they choose to believe it or not, it doesn’t change the fact that we as human beings are all responsible to act in a way we would recommend for everybody else. By using drugs and drinking alcohol all day/every day at will, we are essentially saying that it’s okay for everybody else to act this way too.

     Think about it. What would the world look like if everyone went around shooting heroin, smoking crack or drinking like a fish? Sure the world is a mess already. Sure there is a grand holy war taking place, the war between good and evil. But if everybody felt justified to use and went about jammed all day long, the world would essentially cease to exist. It would become a cesspool of filth, moral decay and spiritual destitution. There would be no sanity. There would be no progress. There would be no adults. There would be no love.

     So then, why do we addicts somehow have this right to use drugs, become insane and kill ourselves exclusively, but every other adult in the room does not?

     Right, we don’t.

     Human responsibility transcends all of our individual issues and beliefs about who we are, what we think we deserve, and what we think we may have the right to do compared to everybody else.

     Whether we have lost control of our drinking or drug use is irrelevant because we as humans are never excused from our fundamental responsibility to act in a way we would endorse for the entire world. What we are saying by using, drinking, lying, deceiving, stealing and manipulating is that all of these behaviors are acceptable for every other member of the human race. We addicts tell ourselves that our lives and our experience is unique, that nobody feels what we do, that nobody knows what it’s like to be us, but these are but convenient excuses and delusions to justify the way we act.

     The truth is that, addict or not, we cannot escape the fundamental and God-given responsibility we have to step up and take care of ourselves, take care of our loved ones, help those we can, do the right thing, work hard and walk through our fear and pain and discomfort with grace. We cannot escape the human responsibility we have to refrain from ignoring or walking away from our conscience, refrain from retaliation, refrain from wearing our shit on our sleeves and bringing others down with us. We cannot escape the human responsibility we have to make things right when we have committed a wrong, to submit to the will of God and to have faith in his Power. We cannot escape the human responsibility we have to not act immorally by engaging in deception, dishonesty, deviance or any other harmful word, thought or action. Ask yourself why people want public monuments containing the Ten Commandments removed? You really have to wonder.

     We also must be wary not to worship ourselves (or others), lest we find ourselves abusing power and those around us.

     You can add to the list, but the point is that human responsibility dictates that we addicts and alcoholics cannot escape the responsibility we have to recover, since using and drinking violates this fundamental code.

     It also means that because drinking and using (especially once we have lost control) is harmful to self or others, it is also wrong, and yes, immoral. Regardless of how we try to destroy the absolute truth of right and wrong through moral relativity, secularism, PC nonsense and attempts to rationalize deviant behavior, it does not change the fact that there is an inherent moral component to engaging in behavior that destroys life and break hearts. Those who try to remove the moral component to using drugs and alcohol have voluntary chosen to put their heads in the sand. They seem lost, desperate, angry, and all too happy to reject God. Other than that, the only reason I see this idea being promoted is some sort of financial, ideological, political or pharmaceutical agenda.

     “So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God’s help.

     This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn’t work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.

     When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested is seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt a new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.” – Alcoholics Anonymous, p.62-3.

     I used to run this little meeting in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was a Big Book meeting we used to call “Chapter 2.” Chapter 2 in is entitled, “There Is A Solution,” so the point was to give exposure to the spiritual solution and to pull the Steps right out of the Big Book. The format was markedly different than a typical meeting, as the leader would teach and break down the contents of the first 164 pages of what should be described as the AA text book. When I was asked to run the group, I was both nervous and excited. It suddenly became my responsibility to bring to light what seems largely in the dark these days.

     I used to say the following prayer each night before starting:

     “God, please come into this room. Teach me to love and accept myself that I may love and accept others and do Your work well.“

     Sometimes that would work and other times it would not, but it was always up to me. If I let go, there was magic in the room. If I held on, it was like a mild form of torture.

     Over the recent past, a fair amount of pressure has been put on me to change, be different, make more money, do this, do that, stop blogging, do this kind of work, stop that kind of work, etc. etc. Yet, I must stay focused on the very thing that got me to where I am today:

     God.

     Everybody knows that you cannot serve two masters. This is proven to me again and again every time I over-exert my will to force some sort of change or feel as though I need something external to feed me, to be okay, to please others, to be a good person, to be a good man. The truth is that what I need is to always stay close to Him. For people like me, prioritizing spiritual action is essential to my very survival. My relationship with God and Christ comes first before anything.

     Since I’ve recovered and assumed accountability for my own life and worked hard to progress and succeed, I find it less complicated to assess the validity of information and the nature of events because I don’t complicate everything as much anymore or try to intellectualize everything ad nauseam. “Does it make sense?” – that is the only question that must be answered both on a personal and a macro level. For me, my life only makes sense and works properly if I try to stay close to God. Without God as my Director, not only am I lost, but nothing seems to work out. When I try to put anything else first above God, even if it appears to be the most righteous of causes such as pleasing someone close to me, I fail utterly.

     All that said, if we continue collectively to sacrifice the very principles that have elevated us out of primitive, morally destitute impoverishment – if we sacrifice our personal and economic freedom, our speech, our thought, our minds and our souls – we will devolve back into Godless animals. Take a second look, because those who we idealistically put up the most simply for their lip service may be the most devilish, power-hungry animals of them all. Worship no one, lest we eventually become enslaved by the temptation of false utopia, underneath which lies the very evils we are all trying to avoid and resist.

God, please keep me close to You today…

     Just heard someone on the NPR propaganda machine confidently and aggressively assert that the most important, golden rule of recovery is never to reveal publicly if you are “in recovery.” She likened doing so to some sort of mortal sin, saying it is “100% inappropriate” and everybody knows it.

     Huh???

     Let me just get this straight. Not revealing I am in recovery is much more important than say:

     Making amends to all those we have wronged?

     Working with other addicts and alcoholics?

     Serving and helping our loved ones?

     Improving our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation?

     Writing inventory to continuously cleanse the poison within?

     Now let’s take the “going public” issue, one I’ve been bashed for countless times. Trolls often cite the 12 traditions, despite the fact that the 12 Steps take precedent over any traditions, especially since they ARE the very program of Alcoholics Anonymous. In other words, if no one gets better – if no one recovers spiritually and mentally – there is no point to anything else.

     The Twelfth Step reads as follows:

     “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” – Alcoholics Anonymous, p.60

      So wait, how exactly am I supposed to carry this message without being able to carry this message? How am I supposed to carry anything without sharing my experience? The very point of the Steps is to crack wide open our closed, narrow, hidden world and become transparent. We are to become an honest, open book. Sharing my story and my experience as an addict is absolutely necessary to not only carry a message but to effect change or hope or inspiration in others.

      But still, Charlie, why do you have to do it publicly?

      Is it not a good idea to carry this message to as many people as possible? Today we have a miraculous way to reach others in the internet. Furthermore, how do you define public? Am I not supposed to speak at a hospital, sober house, support group or convention? Am I not supposed to then post the speech or share an article about its content on the web? Am I not allowed to write my memoir just because it includes the specifics of the process of my recovery? Sorry, I am a writer. That’s what writers do.

     There are many recovery speeches and personal accounts publicized over the internet, on sites, blogs and YouTube. This allows for greater exposure to the spiritual solution. So this ridiculous idea to never reveal that you are in recovery can only come from those who have never helped anybody, and if an addict/alcoholic has never helped anybody, then there is no recovery to speak of. The very purpose of the Twelve Steps is to recover sufficiently that we become equipped to go serve. We are called on to become strong and go out to help others and serve God.

     Going “public” with my story, my experience and with the spiritual solution has enabled me to reach many. More importantly, guess who reads my blog the most? Mothers and spouses. Many of them have written me with gratitude for shining a light on the nature of addiction and recovery. Many of them have been relieved of the guilt they carried around for years, falsely blaming and judging themselves for the addiction of a loved one. That alone justifies going public, whatever public means.

     Finally, why is it that we should hoard the powerful, mystical and potentially miraculous tools contained within the Steps? Why hoard a solution that is given to us by God? Tools such as written resentment, fear and sex inventory could bring relief to millions of families, spouses and codependents alike. Should they not experience the relief that we recovered have been so blessed with? Quite frankly, it is they who deserve it the most.

     So when we grasp onto some ritual or rule from which to channel our anger, we need to re-examine our own recovery, especially when it makes so little sense as to sound rather stupid. Yes, I know what the kumbaya, self-help crowd will say – that I am angry and rigid – too angry to help. If you really read through the blog and examine my shared experience deeply, you will find that it is quite the opposite. I am not angry. I am trying to help. I want others to have the life-changing spiritual experience that I was so fortunate to have, and more importantly to feel this relief, freedom and peace.

      And yes… I am also willing to be wrong. Remaining educable is priceless, and I have reassessed and changed my positions on this or that many times over the years. In fact, I look forward to learning new things. Perhaps the anti-public crowd should also be willing to learn new things.

     I really don’t get it. Instead of rationalizing addiction as a naturally-occurring lack of endogenous opioids and then justifying various forms of artificial dopamine as effective treatment because we are such poor, innocent victims of a blameless disease, here’s a novel idea:

    Get used to less dopamine.

     Why are drug addicts and alcoholics somehow entitled to be treated with more euphoria, as if it isn’t our preoccupation with physical and mental climax that got us into trouble to begin with?

     I don’t get it.

     Why not simply get used to a more human amount of dopamine?

     I’ve read stuff by some of these poor parents on other blogs who discuss the latest propaganda delivered by psychiatrists and behavioral neuroscientists. They believe their sons and daughter are innocent “victims” of an organic “lack of endogenous opioids” and that the poor little things are shooting dope in a desperate attempt to address “legitimate” mental health issues?

     Legitimate???

     Sorry, but that is insane. This kind of thinking is removed from reality.

     Most people don’t really believe that, do they? So wait, let me get this straight, we addicts legitimately need opiates because we are suffering from a lack of opiates, which causes us to suffer mentally. Please. First, I think I know what my problem is. Second, I definitely know that I don’t need more opiates, but hey, you can tell yourself anything you want in an effort to justify the selfish and deranged behavior of an addict.

     First of all, there is no rationale or justification for anybody to use heroin, regardless of how f***ed your brain might be. Using hard drugs is wrong. Everybody knows that. And if you have lost control, using any mood-altering substance is wrong (yes, including pot, though I’d be over the moon if the new marxist generation of stoned college kids simply stopped whining for stuff to be forcibly taken from others and engaged in something we like to call “a job.” Sorry guys, there is no such thing as free stuff. Anything you get for free is taken from the few people still working in the private sector. If you want something, like a college degree, work for it, like everybody else. You don’t consciously buy something and then complain about paying for it afterwards, especially if you indebted yourself to buy it. And if and when you leave the cushy college bubble, you will eventually realize that not everything is a social issue. If and when you finally grow up and enter the real world, it is then and only then that your real education will begin. All I know is there is no way in hell I’m paying 400k for my children to engage in 4 years of self-hatred and then leave essentially brainwashed, thinking I’m evil, and without a single, functional skill set, let alone a drop of financial IQ. Oh and btw, ‘micro-aggressions’ don’t exist, so when the civil unrest begins, look no further than the mirror when looking for someone to blame for intolerance and division. Much of the violence and hatred we see out there emanates from those who will only tolerate others who agree with them about everything and see the world exactly as they do, even if they’re wrong. Vehemently rejecting any debate or difference of opinion whatsoever is much closer to the “facism” that you so zealously oppose. More specifically, the fundamentalism with which you and your loony tune professors approach certain ideas and theories runs contrary to rigorous and objective academic exploration). 

     At any rate, this is the very last message on earth you want to send addicts and alcoholics: that your body is wired to need drugs and therefore it’s okay to use. Regardless of how educated one may be, you have to be bit touched to believe or endorse such a theory.

     Furthermore, this sort of approach prevents real recovery. Navigating life and the world with artificial amounts of dopamine is not real life. Dealing with life on life’s terms is real life, and therefore real recovery.

     Why are we entitled to have maximum comfort simply because we molded ourselves into drug addicts? Why not simply embrace the reality of being a human being? Wouldn’t getting used to less dopamine bring about a more fundamental and lasting recovery? Where did this degenerate notion come from, that addicts constitutionally need more dopamine and therefore we should give it to them?

     Fact: They don’t need more dopamine, they WANT more dopamine.

     We want more dopamine because when you use drugs, you are literally flooding your CNS with pleasure and relief (i.e. euphoria). Naturally, the removal of such ridiculous amounts of artificial relief will create some whining and moaning, but trust me, this is good for addicts. It’s okay to suffer a little bit. It’s good for us, and in fact, it is the trick to recovery – to be okay with normal amounts of dopamine, i.e. to experience the entire spectrum of human life/emotions and continue to do what we need to do. Why are we pumping the false notion that addicts are somehow unique and shouldn’t have to walk through discomfort like the other 7 billion people on Earth?

     The key to maladies such as addiction and depression is simple:

     Don’t let your feelings stop you.

     Don’t let your feelings stop you from doing what you need to do, from doing the right thing, from going to work. Feelings are not gonna kill you. In fact, the more you move through them, the more action you take and the busier you get, the more the depression will dissipate. We get stuck when we stop, cower and retreat into our comfort zones.

     As far as drug and alcohol addiction go, the more you reach out and step outside of yourself, the more you will come to naturally repel drugs and alcohol. You will be lifted up spiritually, in the real way, and will seek real strength and real peace as opposed to the phony, manufactured comfort of drugs, alcohol, synthetic dopamine and other toxic science projects.

     Sorry, but we shouldn’t let the current thinking about addiction devolve into absolute nonsense. Nobody just wakes up one day and they are suddenly a fully blown addict with no control over their drinking or using. That is ridiculous. You have to use and drink quite a bit in order to to officially break your body and develop the physical allergy. The process of losing choice is indeed very much a choice. That is the truth, so please, let us see addiction as it is, not as you want it to be.

     I recently suffered through yet another ‘ol timer meeting, the contents of which included not a soul who had actually taken Steps as they’re ironically laid out in ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’, which is fine, as that is how the world is. One gentlemen incessantly mumbled to himself, correcting people throughout the meeting, frothing for his turn. Brutal. Finally let loose, he went on about his first sponsor who had no moral compass, dated/slept with ten women at a time and so forth, you know, a real stand up guy. The sponsor was a savior to him.

     No offense, but there are no real alcoholics in the world who can stay sober while continuing to live immorally in sobriety.

     When the baton was passed to me with collective reluctance, I spoke about the center of my problem being the person I was – my character – my selfishness, lack of principles and lack of purpose. I also noted that I had zero chance if I went around cheating on my wife and banging escorts and so forth. More importantly, I noted that I was recovered. I trust my recovery and do not need to consider my sobriety one day at a time. 12 years later, I don’t find that arrogant. I think if by then we haven’t reached some level of consistent safety and sanity, there is something wrong with our program.

     Immediately, the next guy went apoplectic, turned and addressed me directly – “You don’t know you won’t shoot dope tomorrow!”

     Um, yes, I do. 

     Let me be clear: I know for a fact that I will not shoot dope tomorrow. It’s not arrogance. It’s simply based on the fact that I do not suffer from the mental obsession anymore. And since I have the power of choice back, I choose God over heroin and alcohol. Is that cool? Is everybody okay with that? I certainly wouldn’t want to offend anyone… even though that’s not possible today since everything is somehow offensive. 

     While doing the wrong thing over and over again will gradually sicken my mind and eventually lead to relapse, I am now well aware of what sorts of words, thoughts and actions will cause this sickness of the soul. More importantly, I try to actively expel the filth and correct mistakes when I veer off course. I do the work. People tell me I am playing with fire because I don’t go to meetings and still write inventory 12 years later. It’s quite the opposite. I wrote inventory for two hours the other day at some cafe and I never go to meetings. I have no thoughts to use. I’ve had no thoughts to use or self-destruct since the night I gave my life to God back in 2005.

     One day at a time is pre-recovered. Sure that is a good motto to live by – to take it slow, to stay in the moment, etc – but as it relates to shooting heroin, if you are living one day at a time ten years down the road, there is something missing in your program, to put it lightly. 

     Now, because “double-dipping” will get me assaulted by many of these local AA lunatics, I refrained from saying any more, but had I broken this sacred ritual, I would have suggested that he refrain from taking my inventory and perhaps focus on his own, let alone refrain from pretending to be psychic and seeing into my mind and heart. This is why I can’t do meetings anymore. I’d rather not go home with a migraine.

     He went on to tell me that I should NEVER tell a sponsee how to take Steps, nor should the Big Book.

     Huh???

     What are the Steps if not pulled out of the Big Book? The Steps are the Big Book. It is the very text book on how we take Steps. Sure anyone can engage in anything they want to, but the Steps come from the Big Book, and they are delineated with tremendous specificity. We have them for a reason. We have them because they are a solution to our specific problem. This attitude of his is one of the reasons why so many fail after, for example, filling out a few watered-down worksheets as opposed to writing all four columns of their resentment, fear and sex inventory as they were laid out in Alcoholics Anonymous.

     So sorry, but I opt not to drag sponsees to speaker meetings and let ’em figure it out on their own. Most of the people I’ve been so blessed by the Lord to work with over the years are desperate and need a real and powerful solution. They have a volcano of work to do. The emotional and spiritual poison within is eating them alive. They need to feel different, and fast. They need inspiration and hope at once, lest they go back out. They need to have a real experience in the real world.

     So I don’t tell sponsees to just do whatever floats their boat and do the Steps in their heads while staring at the poster on the wall. And why don’t I? Because I don’t want to kill them. I don’t want them to die. I want them to get better comprehensively and become a master of this stuff such they they are best equipped in every possible way to go help others. My job is to hook them up to God and then get the F out of the way. My job is not to hold someone’s hand with no exit strategy in sight.

     It matters who you follow, and if you are following the likeness of one of the above knuckleheads, then good luck, because luck is what you will need.

     This article is dedicated to a good friend who is told repeatedly that no alcoholic EVER regains choice. Sadly, the people telling him this can’t seem to comprehend the basic structure of alcoholism, of which there are two components: mental and physical. Physically, we never regain control. Mentally, we can absolutely regain control. In fact, that is very definition of recovery. Without mental control or choice, nobody would ever get better. The Big Book delineates all this very clearly, but since a basic understanding seems lost on the contents of my friend’s group, let’s have a closer look.

     The Big Book does state that the alcoholic never regains physical control, meaning that his or her body will always respond abnormally to alcohol once ingested, but that our power of choice, which is mental, can certainly be restored. That is what recovery is. Loss of power of choice is temporary. Moreover, the process of losing choice is a choice. Nobody is born an addict. Sorry, can’t blame your genes, i.e. your parents.

     The Big Book reads, “On the other hand – and as strange as this may seem to those who do not understand – once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required a few simple rules.” -from The Doctor’s Opinion, xxix

     So what is a psychic change? Again, quoting Carl Jung from There Is A Solution (p.27), “Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.”

     If that isn’t a description of the restoration of choice and willpower, I don’t know what is.

     Let’s continue from Into Action, p.85: “And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even alcohol. For by this time [after amends] sanity will have returned [sanity = choice, mind you]. We will seldom be interested in liquor [or never, in many cases, such as mine for example]. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally [normal people have choice. Choice is mental, loss of control is physical], and we will find this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us without thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, nor are we avoiding temptation [power of choice is necessary to make avoiding temptation irrelevant]… Instead, the problem has been removed.“

     In “Anybody Can Take Steps” I wrote, “Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), this abnormal physical response to drugs and alcohol, once acquired, is permanent. While that may sound hopeless, it is not, because all any addict or alcoholic needs to do is to restore willpower, supplemented by a life of spiritual growth, and he or she can then choose never to drink or use again. Thus, the real defeat is what happens to addicts mentally.”

And this is why the Big Book confirms that “…the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body.” –Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 23

     Thus one can see that if we could never regain the power of choice, nobody would ever recover. Regaining choice is the very definition of recovery. It is the very thing that allows an active addict to become restored and never drink again. If I was walking around with no choice, then I am subject to drink or use at any point in time, and that is not my reality. I have full control of my mind and the power to choose/willpower has been restored. My once broken mind has been fixed (at least in that department). 

     Choice is associated with our mental condition. Active drinkers or users have lost the ability to think rationally or reasonably about drugs and alcohol. When the thought to drink or use comes into their minds, they cannot choose whether to pick up or not. They just pick up. By all accounts, an active user who has so thoroughly lost his or her willpower is insane. This is what we refer to as the mental obsession. The mind has become so compromised and so owned by drinking or using, choice has been lost.

     But choice is mental. Choice is a mental loss of ration, reason and power. And power, just as ration or reason, can be both lost and regained. I and other recovered individuals have regained that ability. I choose every single day not to pick up, as drugs and alcohol have no power over me. In fact, I repel them. To me, they are nothing but spiritual poisons that push me away from God, and all I want to do now is grow closer to God. So our problem is mental.

     Before my obsession was lifted, I had certainly lost the power of choice. In fact, I didn’t even think at all. I’d use your bathroom, notice a bottle of Percocet, and my arm would reflexively reach out and before a single thought had entered, the pills were sailing down my esophagus. This is what the Big Book refers to as those “strange mental blank spots,” where the mind stops working and we just pick up for no reason at all. Put another way, active users have a broken mind. Recovered people have grown new minds. So while the body of an addict cannot be fixed, his or her mind can. This is why it is fruitless to try to treat the body of an addict, which has ignorantly become the entire focus of addiction treatment today.

     So when I say I am a recovered alcoholic, what I mean is that I no longer suffer from thoughts to drink. Additionally, I can purposely think about alcohol and these thoughts have no effect on me whatsoever. I can walk through the halls of a liquor store, meet friends at a bar, or even work in a brewery and because CHOICE has been restored. More importantly, I have no desire to drink, and for me, that goes hand in hand with becoming recovered.

     What I have now is much better that what I had before during brief times of sobriety. Once again, I have come to naturally repel drugs and alcohol as opposed to miss them nostalgically. I view them as evil garbage as opposed to a long lost love. I have come to repel anything that pushes me away from the Holy Spirit. This is precisely the result of the spiritual actions of the Twelve Steps. Right action enables us to access the power of God and make us sane once again.

     So to beat a dead horse, if addicts and alcoholics never regained the power to choose whether they pick up or not, nobody would ever get better. Regaining the power of choice IS the very definition of recovery. It’s called getting better and becoming sane again, though many who have only achieved physical sobriety have yet to experience this freedom. The white-knuckle crowd should try it by taking the Steps we are so blessed to have received in the Big Book entitled Alcoholics Anonymous. Once restored, you are a free man or woman. You can go anywhere on God’s green earth because drugs and alcohol no longer have you by the balls.

     Power, by definition, IS choice, so I’m not sure I understand the assertion that we never regain choice. The entire program of AA is designed to give us our choice back and teaches us that power can be both lost and regained.

     Hope that helps, my friend.

     I’ve written about human shame before and how addicts and alcoholics have no monopoly on it, but I want to revisit the subject as a good friend recently sent me the following devotional by Frederick Buechner:

     “Everybody knows what everybody else looks like with no clothes on, but there are few of us who would consider going around in public without them. It is our sexuality that we’re most concerned to hide from each other, needless to say, although one sometimes wonders why. Males and females both come with more or less standard equipment, after all. There would be no major surprises.

      It started, of course, with Adam and Eve. Before they ate the apple, “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed,” Genesis tells us, and it was only afterward that “they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons” (2:25; 3:7). In other words, part of knowing evil as well as good was to know sex as a way of making objects of each other as well as a way of making love, and we have all felt guilty about it ever since. Pudenda, deriving from the Latin for “that of which we ought to be ashamed,” is etymology at its most depressing.
 
     People go around dressed to the teeth, and in our minds we go around undressing them. Again one wonders why. It’s not just to see their bodies, surely. We already know what those look like. If our most abandoned fantasies came true and we were actually to have our way with the bodies that attract us most, I suspect it wouldn’t even be that either. We already know just what bodies can do and what they can’t.

      Maybe our hunger to know each other fully naked is in the last analysis simply our hunger to know each other fully. I want to know you with all your defenses down, all your pretenses set aside, all your secrets laid bare. Then maybe I will be brave enough to lay myself bare, so that at last we can be naked together and unashamed.”

     ~originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

     Indeed, it is the epidemic of human shame that damages us spiritually and robs us of fully knowing each other, unashamed. How fascinating that we have become so ashamed of simply being human, of our human bodies, of who and what we are. I wonder if the absence of shame is even possible, given that original sin seems embedded in our DNA. Whether we like it or not, we are damaged, so perhaps if we can let go of the shame of being flawed, we can make peace with who we are, and thus, with others.

     For me, as far as naked and giving myself goes, I feel the most unashamed when I trust my wife (emotionally) and when I feel loved and admired by her, which is by no means always the case. Shame and trust are interconnected and inversely correlated. Trust, of course, is faith, as well as (healthy) love for self, others and God, so the more love and faith I have, the less shame.

     And so the pendulum swings back and forth along the spectrum of shame. Sometimes I feel bitterly self-conscious, and other times, not at all. Sometimes I respect and accept my human body with no shame, and other times I judge myself. Again, the more we trust our spouses and the healthier the love is between us, the less shame we feel. As tension and defensiveness rises while trust in God declines, so the amount of shame increases.

     Because human shame is now built-in as the human condition, we must continually let go everyday, continually renew our trust, and continually take actions that increase love. The courage to love and the humility of faith repel shame. When I neglect myself or loved ones, commit a wrong, become too self-absorbed or isolated, shame increases. And even then, we must walk through the shame and continue to act. We must bring ourselves back to a place of humility and other-centeredness.

     So the less I focus on ME and the more I rid myself of the poison of self, the less power shame has.

     Today we live in a culture of shame. Shame is in fact promoted and encouraged, especially physical shame. Mirrors are everywhere. Physical appearance and identity has become an obsession. Quite frankly, we’ve seen this script before during all ages of decadence that preceded the fall of great empires. As we decline economically and turn away from freedom and spiritual principles, culture fast becomes Godless, ashamed, confused, mentally ill, psychopathic and hyper-sexualized. Shame is tearing apart our very social fabric at its seams.

     All this is to say that we cannot seve two masters. If I worship Self, God becomes secondary, and my fall from grace is swift. For addicts, it ends in relapse. In this sense, shame can be equated with selfishness, and if both exist as who I am, if both are in my fundamental make-up, then I must work everyday to prevent them from growing into monsters. Shame and selfishness left unchecked will lead us to hurt ourselves and more importantly, others. To be sure, I am guilty of this myself, and when I feel the darkness approaching, I must turn back to God before it is too late. I must, lest I lose everything.

     This is why our recovery boils down to the simple, universal law of cause and effect. Right action = good life. Wrong action = shitty life… and shame. The choice seems so easy…

     Mainstream addiction treatment is essentially a farce and has been all but co-opted. Addiction today is considered little more than a brain disease that requires medication (including psychotropics, of course, as all addicts are now considered to be dual-diagnosis), which means that more drugs can be sold by pharmaceutical companies and more government handouts can be procured to open and fund watered-down treatment centers where addicts can simply get re-drugged. It’s a nice little loop… but doesn’t help addicts in the slightest.
    Any treatment center that re-drugs addicts yet peddles the program by including therapy et al is doing so in vain, as public funding and insurance models have one requirement and one requirement only: adopting the pharmaceutical model, i.e. the non-recovery model. Treatment isn’t about treatment anymore. Treatment is about selling a different brand of drugs to drug addicts and their families. I have no problem with making tons of money, and in fact, I cherish capitalism (not to be confused with crony capitalism or corporatism), economic and personal freedom, but exploiting addiction financially by lying about it is just immoral.

     How has this happened?

     By controlling the narrative and manipulating clinical data. Treatment must now be “evidence-based” or “science-based.”

     But what approaches are we gathering evidence for? Are we leaving some approaches out altogether? And what are the parameters of evidence? How much clean time is considered to be evidence? Is evidence determined by time away from our drug of choice but no biggie if we’re nodding off on methadone 24/7? Is physical sobriety alone considered evidence? What of our quality of recovery?

     Treatment centers are now rejecting Twelve Step principles and spiritual growth because they have no evidence that it works. Why? Because they actively avoid conducting any research or gathering any clinical data… because it’s not science-based. Really? What does that even mean? So if I began engaging in right action (which has brought me closer to God and restored me to sanity) and no longer suffer from any thoughts to use, that doesn’t count as evidence? Nope. There is no profit in recovery or spiritual growth. In fact, has anyone else noticed the all-out war on God?

     Furthermore, the new-age, evidence-based assumption is that my recovery is by implication weaker than someone who is engaging in an “evidence-based” program, someone who is jammed on subs and remains a bubbling cauldron of mental, spiritual and moral decay. How has it become normative that my recovery is not counted as evidence but the kid on suboxone who still calls his mom a f***ing bitch is what we now define as success? It’s possible because “evidence” simply needs to meet the goal of selling drugs by medically claiming that it is the solution.

     Does anyone else see the travesty that addiction treatment has become?

     It is not about real recovery anymore. It is about selling drugs and procuring subsidies based on empty recovery stats and bio-chemical nonsense, which means selling out. I used to speak at a parents’ support group and was helping parents not only begin to understand addiction but take a look at embarking on their own healing journey. Then they took BSAS funding and that was that. Speakers must now tow the party line and pump substitution drugs like methadone.

     But the truth is methadone and suboxone do not help addicts. The truth is both of these synthetic opiates make us worse, not better. Never once have I seen anyone on these drugs NOT relapse and relapse hard. If the addict’s condition of insanity is not lifted, there is no point to anything. It is therefore insane to give an addict methadone or suboxone, as it simply perpetuates their condition of insanity. It preserves the mental obsession, and they remain subject to relapse at any time and for no reason. In fact, they already remain in relapse because both of these drugs are synthetic opiates. 

     So when you hear people discuss “evidence-based” approaches to addiction, they are using the term to pump pharmaceuticals while discrediting spiritual models such as the 12 Step program of action. The 12 Steps were inspired by the Christian-based Oxford group, which is perhaps why it has become all the more despised. And once again, I plead you to ask yourself, what is the definition of “evidence?” The term itself it meant to imply that the evidence-based approach works, but that is often a fabrication. Is evidence of sustained recovery someone on subs who hasn’t used heroin? What variables we are using? If a biased R&D team determines that sustained recovery is 90 days, then any subject clean 90 days passes for evidence?

     You can see how this becomes a problem. Almost every addict I know has accumulated 90 days here or there and then relapsed. Hard. Moreover, if I get to stay jammed out of my skull on Methadone, then yeah, 90 days? No problem! Sign me up!

     The bottom line is this: An addict is either still insane and suffers from the mental obsession and is therefore subject to relapse randomly, at any point in time and for no reason at all… or they are sane and no longer suffer from the mental obsession and can move about freely in the world as drugs and alcohol have no power over them anymore.

     Is not that the recovery we and our families so crave (no pun intended)? Don’t you see that we are being fooled by the medical “addiction”crowd? Asking a non-recovered addict questions about the “disease” of addiction and effective treatment strategies is like asking a politician about how to tell the truth. It is something they simply don’t understand. So why waste your time and money when your addict is going to relapse?

     A good friend of mine told me that he knows someone on methadone and he works and stuff. I asked him if the guy had a family and he said, yeah, a wife and kids. Do you really think his wife and kids are jumping for joy that he has to drive to the clinic every morning to dose himself into zombieland all day while his organs, bones, body, mind and soul continue to deteriorate?

     I’m no psychic but I’d guess no. In fact, I’d presume they are probably horrified and scared shitless.

     Right, let’s keep funding “evidence/science-based” approaches. Good luck with that.

     Let’s briefly define sugar-coated. Now, I don’t usually do this but in the spirit of brutal honesty and illumination, let’s look at a comment I saw on some other blog from an active addict trying to explain why the blogger’s son (I presume) is still using and can’t stop. She offers an ingratiating apology for not “sugar-coating” it, but, um, this is precisely what sugar-coating is when it comes to addiction. Look, she’s probably a sweet kid and I honestly bear no judgment on her individually, but these types of comments are representative of addicts-at-large. They could come from anyone for all I care.

     She says, “We wouldn’t tell someone to stop being diabetic. They don’t choose it.” Addiction is the opposite of any other disease that is beyond our control. We are not born addicts. We mutate ourselves into them. People with diabetes or better yet, say juvenile leukemia, are the ones who have no choice. But to drink like a fish until you become an alcoholic or to bang dope until you become a junkie? Sorry, you have made yourself an addict. You only lose control after voluntarily evolving into a junkbox.

     She also says, “it’s rare that anybody gets better.” Well, that is true, but not because they can’t. Anybody can get better, it’s just that they won’t because they are addicts. Addicts are perhaps the most immature and selfish people in this world and won’t so much as lift a finger if it means stepping out of their comfort zones.

     She goes on to say, “Why is he worn out and sad? Not because he is indulging a want… no he is ill and he doesn’t choose to be ill.” Sorry, NOPE. He is worn out and sad FROM USING, so it is really quite the opposite, as he has quite clearly chosen to be in pain. In fact, addicts, like codependents, actually become pain-dependent. We choose pain. We would rather have problems and chaos because it is familiar and feels more in control than the alternative. For addicts, that alternative is actually being in control. For codependents, that alternative is not controlling what is outside of themselves and letting what’s inside rise up, which is perhaps more frightening than dealing with someone’s addiction.

     This comment reminds me of the comment from Jackie X from the UK who wrote that my theory/philosophy failed to have enough intellectual “nuance” to have any value. Intellectual nuance is precisely the problem, as addicts will talk you into circles to try to rationalize and justify their using. Furthermore, if this new trend of the use of the word “nuance” isn’t stomach churning, I don’t know what is. Today any dissent, authentic/free thought or deviation from the status quo leaves one incessantly bombarded by progressive intellectuals using this word to appear sophisticated (no doubt aroused by the opportunity to tell you how stupid you are) while having absolutely no clue how to defend their positions coherently, let alone offer facts, common sense or historical literacy. Why is that? A) because they tend to sound smarter than they really are, and B) because they don’t understand the real world and how it works, let alone the economy or inter-connectivity. No matter how hard you try to engage in social engineering or manipulate the economy, it only makes things worse.

     At any rate, the comment was,

     “Being a junkie and coming up with 100 bucks for your habit everyday is a harder grind than many working adults have ever experienced.” – by JACKIE X

     Wow. Poetic.

     So that is a more nuanced theory? Sounds like standard addict nonsense to me. It is delusional. Working hard are two words that are absent from the addict’s vocabulary, and two words that would serve us and many others more than words can describe.

     Addicts fall prey to the victim narrative that we see so easily adopted and defended today. Sad really, but this is what addiction and recovery have come to, and to be sure, the addict mind and attitude is but a microcosm of our social character.

     Trust me, only active users talk like this. Recovered addicts are fully accountable for turning themselves into addicts, for their previous selfishness, and for causing themselves the totality of the pain they are in. Recovered people have put down the pity pot and have understood that their ultimate destiny in life is up to them. Who we are and what we become is up to us and us alone. Our entire lives are but a canvas that we paint ourselves. Sorry if that isn’t nuanced enough.

    Where have all the adults gone?

     When did common sense become so demonized?

     Active users also remind me of many physically sober alcoholics I used to hear in meetings. “Just bring the body” sums it up, because let’s face it, if all you do is bring the body, I can speculate with near certainty that you will probably fail, and you will never get to experience the spiritual solution, which requires a tad bit more than bringing your body somewhere and doing absolutely nothing.  I’m pretty sure that just bringing the body isn’t going to write a thorough and mind-bending 4th Step inventory of your entire life, nor will it give you the power to face every soul you have wronged and courageously make amends to them all. Nonetheless, it will make you eligible for story time and snack break… oh, but you can’t speak until you have 90 days or chair until you have a year. Lol.

     Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you are an alcoholic or an addict and some airhead at a local meeting tells you to “just bring the body” and “just keep comin’,” don’t walk but SPRINT the other way, as this advice may well end your life when the obsession to use again hits you like a brick and you go on the run of a lifetime. Sponsorship, needless to say, has also been reduced to near oblivion, which is why we now have both active and sober users running around absconding themselves from any responsibility whatsoever. That said, all this appears to have evolved naturally as but a microcosm of our ever-expanding and destructive culture of entitlement and immaturity.