I’ve spent a lot of time trolling addiction message boards of late.
Well, not trolling, per se. More like “scrolling”. Scrolling and commenting. Because, a lot of the time, I’ll hop on the comment section and encounter a wealth of outta-their-element people pontificating on addiction. It’s not always clear who has addiction. (Seeing as it’s a self diagnosed disease.) But it is always clear who definitely doesn’t – based on their grave misunderstanding of it and total lack of empathy for the sufferer.
But I get it.
To be fair, it’s tough to be empathetic to an addict.
When we’re in the throes of it, we’re shaky, pasty, pale, clammy.
And we don’t care about anything but what we crave.
We definitely don’t care about you.
So, why would you care about us? Why should you?
That might be best answered by asking those who do – for whatever reason – care about us, why they do. Ask any mom who’s watched a chemical shred her child alive, and she’ll likely pull out and dust off the high school photo album, the framed collage from Olan Mills her daughter had done after winning an academic excellence award, graduation snapshots of embraces with companions. The smile before a permanent furrow hijacked the brow of her baby girl. My point? That – all evidence to the contrary – there’s a person underneath the flesh we see, possessed by dependency. Those who love them know this. Those who’ve been through it “get it”. That’s why, though I’m recovering well (no one who’s met me in the past couple years would ever guess where I’ve been), I’m always up for extending a hand and educating those who don’t get it. Example? Today, I read a fellow addict’s musings about hitting up the pill mill and how he can’t use these drugs reasonably. His entry resonated so deeply that that dormant demon within me stirred a little himself.
Then I saw the following comment:
And, to be honest, it’s not a distant whimper from a lot of non-addicts’ logic.
Which is fine. It’s just ignorance (and I don’t mean that in a rude way) born out of lack of context. Lack of understanding. It’s never easy to identify unless you’ve been there yourself or experienced it for yourself. So, for anyone nodding in concurrence with John’s comment (or any addicts loathing themselves for lack of “self-control”), I encourage you to read my own reply to Mr. M.
It went thusly:
Yeah, I hear what you’re saying.
Indeed, drugs don’t make decisions. But they do often affect different brains differently. I too believe that maybe Clark could stay stopped after getting and being clean for a while – after allowing that ritual, habitual, neural connection that goes hand in hand with using (or any habit, really) to weaken and be replaced by healthier ones. But I think what he may have meant was that once he *starts* taking those drugs – while he’s still in the grasp of dependency and addiction – they affect his brain in such a way that he cannot make the rational decision to quit.
In other words, he can’t “reasonably use” them.
And that’s totally believable. Every brain changes on drugs. There’s a reason we’re told not to drive cars or make big decisions on scheduled substances. And, on top of that, if we’re affected by chemicals differently, it’s entirely possible that once it’s in our system, some of us hunger for that continued mitigation of emotional or physical pain the way someone drowning craves a gulp of oxygen. For an addict, once you try to listen to the halo toting voice on your shoulder, over the horned one – even if you heed its angelic advice – that doesn’t stop the horned one from screaming into your every thought. That’s when you become so distracted and dysfunctional that work performance, relationships, and activities of daily living begin to suffer. The addiction finds another release valve. Overeating. Drinking. Exercise anorexia.
(Let’s don’t forget Tinder binges, too.)
That said, addicts don’t have to live in a victim mentality. While reasonably using may not be an option for an addict, where I do agree with you is that you *can* get out of it. Enduring that thoroughgoing sensation of spiritual and physical suffocation for a while, paired with the supplanting of the right program for you (you, meaning whichever addict’s reading this and rolling their eyes at the thought of a 12 step being the only answer) is worth the ephemeral suffering.
Just my pair of pennies on the matter.