Addiction recovery is personal. Everyone has their own journey, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach, contrary to AA dogmatists.
In fact, most people, at some point in their lives, fit the clinical definition of an addict, and yet their lives aren’t derailed. They stop those destructive behaviors, and become responsible adults, despite having the “disease.” It’s called growing up.
AA/NA, depending on circumstances, can be counterproductive. When I first got in legal trouble at 21, I was mandated to attend 90 meetings in the course of 6 months. As everyone knows, when you share at a meeting, you introduce yourself by saying your name and then “…and I’m an alcoholic/addict.”
I was skeptical at first, but after 90 meetings of saying “I’m an addict,” I believed it. That wasn’t a good thing. In a counterintuitive way, identifying as an addict made me self-destructive in a way I hadn’t been before. It gave me license to eschew responsibilities to go on benders. After all, that’s what addicts did, and I fit myself to the profile.
I’ve had a lot of addicts write to thank me for sharing and that my story helped them. So, if that’s something you struggle with, here are some things to be cognizant of.
Addiction is the result of 3 lacks: of purpose, of imagination, and of self-awareness.
If I’m being precise, it’s not exactly a lack of purpose, but the wrong purpose. A drug addict’s purpose is to get high. Their priorities are fucked up. There is no overarching goal directing their daily lives, nor any goals further into the future than tomorrow. They want to feel good right now, at any cost, even it’s chemically induced.
What they don’t realize (/What I didn’t realize) is that there are organic ways to produce dopamine and serotonin, and they are much more sustainable. Exercise, hobbies, meditation, and socializing, even going to church, spike the brain with feel good chemicals. Achieving long term goals leaves you glowing. Obviously, easier said than done.
Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” That applies to any “why,” including getting high. Find a good why instead. Start with something simple, like leaving the world a little bit better than you found it or getting your life in order. Figure out how to do that. For starters, stop being a burden on your loved ones.
You don’t realize how obvious the lack of imagination played in your addiction until after the fact. I’m not talking about the hallucinations induced by acid or a weeklong meth binge.
I mean imagination the way an elementary school teacher means imagination–envisioning the world different than it is presently. Addicts can’t or won’t picture a life without drugs.
The ability to imagine something that does not yet exist and then go about making it a reality is a superpower. It’s the salient characteristic separating us from animals.
I didn’t start to extricate myself from the addict morass until I thought, who do I want to be in 10 years? What kind of things does that person do? How did he get to where he is? I wanted to write.So I wrote.
Once I got some positive momentum, I thought, what do I wanna look like? I realized, poignantly, that we only live once, that there are no do-overs, that your 30s always last just 10 years. So I decided to get in the best shape possible, and made that goal an everyday priority.
Which brings me to my last point: lack of self-awareness. A better way to put it: addicts have no routines, no structure, nothing consistent from day to day besides drugs that says, this is who I am, this is what I value.
Everyday priorities determine your long term goals. Routines make up your habits, and habits make up your character.
Addiction robs you of self-awareness, a knowledge of who you are, because you change too much, too often, depending on what substances and how much you have ingested.
Over the last several years, I had an epiphany: everyone has anxiety, to some degree. Anxiety is your body telling you to do something, make something, achieve anything. I confused anxiety as a negative force, and I sought to dampen it with drugs and alcohol.
But that anxious energy can be redirected into positive goals, and help you accomplish great things. Anxiety subsides when you have exhausted yourself and tried your best.
It’s best to have routines you can turn to instinctively to harness that anxious energy before it gets overwhelming.
It sounds fucked up, but I’m grateful that prison granted me the structure to make that discovery. Boredom is the impetus behind all great ideas.
Easy Trouble 