I had one gentleman substitute his opioid addiction for a gambling one. The moment you reach the point in the discussion about what he can do, literally that second, delete the apps, he's arguing that he's done that before and just downloaded them again in the past. You know how you lift a weight once and then you can enter the body building competition?
I have one lady who is emerging as the queen of thinking herself in circles and refusing to follow any conclusion through, even after she notices a change in how she feels when she half-ass does so. Each week a version of the same conversation that's not, in reality, a conversation at all. It's a merry-go-round.
I have my "healthiest" people get their boundaries or ideals tested in the lightest of ways, and newer, more nuanced, but still addictive coping mechanisms come in to pile layers of what feels like needless complexity on enough problems already. And often enough, that complexity manifesting as a new man in their life. That is, when it's not an old man professing to be a new man.
I have friends, literal counselors, who get themselves on the verge of heart attacks and abject depressive chaos, endlessly doubling down on the exact wrong behaviors they're literally supposed to be capable of counseling others away from.
I have a lingering absurd scenario I'm growing more desperately desirous of bringing some resolution that seems to threaten my last bastion of what I thought could be the basis of at least one stable friendship in my life.
It makes the idea of "helping" or "trying" feel so shallow if not altogether hallow if it doesn't speak primarily to how you wish to help and try in service to yourself. Perhaps I'm just "lucky" I've done the work in that regard.
Another week, and especially now that I'm leaving some of these groups, the adulation is pouring in. How? How am I helping? I'm making you think? I'm calling you on your shit? I'm friendly and non-judgmental enough to keep you talking? I want to believe I'm helping, but in a major way, the problem isn't something I can fix. Life fucking sucks. It's a miserable place with death around every corner and most everyone and everything gives no fucks about you. You're prey to those in power. You're on the wrong end of the bell curve. You're sick, you're broke, and you're a blip on the ambivalent ass of existence. No shit you're an addict, what else could you possibly be? Surely a great many things, but addict first, right?
Even with "things" going "mostly" right or appreciably along a sense of stability, they're still shit. There's still plenty of suffering and absurdity and "stupid people" to be had. Oh, how my clients this week wished to complain about the stupid people! And then they get frustrated and want to smoke, or take it out on their kids, or flirt with their favorite path to self-destruction.
We need to wise up. I think the wisdom is bred from literal work on specific things we claim to believe. Our language is dog shit. It gives us glancing blows without landing the emotional umph that prompts behavior change. We're not working to talk better. We're not pairing our words with anything meaningfully manifested. We're not working to create a place that reflects effort, growth, and sanity. We're fucking around with memes. We're silent. We're complaining into the abyss on an ironic ride to hell.
I get so discouraged when I think about what it is I do to try and remain okay, and how long it took, and how many aspects still go miserably wrong all the time, and I'm supposed to translate that into digestible chunks for people maybe less equipped? It's not about being intelligent. It's that you have to functionally turn your lived experience into something people can have faith in. Then you have to, in turn, have faith it'll translate and stick? That's fucking gross. I'm not operating on faith. I'm doing fucking work. I'm trying to be accountable by literally counting words and time and money spent to achieve things. You have to reduce all the work you're doing into sentiments that can land on ears that don't speak your language. You're talking about exercising muscles they don't realize they have and which tremble against the wind.
With our infinite capacity to reimagine and interpret, what am I even saying to people? Sometimes they'll start a sentence with, "Like you said…" and proceed to say none of anything I've ever said, but damn are they enthusiastic about what it meant to them! What on Earth am I supposed to make of that? What could they possibly be hearing if they're willing, enthusiastically so, to continue "coping" in the easiest and most familiar ways after YEARS of being shown, and testifying to how they've been shown, how it's harmful, unproductive, and not in line with their values? It's ways that keep them sad, unmotivated, defensive, and yet proud to…play along?
"We're all addicted to something."
No. This is one of a thousand pithy sayings used as an excuse to feel better about what you're addicted to. The lack of control, therefore responsibility, is the point, not the deep desire to repeat something. I'm not addicted to writing, or eating, or picking scabs. I'm not addicted to TV or my go-it-alone "fuck you" attitude, or any food I thoroughly enjoy. Pretty much every single time I find myself getting lost or getting tempted to absolve myself of an awareness of my complicity or responsibility, it pops up here, at least to the extent anyone can pull themselves back.
Our cultural psychosis isn't an addiction. It's a mental health crisis to be sure. There's an infinite array of negative self-destructive feedback cycles we dip in and out of. But we're in severe denial about how many times we're capable of doing or saying "more" or something "better." I don't allow you to be held-harmless like you're at the peak violent throes of an addiction. You know damn well what's your fault, what's in your control, and what you're attempting to excuse and distance yourself from. You're not calculating a brilliant strategic approach, you're a pussy and a liar and you refuse to allow yourself to hate that about you as viscerally as it needs to be felt in order to change.
I'm no more willing to invite the vast majority of fights offered to me than I am willing to get sucked into the black hole at the center of anyone's individual universe. That doesn't stop me from recognizing my fight, my playing field, or my goals. Here's another 1,244 reps.
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