The Word “Addict”

The Word “Addict”

It’s a word that can act like pulling a pin on a hand grenade.  If it has that much power, you know it matters.  An Addict is not necessarily physically addicted to anything anymore, but struggles with a pattern where substances become unmanageable unless they live into abstinence.   That’s why someone with 30 years of recovery still calls themself an addict.  It’s a condition of being, not a measure of just having used. 

Whether or not we’re an addict can be a tricky question while we’re young.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve met 14 year olds who have known they’re addicts.  But, we also know that there are plenty of people who will do some crazy things in their teens and in college, and then, by mid-twenties, don’t look back.  There are people like that, and then there are those that don’t pull out of it.  They’re doing in their 30s and 40s what others gave up by age 25.  It might look smoother.  It can be functional and successful on a superficial level, but under the surface there’s a lot being hidden and a lot of shame.

Whether or not someone is an addict is a personal realization.  It’s always painful, but the pain was already there.  The realization is the beginning of hope and possibility, but it’s hard.  Suffering is the driver of addiction and it is also the result.  It’s a very efficient, self-reinforcing feedback loop.  Instead of arguing about a label, figure out together what sort of grief, loss, physical pain, existential pain, or trauma make the drugs make sense.  The drugs are the smoke, the smoke can kill you, but the smoke is not the fire.  Find what makes the drugs necessary and go after that. 

Drugs are tricky because they insinuate themselves into the part of the brain where primal emotions come from.  When the supply gets threatened, whether that’s not having enough money or even talking about stopping drug use, Flight, Fight, Freeze and other evasive maneuvers are activated. People will lie, cheat, steal from themselves to protect their access. The compulsion will destroy them to maintain itself.  The part of the brain where our personality, judgment, rationality, and character reside doesn’t get to weigh in because the decision making has already happened further down the chain.  I’m all about personal responsibility, but it’s also true that the struggle for recovery is an unfair fight that takes an army to win.

You don’t have to be an addict to die from drugs.  Let’s be real, most people who use will not die from drugs.  But, in the past few months, I’ve heard of 3 people dying of Fentanyl.  I mean, 3 people directly connected to people that I know.  One of them had a pattern of drug use.  One I’m not sure about.  And one of them just took a pill at a party freshman year of college.  They all died, but at least one of them did not have a substantial pattern.  You don’t have to be an addict to be killed.  Many have died sure that they weren’t addicts.  The question of “Am I?” can become a bright, mysterious object to gaze upon whilst the mouth of the fish snaps closed around us.

There’s always someone whose use is much worse than ours, someone else to point at and say, now they’ve got a problem!  Just be aware that what passes for normal in a lot of social contexts in our society isn’t necessarily good.  There are some “normal” things in our culture which are bad.  Simply being middle-of-the-pack or not-the-most-messed-up doesn’t mean anything.  

You don’t have to be at risk of dying for drugs to be wrecking your life.  Particularly once we’re into full-on adulthood, problematic drug-use can do the whole successful career with life in the burbs thing too.  While we’re looking presentable, it’s impacting our kids’ lives.  It splits us from true connection.  It ruins marriages.  It crashes relationships.  It recreates the pain we had to grow up in.  It perpetuates cycles that feed the pain that, in turn, creates the need to keep using.  It’s “the frog in the pot” version, instead of “dead at 27.”  There’s more of this type than anything else.  The tragedy is the sense of should have been, could have been but never was, or simply fell apart.  There’s a world of pain kept behind closed doors, out of view.

No one ever signed up to be an addict.  It has never been an aspiration for anyone.  It’s something that happens to some people slowly, it’s something that some people exhibit right out of the gate.  More than coming from any particular substance, it is the symptom of unresolved pain within a person.  And, yeah, even though the thinking is backwards, there are certain substances where taking them is basically asking for it.  But, the thing I have found, and it’s the thing no one talks about, is that those of us who are addicts, who make their recovery happen, are among the most switched on people there are.  It’s like a mandatory Ph.D. in life.  If you don’t do the work, you’re going down.  These people get wise because they can’t afford not to.  They’re among the best of us because they’re humble too.  They are your army.  No one ever wanted to heed the call. The call has always been unwanted.  But the call is the beginning of the hero’s journey.  And so it begins….