The Truth About Addiction and Recovery
The title of this piece is a book title. I read the book a lot of years ago and some of what I remember from the book:
They compared cultures across the world. Places like Italy where social drinking is very acceptable but drug addict style bad behavior is NOT have lower rates of alcoholism. Places like Ireland that say alcohol is the work of the devil and go all "The devil made me do it!" both give people a free pass on their shitty behavior and also teach them to feel HELPLESS and UNABLE to fix it. And they have much higher rates of alcoholism.
In cultures that say "It's fine to imbibe" but they INTERCEDE when you start behaving BADLY, they hold you accountable for your behavior EVEN WHILE YOU ARE DRUNK. People who are told "it's not your fault, you cannot HELP IT while high/drunk" -- well, if you KNOW ahead of time you are a badly behaved asshole who does bad things while high and drunk, DON'T IMBIBE. You CHOSE to take that first drink. And that second one. And that third one. And etc.
So I don't want to hear your excuses. It's an EXCUSE. It works ONE TIME -- the FIRST TIME you get high/drunk and behave badly. After that, if you KNOW that's how you behave while high/drunk, MAKE OTHER CHOICES and don't tell me you can't fucking HELP IT.
RE the second bullet point:
The book gives an example of a program that helped addicts get jobs and actively worked to NOT be categorized by state and federal authorities as "an addiction treatment program." They were like "NO, we do NOT treat nor deal with their addiction. We just help them GET JOBS. That's IT."
And being unemployable because of your addiction is a root cause of getting trapped in addiction. Getting someone a job and saying "Hey, it's YOUR PROBLEM to stay sober enough to show the fuck up for work and etc and we are NOT helping with that." fixes a lot of lives WITHOUT going through a twelve step program or doing therapy and all this BULLSHIT.
What I believe is that MOST people with addiction are treating an actual MEDICAL (physical) problem and SOME are treating mental health issues (and you can, of course, be doing BOTH). Whatever reason is the underlying cause of your addiction, treating that will help you get free of your uncontrollable compulsion to imbibe.
If you don't know that, well, sorry your life sucks. If you are HERE on MY SITE and READING THIS, you no longer have any excuses for your shit behavior. Fix the underlying cause and don't give me any fucking excuses.
If you click through the links on the Addiction page one of them goes to a reddit submission that links to this comment by me on Hacker News. I encourage you to read the whole thing but the closing paragraph is this:
- You see more addiction in cultures that blame the substance instead of holding the person accountable for their behavior.
- The most effective programs for ending addiction do NOT focus on the addiction. They solve some underlying problem fueling the addiction.
They compared cultures across the world. Places like Italy where social drinking is very acceptable but drug addict style bad behavior is NOT have lower rates of alcoholism. Places like Ireland that say alcohol is the work of the devil and go all "The devil made me do it!" both give people a free pass on their shitty behavior and also teach them to feel HELPLESS and UNABLE to fix it. And they have much higher rates of alcoholism.
In cultures that say "It's fine to imbibe" but they INTERCEDE when you start behaving BADLY, they hold you accountable for your behavior EVEN WHILE YOU ARE DRUNK. People who are told "it's not your fault, you cannot HELP IT while high/drunk" -- well, if you KNOW ahead of time you are a badly behaved asshole who does bad things while high and drunk, DON'T IMBIBE. You CHOSE to take that first drink. And that second one. And that third one. And etc.
So I don't want to hear your excuses. It's an EXCUSE. It works ONE TIME -- the FIRST TIME you get high/drunk and behave badly. After that, if you KNOW that's how you behave while high/drunk, MAKE OTHER CHOICES and don't tell me you can't fucking HELP IT.
RE the second bullet point:
The book gives an example of a program that helped addicts get jobs and actively worked to NOT be categorized by state and federal authorities as "an addiction treatment program." They were like "NO, we do NOT treat nor deal with their addiction. We just help them GET JOBS. That's IT."
And being unemployable because of your addiction is a root cause of getting trapped in addiction. Getting someone a job and saying "Hey, it's YOUR PROBLEM to stay sober enough to show the fuck up for work and etc and we are NOT helping with that." fixes a lot of lives WITHOUT going through a twelve step program or doing therapy and all this BULLSHIT.
What I believe is that MOST people with addiction are treating an actual MEDICAL (physical) problem and SOME are treating mental health issues (and you can, of course, be doing BOTH). Whatever reason is the underlying cause of your addiction, treating that will help you get free of your uncontrollable compulsion to imbibe.
If you don't know that, well, sorry your life sucks. If you are HERE on MY SITE and READING THIS, you no longer have any excuses for your shit behavior. Fix the underlying cause and don't give me any fucking excuses.
If you click through the links on the Addiction page one of them goes to a reddit submission that links to this comment by me on Hacker News. I encourage you to read the whole thing but the closing paragraph is this:
But I do not believe in simply excusing repeated bad behavior because someone drinks or takes some other drug. We don't say people with medical conditions who are permanently on medication for it are excused from standards of behavior. So I see zero reason to say that about addiction.
