we had an addict speak to our group for staff meeting yesterday. the guy looked just like brad pitt, but more manly. i think for the first time in my life, i understand addiction, or i guess i should say, drug addiction. the key is, it's a full time obsession. and the first time you get it, you crave to do it again, and again, and again. never satisfied.
i've concluded that addiction is a basic human construct. and that all actions, altruistic, destructive or otherwise, have their root in a process of addiction in some form. sometimes it goes haywire, but i see something universally essential and needful.
and so, for those of us who have it. i believe the task is to unearth our humanity such that we can ride it, or even get off of it at times, hopefully anytime, but definitely, we can not allow ourselves to be ruled by it.
i think it gets quite tricky when there is a lack of awareness, acceptance, realization of the destructive aspects of addiction, or when ones "self" is "one" with the addiction. and i believe this to be so, even if there are not the extrinsic signs of addictive devastation. even if only you know you have an addiction, and it's well hidden from others, it's an addiction all the same.
sometimes it can be partially, adequately, fully subsumed/sublimated into positive, constructive activities. i we can all achieved a path of ever increasing approximations towards this. and so, addiction, is the "stuff" of productivity and self advancement. it's the coal, that fuels our passions and desires. and the conflicts it brings up, are the "issues" of our lives.
I think I finally got it.
This whole 12-step thing i got a while ago.
Drug Addiction? Never understood it.
Can work with it pretty well, but still, never understood it.
But NOW, I think I get it.
We ALL know what addiction is in a sense, as we all "know" many things. the trick to life is "knowing" things front, back, center and in many different ways as it links to the essential elements of our lives. We all have addictions. Some do better with it than others. Some have addictions that don't destroy family, friends, jobs, finances, health.. Some of us do. But, they are ALL addictions.
And so, the key to understanding drug addiction, is the key to understanding something intrinsic, essential and indispensible concerning the foundational, through-and-through survival based aspect of humanity.
addiction is an overwhelming urge, an obsession, an irresistible pull with an attendant delusion of romantic fulfilment when the substance is obtained.
The drug becomes all powerful. The desire to obtain it, all consuming. The strategy employed to convince others to get, assist and facilitate it's acquisition, self-justifying
Lies, deception, dealing, bargaining, all will be used and employed. There is no price that is to high. No moral or ethic that can not be breeched. No relationship worth keeping. No responsibility has the power to nullify the drive. A million lies will be told to move, beseech, and convince the individual to move ever closer, in the most miniscule increments toward the drug.
It is a drive which denies even the individual. As long as the individual is alive, the "self" will propel the individual towards the drug. Nothing can be believed that the addict says.Nothing can be trusted that the addict promises. Even if the addict believes it and trusts it themselves, it is a lie, employed by the addiction to clear a path towards the drug.
An addiction is the essential aspect of the humans ability to relate to, with and in the world, bent towards a dark purpose.
It is insidious to the point that everthing a human being does, is done, in some way, in some fashion, in some respect, to satisfy dark addictions and urges.
Sometimes these urges are properly and fully subsumed into a noble purpose or constructive engagement.
Yet, the truth remains, that addiction is the part of humanity that is indispensible.
Just as love
Just as psychosis
Just as delusion
Just as dissatisfaction
Just as narcissism
Just as materialism
Just as the death instinct
Just as lust
Just as gluttony
Just as the belief that there is something more special, more unique, more perfect, more absolute about humans such that there not only must be a creator of the universe, but that he and only he, was the personal creator of man, in his own image... and full of, ruled by, in symbiosis, with addiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment