Have you ever felt completely powerless over something? Has something ever had complete control over your mind, body and spirit? As someone who has battled with addiction his entire life, I can answer “yes” to both questions.
To be “addicted” to a mind-altering substance is to be subject to and at the mercy of two equally powerful forces: a mental obsession and a physical craving. The craving ensures that one is never enough. Once you start, you can’t and won’t stop. The obsession guarantees that when you’re not doing it, when you’re not under the influence, it’s all you can think about. You fixate. You become irritable, restless and discontented until you can once again get that “fix” and return to being under the influence.
It might be difficult for a non-addict to identify with absolute powerlessness over something, particularly when that something causes the user so much harm. The bystander watches helplessly as the user’s life implodes on itself. They can’t understand why the user won’t stop such destructive behaviour. They believe that perhaps the user lacks willpower or is depraved and devoid of moral character. These judgments couldn’t be further from the truth.
Looking to escape
From as early as I can remember, I was always looking to escape. I call it escape, but I think what I really mean is that I was looking for comfort. Whether it was sucking my thumb until the age of 10, or going to bed at 7 p.m. when all the other kids were up until 10, 11 or midnight, I craved sedation and escape.
When I discovered alcohol at the age of 13, I finally felt complete … no longer a square peg in a round hole … no longer a stranger among friends … no longer alone. That first sip shot through me like a can of spinach did Popeye. Despite the leaden feeling in my head, I’d come alive for the very first time in my life. No longer could my mother, witnessing my stoic birthday face, tell her friends “Oh, that’s his happy face.” I’d finally found a way out.
The passouts, blackouts and vomit would not deter me. Alcohol and I were best friends, two peas in a pod … until marijuana came along. But three was a crowd, until cocaine floated in. And so on, and so on. I didn’t just want it all. I needed it all. To survive. I didn’t ask to be this way. I envied those who could drink two beers or take two hits and leave it at that. I couldn’t.
Numbing the pain
As I got older, with responsibilities of my own, I grew angrier at the world. The desire for control that I so desperately sought as a child and adolescent—a futile endeavour—was exercised over everyone and everything in my path.
Domination of my own world would never elude me again. I wouldn’t be a victim. I wouldn’t be at the mercy of another. And all the principles I’d been taught as a child—that to ask for help was a weakness, that there was nothing I couldn’t change (except, perhaps, the weather or a foreign war), that giving only made sense if you were also getting and so on—had come home to roost. I was self-will run riot in a world where you either ate or were eaten.
In this sick world of my own creation, my alcoholism and drug use spiralled out of control. How could it not? I needed something to numb the pain. My ritual of leaving work after a 15-hour day and stopping at a bar on the way home to suck down six Manhattans inside 15 minutes to cleanse me of that day, while my wife and two young children waited at home, did just that.
My drinking escalated until the day came when I couldn’t live with it and I couldn’t live without it.
Time moved on, and my drinking escalated until the day came when I couldn’t live with it and I couldn’t live without it. An addict in the throes of active, unrelenting addiction is an unpleasant creature. Do you think I wanted to live on that merry-go-round to hell and back every day? Waking in disgust with remorse, nauseated and swearing off the damn bottle, only to return to it later that day—having forgotten all that I’d felt and thought that very morning.
Once again, I couldn’t live with it and I couldn’t live without it. When the addict comes to exist in that space, they’ve surely hit some form of rock bottom. How long the user lives in that place will determine how deep that bottom goes, but know this: the addict in that position wants out. Desperately. For the non-addict to think otherwise is just dead wrong.
In that despair, the addict comes to a crossroads: they can either continue on to the bitter end and die an unpleasant death, or they can accept help. This may appear like an easy choice, but to the addict, it isn’t.
Empathizing with the addict’s dilemma
The reason the addict can’t stop isn’t because they lack the willpower, and it’s not because they’re some kind of sociopathic deviant. The addict can’t stop because they can’t. And now that so many of us (either directly or indirectly) have been touched by the diabolical hand of addiction, it behooves us to share these facts with the masses.
The addicts in your life aren’t some unknown quantity. They’re your teachers, lawyers, doctors … your cashiers, plumbers, restaurant servers or perhaps the maître d’s. The addict is your neighbour next door. Whether it’s caused by nature, nurture or both, addiction doesn’t discriminate. It’s an equal opportunity exploiter.
Those in active addiction must understand that it’s not their fault. They have a disease that centres in the mind. It’s that first drink, drag or snort that lights the fuse. Most of all, they must understand that there is a way out. There is help available for their hopeless condition of mind and body.
For those who aren’t addicts, they must appreciate that they don’t know what they do not know or judge what they don’t understand. It wasn’t until I found myself lying in bed one day, unable to move, in deep depression, abstinent and contemplating suicide that I finally understood how the irrational can suddenly seem quite rational. We should empathize with the addict’s dilemma, not stigmatize it.
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image: Daniel Rueda
