I related this story to a friend/fellow blogger earlier, who told me I should at least write it up. I have a hard time even wanting to relate these horror stories from my using days, as I don't want to sound overly dramatic or like I'm playing the victim. However, from my vantage point now, I do still see what happened here as horribly unfair, not the least bit because it could very easily happen to someone else. Two recent threads at the Orange Papers Forum, one on members of alanon/naranon (or just people who learned what little they know of addiction from these groups but skipped the parts about being "accepting" and "serene") and one on whether or not people should have the book thrown at them for DUIs also had me thinking about the horrors addicts and alcoholics (or presumed addicts/alcoholics) can face at the hands of the criminal justice system. Well, not just the criminal justice system, but also the droves of people who consider themselves the walking wounded in terms of having had a loved one who was an addict--and hurt them somehow--and they'll never let that go.
This was July of 2010, it was a dreadful day, back when I was trying to quit and stay quit off of opiates. With no NA meetings during the day in the suburbs I live in, I decided to hit the NA meeting downtown. For the life of me I can't fathom why I would've taken my children to an NA meeting, but I did. Except that I got really, really lost and missed it, deciding to just head home instead. I had a first appointment that day with a new primary care physician back out in the burbs and wanted to be on time for it, and also (for the appointment) had gathered all of my prescription bottles in a bag, though I had emptied the bottles themselves and left the actual pills at home. None of them were opiates.
The problem came when my car (it's manual transition) dropped the slave cylinders (I believe that's what they later said they were called. This killed the clutch as I was trying to turn at a busy intersection, right as the light turned, stalling the car out completely, the clutch pedal dropped to the floor. At that moment, a woman (whose husband later said had gotten her license one week previously) turned and rammed right into us, slamming my head into the window and window frame pretty hard in the process. I thought it lucky that a police officer was nearby, at the time. Big mistake.
An ambulance was called as a precaution, and I was starting to get woozy pretty fast due to the head injury, so I was taken to the ambulance and placed in a neck collar, while one of the EMTs went to my car to retrieve my bags (my car was about to be towed, another family member had also arrived to take the kids and handle the rest of the car business) for me. When she returned to the ambulance, she closed the door and told me, "I know what you are. My mother is an addict and I hate her to this day." I've rarely been this horrified in my life. I was completely clean at the time, I wasn't on anything! Yes, I was an addict, but certainly my addiction didn't have anything to do with my car stalling out, or the Ethiopian woman who plowed into me, or my head being banged into my window-frame! What was her point, exactly?
She then explained that she knew all about addiction (her knowledge seemed to be limited to a misunderstanding, though common misconception that addicts are unstoppable, can never stop trying to get high, and are always on SOMETHING--and are always lying about it!). She showed me the NA Basic Text she had retrieved from my car as "proof" of my status as an addict, and the bottle of trazodone from my bag of medicine bottles. I had been given that prescription for sleep, and it knocked me out completely. There's no way I'd've been able to operate a car on it at all, nor would I have wanted to. I can't imagine being able to get high off of that drug at all, but because the pills were at home--and the bottle read that the script had been filled 5 days previously, she just leapt to the conclusion that I was bombed out of my skull on it. She then proceeded to go run her theory by the policeman at the scene (notice that I'm still not at the ER for my head scan here, as she hurries around playing "catch the lying addict").
Returning to the ambulance a second time, she informed me that the officer agreed with her and would've arrested me on the spot had I not been already in the ambulance! Their running theory was that I had crashed my car PURPOSELY just so that I could claim injury and be taken to a hospital--to get more drugs!! With my children in the car! She then told me that they see this sort of behavior in addicts all the time in their line of work, so it was natural to assume it in my case as well! Well, incredibly bad powers of deduction were obviously at work here. She and the other EMT then decided to try and give me an intervention of sorts, demanding that I go into treatment (wasn't the NA book enough to convince them I was trying?) and telling me about the destruction addicts had caused in both of their lives, all while I was starting to really feel my concussion. I don't think it really ever works on any addict, no matter if they're using or clean at the time in ANY situation to accuse them of trying to harm their children, accuse them of lying, then accuse them of a plot to get drugs and then to confront them and try to get them to go to rehab! I don't think anyone who has never been addicted would take to well to that tactic either, but it really never seems to get people to stop trying with it.
Well, they finally gave up and drove me to the nearest ER, and the EMT stayed near enough to me while I was being admitted to be able to tell the nurse all about her little theory. I just vaguely remember all of this while I was starting to get extremely sleepy, which was taken as a possible sign that I was ODing on trazodone, for some reason. The response, however, to that assumption was not to do any sort of tox screen, and not even to place me in a room. Instead, I was left on a gurney, on my back, in a neck brace, and completely asleep with a head injury in a hallway--where an ORDERLY found me 3 1/2 HOURS later when I started to vomit. While asleep, on my back and in a neck brace! He woke me up to turn me over so I wouldn't choke, then got nurses for me, the first bit of actual medical attention I had gotten the entire time I was there.
My family arrived at that time, and were so appalled that they just took me AMA (against medical advice, as if there had even been medical advice from anyone!) and we went to a better hospital, as by that time I mainly just needed a scan of my head. The nurses even told my spouse that nothing had been done for me because they suspected that I was on drugs (no tox screen, just a 4 hour old theory based on someone's unprofessional bias--because she hates her addict mother "to this day"). As it turned out, I did have a pretty bad concussion, and was kept almost all night for observation at the other hospital, in which I was treated (I barely remember, but it seems I was....) very well, or at least fairly, and without the EMT we were believed in relating how I was injured and that I wasn't under the effects of drugs or alcohol at the time.
I haven't even shared this story with anyone in the addiction-related blogosphere until this day, because it was just really unfair--but in a way that leaves me feeling as if I should never, ever complain. The overwhelming attitude is that you get what you deserve if you're an "addict". When I did complain at the time, I was told that it should surprise me that I wouldn't be believed. "After all, you're an addict!" As if it was patently absurd for me to expect fair treatment from a medical professional when I was one of "those people"! I was trying so hard, I had tried to get to an NA meeting even (!!), only to have an unfortunate bit of car trouble and get accused of placing my own children in harm's way just to try and get high! I'll admit, I kind of just gave up at this point. I relapsed. It was stupid thinking, but I felt that it wasn't worth much to try so hard if I was just going to get accused of wrongdoing anyway. I don't even remember the charge, something minor, not DWI or anything, but I did have a ticket and a court date to go prove my innocence.
That last bit happened without me, my family insisted on 30 days inpatient rehab once I relapsed. I shared very little at that rehab, but during a group session in which we were being pounded with disease theory, I asked if there was something that could be done (I needed my counselor to call and change my court date, mainly) about being treated so unfairly as I had been. If discrimination that led to me almost going out like Jimi Hendrix--but without the OD aspect--was something I could fight. Both a body shop and mechanic had by then found (and reported to my insurance) that it had been the cylinders dropping that had caused the accident, and that I had not been at fault, so I was no longer legally liable for the ticket. Instead, I was told that I needed to "live life on life's terms". That it was natural for me to have been treated the way I had been. That "the disease doesn't excuse our behaviors", etc. Even when the "behaviors" in this case were mechanical failure and a heinously bad newly licensed driver. I'm not sure the rehab folks believed me, either. At least not entirely.
I never spoke about this again, save to my attorney, until today. I thought for quite a long time that maybe I was somehow at fault, or at least that I shouldn't complain. I had already long since made the calls to try and file an official complaint against the EMT and the hospital, which I had let go to go to rehab and straighten the rest of my life out. From my vantage point now, however, I still find the events of that day to be just awful. I wasn't on drugs that day, I wasn't looking for trouble. With the terrible things I was accused of, I could easily have ended up arrested and having to prove my case in court. That obviously would've gone in my favor with the mechanic's reports, but no tox screen had been done and I had relapsed and ended up in a treatment center afterwards, which would've done little to prove that day that I was NOT high and driving impaired. It was all simply too much. I was trying to "recover", to get my life back, yet in those last few months--not to mention the few months after rehab--everything in the world seemed to be blamed on me. There was nothing I could do right, seemingly in anyone's eyes. The people at NA and AA meetings were no less forgiving, nor were those at my rehab, all telling me that "that's what you get when you use! Don't you understand this yet? These are the problems that happen to us when we use!" No, I had enough troubles that were quite of my own doing by that time, and understood this all too well! Adding that was just too much on my plate.
I have decided to write about this only because of my friend, and because I do feel that if enough people begin to share their horror stories of the way they were treated while trying to recover, or even while using--and the utter lack of concern shown to us by other people--that perhaps people will start to care about these things. They aren't unimportant, they are equal treatment under the law, actually. To this day I am still frightened of being in any way not at the top of my game, of being in some way under par and unable to present a perfect picture to the world. I no longer use any drugs, though I also no longer want to, but I have been accused of too much to allow anything like this to ever happen again. It does gall me though, that this could still be being heaped onto others out there so unfortunate as to have gotten addicted to anything or been labeled "addict".
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Notes on an NA Meeting
Well, mission accomplished. I went back to a meeting at my former "home group", and while I knew it would look very, very different from my perspective of not being even in a semi-chronic state of relapse (rather, from the perspective of being completely clean for an extended period), it was more of a mess than I had thought it would be.
First off, I knew this was a very "sick" group to begin with, it was widely talked about in other NA groups at the time. I was actually "recruited out" of this group by other NAers for that reason. My former sponsor was a disaster, a woman who had 12 sponsees after she and her then-boyfriend rather took over the group a few years ago. At that time she had only 1 1/2 years of "clean-time", which is actually less than I have now, yet was the only eligible female sponsor for this group, which is one of the largest where I live and boasts the largest amount of court ordered members. I say this not to judge her smaller amount of clean-time, btw, but to point out that I feel in no way qualified to try and guide a vulnerable addict through to sobriety at this point in my life, as much as I'd love to help people.
I had no real inclination to speak to this woman, and that feeling grew during the meeting. She finally shared last, a few people after her former boyfriend (and previous sponsor of every male in that group), who revealed gladly that he was now facing homelessness and was suicidal. Despite his newfound interest in suicide however, he kept saying how many people he had called "in the program" to talk to about his "racing thoughts", his hopelessness, etc. Every one of them has told them to "read the basic text, man". And hit some more meetings (he already goes to 1 per day). All I could thing was, "Holy crap, this is your friend, he's effing suicidal, and you're telling him to read the basic text and hit several meetings a day? WTF??!?!?"
But......back to my former sponsor sharing. She stated repeatedly that the only reason she was there was to wish a goodbye to an oldtimer there who was to be moving tomorrow three states away. Then she launched into telling the room how she had had to use every bit of strength she had last night to---keep from "beating the shit out of this bitch and all she was doing was stroking my hair". After explaining about 10 times that she is just a "very, very violent person", she tried to explain that this woman wasn't really doing much, just stroking her hair. But she had a problem--she didn't fully explain this bit--with gauging motives of women and whether or not different women were "that bitch who fucked me up so bad". Therefore, "those newcomer women, those fucking newcomer women" should all just "stay the fuck away from" her. And yes, at this point I was wishing to my doorknob that I had instant replay so I could run it back and record this particularly enlightening drunkologue. Or was it an assaultalogue?
What the HELL?!?!? Who speaks like this? Ever? Let alone to a group that is supposed to be gaining "fellowship" from their words? Needless to say, she was not the first person to share about their problems with previous episodes or even arrests for "violent" behaviors or offenses. While everyone else nodded their heads knowingly at each of these confessions, I sincerely wished to become invisible. I didn't feel terribly warm and gushy inside with the three men who told everyone how they only had to serve anywhere from 20-90 days in jail (for "violent" offenses, unspecified). I was wondering about the five or so 18-20 year olds sitting in there eligible for sponsorship by these people who kept claiming that they'd not only use were it not for meetings but that they'd do much worse ("I'm just a VERY violent person!"). And that doesn't even touch on the talk of suicide!
Admittedly, it does make sense now, that this woman who hates other women to such a degree would've not cared one bit (or even returned a call, though I considered that a blessing, even then) about my life or her other 11 sponsees at the time. After all, she's just a "very, very violent person". I certainly am not going to harbor any animosity towards a woman who is so messed up that she can barely make it through a night without an assault & battery charge, I don't begrudge these people their different beliefs. Not if these meetings are all they have preventing them from killing themselves. That said, people who've been clean for years and years whose daily struggle is severe depression, violent tendencies, suicidal thoughts --well, let's just say that their biggest problem at the present is probably not their experience however long ago with addiction.
Admittedly also, this could be grandstanding. But if the newcomer is the most important person in the room, what kind of hope does it give them in their own "recovery" (and there were EIGHT people there with under 30 days all in the 18-21 age group!) to hear every oldtimer talking about not being able to escape from the destructive thoughts in their heads, the dangerous thoughts of suicide, constant threats of homelessness? If this is "serenity", I must've missed the proper definition.
So, my ex-sponsor ended her share by stating that she was grateful for this county's "finest", who had arrested her (for some previous violent behavior, I was inferring), that that was a blessing in disguise. Then made a final reference to "newcomer women". I had already passed during sharing, even declined to give my name (I didn't want to seem horribly disrespectful because I did NOT go to "crash" a meeting, merely to observe--but I still wasn't about to say that I AM an addict. Oh, no.). After hearing that though, I couldn't much speak at all. I encouraged the newer members best I could, told them not to lose hope, that if I could make it anyone could. I kept free of any other message. I won't deny that I felt much better off in having refused previously to "keep coming back", though. Thank the great doorknob in the sky, my life is far better for the path I chose.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Is the Group Experience So Important That the Individual Experience Must Be Denied?
Well, my final note on having attended a meeting has turned more into a question. The one thing I noticed that I'd almost forgotten about in relating to people in a 12 step program is that (and I am speaking of the completely indoctrinated members here) your individual experience is always denied you. Always. Which led me to wonder if the idea of the group experience is of such importance in 12 step programs that experiences that fall outside of the standard must be strenuously denied in favor of keeping the strength of the broader group experience.
Just as examples, I spoke for over an hour and 1/2 (mostly not even about recovery issues) to a man I've not seen now in roughly two years. When the subject turned to recovery, however, and even to my story, I might as well have been speaking to a chorus of every 12 step devotee I've ever spoken to. Every issue I had had merely rendered me identical to every other member of NA he had ever met. Since joining in the early 80s. If your story doesn't fit the script, they gladly rewrite it for you. If you protest, you are merely in denial and need to be helped further. It is really quite maddening, and I've always noticed it, but during early recovery they're usually hammering on every single point in your life that while I did notice this, it was just one more irritating voice in the cacophony.
No, according to a man who is himself disabled, I was never injured. Not truly, I was "drug seeking". Even when I mentioned I had been accused of drug seeking when I sought treatment for a bout of chronic vomiting that wouldn't end. "But that WAS drug seeking", he insisted. Which just made, in my opinion, him look a bit nutty. I hadn't been so straight-edge during high school and in college, I must be in serious denial. Must have been experimenting somehow. I've seen this attitude towards other people in NA, in AA and in rehab. It's always your fault, what happened to you is always an extension of your addiction, no matter what it was or how not at fault you were.
I understand that it's simply part of the program to make people focus on themselves, to take responsibility for what they are doing wrong. It's just that it goes far beyond that frequently, and in ways that simply deny any sense of individual experience. I personally think that this goes beyond the issue of getting people to stop blaming, to focus on working on bettering their attitudes, because I see that in play as well. I also see repeated attempts (and snide, condescending remarks) to inform others that they're "no different than anyone else here". Well, when the entire program is based on fellowship and group experience I probably shouldn't be very surprised that that aspect must be protected at all costs, even when it extends to telling abuse and assault victims they must forgive and submit, even when some members must be sacrificed because their needs are beyond what the program can give them.
It's so much easier to heap the blame than to make any sort of group "inventory" that is "rigorously honest", after all. Besides, those pesky individuals really destroy the fantasy that everyone fits in Bill W. & Co.'s narrow mold. But seeing as the group and the experience of being in the group is of supreme importance, I don't doubt that this goes a bit further into the anthropological and/or sociological realm than the built-in excuses of getting addicts to focus on themselves provides.
Just as examples, I spoke for over an hour and 1/2 (mostly not even about recovery issues) to a man I've not seen now in roughly two years. When the subject turned to recovery, however, and even to my story, I might as well have been speaking to a chorus of every 12 step devotee I've ever spoken to. Every issue I had had merely rendered me identical to every other member of NA he had ever met. Since joining in the early 80s. If your story doesn't fit the script, they gladly rewrite it for you. If you protest, you are merely in denial and need to be helped further. It is really quite maddening, and I've always noticed it, but during early recovery they're usually hammering on every single point in your life that while I did notice this, it was just one more irritating voice in the cacophony.
No, according to a man who is himself disabled, I was never injured. Not truly, I was "drug seeking". Even when I mentioned I had been accused of drug seeking when I sought treatment for a bout of chronic vomiting that wouldn't end. "But that WAS drug seeking", he insisted. Which just made, in my opinion, him look a bit nutty. I hadn't been so straight-edge during high school and in college, I must be in serious denial. Must have been experimenting somehow. I've seen this attitude towards other people in NA, in AA and in rehab. It's always your fault, what happened to you is always an extension of your addiction, no matter what it was or how not at fault you were.
I understand that it's simply part of the program to make people focus on themselves, to take responsibility for what they are doing wrong. It's just that it goes far beyond that frequently, and in ways that simply deny any sense of individual experience. I personally think that this goes beyond the issue of getting people to stop blaming, to focus on working on bettering their attitudes, because I see that in play as well. I also see repeated attempts (and snide, condescending remarks) to inform others that they're "no different than anyone else here". Well, when the entire program is based on fellowship and group experience I probably shouldn't be very surprised that that aspect must be protected at all costs, even when it extends to telling abuse and assault victims they must forgive and submit, even when some members must be sacrificed because their needs are beyond what the program can give them.
It's so much easier to heap the blame than to make any sort of group "inventory" that is "rigorously honest", after all. Besides, those pesky individuals really destroy the fantasy that everyone fits in Bill W. & Co.'s narrow mold. But seeing as the group and the experience of being in the group is of supreme importance, I don't doubt that this goes a bit further into the anthropological and/or sociological realm than the built-in excuses of getting addicts to focus on themselves provides.
Serenity is the Enemy? (More Meeting Observations)
Quite a while back, I decided to start making up the most pathetically stupid 12 step type slogans to sprinkle onto pro 12 step forums. It was a prank that didn't last, as this is just nothing but boring. I guess that was in my mind at the meeting I attended the other night. I forget how little I care for so many 12 step essentials until I'm stopped by a question of what my "clean date" was. OK, I know the month and year I went to rehab, but beyond that I couldn't give a date. The head guru at this meeting, though he hadn't seen me for two years now, still remembered a very large amount of details about my life, but kept remarking that I'm a "fighter". My joke-sloganeering mind quickly jumped to another bad pun, "Serenity is the Enemy!!". Needless to say, I didn't say this out loud. I only say it in print because it's so painfully bad and somehow parodies how silly the actual slogans seem to me.
I never understood why the "fighting" thing is so terrible in 12 step programs. From my perspective now, I understand that many of us are raging against everything while getting clean to an absurd point, but really it's my rejection of their version of serenity that kind of brings me to my own serenity. I could, after all, have accepted (as I was, believe me, told to do by everyone in "recovery"!) that I was somehow disabled. That I should be on medications and not "exert" myself. I chose to fight that, and somehow fought my way into really, really good health. My health and physical fitness are sort of my serenity, as when I am capable and my body is working well, I can rely on myself. Therefore, I established a belief in myself (that I'd never had before, sadly) that I am capable and able to depend on myself to get things done. That process led me away from this belief that I was powerless (oh, I believed that long before I ever was told to believe it, long before I ever touched a substance) and had to rely on an external force to make myself well, capable, etc. No more reliance on externals, no more crushing anxiety over it, either. Which eliminates another need for external relief, though if I do get a bout of anxiety these days, I turn it somehow to an advantage and work it out of my system.
A brief summation of the process I took that was decidedly against everything I was told to do in rehab, if only because I hope that my version here of the group share helps/ is something someone else can identify with. Long story short, I took a different path and ended up also with "serenity"--to a degree. In many cases what I see as this insistence on "serenity" in 12 step programs is what I take as being the same self defeating thinking that trapped me in prescription drug addiction, however. Every time something rough happened in the first months after rehab, I was told to let it go. Big stuff, too, like getting ID thefted/bank card thefted by someone IN recovery. The logic they used was that I had to be able to let things go, and if I didn't it might cause stress, which would cause me to use. Isn't that the same thinking that kept everyone using in the first place? Daily stresses of life being too much to handle? I realize that at the time, and I cannot even imagine the physical pain now, I was in horrible, horrible physical pain too, but I didn't recover like a normal person, I recovered from my injuries like an addict clinging desperately to my drugs.
So, stress. Stress, not serenity. Why is that a problem? Yes, the first stress I faced was admittedly an enormous one, but any first stress would seem enormous. So out of my own sense of spite, really, at people saying I should let it go when sanity demanded that I let it go to THE AUTHORITIES, I did it all. I did it myself. I faced it all, faced that bad things were happening. I didn't have a sponsor any longer to hold my hand, but I came out able to handle things, and isn't that the goal of "recovery"? To turn someone who cannot handle things without turning to an external remedy into someone with a core sense of self who can finally handle life? I mean, I'm by no means some stoic, nor even close to having the kind of strength that many quite normal people have, but I'm also not in danger of relapse, because I recognize now the difference between relying on my faulty but strong self, not relying on a substance as a crutch. I realize that many before me have observed these things, and that many before me have noticed the crutch-like quality that meetings take on for many in 12 step programs. It's just amazing to reach that moment the hard way, not by my rehab-era critique of xA, but from having done something on my own, which again, is frankly the goal here.
Which brings me back to my little slogans, even the really cheesy and terrible joke one, "Serenity is the Enemy". I like fighting through things, it is my process. It's becoming a much smoother process. The 12 step programs have a way of trying to deny anyone their individuality, which can be intolerable. Not the "I'm SO DAMNED SPECIAL!!" individuality, but the "hey, I'll get there, I'll be OK coloring slightly outside the lines" variety. Now perhaps I didn't merely color outside the lines, but I'm still doing OK. I don't need the externals, not even the pat slogans. I make up my own, and then only as jokes, and when it comes to that crowd, I'm somehow the only one left smiling. I don't think that's so terrible.
Thanks;)
I never understood why the "fighting" thing is so terrible in 12 step programs. From my perspective now, I understand that many of us are raging against everything while getting clean to an absurd point, but really it's my rejection of their version of serenity that kind of brings me to my own serenity. I could, after all, have accepted (as I was, believe me, told to do by everyone in "recovery"!) that I was somehow disabled. That I should be on medications and not "exert" myself. I chose to fight that, and somehow fought my way into really, really good health. My health and physical fitness are sort of my serenity, as when I am capable and my body is working well, I can rely on myself. Therefore, I established a belief in myself (that I'd never had before, sadly) that I am capable and able to depend on myself to get things done. That process led me away from this belief that I was powerless (oh, I believed that long before I ever was told to believe it, long before I ever touched a substance) and had to rely on an external force to make myself well, capable, etc. No more reliance on externals, no more crushing anxiety over it, either. Which eliminates another need for external relief, though if I do get a bout of anxiety these days, I turn it somehow to an advantage and work it out of my system.
A brief summation of the process I took that was decidedly against everything I was told to do in rehab, if only because I hope that my version here of the group share helps/ is something someone else can identify with. Long story short, I took a different path and ended up also with "serenity"--to a degree. In many cases what I see as this insistence on "serenity" in 12 step programs is what I take as being the same self defeating thinking that trapped me in prescription drug addiction, however. Every time something rough happened in the first months after rehab, I was told to let it go. Big stuff, too, like getting ID thefted/bank card thefted by someone IN recovery. The logic they used was that I had to be able to let things go, and if I didn't it might cause stress, which would cause me to use. Isn't that the same thinking that kept everyone using in the first place? Daily stresses of life being too much to handle? I realize that at the time, and I cannot even imagine the physical pain now, I was in horrible, horrible physical pain too, but I didn't recover like a normal person, I recovered from my injuries like an addict clinging desperately to my drugs.
So, stress. Stress, not serenity. Why is that a problem? Yes, the first stress I faced was admittedly an enormous one, but any first stress would seem enormous. So out of my own sense of spite, really, at people saying I should let it go when sanity demanded that I let it go to THE AUTHORITIES, I did it all. I did it myself. I faced it all, faced that bad things were happening. I didn't have a sponsor any longer to hold my hand, but I came out able to handle things, and isn't that the goal of "recovery"? To turn someone who cannot handle things without turning to an external remedy into someone with a core sense of self who can finally handle life? I mean, I'm by no means some stoic, nor even close to having the kind of strength that many quite normal people have, but I'm also not in danger of relapse, because I recognize now the difference between relying on my faulty but strong self, not relying on a substance as a crutch. I realize that many before me have observed these things, and that many before me have noticed the crutch-like quality that meetings take on for many in 12 step programs. It's just amazing to reach that moment the hard way, not by my rehab-era critique of xA, but from having done something on my own, which again, is frankly the goal here.
Which brings me back to my little slogans, even the really cheesy and terrible joke one, "Serenity is the Enemy". I like fighting through things, it is my process. It's becoming a much smoother process. The 12 step programs have a way of trying to deny anyone their individuality, which can be intolerable. Not the "I'm SO DAMNED SPECIAL!!" individuality, but the "hey, I'll get there, I'll be OK coloring slightly outside the lines" variety. Now perhaps I didn't merely color outside the lines, but I'm still doing OK. I don't need the externals, not even the pat slogans. I make up my own, and then only as jokes, and when it comes to that crowd, I'm somehow the only one left smiling. I don't think that's so terrible.
Thanks;)
Observations at an NA Meeting
I have no idea what compelled me to go to an NA meeting the other night, but I did decide to go. Possibly because I was feeling so emotionally neutral on the subject, mainly because I am unendurably curious. I had pondered a question over at the Orange Paper Forum, whether or not there can be common ground between anti-12 step folks and pro 12 steppers. The actual forum was more an examination into the dynamics of anonymous web trolling and the animosity that breeds on any forum than an examination into the differing ideologies with regards to recovery. I was curious, however, and have long since stopped feeling traumatized by my own recovery experience.
Out of it all, however, I do desire to be able to help others, if only to provide them another example of someone who is not dead or institutionalized. I do believe that these newcomers desperately need some love in their lives. Not the 13 stepping variety, but people to actually tell them that they really are OK. My old "home group" would've been better for this, as it's the place younger people get sent and half of it is court ordered. If not more. I chose instead to go to one down the street that is quite smaller due to the meeting time.
This meeting was a topic meeting with five men and myself, except that no one had a topic. So everyone just dove into the sharing. I didn't share as I thought it would be disrespectful, and I honestly was very, very happy when the men shared that they had found a way out of their problem. Mainly, I just observed the differences between the paths we'd taken, as I've now been able to see a meeting through my completely clean lens now, as well as with all I've read on "recovery" since that time. The disease talk was off-putting, to say the least. It was also hard to ignore the fact that a few of these men (including the one I'd been friends with, with whom I spoke for over an hour after the meeting, mostly about non-recovery topics) were daily meeting-goers---for the last several decades. I cannot imagine still dwelling on the worst part of my life daily for twenty-something years, though I have nothing but sympathy for the men there who get relief from daily depression through meetings. But I couldn't help but feel that the problems were not of the addiction variety any longer, these people had taken on an identity and were it not for their ability to share and let it out (or, in an alternate view, finally have a somewhat captive audience), I doubt they'd see much value in meetings at all.
I don't say that to sound cruel, but if you've been able to stay clean for over 25 years, are meetings little more than an adult still using training wheels? The responses I got were (I didn't ask my question, I am inferring this from the sharing, mainly) that "the problem wasn't the drugs, it was ME. And the problem is still ME." Er, I should say that that was THE response, repeated by 5 men in 5 different monologues. I felt much better about my own "recovery", honestly, hearing that, though I didn't go to this meeting to make myself feel better by comparison. I have no doubt that the problem was also me, but I consider it no one else's place to say so, nor for me to be constantly atoning for this for the next 25 years or more. These people looked beaten down. While suggesting that everyone else who doesn't make it "in the rooms" was faulty in their inability to "humble themselves". Why, I had to wonder? And why the obsession with humbling people who already despised themselves enough to commit to a slow form of suicide?
I wrote in an email a few weeks back to a friend that this is the narcissist's answer to drug and alcohol addiction, the idea that we were all "ego" and "self-will run riot". Whether or not Bill W. was a narcissist, I'll leave to the people who are more apt to study his story. However, that would be the indication and interpretation I'd take from it all. I've met very, very few people in recovery who actually believed themselves worthy of even getting out of bed in the morning (or even into it!). I've mainly met people in horrible emotional pain who were punishing themselves with something that at least gave them something of a "high" that they wouldn't get from self-flagellation. Yes, I've met the small town alcoholics with little education who were all ego and convinced they were so damned special and knew better than everyone else, the few professionals who started thinking they were godlike (though that mainly seemed to be a delusion that came with the actual substance being in their body, which I'd argue is quite different!). They're few and far between, however, in the people I personally have met.
What I kept seeing, and see now when I peer through the windows, is people buying into the ultimate narcissistic lie. And perhaps I've allowed myself to be controlled by too many narcissists in the past for this to work on me. I see people who already felt powerless enough buying into a fairy tale that it is their own narcissistic tendencies that kept them in active addiction, admitting that they are "powerless" and then becoming so self absorbed in their own psyches that they see fit to tell their, "ME, ME, ME!!!" story over and over for years. It is moving, but how does this help anyone stay sober, exactly? You felt beneath your own contempt before, and now you're so unworthy that you don't even allow yourself to do the things you wanted to before?
At least these chaps have someone like me to hold up as a shining example of someone who "just doesn't get it", and I won't begrudge them that, personally. It was like watching the beaten dogs getting to finally speak, and I was clear to them after the meeting (I refused to identify as an "addict", rather someone who'd been addicted. I'd not meant to even cause that much trouble, but just couldn't say the "A" word) that I respected their choice--but would ask that they respect mine, also. That's when the main stalwart of this group proclaimed, "Well, NA is no longer the only game in town. There's something now called Celebrate Recovery!"
(Corollary to this post to follow, but what I have to say isn't going to fit the flow here, thanks.)
Out of it all, however, I do desire to be able to help others, if only to provide them another example of someone who is not dead or institutionalized. I do believe that these newcomers desperately need some love in their lives. Not the 13 stepping variety, but people to actually tell them that they really are OK. My old "home group" would've been better for this, as it's the place younger people get sent and half of it is court ordered. If not more. I chose instead to go to one down the street that is quite smaller due to the meeting time.
This meeting was a topic meeting with five men and myself, except that no one had a topic. So everyone just dove into the sharing. I didn't share as I thought it would be disrespectful, and I honestly was very, very happy when the men shared that they had found a way out of their problem. Mainly, I just observed the differences between the paths we'd taken, as I've now been able to see a meeting through my completely clean lens now, as well as with all I've read on "recovery" since that time. The disease talk was off-putting, to say the least. It was also hard to ignore the fact that a few of these men (including the one I'd been friends with, with whom I spoke for over an hour after the meeting, mostly about non-recovery topics) were daily meeting-goers---for the last several decades. I cannot imagine still dwelling on the worst part of my life daily for twenty-something years, though I have nothing but sympathy for the men there who get relief from daily depression through meetings. But I couldn't help but feel that the problems were not of the addiction variety any longer, these people had taken on an identity and were it not for their ability to share and let it out (or, in an alternate view, finally have a somewhat captive audience), I doubt they'd see much value in meetings at all.
I don't say that to sound cruel, but if you've been able to stay clean for over 25 years, are meetings little more than an adult still using training wheels? The responses I got were (I didn't ask my question, I am inferring this from the sharing, mainly) that "the problem wasn't the drugs, it was ME. And the problem is still ME." Er, I should say that that was THE response, repeated by 5 men in 5 different monologues. I felt much better about my own "recovery", honestly, hearing that, though I didn't go to this meeting to make myself feel better by comparison. I have no doubt that the problem was also me, but I consider it no one else's place to say so, nor for me to be constantly atoning for this for the next 25 years or more. These people looked beaten down. While suggesting that everyone else who doesn't make it "in the rooms" was faulty in their inability to "humble themselves". Why, I had to wonder? And why the obsession with humbling people who already despised themselves enough to commit to a slow form of suicide?
I wrote in an email a few weeks back to a friend that this is the narcissist's answer to drug and alcohol addiction, the idea that we were all "ego" and "self-will run riot". Whether or not Bill W. was a narcissist, I'll leave to the people who are more apt to study his story. However, that would be the indication and interpretation I'd take from it all. I've met very, very few people in recovery who actually believed themselves worthy of even getting out of bed in the morning (or even into it!). I've mainly met people in horrible emotional pain who were punishing themselves with something that at least gave them something of a "high" that they wouldn't get from self-flagellation. Yes, I've met the small town alcoholics with little education who were all ego and convinced they were so damned special and knew better than everyone else, the few professionals who started thinking they were godlike (though that mainly seemed to be a delusion that came with the actual substance being in their body, which I'd argue is quite different!). They're few and far between, however, in the people I personally have met.
What I kept seeing, and see now when I peer through the windows, is people buying into the ultimate narcissistic lie. And perhaps I've allowed myself to be controlled by too many narcissists in the past for this to work on me. I see people who already felt powerless enough buying into a fairy tale that it is their own narcissistic tendencies that kept them in active addiction, admitting that they are "powerless" and then becoming so self absorbed in their own psyches that they see fit to tell their, "ME, ME, ME!!!" story over and over for years. It is moving, but how does this help anyone stay sober, exactly? You felt beneath your own contempt before, and now you're so unworthy that you don't even allow yourself to do the things you wanted to before?
At least these chaps have someone like me to hold up as a shining example of someone who "just doesn't get it", and I won't begrudge them that, personally. It was like watching the beaten dogs getting to finally speak, and I was clear to them after the meeting (I refused to identify as an "addict", rather someone who'd been addicted. I'd not meant to even cause that much trouble, but just couldn't say the "A" word) that I respected their choice--but would ask that they respect mine, also. That's when the main stalwart of this group proclaimed, "Well, NA is no longer the only game in town. There's something now called Celebrate Recovery!"
(Corollary to this post to follow, but what I have to say isn't going to fit the flow here, thanks.)
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
A System of Dualities and Contradictions
In reading about opiate addiction in America (historically), the views of this problem in the 1800s, early 1900s, and the laws that grew out of the temperance movement which stamped out the earliest "clinics" that had been established on the drug replacement model, one thing strikes the modern reader in the language used in the older reports. The discussion, especially regarding/written in the 19th century, was of people becoming "addicted by their doctors" (see especially David T. Courtwright's Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America). No matter how bad the problem (some say epidemic) of prescription drug addiction gets in modern America, the notion of people stating that they were "addicted by" (not the complete lack of passive voice) someone else has become a bit taboo. Enter recovery culture, and this notion of someone else "addicting" you or anyone else there is tantamount to heresy. In modern American Recovery Culture, it IS always the fault of the addict (or alcoholic), while also being completely out of their control and in the realm of a disease that everyone is powerless against. The blame isn't removed here, only the logic.
Yet this twists and turns as does everything else in the alternate universe of recovery. No one addicts anyone, it is a series of poor choices--right up to the point where the switch is made to the argument that it is all a "disease" somehow. How they reconcile this contradiction always baffled me, but there it is regardless. It does keep patients and group members walking a very fine line, as the 12 step mentality dictates that one must analyze their part in everything, their own dark pasts, divulging every secret, every emotion, but never to come to a point of either healing from it or to understand a reason behind one's substance abuse problems. This is almost the ultimate sideshow, the taking of inventory. It doesn't matter in the end, because this is a "disease", and a lifelong one at that.
Yet, if this is such a chronic and incurable illness, why doesn't the school of thought that has monopolized treatment of it in the United States lobby for acceptance in the broader population of this dreaded disease? I realize that that would lead to more effective treatments and having the 12 step system put under a rather uncomfortable microscope, and as this model teaches that it's the one "program" one cannot graduate from or ever move on from in life, that would indeed cripple it. I realize their rationale, however it is stated. For a moment though, remember what it was like to encounter this system of thinking anew. If this is a "disease", then why the lack of advocacy for those who suffer from it? Why allow society at large to continue to vilify the addict so completely to this day, only to send those who become addicted into this system and not successfully back into the world cured (as so often happens with those outside of this system who have beaten their addictions)?* How can a person enter this system and not ask these questions? It makes no sense to not advocate for them, but the only advocacy that is done is done in the guise of those living within the system itself, which in turn creates a lifelong process of groveling and unending repentance in former addicts and alcoholics, unless they leave and just ignore the recovery system forever more (in which case they're either "dry drunks", "normies" or "back out there"--again, there's never any way to win in this system).
I asked these questions from day one, and was given condescending explanations that merely stereotype all addicts and alcoholics (as if the labels aren't enough!) as being of the victim mentality, of constantly blaming others for their predicament, being "dry drunks", etc. These are nothing more than carefully constructed arguments to immediately shut down any contrary arguments, especially when applied to finding injustice in how other people within the system are being treated (which was always my primary concern and seems at least to be what leaves the most scars on others who have left "recovery world"). Helping others is discouraged, unless it's helping them to further themselves within the stated system. Period. If someone messes up, it was a result of their "choices" somehow, yet if help is asked for, you need it because you cannot help yourself, as you have this incurable and fatal disease (of making lifelong bad choices?). Always the duality. Never the "rigorous honesty" so valued in conversation and meetings. Never the truth in the middle between the extremes**, it's always either someone's own fault due to painfully bad choices or complete powerlessness in the face of a dreaded disease, neither option leading to a solution in any sphere of discussion.
*For a bit more on the changing view of the addict in society in the early 20th Century, see notes on Richmond P. Hobson in the link above, more here and here.
And here on The Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 (US) in general and as dealing specifically with the vilification of drug use (opiates specifically):
"Also in 1957, Dr. Robert S. de Ropp, biochemist and writer on mind affecting drugs, added this comment:
just why the alcoholic is tolerated as a sick man while the opiate addict is persecuted as a criminal is hard to understand. There is, in the present attitude of society in the United States toward opiate addicts, much the same hysteria, superstition, and plain cruelty as characterized the attitude of our forefathers toward witches. Legislation reflects this cruelty and superstition. Prison sentences up to 40 years are now being imposed and the death sentence has been introduced. Perhaps one should feel thankful that the legislators have not yet reached the point of burning addicts alive. If one insists on relying on terrorism to cope with a problem which is essentially medical one may as well be logical and go the whole hog. 19"
**Another aspect I hadn't the time to discuss here adequately is the imposition upon new members, especially in NA, that everyone is equal in their addiction. Doctors cannot "addict" people, that would suggest a different level than those who weren't medically addicted. While the addiction is the very same, the process is simply not. I've heard alcoholics in treatment balk at the idea of being put on the level with meth users, or junkies, because they became addicted to a chemical that is legally available. This comes off frequently as base snobbery in the group setting, but I certainly see their point. Add in those suffering from "codependency", and this effect is amplified, they just get a slightly different system to work with. I personally got along great on a personal level just as easily with people in recovery from using illegal substances as well as those seeking help for alcohol.....but that didn't put me on the level of having done illegal things to end up where I did, nor was I willing to malign my pharmacist or myself by suggesting that when picking up a script I was "actually going to my dealer", as we were taught to say if we were in treatment for prescription drugs. Nor do I feel that alcoholics are going to dealers when they simply order cocktails in a restaurant, this brings in social implications that are damaging (to those in treatment and others) and simply not accurate.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Want to scare on Halloween? Dress up as an "addict".
I was inspired by a comment by Violet I received on another post as I was sitting here handing out candy to trick-or treaters, being rather unscary. I read her words about how addicts are treated in this country (assuming she meant the US, where I live). The fear of going to jail while on opiate replacement, the fear that it wouldn't be given to you. I thought back on how I have been regarded since I was addicted...and still by those who know since being off of everything. I thought especially though of how I still thought even in college of what it was to be an addict. Sure, everyone tried drugs, but to be an "addict" was something entirely different. It meant something I absorbed from people around me, really, whether the romanticized type of Bill Burroughs addiction and his collaboration with fellow "tortured addict" Kurt Cobain or the tainted people who were regarded as ticking bombs, always a crazy night away from relapsing. Because that's what addicts do, right? I didn't just learn this in 12 step meetings or rehabs, I had absorbed already the idea that people who tried certain drugs were "hooked" for life. The rest of life was a torturous exercise for them, wasn't it? Always the desire to use, the relapse, the sirens and the funeral. That's the inevitable outcome, right?Anyone labeled an addict, whether they are "unstoppable" in their addiction for a long period or if they just were out of control for a brief period, are forever regarded as untouchable. Addicts are somewhat acceptable if they're in a 12 step program, but are still "other". They're the worst fear presented by parents, police, even occasionally First Ladies. Doctors and other medical professionals generally regard "the addict" as a constant troublemaker, not someone who can have legitimate complaints, someone to be sidelined and thrown into the alternate universe of "recovery", but not anyone to be associated with. Addicts will inevitably steal from you, "convert" your children, or do any other number of as yet unimagined horrors. "You just never know what an addict will do."
One thing that I found surprising, though I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, is that there are plenty of people I met in my own "recovery period"* who didn't attend meetings, or at least not anymore, who hadn't been to rehabs, but considered themselves to have been addicted. If they shared anything with anyone in the process of "getting clean" it was with the caveat that we not share their stories with those who ran the treatment centers. These people have popped up many times for me, always just to tell me very encouragingly that it could be done, that they were living proof. It was very encouraging, but somehow shocking. After all, they don't just pop up at the grocery store to tell their stories, they probably don't share much except on visits to friends in detox or in brief stints as the nurses and orderlies who do let you off easy when you don't want to "follow the program".
I don't blame them, I certainly don't tell anyone my experiences. I don't want to be regarded as a ticking bomb only a stretch of time before I relapse--or suffer from "cross addiction" to yet another substance I will be, by virtue of the fact that I am therefore (perceived as) an incurable addict, I will be powerless to control my use of. I know already that I am not that person. I already know that people in my life who openly regard me as "incurable addicted person" are no longer in my life. I know that I don't use anything anymore. I am well aware, however, that if I share any bit of that history either in non-recovery circles or in recovery circles that I bring into anyone's world an element of fear, which is not a pretty thing in society. I'm bound in both ways as someone who has broken a taboo. It would be far worse to be "myself" in recovery circles, however, where my very life story is regarded as taboo by my rejection of the 12 step program--or even the feeling that constant self-examination is necessary.
The only alternatives open to those who have been addicted to drugs in American society is to either disappear, not mention it again, or to enter a life of continual atonement. It's as if a Priest were able to give one a perpetual sentence of atonement after confession. Forget that even the Catholic Church has renamed "confession" as the Rite of Reconciliation, considered a better name as it addresses that one confesses, atones, and gets to move on unencumbered by their guilt, "reconciled" ever after with the God of Christianity. Addicts don't get such options, we represent one of the worst fears in a society increasingly dependent on the self instead of extensive family networks. We represent the loss of control that is defined by being unable to even further control our loss of control, the notion of the slippery slope ("it always starts innocently") which ends in any version of the 12 step "jails, institutions or death". The loss of a child to an uncontrollable force by which they'll be socially demoted, if they live or are not cut off by the family, another societal edict (mirrored in the 12 step programs). Addicts are not something people want to have to acknowledge. They are to be passed on to whoever will deal with them, whether or not those people have the answers at all.
I sat here this Halloween not even thinking of about my perceived role, or of any of ours, until I got a notification of a comment on this blog, when the thought popped into my head as a joke as the response here to Violet's comment that if you really want to scare people this Halloween, go as an addict, but don't be prepared to be congratulated on your costume by the world at large, even on Halloween.
**.....and this post if proof that I'm spending way too much time on this subject matter! But if anyone says I'm "addicted", they're getting smacked.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Online Listing of Treatment Facilities Proposal
I raised this question at the now defunct ST blog, but I still want to do this. I'm always shocked that my disapproval of 12 step doctrine in a few places led to them (of course, this is always how they operate) then questioning me as to why I'd chosen a 12 step based treatment center. My response to them was always to ask which centers were available to me that don't run on this model, and that I'd gladly transfer. They naturally never had any suggestions, or even tactics aside from saying canned 12 step things like, "You should go look up the definition of "terminally unique".
Some of the practices at these treatment centers veer into the abusive, in my opinion, and I'd like to see a list for consumers that addresses this. Something that addresses the actual nature of the treatment received once patients/clients are admitted for treatment, that is. Whether this addresses the nature of the facility being 12 step based merely, or other practices in the realms of confrontational therapy or simply a way to convey to people looking for a detox/treatment program that certain facilities are less willing to deal with chronic pain patients coming off of prescription opiates (even ones that claim already to not be medical facilities).
I do believe people should have a choice as to whether or not they will be cold-turkeyed off of their medication or tapered down. Whether or not suboxone will be an option. I know some facilities will tell people up front about these policies, but families believing that it's a "life or death" situation or those entering the withdrawal phase shouldn't have to cold-call every facility near them.
Many in the anti-AA/alternatives to 12 step program circles online are very aware of the psychological traps in 12 step treatment, but those who aren't have the right to be warned about the nature of the treatment, to be shown studies proving any effectiveness, to understand the nature of confrontational therapy (someone posted a link for me on this at the ST blog from an addiction professionals magazine, an article rather debunking the validity of confrontational therapy and its uses in practices like "hot seat", here:
http://www.counselormagazine.com/columns-mainmenu-55/27-treatment-strategies-or-protocols/608-confrontation-in-addiction-treatment )
I've seen people die after brutal "hot seat" treatment, in which anonymously written statements placed into a bucket are then read in lists of pros and cons to patients right before discharge, "observations" meant to be suggestions for gauging success as well as relapse probability. It is, at the least, disheartening to hear 30 or so "cons" read to someone about to leave treatment in which many state, "You'll be back within a week", or other put downs insinuating (or stating flat out) that the patient is going to die. I'm not convinced that there is no connection to the deaths I've seen shortly after people leave treatment and the brutality of people towards those less willing to "work the steps" once they're in the "hot seat". This is a final attempt to break the person down further, I've seen few that don't result almost immediately in tears. I am here speaking also of treatment for adults and those over the age of 16 (in the United States), which pales in comparison to the abusive tactics reported in centers for teens. Again, I have yet to receive more than a dance from treatment centers I've called already asking about this, nor can they ever conclusively prove that the deaths occurring were not caused in part by the harshness of the confrontational tactics used.
In terms of the application of this idea, I was thinking more in terms of the model of "Angie's List" and other consumer rights based services. I've been unable to cross-reference any searches for rehabs based on the criteria of "secular", or "non 12 step", etc. I don't think most families of/potential patients are already aware of terms like "Minnesota Model" or beyond that to have tried them. The only service I'm aware of at all is one I found here: http://www.non12step-drugrehabs.org/ , a site with a toll free number that is almost always answered. I love that this is available, I just want to add to it by creating a demand in the market for more non-12 step rehabs once it is made clear that it's not mere assumption that "they are out there, I'm sure they are....." along with warning consumers of the more damaging practices and grievances of other patients/family members, which is nothing more or less than what is already done by the Better Business Bureau or organizations like "Angie's List", this would just be as comprehensive as possible and include that this IS indeed 12 step based--or isn't.
Please let me know here, or where I've cross-posted a shorter version of this idea proposal at The Orange Papers Forum if you post there, and at my email kaiannesworld@gmail.com, as I am well aware of the fear people have on this subject of throwing information out on the web. I am not proposing a "bitch-fest" here, however, but a system of holding these businesses accountable to the consumers they serve. I'm willing to do as much legwork on this as is needed, whatever is necessary. And I'd love your help!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Unofficial Worst Psycho-Henpecking Contest Of All Time
One thing I came to understand about 12 step programs, and boy do I ever include Alanon/Naranon in this category, is the roost it becomes for people who are dying to be the annoying busybody in the life of the entire world. Some take that much more literally, of course, (need I mention Jane Velez-Mitchell's new book here?), deciding that our entire society and those of others are suffering from the same "spiritual malady" that led them to "the rooms". Some merely seek out others, either by projection or by festering resentment over someone else in their lives (this is why I include Al/Nar anon here), to pester eternally, gaslighting and henpecking until the recipient of the stalking gets a restraining order. This is why I sometimes refer to recovery culture as "The Unofficial Worst Psycho-Henpecking Contest of All Time" (as opposed to "Toddlers & Tiaras", for example).
Some of the people who engage in this behavior will readily tell you, in bragging tones, that (actual) family members and even friends will no longer talk to them. Always because of some notion unknown outside the world of 12 steps, of course, they're in "denial", or "can't see the truth", "lost to the disease", etc. And God-doorknob love 'em, they have found a home. Right in your local treatment centers and meetings. These unhappy people find in recovery culture a sense of righteousness in their desire to stalk and attempt to micromanage the lives of others, a variety of justifications, be they an abusive sponsor or a crusading recoveryhawk out to talk to the families of every newcomer through the doors.
Anyone who's been in recovery culture knows the people I'm speaking of. Whether it's the rotten intake nurse at a treatment center (notice the puckered brow as she analyzes each "patient", trying to sniff out a weakness whether it's an already weak spirit or a spirit of defiance) or the person at meetings with 20 years of sobriety/clean time who can't take a sponsee at that time due to "personal problems" (i.e. their spouse just got sick to hell of their henpecking and chucked their sorry ass out). These people then descend on everyone and anyone they can find, even outside of the treatment industry, to try and tell them just how horrible and wrong they are. That they're wrong for all eternity. That even before they ever drank or used a drug, they were already full of "defects of character"that would forever seal their fates and doom them---to a life of being under the thumb of one or more of these recoveryhawks.
I call them "recoveryhawks" because like their cousin, the chickenhawk, they espouse every quality they attack others for exhibiting signs of. They are prime examples of festering resentments, boiling anger, rage and the very opposite of the "keep your side of the street" mentality often voiced in recovery culture. In the case of the Al/Nar anons I've personally seen engage in this reckless behavior, they explain their justification in tormenting people in recovery (or anyone they feel should be somewhere where they can control them by mock-diagnosing them with a mythical disease) whenever it is pointed out to them that they themselves are the angry (Fucked Up Neurotic & Emotional) ones themselves by smugly claiming that, "but I never ended up a drunk! So THERE!". This gets a bit more nebulous with the AA/NAs, who in turn tick off the years, hours, minutes and seconds of sobriety/clean time they have accrued while waiting for the rest of the group to get utterly confused in the cognitive dissonance of the idea that that somehow makes their hypocrisy valid. (Then the nods and high fives begin at a staggered pace of the slow of uptake).
12 step programs are an absolute dream come true for people like this, like everyone's most annoying grandmother or aunt they talk about at gatherings of friends, their frustration with said relatives bringing hoots of laughter to everyone else. Because these are the relatives you don't talk to when you can avoid it. No one likes people like this, and only in a culture where someone can be held as the lowest of the low due to a (fake) diagnosis can these people achieve any power. Only in a system in which everything a "recovering addict/alcoholic" (I still hate that terminology, can you all tell?) does and says can be deemed signs of their "disease", no matter how innocent. Only in this system (the dominant system, I must add, and one that scores are driven into by well meaning family members daily in the US) can people be damned by the recoveryhawks, who are just as miserable in their lives as the newcomers they torment, for every aspect of their lives or any signs of actually recovering from their bad experiences with substance abuse. The loopholes and twists of logic allowed in recovery culture are such that any argument (even opposing arguments given in the same statement) is considered valid. These are handed down by the worst bullies to be found, always to the smiling-but-mute nodders around a table in a church basement near you. In the world of recovery, you can get sent straight to a table of the Aunts Who Don't Even Get Invited To Thanksgiving Anymore. For eternity. But don't even think of complaining, because this is AA/NA, remember, where it's never any other member's fault. Ever. Even if you die.
I will note, however, that just like the dysfunctional abusive parents and emotionally abusive spouses and partners out there, many of their victims do end up feeling hopeless to the point of suicide and overdose. Of course, if this happens with an addict or alcoholic (or a person merely decided to be by the recoveryhawk), the recoveryhawks then almost dance in the streets yelling how right they were all along that the now-deceased had such a horrible problem. This cannot be ignored, but I also promised I'd keep this post on the lighter side.
The henpecked husband under the thumb of the controlling wife is a cultural joke, the silent and meek wife of the bullying abuser a depressing stereotype. The controlling, always critical parent-in-law is frequently so appalling to people that they inspire entire books, films and essays (not to mention jokes and television commercials). Americans alone spend millions of dollars on therapy to heal from wounds dealt by parents of this stripe. Yet, I assure you, if you are ever deemed to have a "problem" with drinking or abusing drugs, you will be sent to the biggest unofficial parade grounds for these types I've ever seen be (barely) sanctioned by a usually unsuspecting public. "But your best thinking got you here!" Yes, and that is why your best thinking can and should get you out of there, just as fast as you escaped the critical eyes of Aunt Marge on her last visit. As funny as these people can be to mock, in the end it has not a single thing to do with getting or staying clean and sober, and nothing to do with any real world notion of "recovery". It's merely the unofficial worst henpecking/stalking convention of the whole world.
Some of the people who engage in this behavior will readily tell you, in bragging tones, that (actual) family members and even friends will no longer talk to them. Always because of some notion unknown outside the world of 12 steps, of course, they're in "denial", or "can't see the truth", "lost to the disease", etc. And God-doorknob love 'em, they have found a home. Right in your local treatment centers and meetings. These unhappy people find in recovery culture a sense of righteousness in their desire to stalk and attempt to micromanage the lives of others, a variety of justifications, be they an abusive sponsor or a crusading recoveryhawk out to talk to the families of every newcomer through the doors.
Anyone who's been in recovery culture knows the people I'm speaking of. Whether it's the rotten intake nurse at a treatment center (notice the puckered brow as she analyzes each "patient", trying to sniff out a weakness whether it's an already weak spirit or a spirit of defiance) or the person at meetings with 20 years of sobriety/clean time who can't take a sponsee at that time due to "personal problems" (i.e. their spouse just got sick to hell of their henpecking and chucked their sorry ass out). These people then descend on everyone and anyone they can find, even outside of the treatment industry, to try and tell them just how horrible and wrong they are. That they're wrong for all eternity. That even before they ever drank or used a drug, they were already full of "defects of character"that would forever seal their fates and doom them---to a life of being under the thumb of one or more of these recoveryhawks.
I call them "recoveryhawks" because like their cousin, the chickenhawk, they espouse every quality they attack others for exhibiting signs of. They are prime examples of festering resentments, boiling anger, rage and the very opposite of the "keep your side of the street" mentality often voiced in recovery culture. In the case of the Al/Nar anons I've personally seen engage in this reckless behavior, they explain their justification in tormenting people in recovery (or anyone they feel should be somewhere where they can control them by mock-diagnosing them with a mythical disease) whenever it is pointed out to them that they themselves are the angry (Fucked Up Neurotic & Emotional) ones themselves by smugly claiming that, "but I never ended up a drunk! So THERE!". This gets a bit more nebulous with the AA/NAs, who in turn tick off the years, hours, minutes and seconds of sobriety/clean time they have accrued while waiting for the rest of the group to get utterly confused in the cognitive dissonance of the idea that that somehow makes their hypocrisy valid. (Then the nods and high fives begin at a staggered pace of the slow of uptake).
12 step programs are an absolute dream come true for people like this, like everyone's most annoying grandmother or aunt they talk about at gatherings of friends, their frustration with said relatives bringing hoots of laughter to everyone else. Because these are the relatives you don't talk to when you can avoid it. No one likes people like this, and only in a culture where someone can be held as the lowest of the low due to a (fake) diagnosis can these people achieve any power. Only in a system in which everything a "recovering addict/alcoholic" (I still hate that terminology, can you all tell?) does and says can be deemed signs of their "disease", no matter how innocent. Only in this system (the dominant system, I must add, and one that scores are driven into by well meaning family members daily in the US) can people be damned by the recoveryhawks, who are just as miserable in their lives as the newcomers they torment, for every aspect of their lives or any signs of actually recovering from their bad experiences with substance abuse. The loopholes and twists of logic allowed in recovery culture are such that any argument (even opposing arguments given in the same statement) is considered valid. These are handed down by the worst bullies to be found, always to the smiling-but-mute nodders around a table in a church basement near you. In the world of recovery, you can get sent straight to a table of the Aunts Who Don't Even Get Invited To Thanksgiving Anymore. For eternity. But don't even think of complaining, because this is AA/NA, remember, where it's never any other member's fault. Ever. Even if you die.
I will note, however, that just like the dysfunctional abusive parents and emotionally abusive spouses and partners out there, many of their victims do end up feeling hopeless to the point of suicide and overdose. Of course, if this happens with an addict or alcoholic (or a person merely decided to be by the recoveryhawk), the recoveryhawks then almost dance in the streets yelling how right they were all along that the now-deceased had such a horrible problem. This cannot be ignored, but I also promised I'd keep this post on the lighter side.
The henpecked husband under the thumb of the controlling wife is a cultural joke, the silent and meek wife of the bullying abuser a depressing stereotype. The controlling, always critical parent-in-law is frequently so appalling to people that they inspire entire books, films and essays (not to mention jokes and television commercials). Americans alone spend millions of dollars on therapy to heal from wounds dealt by parents of this stripe. Yet, I assure you, if you are ever deemed to have a "problem" with drinking or abusing drugs, you will be sent to the biggest unofficial parade grounds for these types I've ever seen be (barely) sanctioned by a usually unsuspecting public. "But your best thinking got you here!" Yes, and that is why your best thinking can and should get you out of there, just as fast as you escaped the critical eyes of Aunt Marge on her last visit. As funny as these people can be to mock, in the end it has not a single thing to do with getting or staying clean and sober, and nothing to do with any real world notion of "recovery". It's merely the unofficial worst henpecking/stalking convention of the whole world.
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