I get that it’s so difficult for those without addictions to relate to those who have them. I, too, have difficulty stopping eating chocolate once I start. But to compare my chocolate-eating to my wine-drinking? I burst into tears even typing that sentence.
I have found it so difficult to feel heard by those without addictions, both inside and outside of the addictions treatment field, about the magnitude of having an addiction.
Many people with addictions throw up their hands and say those without just can’t get it. They tell me I will frustrate myself trying to explain, to let it go, and to focus on my own recovery from addiction to alcohol.
Why do I keep trying?
Because if your mind can’t in some way think like mine does, if your heart can’t empathize with mine, then I am alone when I am with you.
“Only connect!”
– E. M. Forster, Howard’s End
Difficulty connecting by heart and mind is hard on all relationships. Addiction makes it miserably harder.
And I’m sure it feels dangerous to attempt to access one’s own potential inner addict. If you don’t want to do that, I totally understand. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.
But if you do want to try to connect, I try again:
Addiction is an unrelentingly powerful condition that requires attending every second of every day, day after day, month after month, year after year. And that condition is a universe unto itself that fills and spills into the universe of the very personhood of the person – body, mind, heart, spirit, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, speech, actions. Wherever you go, there you are, Jon Kabat-Zinn tells us. When one becomes addicted, wherever you go, there you are, but so goes the addiction within.
And not changing what I’m doing doesn’t just result in a moral defeat (Oh, phooey, I ate chocolate again!), or a setback (I know I’m diabetic! Why do I keep eating what I shouldn’t?!), or a chance at a do-over (Okay, enough. Let me stop this and try again.) Not changing as an addict isn’t just about me. Not changing costs and endangers me and you and society. If I don’t change, I could kill you. Or immobilize you under the deadweight of the burden I place on the health care, legal, and social services systems.
And choice has nothing to do with not changing.
For what I have done and been unable to do and am just on the verge of doing, I can loathe myself and I suspect – at some level, consciously or unconsciously – you loathe me.
I will never, ever be free again. Always, always, a part of my concentration – which I would so love to give to the fullness of the presence of you, to the dormant apple trees in the backyard of my new house, to the soft fur of my cute kitten – must be on not.
Very well said, Anne. I have been enjoying your posts about addiction. I would like to offer one more perspective, if I may. Not saying “no” to the chocolate as you describe May be simply a moral defeat for some, but for others it is a sign of something much larger…complete powerless over food and eating. Just like our brothers and sisters who are unable to say no to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, or any other form of addiction, we compulsive binge eaters experience the same physical, mental, emotional, spiritual ramifications of our disease. Addiction to food “spills into the personhood of the person” as you so eloquently describe. It’s more than not saying no to a candy bar.
Anne:
Let me strongly suggest that you and those who appreciate you read Alan Deutschman’s CHANGE OR DIE, a book that details just what you’re explaining here. In the forward, the writer (a journalist in Atlanta) talks about a physicians’ study a few years ago that took a close look at the reaction of patients who were told that if they didn’t change some kind of basic behavior, they would die. No options. Change or die. Nine percent chose to change.
I have discovered that talking about my addiction is far easier for me than it is for the non-alcoholic who is listening and hearing strange and unaccustomed thoughts. I don’t mind it any more because when I am allowed to talk about my alcoholism, I am also given the chance to hear myself and that is part of healing.
People who come back from the depths of war, rarely want to talk about their experiences to those who have not been there. “You’d never understand,” they say, and they are right, but we want to listen and to sympathize, I think, just as people want to hear our tales of addiction. They probably won’t understand them, but in hearing them, they can perhaps feel for us a little more deeply and they allow us to share our most precious thoughts with them.
There is value in that.
Dan Smith
>I am also given the chance to hear myself and that is part of healing.
Okay. Okay, Dan. I will trust this. Thank you.