Addiction Addiction is a stage in a journey.
Before addiction there will probably have been neglect (your feelings and wish for love, your tears, your helpflessness fear and pain did not count), abuse (they used you without concern for your horror, your pain, your feelings). In the beginning of life when they should have been available for you you were used by them.
And then in school, when the pain and the rejection from home (or residential project) made it difficult to concentrate, when it all seemed irrelevant, there were probably other know it alls who made you feel small for not knowing the things that they knew - that were not relevant to your misery.
And so they said you turned bad, or perhaps they always said you were bad, they assumed you were bad and maybe it went back as long as you can remember and it made sense of the pain they inflicted on you - you accepted their reasoning - but they were just finding a reason to make to the target for their own anger, they were looking for reasons to make you feel small so that they could feel big - because they still felt small after what parents and teacher did to them.
So being bad, rebelling was no great thing, they said you were and taking the drugs was your act of rebellion, your gesture for liberty, it was your choice against a world that had always shut you out.
And it felt so good - the power and the pleasure was a revelation about how things could be different
But then the pain rushed back and you had to rebel and soon you were a slave to your rebellion and this was a stage in your journey.
And you went down and down
But it wasn't because you were bad anymore than when you were originally bad - it was because you could not see the signposts and you could not see another direction
The same know it alls, and new ones regarding you with contempt, they could feel they were right about you all along. They had sent your life reeling into the gutter and in the gutter they looked at you in contempt - refusing to see it was their kicks, their hatred and contempt, their pitiful revenge against the wrong person that had put you there (they revenge themselves against you because you were weaker than them. They did not revenge themselves against the teachers, the parents, the social workers that made them feel small - they were obedient and docile before more powerful people and directed their anger against you).
It was these people who kept showing you signs out of the gutter and how could you believe them? How could they know?
So there was no one to show a way out.
But the next stage of the journey then revealed itself.
It was to start searching for ways out.
It was to find a way to build a new life with others and help them find a way out.
It was to find dignity and respect through saying no
Because you couldn't stop because you were lonely in the gutter and in the gutter there were only others like you who had been kicked there and were lost there, without hope.
So you couldn't say no to the addiction you shared with them, which was your badge of shame but was also your bond with them, your membership to a sort of community, a sort of fellowship.
So you couldn't say no to them - also because to say no meant pain, meant anguish.
But then you could say no and see it was only pain.
And what you got was dignity, because you had taken another decision, but more than that you saw there were different things in life, there were possibilities of other kinds of relationships, of work, of respect because of a place in society
Not that the usual moralists offered it to you - it was something that you saw you could become a part of developed by people like yourself
And you in turn would help others
and the next stage, the stage after the pain, after the uncertainty, the set backs, the very demoralising set backs, the new lectures you suffered (like this one), after the feeling of inferiority coming back just temporarily, after all these there was a sense
Life stretched out in front of you still and with patience days that you could wake up to and look forward to at last
And pleasure of living
and joy to be alive because you had never stopped searching, never stopped learning, never stopped finding new paths and the sheer unexpectedness of being alive.
© BRIAN DAVEY