Addiction is illogical. Within each addict, a duality exists between a person who knows better and understands the harm they are doing to themselves and a person who can justify and rationalize their harmful behavior.
I’ve personally always prided myself as a rational and logical person, but when it comes to drugs and alcohol, particularly when I’m under the influence of them, all of that goes out the window. It’s a Jekyll and Hyde sort of scenario where there exists two versions of yourself, both in clear opposition to the other.
This is the insanity of addiction. A version of you that’s hard to control, impossible to understand, and constantly working against the better part of yourself who wants to abandon ship.
A Story
I tend to be triggered by weird things in my recovery. Seeing or talking about drugs, the smell of alcohol, and other common triggers don’t usually make me feel any particular way. Usually it’s the little things that were part of my pattern of addiction that I either haven’t come across since getting clean or don’t think of very often that will conjure up old feelings and memories. These things, by themselves, typically have nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.Recently my girlfriend and I were on the couch and I thought of the TV show Twin Peaks. When I was still using, I had a months-long sprint where I would binge watch that show while crashing after days-long benders.
I remember laying on the couch with half a bottle of liquor in me to help with the come-down from days of stimulants. I remember being drenched in sweat listening to the intro with my eyes closed because even though sleep was out of the question, I was physically and mentally exhausted. I remember the complete and utter shame I felt while I hid on that couch hoping to God that no one would knock at the door and no one would call my phone. This would confirm my existence and the fact that this, indeed, was reality. It was a terrible moment in time. A bad memory.
I was telling my girlfriend about this, reminiscing about how bad things had been before I got myself clean and before we met, when I had to admit something to myself and to her. Even with years clean under my belt, even with it logically being a terrible story and a terrible memory, there was some part of me that still glorified that moment. There was some part of me that still longed to go back and experience this disaster all over again. This is the insanity of addiction.
It’s Never Going To Make Sense
I’ve come to accept that this part of me is never going away. This illogical temptation towards behaviors and situations that are in no way attractive will always live on. It’s never going to make sense and I shouldn’t expect it to.
What’s ironic is that when I first decided to go to rehab, I was afraid that giving up drinking and drugs meant that I’d somehow be losing part of myself. As it turns out, that part of myself I feared of losing never actually went away and probably never will. Now I simply wish it would.
We are all broken, addicts or not. Religion, society, and even science have recognized this since the beginning of time. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t need to depend on our sense of morals, the threat of punishment, or the promise of eternal salvation to do the right thing. Addiction just happens to bring about a particular type of fragmentation inside of us where even once the glamor and allure of particular actions go away and what’s left is clearly only suffering and misery, a part of us is still drawn to it.
The Only Solution
So the question becomes – how do we deal with this?
If we can’t ever totally rid ourselves of that part of us that is drawn to illogical and irrational behavior, the only viable option is to tame this unreasonable version of ourselves. Naturally, our first instinct might be to try and rid ourselves of this unwanted character completely and forget all about it, but ignoring its existence won’t make it go away and takes our focus off the enemy. We must learn to coexist.
What we can do is starve it and give it minimal power over our actions while cautiously keeping an eye on it. The way we starve it is simple. We give up drugs and alcohol–completely. The consumption of either makes us weak, clouds our judgment, and makes it highly likely we will act in a way we normally never would.
Our job in recovery is to create and preserve the conditions necessary to stop us from turning into this impulsive and reckless version of ourselves. We do this by being mindful of these negative thought patterns. We learn and practice techniques for dealing with these thought patterns. We recognize our tendency to try and fix whatever internal problem we have with external stimuli. We acknowledge we are broken and we learn to deal with it.
Final Thoughts
There are many facets to the insanity of addiction. We repeat the same actions over and over again, regardless of how damaging they are to our own wellbeing or how bad they hurt the people around us. One side of us knows better while the other side of us is incapable of using this knowledge to control our impulses. We lie to ourselves a thousand times over, telling ourselves that “this time is going to be different,” and part of us actually believes it. We initially use drugs and alcohol to fix something inside of us that is inherently broken, and over time, a transformation occurs where drugs and alcohol become both the source of, and the shitty solution to our problem. It’s absolutely fuckin’ nuts.
The first step to overcoming addiction is admitting we have a problem. Personally, I think this comes in two parts. First, we have to recognize that our drug and alcohol use has made our lives unmanageable. Second, we must accept the fact that this problem is never going to go away. This broken part of us, this deep seeded insanity is here to stay.
The silver lining to this is we are strong enough to get through it. We can manage it. We can tame this monster that lives inside us.
