What I Hate.
Sometimes I am erudite - in most of my writing, I strive toward a dispassionate selection of words that paint pictures that reveal my perspective. This is the me that my coworkers have at whiles referred to as professorial (I always find this apt, even if I don't always take it as a compliment).
Sometimes, I am emotional - I attack the keyboard, slamming the words in my heart onto the screen with a force that requires italicization and profanity to convey since none of you can hear the percussion in my typing or see the grimace on my face. This is the me that many in my life have identified as "passionate". A significant percentage of the time, they are being kindly euphemistic: "strident" is a word that fits this me at least as well, often better.
This is gonna be one of those latter posts, because right now I am angry. I am angry at a thing that cares not for my anger - and as most of us know from personal experience, anger that is greeted with dispassion metastasizes.
My occasional and increasingly rare tendency toward self-loathing aside, I'm not a creature of much hatred. I despise few things and no people. But oh, the thing I do hate:
Fuck Addiction. Seriously.
I have burned the filthy fuel of rage often in my life. I know its too-viscous, system-corroding gunk with familial familiarity. These last almost-ten years of mental health, I have made an ongoing mission of my refusal to burn that fuel again. On this topic, I cannot restrain myself.
Addiction is, if you'll forgive me my bias, the most unfair of mental health disorders. Consider the stigma: addicts are weak, addicts are selfish, addicts should know better, addicts seek to abrogate responsibility for their actions with the excuse of compulsion. This is how society views sufferers of this disorder*.
Now consider how addiction begins: a teenager takes a drink of alcohol, a hit of weed, a pill that wasn't prescribed for her by a doctor but came recommended by a friend. The objectives behind these behaviors are always the same: to increase comfort, reduce discomfort, and/or create additional psychological resources for the completion of some task. The initial behavior is considered socially acceptable, low-risk, high-reward. Anyone who cannot maintain the social acceptability of their alcohol/marijuana/gambling/sex-related behaviors has only themselves to blame.
As adolescents and young adults, we are routinely tempted into behaviors whose true risks we do not understand. We are told that these behaviors are our right and rite as youth: we are entitled to take these risks and the taking of these risks is a gateway to adulthood through which we must pass. If these behaviors result in negative consequences, we have failed the test.
This is bullshit (I warned you, Erudite Me is not the one sitting at the keyboard). A bullshit double-bind. A fatal bullshit double-bind. A fatal bullshit double-bind that regularly claims bystanders as collateral damage.
Sometimes, I am emotional - I attack the keyboard, slamming the words in my heart onto the screen with a force that requires italicization and profanity to convey since none of you can hear the percussion in my typing or see the grimace on my face. This is the me that many in my life have identified as "passionate". A significant percentage of the time, they are being kindly euphemistic: "strident" is a word that fits this me at least as well, often better.
This is gonna be one of those latter posts, because right now I am angry. I am angry at a thing that cares not for my anger - and as most of us know from personal experience, anger that is greeted with dispassion metastasizes.
My occasional and increasingly rare tendency toward self-loathing aside, I'm not a creature of much hatred. I despise few things and no people. But oh, the thing I do hate:
Fuck Addiction. Seriously.
I have burned the filthy fuel of rage often in my life. I know its too-viscous, system-corroding gunk with familial familiarity. These last almost-ten years of mental health, I have made an ongoing mission of my refusal to burn that fuel again. On this topic, I cannot restrain myself.
Addiction is, if you'll forgive me my bias, the most unfair of mental health disorders. Consider the stigma: addicts are weak, addicts are selfish, addicts should know better, addicts seek to abrogate responsibility for their actions with the excuse of compulsion. This is how society views sufferers of this disorder*.
Now consider how addiction begins: a teenager takes a drink of alcohol, a hit of weed, a pill that wasn't prescribed for her by a doctor but came recommended by a friend. The objectives behind these behaviors are always the same: to increase comfort, reduce discomfort, and/or create additional psychological resources for the completion of some task. The initial behavior is considered socially acceptable, low-risk, high-reward. Anyone who cannot maintain the social acceptability of their alcohol/marijuana/gambling/sex-related behaviors has only themselves to blame.
As adolescents and young adults, we are routinely tempted into behaviors whose true risks we do not understand. We are told that these behaviors are our right and rite as youth: we are entitled to take these risks and the taking of these risks is a gateway to adulthood through which we must pass. If these behaviors result in negative consequences, we have failed the test.
This is bullshit (I warned you, Erudite Me is not the one sitting at the keyboard). A bullshit double-bind. A fatal bullshit double-bind. A fatal bullshit double-bind that regularly claims bystanders as collateral damage.
Here's the true picture: a teenager, a child, takes an addictive drug. Usually, the drug in this scenario is alcohol, which most people are incapable of perceiving as a drug.
It works. It does whatever that child wanted it to do, whatever that child was told to expect. Told by parents and peers. Told by every other Super Bowl commercial. Told by Judd Apatow and John Hughes. Since it works, the child takes the drug again. It works again. And again, and again, and again.
While it is still working, producing the intended effect, it begins producing unintended and undesirable effects. Humiliation and hangovers. Missed days of class, work, and family commitment. The minutes spent in regret and self-loathing accumulate; the child either doesn't notice or considers these minutes an unavoidable and tolerable consequence of the intended effect. With every "totally worth it" and "not that big a deal" and "not my fault," the intended and unintended effects collaborate to rewire that child's brain. The rewiring is bent around a single objective: repeat the behavior. Take the drug, tolerate the consequences.
Let's assume that this child makes is through college (I didn't). Degree in hand, still taking the drug and tolerating the consequences, the child now considers himself a man. Deems herself a woman. The rite concluded, the test passed, the adulting begins in earnest.
Maybe this adult with the rewired brain lives some functional years. Maybe there are years of happiness. Maybe there is achievement, romance, family, financial stability, holiday cards. The bills are paid, the taxes filed, but those negative consequences continue to accrue.
It works. It does whatever that child wanted it to do, whatever that child was told to expect. Told by parents and peers. Told by every other Super Bowl commercial. Told by Judd Apatow and John Hughes. Since it works, the child takes the drug again. It works again. And again, and again, and again.
While it is still working, producing the intended effect, it begins producing unintended and undesirable effects. Humiliation and hangovers. Missed days of class, work, and family commitment. The minutes spent in regret and self-loathing accumulate; the child either doesn't notice or considers these minutes an unavoidable and tolerable consequence of the intended effect. With every "totally worth it" and "not that big a deal" and "not my fault," the intended and unintended effects collaborate to rewire that child's brain. The rewiring is bent around a single objective: repeat the behavior. Take the drug, tolerate the consequences.
Let's assume that this child makes is through college (I didn't). Degree in hand, still taking the drug and tolerating the consequences, the child now considers himself a man. Deems herself a woman. The rite concluded, the test passed, the adulting begins in earnest.
Maybe this adult with the rewired brain lives some functional years. Maybe there are years of happiness. Maybe there is achievement, romance, family, financial stability, holiday cards. The bills are paid, the taxes filed, but those negative consequences continue to accrue.
Ultimately, in the life of everyone who becomes an addict, there is a negative consequence that cannot be shrugged off so lightly as a hangover. Cannot be laughed off as easily as being a bit too loud last night. Cannot be amended as easily as apologizing to a loved one.
This is where the worm turns. Society - the same set of perceived social norms and expectations and values and attitudes that has encouraged, supported, rewarded, and enabled the addict's drug use for years by this point - now blames the addict for this major negative consequence. The addict, alone, is held accountable for this failure.
You should have known your limits.
If you knew you were the type of person to get addicted, you shouldn't have started in the first place.
You should have stopped when your friends/family/boss suggested it.
The heaping of blame that begins at this point finds a sympathetic echo in the rewired brain of the addict, who has been banking those minutes of regret and self-loathing and shame for so long that the external judgment is nothing more than diarrhea icing on a shit cake years in the baking. Instead of promoting behavioral extinction - the end of the actual problem - this shame pas de deux demands more drug.
The addict medicates the shame with the source of the shame. The rewired brain demands, as an act of survival, that the organism do that which is fatal to it.
This is the double-bind: if you're an American, you should take drugs. Before you challenge me on that, consider the statement "I don't trust a man who doesn't drink." Consider whether you've ever been at a party and been surprised by someone enjoying herself without any alcohol. Yeah: if you're an American, you should take drugs. But you should not get addicted. Place yourself on the slippery slope and do not slide.
Everybody's doing it, the drug-taking (this is not true), and most of them are fine (this is also not true). So if you take the drugs and are not fine, it's your fault (this is unmitigated horseshit).
How conveniently society forgets, in these particular cases, whose idea it was to take the drug in the first fucking place. No addict has ever woken up with a virginal reward pathway and thought, "Hey, you know what nobody has ever said anything at all about to me? Drugs; I wonder what that's about, lemme take some."
No. Addiction is a function of human social behaviors. It springs up where humans gather in groups. Where people recommend quick fixes to each other. Where people turn their backs on one another when those quick fixes fix nothing, time frame be damned.
Now I've described addiction. Now you've read my anger and you're probably getting an idea of its source, but I have only begun to diatribe.
* This is one of those times people think something is a matter of opinion, or that there is room for debate as to the nature of reality, when neither is the case: whatever else it may be, addiction's nature as a neurological maladaptation is scientifically demonstrable. Go debate the rest elsewhere.
This is where the worm turns. Society - the same set of perceived social norms and expectations and values and attitudes that has encouraged, supported, rewarded, and enabled the addict's drug use for years by this point - now blames the addict for this major negative consequence. The addict, alone, is held accountable for this failure.
You should have known your limits.
If you knew you were the type of person to get addicted, you shouldn't have started in the first place.
You should have stopped when your friends/family/boss suggested it.
The heaping of blame that begins at this point finds a sympathetic echo in the rewired brain of the addict, who has been banking those minutes of regret and self-loathing and shame for so long that the external judgment is nothing more than diarrhea icing on a shit cake years in the baking. Instead of promoting behavioral extinction - the end of the actual problem - this shame pas de deux demands more drug.
The addict medicates the shame with the source of the shame. The rewired brain demands, as an act of survival, that the organism do that which is fatal to it.
This is the double-bind: if you're an American, you should take drugs. Before you challenge me on that, consider the statement "I don't trust a man who doesn't drink." Consider whether you've ever been at a party and been surprised by someone enjoying herself without any alcohol. Yeah: if you're an American, you should take drugs. But you should not get addicted. Place yourself on the slippery slope and do not slide.
Everybody's doing it, the drug-taking (this is not true), and most of them are fine (this is also not true). So if you take the drugs and are not fine, it's your fault (this is unmitigated horseshit).
How conveniently society forgets, in these particular cases, whose idea it was to take the drug in the first fucking place. No addict has ever woken up with a virginal reward pathway and thought, "Hey, you know what nobody has ever said anything at all about to me? Drugs; I wonder what that's about, lemme take some."
No. Addiction is a function of human social behaviors. It springs up where humans gather in groups. Where people recommend quick fixes to each other. Where people turn their backs on one another when those quick fixes fix nothing, time frame be damned.
Now I've described addiction. Now you've read my anger and you're probably getting an idea of its source, but I have only begun to diatribe.
* This is one of those times people think something is a matter of opinion, or that there is room for debate as to the nature of reality, when neither is the case: whatever else it may be, addiction's nature as a neurological maladaptation is scientifically demonstrable. Go debate the rest elsewhere.