Have You a Sufficient Substitute?

Like any old tradition, 12 step programs have their problems. Introduce a profit-driven machine like capitalism, and something as misunderstood as addiction, and there are bound to be unintended consequences. Some people even think that pharmaceutical companies induced addiction to sell more medicine. I think that some people react to drugs differently than other people, and the reward system can be reconfigured partway through life. But I also think that the brain has the capability to rewire itself; we are different people at different parts of our lives.

A Little About Me

I have been taught the information about addiction from a private drug and alcohol facility multiple times. I was told that I would always be an addict, and they told my parents that there was no hope. They said I would die of addiction, and I imagine they all talked about how sad it would be. Everyone was crying like the day Jesus died on the cross. People were so amazed with my life experience that they genuflected when I entered the room, and prayed to me for forgiveness. They always looked me in the eyes when they said, “body of Christ”, and popped the bread into their mouth. Sorry, that was all my Catholic schooling talking.

Actually, they were a little relieved to have some answers. I was very gone when I went to rehab the first time, though. Years of psych meds mellowed me out a bit, but before that I was constantly hearing voices in my head, and mumbling parts of the conversation. In fact, about a year and a half before I went to rehab, I did an assessment and they told me I would be better suited to a dual diagnosis facility. I remember the constant jerking of my head, because there was just too much electricity in there. Years of marijuana, alcohol, Xanax, MDMA, LSD, cocaine, salvia, and a few hits of DMT had made that moment uncomfortable, but brought me lots of joy when I started using them.

That was the day after I landed myself in the hospital for alcohol poisoning. The last thing I remember was drinking a lot of vodka very fast, and then going out on a 3-story roof somewhere. There have been stories about guys falling off the roof of fraternity houses after taking LSD, but I think it’s way easier to do when you are really drunk. The second time that I went to the hospital for drinking, I ended up in the psych ward. I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t want to take me to jail, so they took me there. I would not be surprised if they paid them, because I was very angry that they were strapping me to the bed, I was told. I called them lots of names, and then, after a shot of Benadryl and some charcoal, drifted off to sleep.

I woke up and thanked god that it said I had the right to not receive electroshock therapy, though I’m told it is effective by my sister. She does lots of animal testing though, so she might be trying to see if I’ll try it for her own personal experience. They had hired this guy at the psych ward that reminded me of a clown with a very calming demeanor, and he gave me some eggs and sausage and asked me some questions. That was the day that my mom was taking me on a cruise with her parents and the rest of the family. She wouldn’t let me go though, because I was in bad shape.

The first of several points of sorrow in my life because I don’t know that I ever saw my grandpa Ray again before he died. He was the most functioning alcoholic of all time, from the information that I’ve been given. He travelled around successfully finding places to mine gold, and got a bunch of mining claims in Nevada, maybe drinking heavily. I’m not sure what a normal amount to drink is, and my uncle who I thought was an alcoholic is also very functional. But if there is alcoholism in my family, they would be the people I drank with the most in my family.

I had started taking a lot of amphetamines and MDMA at this point, but when I finally found opiates all of the side effects of the other drugs subsided. I could think perfectly rational after smoking meth and doing cocaine if I smoked a little heroin. Pretty soon I found out how awesome heroin was, but in the mean time got really physically addicted. One of the problems with powerfully euphoric drugs is that you no longer feel euphoric when they wear off. One of two things happens to me depending on how long I’ve used them: either I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to get high again, or I start getting sick.

At first, I figured that people would just like me more if I didn’t sweat and never pooped. Pretty soon, they didn’t like me because I stole money from them. When you can’t adequately explain why waging the relationships on the 20 bucks is a rational decision, or why you would steal from your friends at all, things get weird. They like you, but they never want to see you again. The main point here is that I’d rather be alone feeling great than live life with everyone else. Addiction overcame my instinct to connect with other people. The only reason I ever visited anyone was to steal money from them.

Getting clean sure ruined that aspect of my relationships. I would realize that I loved these people, after not being a part of their lives for years, but it took a long time for me to have importance programmed into my brain to be applied to anything except for my feverish apologies as I tried to overwork myself. I would start to hate my life again, and need a way out. Drugs will show them! By this point I would have found someone to blame for my problems.

In fact, I had sworn that I was going to kill myself a million times. As much as I hate to admit it, I am truly a millennial. Emotionally deficient, driven to change the world to impress everyone else, and ashamedly affectionate to the camera. I don’t like taking pictures really, but I like looking at myself and thinking, “who the fuck are you?” I daydream about being someday recognized for how fucking awesome I am, but regretfully admit that I hate my life every night. Am I describing millennials or a personality disorder. I just had a great idea for a gameshow that I’ll make and promote as my crowning achievement.

I am obsessed by recognition. So much so that I can’t share at the meetings. My outsized need for recognition is shameful to me, so I don’t say anything or introduce myself at all. I know that some people think that I should just get over myself and make myself known in the program. I should find a sponsor and work the steps because there’s no program without them. I’d like to tell them to just quit drinking without AA, but they’d probably tell me something mysterious that they couldn’t really think out. Sadly enough, that is what keeps them sober.

They get such a great mysterious experience out of being better than other people, that they have a clear reason for staying clean. They keep reteaching it to themselves over and over again, and bond with other people over it. All I’m saying is, however meaningful a life it is, it’s not for every person that has an addictive personality disorder. I’ve never seen that there is a personality disorder called, “addictive” in any psychology textbooks, which I like reading to feel better than other people, but they teach you that it is a personality disorder in NA and AA.

This is the last frontier where mysticism still shows it’s head. In early times doctors would say a prayer for you if you had cancer, and today they do it if you’ve got addiction. It’s like “pray the gay away” except realizations of god-consciousness will make you remember that doing drugs and drinking has caused you enough harm in the past that you should consider giving it up. Then, God will give you the option to not use again, so that people with more time off drugs have more honor, even if they are a sexual predator.

Every founding father is actually a person so they have problems, so there is no reason to point the finger at the creator of AA. I’m not sure if it’s relevant, so I’ll lay hands off the man who needed to be recognized in the first chapter of the book with a detailed story of how successful he was before he started drinking heavily. How sad it was when he almost lost his wife, but forgetting that he had mental health problems that made it hard for him to stay sober. There were rumors that he used LSD. Those were different times, whisper AA members as they secretly long for life-changing visions on acid.

I certainly have become obsessed with LSD every time I’ve gotten sober. It’s the only thing that will help, I anxiously tell friends who shake their heads and laugh a little. I might be a little more than an alcoholic. I take everything and warp it in my head sufficiently enough that I can make the excuse to shoot up meth or heroin.

I once remembered that there could be a natural disaster at any time. I anxiously thought about what I would do if we were all told we were going to die. Drugs, I thought. I would want them, definitely. It would be impossible to find them, though. I needed to prepare, I concluded. Then I remembered I’d been clean for 6 months, and buying enough meth and heroin to kill me when the apocalypse came would certainly cause me to want to try it out to make sure it was good stuff. I marveled at my ability to come up with new and enticing reasons to buy drugs I have been addicted to before.

The best thing about drug and alcohol treatment centers was that I could accost other people for the mistakes that they had made. It was fun to point out their flaws in thinking loudly while they grimaced. We would all wait for the time that we would have an insight into why something happened to you, or why you did something.

Then we would smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and talk about who was fucking who. I never participated in that, though. I did not want to impregnate one of these girls. She could just die on the spot, seemingly randomly, and leave me to be a single dad. Regardless of the pity points I would score with other girls, it wouldn’t ever be an okay environment to raise a child in. The kid wanting to be a drug addict like her mommy.

When I went out, it was worse. These girls were fucking crazy! I am much more sane shooting meth and heroin every day than some of these girls smoking the shit. Those were the most powerful feelings to forget. I would dream about pulling the plunger on the syringe back and seeing a nice amount of blood going in there. One night I watched Drugs Inc., and felt like that was a good enough reason to start injecting drugs again. Smoking would be a waste, I thought, maximum damage must be achieved.

Injecting the drug made me feel like I fit in more when I went back to rehab. Finally, I could talk about how much better it was than smoking it like the first timers. I’ve actually heard of people that go out on needles to be able to talk about it and then dying. I think that’s probably the case a lot of the time. I only started shooting it when I realized how much cheaper it would be, so I guess I felt better even though my story wasn’t the same as my increasingly dead friends. Some of them died from drug overdoses: Shawheen died when he shot up too much meth and heroin. Brad got shot mysteriously at a lake after returning from advising the Sheiks of Saudi Arabia. Sheiks just sounds like slivering in pure gold. I imagine there were some major deals going down, and the perfect cover story. I always thought his ridiculous amount of motivation seemed a little coked out, but I was so coked out I could be mistaken. I’d call other friends and rant about my latest business idea right after doing a ridiculously long line of coke, and once it wore off I’d call them back in five minutes. That was the first time I pitched a business idea there was a 0% chance of doing to someone. I could be very persuasive when I was high on coke, though. For as little as $2,000 per month we could monetize technology by providing it to poor neighborhoods and improving their lives through directed education. I know it sounds like a google Facebook advertisement, but it’s my greatest idea. We’re going to do it through targeting special memory through experience integrated through a three dimensional interactive experience. Kahn academy, we want to make you way more interesting. By keeping real time feedback for vital signs, we can keep kids at the optimal level of stimulation to maximize retention. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

As I relapsed over and over again, I started to feel rejected by the people at meetings. The importance placed on staying sober rather than life improvement comes with the territory. Numbers make a good score, so it’s the one that everyone remembers, and bases judgement off of. Taking their birthday to go around the room and talk about how great they are tainted the rest of the experience for me, but it kept happening once a week. It had progressed to me wishing I had it in me to accept or be a part of such a ceremony, but being so disgusted that I wanted to kill myself when I realized someone’s birthday meant an hour about how great they are.

Watching someone relapse felt like such relief from this madness. I was wasting my time, I thought, but I had been programmed to believe it was the only way. After being told my emotional problems were just a part of being an alcoholic, resentment being the chief of these, every time I got resentful I relapsed. Instead of taking a personal look at what coping mechanisms I might need to develop, I was admonished for being an addict and told to deal with it by constantly evaluating my life, after apologizing and developing a relationship with god. They definitely are not trained professionals. A lot of them get paid to be alcohol and drug counselors, though, taking the thing most near and dear to them, the 12 steps, and passing it on to other people in their jobs. Belittling people who use medically assisted treatment. They believe only god can help them.

The most fun part of AA was getting really high beforehand. They never said anything, but I was there to listen to someone talk about how they used to be an alcoholic and they were so grateful they didn’t drink. Just like they believed it when they said they would quit. Also to check to see if there were any hot girls there. All my friends were in AA, so I had to pretend to be sober to hang out with them. They would reject me if they found out, I thought. I am too dangerous to be friends with.

I don’t like any of these people anyway. There it was. It hit me square in the back one day, when I realized I didn’t want to be a part of this community. It wasn't that any individual person bugged me out or caused AA to suddenly lack importance, but the fact that I worked hard and spent time at the meetings, only to feel angry, confused, and rejected after hearing about the girls having sex with everyone except for me. This was not fault of them, however, because I graduated to a phobia of women that lasted four years after an 18 month stint in a male-only rehab.