Self knowledge Avails us Nothing, but there is an Upside

Let me say it straight out, so there won’t be any confusion as to what it is I’m trying to say:  In my experience you can’t stay clean based solely on the knowledge of why you used drugs so abnormally and had such an abnormal need for drugs in the first place.  I’m not saying this isn’t valuable information, or that it may not give you peace of mind in other ways, but simply put: being aware of the truth about our emotional makeup as a result of our past, our family of origin, etc., will not in and of itself, keep us clean.  I’m not saying that some folks don’t get clean as a result of the insights they get from treatment, or therapy, or other efforts at self-appraisal.  I am saying that for the vast majority of individuals who have this disease, this is simply not sufficient.  In my experience only through some form of ongoing commitment to your recovery, whatever it happens to be (individual counseling, groups, continuing care, 12 step meetings, etc.), can most of us expect to achieve long-term recovery from the disease of addiction.

There is an upside to this issue of self-knowledge and it’s this.  When in rehab or treatment you hear yourself described in someone else’s story,  the real benefit is not the insight you get as to why you used the way you did, it’s the connection you make with another recovering person, and the realization that you are not as special or unique as you thought. The less different you feel, the easier it is to become part of a recovery lifestyle. While it is deflating at first to accept the fact that you’re not as unique as you thought, there is actually great comfort in knowing that rather than being a very disturbed, highly individual case of severe emotional imbalance (for which you have yet to find a cure), you’re actually a very ordinary, garden-variety addict (for which there are easily available, highly successful cures). This said; let me share with you some things I’ve learned about myself and my addiction patterns.

Addiction has more to do with why you used then what you used. What it is you felt inside that allowed drugs to have a SPECIAL EFFECT on you, an effect that you almost certainly remember from the first time you felt it.  Once having had that feeling, you thought often about having it again and again, and once you started using on any given day, there was no way of actually telling where you would end up- that day, that night, that week.  From the earliest days of your drug use, and for a very long time thereafter, drugs wasn’t the problem, drugs were the solution, and they remained the solution for a very long time, until (to your deepest regret) they stopped working.  For a variety of reasons – no matter the relief they were providing in terms of living in your own skin – they began to cause havoc in every other area of your life (your family; your job; the police).  Then they became the problem.  But before drugs had this special effect on you, and in order for it to meet so many of your unmet needs, you probably had been feeling and experiencing some combination of these things for a very long time:

1. Restless, irritable and discontent. - You may remember having felt this way since you were a kid.
2. Hypersensitive to criticism. - You always felt that everyone had some form of armor that you somehow didn’t get when they were handing it out.  As a matter of fact there was some kind of instructions in general, that were given out to everybody and you must have been in the bathroom, or out somewhere, when the instructions on how to live were discussed.
3. Prone to Resentment. - Capable of holding a major grudge for a very long time, probably unbeknownst to the grudgee.  Although you were sure it’s just killing them that you weren’t speaking to them or were angry with them.
4. Inferiority wrapped in grandiosity - A strange combination of feeling “less than” and “better than” the same people at the same time.  A problem that you specifically remember drugs addressing with a certain special warmth that almost immediately allowed you to feel pretty much like other people – or so you thought. The so-called “feeling on the inside like other people looked on the outside” phenomenon.
5. Uniqueness/Isolation - you often thought to yourself, “As troubled as I am- and I know I’m troubled – nobody could possibly know what I’m feeling inside, or could really understand me. I am completely alone, completely separate. My problems are not like yours, and cannot be solved using your solutions. My situation is hopeless.”
6. Intolerant of flaws in others – You were the director, if everyone simply followed your direction, everything would be just fine.  But of course, everyone refuses to do it your way.
7. Sneaky and self-pitying - When you weren’t planning and plotting, you were feeling sorry for yourself.
8. Immature- Sensitive to even the smallest perceived slight.  You could be crushed if people who you didn’t even care about that much, rebuffed you.
9. Selfish and self-centered- It was always, always, about you; your needs, your problems, your issues. You never got your fair share of attention.
10. Filled with undefined fears- There were plenty of things you knew you were afraid of, but there were others that you could never seem to get a handle on.
11. An actor, A chameleon, leading a double life. What people saw was only what you wanted them to see, what you believed was needed or expected at any given moment. There was no real you inside, and you were the only one who knew it.
12. A worshipper of people, things, money – Jealous and envious of everyone. Especially, but not limited to, anyone who you felt had more than you did. You knew in your heart that they didn’t deserve it. They were fools or worse, yet you desperately wanted to be just like them.

For us, drug addiction has never really been about a few lines, a few rocks, or a few pills drinks more or less.  This was always about a magic potion, one that almost instantaneously made all of this emotional misery and turmoil go away.  All of us had been able to stop using for periods of time; the problem was we couldn’t stay stopped.  And the reason we couldn’t stay stopped was we couldn’t stand living clean.  It was too painful. This was our great dilemma.  We couldn’t keep using, and we couldn’t stay stopped.  It was at this point that many of us landed in residential or outpatient treatment programs, looking for some way not to use drugs, and be able to live relatively peacefully in our own skin, without this cavalcade of personality defects. Of course the question has always been how to make it work. This is no small issue, as we all know.

NOTE: Many of the observations described here have been laid out in accurate detail in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” (The basic text of the 12 step program Alcoholics Anonymous)