Addicted and Alone
The life of an addict is simple, yet highly complex. One big truth about addiction, accepted by everyone who walks down that path in life, is that at some point, you’re going to lose everything and constrict the world around you. You’ll lose money, jobs, relationships, and even family heirlooms and other material possessions that somehow found their way onto the shelves of a pawn shop. You’ll confine yourself to your own personal prison. Dignity and self-respect are secondary. And, to some extent, the world becomes very, very small, to the point where you feel like the only powerful force that causatively creates and makes things happen. Everything and everyone else become an annoyance; a counter-intention to what you have to do on a daily basis to survive. Because that’s what addiction becomes; pure survival.
Addiction is mindless overindulgence. It’s consuming as much drugs as possible to make the hurt go away and tame the withdrawals. It’s not being able to get in the shower until you do a shot. It’s not being able to go to work until you pick up and have enough to get you through your shift. It’s the thing you’ll lie to your family about. It’s the thing you won’t talk about with your girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, or wife. It’s the thing the family brushes under the carpet and doesn’t discuss or it’s the very thing that tears them apart. That’s the life of the addict. Use, get money, lie, use, get money, lie and keep it together enough for the world not to intervene on you. In that sense, the world is very small for an addict. They don’t feel a part of anything. The family has outcasted them to a point or they’ve completely exiled themselves. They don’t keep in touch with their old group of friends, they might drop out of school and take a menial job just to get by. And, at the end of the day, the only group they belong to is the group of people who use drugs, lie, manipulate, cheat, etc. just as a means of getting through each day and that’s all they can see. It’s as if they have blinders on and can’t see a whole, big world out there. They can only see what’s directly in front of them and they’re oblivious to anything past that.
Addicts don’t feel bigger than themselves… because as I have learned in my own recovery, there are many, many things out there that are bigger than I am, but were beyond my scope of awareness while I was getting high every day.
Addicts don’t feel bigger than themselves and a part of recovery is learning to be a part of something bigger than yourself, because as I have learned in my own recovery, there are many, many things out there that are bigger than I am, but were beyond my scope of awareness while I was getting high every day. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. Society shouldn’t have had me because of how destructive I was. My family should’ve turned their backs on me after the 30th time I stole something from them. My friends wanted nothing to do with me. I was alone. Isolated in my own little world that I created for myself.
It’s important than an addict starts to feel like they belong to something again, like the huge group of people out there who made it through addiction and are now sober. Or being part of mankind as a whole, trying to make the world a better place. Or being a part of a group that helps to change the world and make it a better place. It can be anything. It just has to be bigger than the addict. It has to increase the scope of their awareness and make them feel included. There’s nothing more isolating than addiction. Finding a sense of belonging is crucial if a person wants to truly recover. An addict can find that sense of belonging in society again and once they do, it’s life changing.
