What Can I Do?

Few situations can produce the kind of helpless hurt and confusing conflict that a front row seat to the self-destruction of an active addict cultivates. Loved ones are affected without much ability to do anything to help and are often the primary victims of the collateral damage from our chaotic existence.

We usually don’t mean to hurt them; sometimes we intend to do just that. Hurting and disappointing our dearest friends and family is almost like another way to hurt ourselves and feeds our hunger for the self-mutilation of the soul. We have a strange way of becoming accustomed to being a disappointment. We are a very adaptable breed and can lower our standards in the blink of an eye to try and keep ourselves from feeling too guilty or ashamed.

At some point our status quo changes and becomes that of a constant state of abandoned dreams, ambitions and goals. Our natural sense of self-loathing feeds into this and convinces us that while we’d like to be happy, it is a state we surely will never deserve. If we can’t be happy, we don’t really want to see anyone around us being very happy either and to the untrained eye we don’t appear to have any qualms with making sure of it.

On some level we do care that we are hurting people who love us, but that thought just feels like another salvo in the war for control of our lives. We are unwilling and by extension unable to cede the control we think we have. We can’t see past our addiction long enough to see that we’d be better off giving that “control” over to a doorknob. Our lives are an absolute wreck but we refuse to admit it or take responsibility for the mess.

The addict is a living paradox. Our self-loathing inspires us to reach new lows while we are simultaneously trying to dig ourselves out of our spiritual grave by doing despicable things as coping mechanisms. We can’t win for losing because we practice self-sabotage at every turn while cursing our luck or everyone around us.  No one can utter a word that will turn us; there is no magic phrase. Inside us lurks an egomaniac with a self-esteem issue who won’t listen to the desperate pleas of our loved ones urging us to save ourselves. To us it all sounds like someone telling us what to do and NOBODY tells US what to do. We would rather hang ourselves in a noose we tied than save ourselves from the gallows by heeding another’s advice.

We have to reach a point where we just cannot stomach sinking any lower. It must eventually cost us more than we are willing to give. Our standards must get to a point where we are unable to lower them further. This is bottom, and for every addict it is different. For some it is the loss of a job; others must lose connection with family members before they will consider a change. For some it may be a near-death experience, while for others it may involve the loss of someone else’s life. There are few hard and fast rules about the bottom, outside of the absolute that each person’s bottom is his or her own and no amount of pleading, prodding or threatening will make it arrive any sooner than it must.

Acceptance is the key to your happiness. You have to divorce yourself from the idea that there is much of anything that you can do to help, no matter how much it hurts to see someone killing themselves a drink, snort or pill at a time. You must realize that the only control any of us has in this world is the control of our own thoughts, words and actions. You must admit that you are powerless over someone else’s problems and realize that trying to change another person is an unmanageable task. You have to let go and trust that things will unfold exactly as they should and that your timetable is not applicable to everyone else.