“A Problem With Me”

One of the biggest mistakes made by those who are new to Recovery is thinking that the problem is their drug of choice. This leads to addicts and alcoholics using other drugs and thinking it is okay to do so because, hey, they kicked that other stuff! Recovering alcoholics call themselves sober even though they smoke pot. Recovering drug addicts think it’s okay for to drink.

The most common reason people give for this behavior is that they only had a problem with ‘x’, not ‘y’. But this isn’t a reason, it’s a rationalization. It’s based on a very common misconception, that drugs are the problem. They aren’t; they are a symptom of the problem. How many drug addicts end up in the rooms of AA because they thought it was okay to drink? And it doesn’t even have to be substances. The rooms of Overeaters Anonymous are filled with ‘former’ alcoholics.

This problem is only compounded by the insistence in certain rooms (not all, but far too many) that their doors aren’t open to all, only those suffering from the corresponding fellowship’s namesake. It’s unfortunate, really. Anytime someone suffering from the Disease is told they can’t get the help they need, that they have to go somewhere else. On the rare times I’ve been faced with those situations, I remind them that the 12 steps are the same for every program.

As addicts, as those who suffer from the spiritual malady, we are people who are really good at denial. We fool others, but more than anything, we fool ourselves. We can rationalize just about anything. Before entering Recovery, we insisted we didn’t have a problem. We thought others were to blame for the mistakes we had made. Our very thinking is riddled with the Disease. Why else would “my best thinking got me here” be such a common saying?

The disease isn’t about substances. Substances are what we use to get outside ourselves. It’s what we do so that we don’t have to deal with other people or with the world. It’s a quick ‘fix’ to anything we might be feeling. The disease is about behavior—compulsion, obsession. We can ‘use’ anything. The only way to Recover from the disease is to cultivate that spiritual connection.

If we’re intoxicated, we can’t make conscious contact with our higher power. I’ve known plenty of users who felt so deeply spiritual when they were loaded (it’s particularly bad for those like myself for whom marijuana was their drug of choice). What do I think about that? If you’re loaded, then your mind isn’t clear, and if your mind isn’t clear, you can’t make conscious contact. If you’re fucked up, you’re not communing with God, you’re just high. If we’re under the influence, there’s no way to make progress in Recovery. We can’t deal honestly with our thoughts, our feelings, because we aren’t present. We can't escape ourselves and commune with the spiritual, it doesn't work that way.

We don’t have a problem with drugs, we have a problem with ourselves. We don’t want to face us, all our unresolved issues, all our inadequacies, our fears. So we do anything we can to avoid the real problem. And our Diseased brains are only too happy to oblige in helping us along the way. No one substance is better or worse than others. Our drug of choice is irrelevant. Maintaining complete abstinence from any and all mind- and mood-altering substances is the only way to truly Recover.