Bad Path in Therapypage 2 (from novel in progress)
In response to a father’s feeling of despair that his son isn’t trying hard enough to kick, Reverend Cannelli says, “Remember that what you feel only matters to you. What you show is what matters to the people you love. Neglecting to provide unconditional love for an addict is an unrecoverable offense.”
The flawed assumption in trying to get a junkie
straight is that love for that junkie, or love as a transcendent emotion, can
ever be unconditional. Practicing the church’s tough love, basically withholding
attention, is an act of setting conditions. Love alone for someone won’t cure
them.
I’ve found that the church’s intervention meetings
actually enable addicts. The addict gets addicted to the attention provided by
the support system; the attention feeds a new addiction, but the old addictions
remain. Enablers let the addict off the hook for bad behavior, give multiple
second chances, and forgive too easily, too idealistically. The drug-seeking and
drug-using behavior becomes more important than any other aspects of the
relationship, more important than the relationship itself.
It’s the addicts who don’t need the attention that
the reverend should be worried about. They’re the ones who aren’t here. Their
addiction is somehow more pure because they commit to it without burdening
others with their manipulations for attention.
It’s always ultimately up to the addict to get clean,
because addiction isn’t a disease. The addict’s support network helps the addict
survive, and the addict plays on the compassion, pretending that he’s trying to
get clean, until he wears the support out. The strategy is to block the addict
out if he doesn’t seek treatment, but this strategy fails because addicts will
seek support from others who will demand from the addict whatever they can get
in return for feeding the addiction; the motive of the secondary support system
is less caring, less noble, more selfish.
But as a traditional philosophy, religious
institutions withhold support from those who fail to accept the religion’s
dogma.
“My son lies about the level of his alcohol abuse,”
the same father continues to complain. His son nods in agreement.
“He’s embarrassed that he’s let you down, and let
himself down,” the Reverend presupposes.
Alcoholics lie about their addiction because if they publicly admit the truth, they have to take responsibility for their actions. Listening and disagreeing with every position, I start to wonder if I’ve become emotionally sterile and jaded about the prospects of so many irredeemable meth heads ever leading a productive life.
“People are complex and mutable, desirous of
everything whether those things seem both contradictory to health and to one
another,” he explains to the junkie.
“I drank a couple of fifths a day before I got clean,” the son states proudly. There is clapping around the room, which always bugs me, since people who’ve never been bad are never openly applauded. It seems unfair.
There’s nothing worse than people who’ve kicked a bad
habit and how they exaggerate further because they want their captive audiences
to know how extra determined they were to improve their lives. They want you to
feel more pride in their achievement, so they make the achievement monumental.
They want to be heroes. They want you to clap because they’re clean. Trish has
always been clean, but no one would celebrate that. Just getting through life
without escaping through drugs deserves applause, but so few of us get that
applause. If we crave it, when we see that it is reserved for those who’ve done
bad and repented, and we have no other laudable talent, we decide to do bad and
repent to gain recognition.
“Let your goodness emerge,” the reverend says, “to
fight the disease.”
I want to rage. Addiction is not a disease! A fact is
a fact whether or not so many idiots don’t know the fact to be true. A fact is a
fact regardless of how many dispute it. Dispute doesn’t negate the nature of
reality. We know facts; we believe in fantasy. People who say they believe,
rarely know. Deep thinking discredits faith. The reverend’s philosophy is so
grating that I may turn to atheism for sympathy.
We’re listening to new whining from another member.
Misery is mandatory at these sessions, the moderator counseling, soliciting
confessions from the group and supporting backsliders on their first offense:
“It happens. You just have to be strong next time and resist. Have faith. You’re
only human. You’re not God. The substance of your addiction is a powerful
temptation.”
The counselor doesn’t say confessed backsliders have
been bad because sin is attractive to many and the admonishment is negative
attention which many people prefer to receive. Some people thrive on telling
themselves they can’t do something. When the same addict slides again, the group
is not as supportive. On subsequent confessions of lapses, the group ignores her
socially until she mentions that she saw a bottle of booze in a liquor store
window that she didn’t buy. Everyone congratulates her, but she suspects that no
one had been listening to her until she said, “booze.” She suspects the group
members individually might go out to the liquor store after the meeting to take
a look at the bottle. From the attention, the backslider begins to list all the
other alcohol she doesn’t drink, though opportunity abounded.
It’s like giving a kinetic watch to a paraplegic with
the rationale that the need for correct time will be incentive for the
paraplegic to move his arm.
I talk with parents after the counseling session
about the drug problems their teens are having, bottling up my desire to
demonstrate the irony that I ease their teens’ withdrawal symptoms by providing
a fix. I nod when parents describe the white sobriety chips their alcoholic
children have earned as a symbol of their intention to stay sober in AA, though
I brazenly subvert the determination their teens have to stay clean. This is why
I feel like a fraud at these rehab sessions.