Author: tearj3rker
Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:11 am
Always a pleasure when you post stuff in peace, Ironic.
| Ironic wrote: |
| I also reject that people in xA quit "thanks to NA." NA and AA really likes to take responsibility for their success stories, |
Agreed. This stuff was rampant. It also happens a lot on here. People say "Suboxone saved my life", and totally externalise their own miracle. These days, I like to believe that we are the ones who saved our own lives. We chose recovery. These programs and medications are just tools to help us along the way.
| Quote: |
| When I recently suggested to an AA friend that maturity is a factor, she suggested that I was not an addict. |
Yeah, there was a bit of finger pointing at times, I felt as well. "He’s not really an addict" etc. Also, classing people as addict/not-addict is incredibly reductionist. It’s a lot more complex than that. I agree that maturity has a LOT to do with choosing and maintaining recovery. For me, getting to an age where I realised I had limited time on this planet remaining, was a big motivator. I was told by a doctor, that the number of heroin-addicts who get clean spikes in their late-20’s. Those that remain using have a harder time.
| Quote: |
| I ALSO reject the idea that our brains are inherently different from the brains of non-addicts. Maybe some of them are..because depression, bipolar, any mental illness can have an element of insufficient chemical passage, and can also cause someone to abuse drugs and become addicted. Once they have abused drugs enough, their brains change. I looked, and have yet to find anything that can prove that addicts have an INHERENTLY different brain. Nothing is different until we (make a decision to) use drugs. That (or a preexisting mental illness) is what reroutes the neural pathways. |
I’m with you there as well. But at the same time, I think we can inherit traits that pre-dispose us to addiction. Maybe subsyndromal mental health issues, or a feeling of unease within ourselves. I’m also of the belief addicts are more sensitive, which is funny given the "tough" front so many put on. I believe that there’s a degree of emotional pain that motivates this desire to medicate, and in many of us it surfaces when we’re young. I was drawn to drugs from a very young age, and I came from an okay family.
When I was in the rehabs, there were a handful of people who were adopted. It was in an industrial city, rife with social problems, where a lot of babies were adopted out because of addicted mothers. These guys had really healthy adoptive parents, who didn’t drink, no mental health issues. They were put into good schools, and didn’t have a bad thing to say about their parents. But they still hit a point where they were drawn to drugs. I would put it down to chance, but it was such a consistent theme in the adopted residents. Abandonment issues? Maybe. I don’t wanna get all nature/nurture, but being friends with them changed my perspective a lot.
