Addiction Means Telling Yourself ‘I Don’t Trust You’

When you stop trusting your reflection

The thing about addicts is we travel in packs.

Once upon a time, my liquor budget was more than my rent. The thing they don’t tell you about recovery is that even in recovery —

We still manage to find each other.

I never liked AA. Plot twist: I still don’t. I’ve had even more of an ongoing beef with them since I dried out and studied psychology.

Alcoholics Anonymous is predicated on addiction. I don’t mean fixing it. I mean selling it.

For all the marketing that goes into getting totally back on the wagon, the core conceit is harm reduction. Replacing one addiction for another—religion. Specifically, Christianity.

The community of AA, especially those in charge, tends to take on similarities to religion. I grew up Southern Baptist and since went into recovery for that too.

Much works the same. Including the fixation on who sins and suffers the most and least. As though addiction is the world’s largest pissing contest.

Religion is a hell of a drug.

There’s a disconnect between AA and the real world. It’s the same way there’s a disconnect between you, the addict, and you, the recovering addict.

We’re never cured. Don’t let any of us kid you. Or do what I did, and say things like, “I can be careful.”

We tell ourselves such wonderful fairy tales like that. They’re our bedtime stories — they help us sleep at night.

That’s the dangerous thing about addiction. You can’t trust yourself anymore.

My own moment of realizing that came in the bathroom of a local bar, after a spectacular round of vomiting that punctuated six years' worth of sobriety.

I remember drinking a handful of tap water from the sink and giving myself a bloodshot look in a greasy mirror.

People will say we don’t recognize that person. We do. All too well. The edition of us we work very hard to forget and bury deep because we’re convinced that they died.

But, that part of us requires incineration. Being given to the pyre. That’s a difficult thing to do. How do you cauterize a wounded soul?

And so, we pretend it’s a separate person. A different one. An inferior one.

Those are all our bedtime stories. It’s just us. The same as we’ve ever been. And much stronger than we like to give them credit for being.

Plenty are like me. We find people and tell them that we trust them to look after us. I know I did.

But who looks after us when they go home for the night?

Just us. And we’re a little questionable with our judgment when the door shuts.

All that’s left is the gentle hum of the fridge, the click of a light switch, and the sound of car keys in our pockets. Someone who knows good and well they’ve been fine all night — what’s another hit?

How do you trust someone like that?

Time and effort. No get-rich-quick, no sponsor, friend, or lover will keep you sober.

The only one that will is the one you can’t trust after breathing the words in one of many such meeting rooms — “I have a problem.”

It takes time because you have to learn to trust someone who has repeatedly violated that trust. Who’s hurt you deeper than most people will ever understand.

People will say it’s your own fault. That you should just quit. Just give it up—it’s that easy.

That’s like saying, “Just cut out half of yourself. You’ll be fine. Walk it off.”

It was Carl Jung who believed in the power of individuation. Maslow called it “self-actualization,” but they involve the same process. Integrating all the different parts of you.

Sounds easy, right?

Except you have to do what Jung called (and others misused since) “shadow work.”

Your shadow is the part you can’t trust. The part that wants nothing more than to rail a line, pop some pills, and chase it with a shot of rum.

Shadow work is learning to live with that part — and love it the same as you love the parts of you that you can trust.

The parts of me I don’t like, they have good enough reasons to exist. They try to help, in their misguided way.

To keep me from hurting. To keep me from being afraid. To help me be liked and accepted. It’s a big reason that many people who don’t fit into nice, neat little social boxes; or whose neural wiring works a little differently, come to addiction.

We find others like us. Who do it to be liked. To be loved. To be unafraid.

Knowing the real reason, why that part of us was conceived and born — helps us understand.

And, in time, most of us end up on couches in offices, rather than cold steel chairs in the fellowship hall of the First Baptist Church of Wherever, USA.

We listen to that part of us. We understand why it worries. And we give it better ways to help us.

That’s how we become whole again, usually after life has left us with a hole we need to fill with cheap beer and cigarettes. Or whatever poison we pick.

Integration is couples therapy for the soul.

Trust is a hard thing to regain. With others, as much as ourselves. It takes a lifetime.

While you never may really be friends again, that part of you can become your weird roommate.

The process is never sexy.

But healing always is.

As an aside. If you, like me, can’t always trust yourself:

Highly recommend Al-Anon.

If Christianity isn’t your thing, but want a more spiritual approach, Recovery Dharma is wonderful.

And remember — it’s not just you. All of us have our demons. Some just scream a little louder. You don’t have to listen to them alone.