What Your Addict Wishes You Knew About Them
If you’re the addict you are going to love this
I lost my little brother, Marty, to opiate addiction in 2019 when he died in my parents’ basement.
Before he moved back in with my parents, he lived with me three times, and I did everything that all the experts told me to do to help him. When that didn’t work, I did what I intuitively thought should work, but that didn’t work either. All it did was alienate him from me and those who loved him.
So, he turned to the people who understood him — other opiate addicts.
In an effort to better understand my brother, I started providing transportation for individuals struggling with opiate addiction to methadone clinics in Wisconsin. As much as I wanted to help my little brother and the people I was driving to methadone clinics, I never truly understood how people treated them until a few years ago.
My Painful Ephipany
I had sold all my business property and personal possessions — and I mean everything. All I owned was my clothes, a 2009 Dodge Caravan, and a lot of money.
I was also in a new marriage, had a new family, and was beginning a long and painful journey to hell. I was one of those people that if you were not living with me, you would have never known anything was wrong or guessed I was an addict. I was married for the wrong reasons, had no idea what to do with my life, and was miserable and depressed.
To keep my mask in place, I had to work hard to look the part. My appearance and intellect were the only things I could rely on to make me feel okay. At least I could look in the mirror and say, “You look good for being fifty, and you are still really smart.”
Nobody looked down on me for my problems because nobody knew about them. When I finally had experienced enough pain to go to a psychiatrist, the doctor covertly complimented me on my intellect and said I was only suffering from situational depression. She thought this because of how I presented myself.
I wanted to keep the identity that I was in control, even though I went to her because I felt like I wanted to die. That little bit of encouragement she gave me made me happy, as my identity and ego were being stroked, so I hung on to that identity as my life preserver of hope.
I also had hope because of the new marriage. I got married because I was looking for something — happiness through a relationship. I felt the happiest I had ever been during the first year of our relationship. But, I got married for the wrong reasons, and the marriage deteriorated quickly. The inevitable deterioration of the marriage was the driving force that led me to see the psychiatrist.
Quickly, everything began to unravel, and I got divorced, but not until we moved 2,000 miles away from my home and my friends in a final attempt to make her happy. I had squandered away all of my money and lost all my assets, except for the $25,000 ring that my ex-wife gave back to me. If you know anything about diamonds, the resale value is next to nothing.
Now divorced, with very little money and no assets, which had never been an issue before, I had to figure out what I was going to do to survive. One of the first things I did was go on a state-assisted health care plan. That’s not a big deal, except when you need something that doctors don’t want to prescribe.
What happened was I got an upper respiratory virus. This happens every couple of years. The only thing that stops me from coughing once the virus has been eradicated is codeine cough syrup. No big deal, right? But when I told this to a new doctor, his entire demeanor changed.
Since this was my first time seeing him, he started to ask me all sorts of medical history questions. When I told him my history, he said, “You must have had good health insurance at one time.” I didn’t think anything of his comment, at least for a few seconds. Then I realized he thought I was trying to pull the wool over his eyes just to get narcotics. He thought I was an opiate addict.
He was looking down at me like he was superior. I was run down from just getting over the virus, so I didn’t say anything. I ended the conversation as soon as possible and never went back to him.
What’s the purpose of this story?
The purpose of this story is to illustrate that as the poster child of white privilege, I had never experienced how people act condescending toward addicts until that day. For that reason, I am so glad I got sick when I did. That day I learned a valuable lesson and was given a window into how the world looks at addicts. It’s not only addicts that the world views with condescension: I think it’s everyone who is not like “us.”
Even people with the best intentions look at people who aren’t like them and cannot help but feel some sense of superiority. We do this because we want to feel okay, and the way most of us try to feel okay is by comparing ourselves to others and subconsciously saying, “I am better than that person.”
We do this all because we want to feel worthy of respect, have significance, and be valued. Not only is this true but most of us tend to look at others and subconsciously say, “Do I have to listen to this person because maybe they can help me get what I want, or can I ignore them.”
The easiest way to feel okay about yourself is to compare yourself to others and say, ‘“Except by the grace of God, there goes I.’” While the intention is noble, what we’re really saying is, ‘“I am better than that person, and thank God I am not like that.’” If we have a strong tendency to look at others with a sense of superiority when we are not in their shoes, it’s almost impossible to help them.
I believe the doctor I told you about wasn’t consciously thinking he was superior to me. This idea was embedded in his subconscious. Our society has established a perception that doctors are the most intelligent among us and should be put on a pedestal. Additionally, he’s going by what he has learned through his experiences with addicts.
I’m sure he thought he was helping me when in reality, all he did was alienate me from him and confirm an assumption that I already had — most general practitioners don’t know how to deal with patients suffering from addiction.
If this doctor treated me this way, imagine what he was doing and how he interacted with people who really needed his help and didn’t have the intellectual or financial resources to get what they needed.
I eventually called a doctor who knew me in my home state of Wisconsin to send a prescription for the codeine cough syrup.
Most people suffering from addictions look at people trying to help them the same way I looked at that doctor, thinking, You don’t have a clue what you are talking about, and you couldn’t care less about helping me.
When I became friends with the people I was driving to methadone clinics, they told me exactly how they looked at their doctors, counselors, the judges who sentenced them to court-ordered rehab, their parents, and those who “supposedly” loved them.
Their assessments were anything but flattering and demonstrated to them that no one gets them or cares about them, but other addicts.
Oppositional Energy
One thing that has become prominent in our society is what author Seth Godin calls “oppositional energy.” Instead of looking at all of us being in the same boat, we divide each other into oppositional groups.
The result of this atomic bomb is that we pick a “they’’ and look at them as the opposition. We decide that our way is the best way and that “they” are inferior, stupid, and wrong. This oppositional energy has become a subconscious thought for so many of us, and addicts are no exception.
So, how do we get someone who is doing everything they can to self-destruct to stop? How do we show them that we love them when all they want to do is push us away?
The best way to do this is to look at your pain from their addiction or your own addiction. And trust me, you are in pain because of what their or your addiction is doing to you. Then, see your oppositional energy in yourself.
Once you begin to recognize how you are comparing yourself to others subconsciously and developing oppositional energy towards them, something remarkable happens: you start to understand those who are different from you. And guess what? They really aren’t that different.
We all want the same things: to be loved and to love back, to be respected and feel worthy, and to feel safe and in control. Moreover, we’ve all gone through stuff, and you don’t know what others have gone through, even those closest to you.
My prayer is that you and those you love don’t have to go through what I had to go through to see the addict in all of us.
