The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break a heart.
How can society’s stigmatized tongue lashing of addicts stop? The often melancholy opinion addicts hold of themselves needs to change.
#AddictsLivesMatter
How can our culture unite in a positive, productive front and finally crawl out from the bedrock of shame and misinformation?
We must petition the public and the recovery community to sway away from a self-pity city to a healing haven.
Imagine a place of restoration and acceptance, where we stop counting the number of fatalities and failures; focus on solutions! Hopefully, with eyes and hearts truly wide open, we will see the malady of addiction for just what it is…a DISEASE!
“Sometimes we go about feeling pity for ourselves, but behind our back, a great wind is carrying us all along.” Ojibwe proverb
No one is sent into our lives by accident.
We don’t wake up completely off course from the path of life by accident. As hard as we try — we have NO control over the pace of time. Second chances are gracious gifts, but unfortunately, some see these as another blind signal that they’re invincible.
Some supernatural spirits, like the good Mother Earth, may guide us like MapQuest when we need to make decisions. But many people have difficulty trusting themselves or others, especially addicts because they’ve been trusting a crafty and canny disease for so long.
Our families aren’t picked for us — just like our height or our skin color wasn’t fashioned for us.
Some things in life are just facts. Genuine genetics, just as simple as my eyes are green, I’m 5’4″, and I’m an addict.
Falling victim to the pain of whiplash via a car accident is quite different from being overcome by the physical, psychological and soul-sickening grip of addiction.
Unfortunately, many of us have a foggy view of these different realities. The indisputable, stone-cold fact is that addiction is a disease, just like any other person may check off items while filling out a “new patient form” at a doctor’s office.
I doubt nurses gasped when reviewing a new patient’s chart and seeing high blood pressure checked off. But if you answer yes to the question “Have you ever been hospitalized for a mental illness or addiction”; some medical professionals treat you differently, like you wrote in leprosy on your form.
Even though our nation now witnesses a heroin epidemic stealing hundreds of souls each day, people still may see this as an issue of weakness and incompetence.
No human is born without some affliction.
No soul I’ve meet woke up in an ER stating, “Thank God, my addiction is in high gear again”! I recall the day when my Dad announced that he had to quit smoking and lose weight or he was going to die; “I’m going to quit cold turkey”, he stated!
So as a bare pre-teen, ankle-bitting believer, I hopped on my bike and peddled to Acme food market. I purchased a pound of sliced turkey from the deli and gleefully brought it home for him to eat for dinner.
He would indeed be cured after one hearty filling of a triple-decker turkey sandwich. Right?
I was misinformed, often like society’s dimness regarding addiction or mental health issues.
I would place gold stars on a calendar in Dad’s garage workshop for each day he didn’t smoke. I hid the remainder of his Camels in the attic next to the old Xmas ornaments.
Out of sight, out of mind — could it be that easy?
Months later, on a dull Saturday afternoon, I snuck into the basement with one of the hidden Camels and had my first cigarette.
The savior now needed saving.
I didn’t belittle or shame my good friend Mark when he killed himself when I was in high school. I understood his intense pain and inability to open the door labelled “help”. I wasn’t appalled when I learned my close, kindred spirit; brother-in-law was tackling excessive numbers of brain operations because his disease of hydrocephalus had come back to haunt him.
We are not Gods, androids, zombies or monsters — we are completely incomplete.
Emotions are hard to regulate or embrace, like a dog seeing its owner come home, each with their tail wagging full force. Then a day later, someone may be devoured with doom when they glance at the future.
The disease of addiction or any mental or physical disability can be sinister and deadly and can turn an individual and their family upside down. It gives us a chance to change, rise to the occasion and stand tall without being stigmatized. Or it can make us crumble under its villain-like stance.
It can bully us into isolation or drive us down a super-sonic speedway of denial.
Circumstances and life events we try desperately to control can pave a path of insanity — like a forest fire consuming everything in its way. We find ourselves trying to catch a whisper of serenity, but without help from outside ourselves, we become exhausted and defeated.
Time is a gift; to me, the most precious of measurements.
How does one find time to save themselves while trying to help family and friends, work, organize bills, shelter our children, walk the dog, dash to Walmart for cat litter — let alone socialize? Or stay sober and spiritually fit?
How many more funerals do people have to attend until we wake up? Is 150 overdoses each day enough, or do we wait until it becomes a more significant epidemic? We didn’t start wearing breast cancer survivor pins until almost all our female acquaintances were buried.
The more time that I spend in the rooms of recovery, I have — without a doubt found that if you petition to your higher power with an open heart — you may get lessons that are delivered with a hard punch!
These teachings stick to your soul and make your heart seem to grow an extra chamber. We defrost. At first, we become unhinged, like someone blindly looking for exits from a smoke-filled movie theatre; that’s rerunning a shit show called “This Is Your Life”.
We slowly glue our body, spirit and relationships back together. Once we surrender, this calm chamber opens up for us to be filled with hope. Small doses at first, but like the heart is a muscle — behaviors of blind faith — moving in awkward directions we had resisted before; seem to strengthen this muscle.
I have to want (not need) to get better; years spent in misery can become oddly as addictive as the drugs themselves.
For me, using was alluring because not caring allowed me to check out and not follow through on anything except getting high, and then no one expected anything from me. My shame and insecurities were as high as I was souring. I didn’t have to process the fact that I was raped in college, engaged in cutting behaviour as a teen or even that someone might still love me, even though I felt like a dress on a clearance rack that nobody wanted.
Good or bad; statements I heard like “Oh Jeannette’s a losing bet, leave her to rot” or “Jeannette’s doing wonderful; wonder what great plans she has in store for her life”!?Ugh, the pressure and guilt, either way, scared me senseless.
But, these times of either feeling shameful or serene required work, asking for help and unclenching my grip from my trumped-up illusion of control.
Joy to me is realising I don’t know A LOT about many things.
In every book I read, any rationale or behavior born of intellect was just a roundabout. I ended up right back in the same spot I had started.
The more you HONESTLY know yourself, the less judgmental you become of others. I just started listening, taking suggestions and screaming “NO” to my disease one hour at a time.
What a gift to be relinquished of the bondage of a loathing, destructive, self-centred disease. To walk away from the debating society and stop writing myself really bad infomercials.
No more pointing fingers at others for my mistakes. Less gossip and more empathy are essential. Humans who pause, who don’t judge and are more grateful; full of faith instead of fear — become imperfect or HUMAN.
Imagine that — just a human being?! Which is exactly who I am and where I am; it’s where I began and where I’ll end. And I’m okay with that today.
Slowly I became unhinged from Step “Zero”, called “I got this”, and moved out of self-pity city. I’m blessed and a mess. A messenger, mother and human in recovery from a chaotic disease that no longer holds me, hostage.
My freedom now runs a parallel path with my ability to trust an imperfect process.
I still move forward even if I feel I’m confronting a mountain, like unhealthy gossip, or smooth strides like walking my dog or throwing on a meditation podcast. I’m simply grateful my daughter visits me during college breaks at home with a huge hug and not at a jail or a cemetery plot.
There’s help out there. There are lovely links and phone numbers to call right on this website.
In New Jersey, please reach out to:
www.addictslivesmatter.info
(856–225–0505) OOPP — The Opioid Overdose Prevention Program.
(855–652–3737) NJ Connect for Recovery — which provides confidential services for addicts and families from certified drug and alcohol counsellors.
Visit a Partnership for a Drug-Free NJ at www.drugfreenj.org
City of Angels NJ Inc. at www.cityofangelsnj.org
Wellspring Center for Prevention at www.wellspringprevention.org
The NJ Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services at www.state.nj.us/humanservices/dmhas/home/hotlines or call (844) 276–2777
