You’re an alcoholic. Wonderful!
You’re addicted to sugar. That’s great!
You can’t control the amount of food you eat. Not a problem!
You’re obsessed with exercise. That’s cool!
We all have our dependencies, our addictions. Every single one of us.
My top three addictions are writing, confrontation (challenging everything and taking on challenges), and attempting to have as much wit as Oscar Wilde. These addictions are like badges of pride that I wear everywhere I go. At first I thought how interesting it was that one or all three addictions would be entwined with any conversation or any story I would tell people. Then I realized that these addictions are my story.
Being obsessed. Having addictions. Being dependent. All are powerful traits – and I mean that in a good sense!
The problem with being wedded to certain influences is when you wear the problem like a badge; when being an alcoholic becomes your story; when you tell everyone how attached you are to eating junk food, day in and day out; when you start using your addiction to drugs as an excuse for the life you’ve lived.
I had a friend who suffered a serious back injury. I was one of the first people who heard the story of how it happened. It was pretty silly. Weeks went by and I heard my friend tell the story over and over to everyone he talked to. In fact, by the 6th or 7th time, it seemed like it was scripted. My friend had the story down pat. It was as if my friend was ready to tell it for the next couple months. My friend was addicted to telling the story and dependent on the responses and type of attention that was received. How can my friend expect to recover when the injury is the story, and the story, my friends life?
The same goes for the alcoholic who is fine with telling everyone that they are. Who is fine with accepting that the reasons they treated people poorly and had a shitty life was because they were an alcoholic. They go to AA, to be grouped with other people who think they are special because they have an addiction. Am I against people getting together to overcome something like alcoholism? No. Am I against the idea that in going there that they have a signficant problem, an addiction that influences their thoughts and actions – and they believe they are special cases? Yes, there’s a big problem.
Every one of our addictions, whether it be alcohol, sugar, writing, singing, debating, planting, breaking things, or running; they all put us under an influence. Each addiction acts as a filter on our mind, sometimes filtering out good motives and considerations, sometimes filtering out the bad.
I was on an Improv team for a few years. Our troupe was called Improv Anonymous. We often opened the show up by getting in a circle, telling our names, and talking about our addiction to Improv. When we weren’t doing our show, we still did Improv: in class, at a friend’s house, in Culver’s. That Improv badge we wore with pride, what we were addicted to, altered every part of our lives.
I’ll say it again: Being addicted to something isn’t bad, whether it’s drugs or playing basketball. Being comfortable with announcing your addiction, wearing it like a badge of honor, and letting it become your story; that’s when we run into problems. There’s a reason why it’s alcoholics anonymous.
“The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but it never puts them on a level with true men.” – Amelia Barr
Stay Positive & Just A Heads-Up: It’s Easier To Change Addictions Than To Stop Them
Garth E. Beyer
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