It really is baffling that people spend tens of thousands of dollars on a rehab that just tells you to attend free group meetings in your community. Profit off of the fears of parents!
I see it like this. We've all felt incomplete, imperfect, inadequate, etc. Drugs make us feel happier and like better extensions of ourselves. We also may use people to make us feel better, even if this leads to terrible relationships. We crave that (temporary) improvement, but due to it's temporary nature, we have to keep chasing it, and this endless loop of chasing and chasing leads to extreme suffering, and when we break out, we're no better than when we started.
So we go to rehab and we are actually told that we are powerless, weak, have a disease, etc. We are then told that we need a higher-power, greater than ourselves, that we need to do this checklist of things, that we need to depend on these people. Okay....but a lot of other people suck and let me down, and the higher-power leads me only to intellectual confusion. So the behavioural patterns - looking external to yourself to try and find people or things to make you better, and that you depend on to sustain your recovery - are all the same. It's no longer illegal drugs, but it's still setting yourself up for the shame that is an endless quest for temporary betterment of yourself. The dope may not have you anymore, but the recovery people do!
Last time I was in IOP, I actually walked out of a session after telling everyone that my inner power was my higher power, and that every single thing that has ever happened to me was my fault, but also that everything that could happen in the future would start from right inside of me. God does not work in mysterious ways. God isn't going to make sure that everything is okay. Things are BAD and the only way out is not giving into the bullshit that we are told in recovery. That the real leap of faith isn't trusting others or God, but to actually understand that you don't have to supress an addictive personality or an intelligence that craves expansion and pleasure, but you just have to transform your desires to things that don't fuck your life up like certain drugs. The leap of faith is that unlike what they tell you in recovery, you can go from a weak person to a strong person just looking inside of yourself and not reading any books or attending any meetings. Obviously everyone in the room looked at me with shock and the facilitator immediately was like "don't listen to Redleader..."
But ya, dealers, cops, rehab people...they all want to take advantage of you for their own gain. They also feel incomplete and want to take your money or your dignity to try and improve themselves. They are chasing the exact same type of thing. Getting out of the darkness is realising that this is the exact nature of the many of the problems in society and that once you figure it out and absolutely own it, you suddenly are one of the most powerful people in society and you see yourself as a leader who cannot be manipulated. You fix your life if you don't like where it took you just by not allowing anyone to control anything about your life at all. Especially the recovery people. You reclaim the idea that you are the most powerful thing in the universe that you know. Recovery people, the facilitators, the people in the groups (you know them...the ones that sit there with dumb looks like slaves wanting to do what they are told) suddenly become the biggest display of fear and recycled garbage ever. It's no way for a free, intelligent being to live.
</rant> But I despise recovery people in general.
