Addiction IS a choice. It is not, however, a GENUINE choice. Things change. Attitudes, external circumstances, etc. The factors influencing your choice may change and thus your decision will change.
While it may seem like a moral failure to anyone without the requisite experience that one would place such a high value on drugs enough to choose an addictive lifestyle, this is not the case. If you have all the information, I believe that it actually makes a great deal of sense to place such a high value on drugs. All spiritual theories aside, what we are is essentially an interaction of neurochemistry. What motivates even the most altruistic of actions is ultimately how the chemicals in your brain feel about what you just did, and the introduction of drugs into the equation affects this in a dramatic way. The "healthy" things that most people are disheartened to see removed by an addiction are actually just replaced by a more precise and predictable tool to achieve the end that they provided in the first place: all those little neurotransmitters bouncing happily in your brain. Given that, isn't it logical to say that a smarter person will use a more effective tool?
It seems like a clear choice, but of course it can't be, because drugs do in fact cause a lot of people great problems. The problem is, using the tool analogy, that the effectiveness of the tool experiences diminishing returns, and eventually becomes worthless, or at least less effective than the other non-drug tools available. When this occurs, it does make sense to stop using the less effective tool (i.e. stop getting high). But the relative effectiveness of the tools change as internal chemistry and external circumstances also change following a period of abstinence. Drugs will work again, taking you to that place that is really not achievable without them.
So the question comes down to "do I really want to forgo that thing which every molecule of my biology and every shred of my being recognizes as the state which the human animal was designed to strive for?" And that is the true paradox of drug use and addiction. It is ultimately a question that each individual has to make peace with and find some way to manage. It a thing easier said than done, and many people struggle with it their whole lives, often unconsciously.
Unfortunately, the 12 steps address this question in only the most superficial way. On one hand, they want to tell you that the best "tool" (I like this analogy) is God. But then they want to waffle on that in order to appear all inclusive. They want to say it isn't God (although in practice most people insist that it is) but rather a "higher power" that will help you get what drugs give you, and that that higher power is whatever you choose it to be. This makes absolutely no sense because it doesn't address the central question. God may not exist, and there is no guarantee that whatever you might choose to replace God will work to either do the same thing for you that drugs could, or to remove the fact that you actually need what drugs provide. Rather, it offers a false answer and then piles on as much rhetoric as possible to convince you that the answer is genuine. "Simply believe hard enough that it will happen and it will." It is the ultimate placebo effect. It takes the real fact that drugs "work" and tries to convince you that its not true. But it is.
I don’t mean to imply that drugs are the ultimate solution. As I have already conceded, drugs stop working after a while. But the fact remains that, neurochemically, drugs work better than any method which doesn’t include drugs for a period of time. They are a temporary solution. One can say that, given that the satisfaction and happiness that drugs offer is only temporary, that they should be discounted entirely. But this ignores the fact that natural means of achieving the satisfaction that drugs provide are non existent. The brain simply cannot achieve such feats without external chemical assistance. Since the brain is hard wired to pursue the rewarding experiences that drugs provide to a greater degree than any other means, any non-drug method of achieving that end will ultimately come up short. Thus, drugs are not the solution, but abstinence is not the solution either, because while a high life provides greater satisfaction (in terms of brain chemistry), it is not sustainable, but the satisfaction (in terms of brain chemistry) provided by a clean life can never equal that of one based on getting high.
What the 12 steps do is deny this fact. They tell you that what is achievable without drugs is better than what is achievable with drugs. They attempt to redefine happiness, and then offer a path that allows you to achieve what they have defined. If you accept their definition of the ultimate goal, then it makes sense. I don’t. I believe that, by virtue of the fact that we exist in the physical realm, our happiness is based on our physical chemistry. And my experience supports this conclusion for me. Drugs take me to the peak of the mountain, and without them that summit is beyond reach. And I believe that we are hard wired to strive for that peak. To turn away from it is a constant struggle, a constant denial of the human condition.
What 12 step support groups do is create an arena in which that struggle is played out. They offer a figurehead on which to rely to deny the essential truth, that we want the feeling of being high more than we want anything else. But unless, in actuality, God exists, then the figurehead, the “higher power” which the 12 steps postulate, is a self made creation, empowered only by ourselves. So in the end we are left back where we started, constantly fighting against the tidal pull of the unequivocal solution that drugs provide.
It’s a catch-22. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. Take your pick: Fight to get high, or fight not to get high. It’s still a fight. The repetition and lifetime commitment that NA proffers is a testament to that. If one were truly freed by the 12 steps, then the continued participation in the organization and the program of living that NA requires would be unnecessary.
So, if for whatever personal reasons you have, you choose to fight against drugs, you could choose NA. They offer social support and a psychological crutch in the form of "turning over your will." Attending meetings is the most overt alternative because it is patently anti-drugs/drinking. This is not to say, however, that choosing any other lifestyle that does not include drug use is any less anti-using. It is simply another species of the same animal. It is because of this reason, IMO, that 12 step meetings are simply a big loud noise about nothing. Because, as I have argued, I believe the higher power concept to be a falsehood that fails to eliminate the fight that you will have to continue, the uniqueness and usefulness of NA ceases to exist. Their primary method of dispatching with the struggle involved in remaining abstinent is only so much empty rhetoric, and the qualifier that the NA philosophy can be interpreted subjectively is only a means of keeping the organization alive by dancing around the fact that their claims are false.
Taking an attitude of "it means whatever you want it to mean" is a cop-out IMO. If it means whatever you want it to mean, then how can you say it means anything more than anything else?
Everything can mean whatever you want it to mean, so then what is the point of adopting the 12 step philosophy over any other way of life that is incompatible or unrelated to drug use?
Ultimately, success in remaining clean comes on the neurochemical field, not the spiritual one. It’s easier not to get high when we are as close to getting naturally high as possible. This means becoming engaged in life in a way which stimulates the brain’s reward response as much as possible, which is essentially living a traditionally happy life: having hobbies, friends, success, emotional well being, and health, while avoiding stress, sickness, depression, and other negative factors. This is something that does not require the philosophy of NA in the least. So, as far as I can see, what’s the point in sitting in a church basement every night rattling on about the fact that it’s hard not to do drugs. Of course it is! I’m not particularly strengthened by hearing it over and over. If the social support given by the meetings helps you, then by all means pursue it, but it may not, and if it doesn’t, don’t go. Moreover, you could also explore other avenues of social support, such as seeing a therapist or simply hanging out with people who don’t do drugs but are not involved in NA
If you do find that meetings help in this singular way, however, try to remember that it is no guarantee of anything. Personally, I get tired of the fight on either side of the coin after a while. When regular life gets too I end up getting high, and when getting high stops working and starts hurting, I go back to regular life. Despite repeated declarations of “I’ll never be able to stop using,” and “I never want to get high again,” I always end up doing both. I’ve never been much of a fighter anyway. Maybe you’ll do better, but in my experience and from what I have seen in others, NA has nothing or very little to do with it in the end. If you are able to be successful in keeping yourself happy without drugs, and you are somehow able to make peace with the fact that you will never feel that high again, then great. But often times life conspires to make the drugs worth it, if only for a brief time.
Good luck?
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
. Thanks for the well wishes, back at ya...
