“It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour.”
― Gabor Mate
Human beings love to reduce complex problems into overly simplistic formulas.
Depressed? Think more positive thoughts.
Poor? Work more.
Socially anxious? Grow some balls.
If it were that easy, wouldn't there be no problems to even begin with?
What's more is that society has a lovely tendency to always trace the blame back to the individual. You are responsible for your depression. Never mind that the work system invites you with welcoming arms to fall into that hole. You are poor? Well clearly you are lazy and inadequate. Never mind that the system voluntarily creates poverty. You have anxiety? Something's wrong with you and your brain. Never mind that the demands of modern life are meant to kill you alive. You're grappling with addiction? Maybe it's about time you stop being so weak minded and get some willpower to solve your problem.
So long as the problem is yours, it's your personal responsibility to solve it. Even if society has put into place the perfect conditions for you to get that very problem in the first place. You ought not to forget: living in a capitalist society demands of you to never come to the table with problems without also coming to the table with a solution to those problems.
What's worse than popping benzo all day long is being permanently shamed for it. The stigma is like the cherry on the sundae of death. You suffer ; therefore you must be judged for it and labeled all kinds of reductionists shit. People who are addicted aren't because they lack proper willpower. What they lack is perhaps connection. And if you think feeling connected to the society in which we live in is as easy as saying Bingo, you are dead wrong.
The underlying motive that fuels our habit is precisely that. We escape from a world in which we feel profoundly disconnected from to enter one in which we feel welcomed. We're able to sit near a bottle of vodka for days on end because we've never been able to sit with our excruciating pain. Yet that doesn't make us weak, losers, or lazy pieces of shit. It takes an incredible amount of inner strength to cope with destructive habits on the regular while putting out this "I'm all good" facade to the external world.
You don't know what you don't know. You can't comprehend what you close your mind and heart to try to understand. People in pain will never feel heard if we're constantly deaf to what they really need.
