Addiction and the recovery from it is a lengthy process that is super daunting when you face it alone. Yet so many people don’t have any other choice.
More often then not they are dealing with it alone because they have pushed everyone away with their behaviors.
Here is Alcohol Anonymous’s 12 step program. These are the steps every addict has to go through. Some skip a few or don’t do them in order, however they are all significant.
These steps can easily be adapted to any addiction process. Drinking, Drugs, sex, eating, Etc.
No one is perfect. I am surrounded by addicts of all sorts, in varied states of recovery. Some I had to give up on. Some I stayed too long. Some are worth the fight.
The 12 Steps, as outlined in the original
Big Book and presented by AA are:
1. Admitting powerlessness over the addiction
2.Believing that a higher power (in whatever form) can help
3. Deciding to turn control over to the higher power
4. Taking a personal inventory
5. Admitting to the higher power, oneself, and another person the wrongs done
6. Being ready to have the higher power correct any shortcomings in one’s character
7. Asking the higher power to remove those shortcomings
8. Making a list of wrongs done to others and being willing to make amends for those wrongs
9. Contacting those who have been hurt, unless doing so would harm the person
10. Continuing to take personal inventory and admitting when one is wrong
11. Seeking enlightenment and connection with the higher power via prayer and meditation
12. Carrying the message of the 12 Steps to others in need
Live life lightly 
Though I’ve not been personally affected by the opioid addiction/overdose crisis, I have suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related hyper-anxiety to have known, enjoyed and appreciated the great release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. I further understand the callous politics involved with this most serious social issue: Just government talk about increasing funding to make proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts, however much it would alleviate their great suffering, generates firm opposition by the general socially and fiscally conservative electorate. Therefore most, if not all, political candidates will typically, tragically avoid this hot potato at election time. Also, the lives of addicts may still be considered disposable, especially by governmental bean-counters and other decision-makers.
There’s a preconceived notion that substance (ab)users are but weak-willed and/or have somehow committed a moral crime. Ignored is that such intense addiction usually does not originate from a bout of boredom, where a person repeatedly consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked — and homeless, soon after — on an unregulated often-deadly chemical that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.
Serious psychological trauma, typically adverse childhood experiences, is usually behind a substance abuser’s debilitating lead-ball-and-chain self-medicating. The addiction likely resulted from his/her attempt at silencing through self-medicating the pain of serious life trauma or PTSD. Furthermore, we know that pharmaceutical corporations intentionally pushed their very addictive and profitable opiate pain killers — I call it the real moral crime — for which they got off relatively lightly, considering the resulting immense suffering and overdose death numbers.
I’ve found that, in this world, a large number of people, however precious their souls, can tragically be considered disposable by others. Then those people may begin perceiving themselves as worthless and consume their addictive substances more haphazardly. Although the cruel devaluation of them as human beings is basically based on their self-medicating, it still reminds me of the devaluation, albeit perhaps subconsciously, of the daily civilian lives lost (a.k.a. “casualties”) in protractedly devastating civil war zones and sieges. At some point, they can end up receiving just a meagre couple column inches in the First World’s daily news.
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nice post..
Thanks for sharing..
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