So in my rehab they would say: quitting drugs is easy, you already did it.
Another thing they would often say was a promise that eventually hit home for me: we don’t quit drugs to live an ok life. We quit drugs to live an extremely good life.
My own life is better now than it has ever been. Drugs are not some shadow that hangs over me. They are something I am grateful for for having made me and I stay the fuck away from to protect this glorious shit I now have.
They even promised that my life would be better than even supposed normal people, which I thought was a scam so obvious it was dishonorable.
And lo and behold, my life is better than non recovering addicts by some distance.
The only thing that would make my life better, and every recovering addict who has done it confirms that it is harder than quitting heroin, is quitting cigarettes.
Thats some really good news - and also corresponds to my statement that, with some exceptions, it appears that one must have tested ones chemical integrity to be an all round stable psyche.
Im lucky I never could smoke more than one without getting nauseous. I tried to get addicted when I was 18. Always found the first cigarette very pleasant. But to me a drug harder than most. It goes to the head so directly and violently, I think I would get migraines if I smoked half a pack.
Hats off to you for ^this^ sir, for this ingenious piece of thinking. 
Took a lot of hard work and pain.
But then, compared to the prospect of what my life would have been without treatment, it was a breeze.
That’s why we always take a minute of silence at the beginning of AA meetings. To contemplate our luck and spare a thought for those of us still in the struggle or who just didn’t make it. It is as much in their honor as for our health that we do it.
Lol I actually don’t think you’re an addict. But just in case, your friend Pezer is always there if you need help.
Somehow I feel it could help also to read the Aeneid. It has something of Dantes crossing the inferno, you can already see how Rome had turned Greece dark -the Aeneid as an ode to Homer is botched, but as a portrait of a powerful soul with a great shadowy burden who does what has to do, and leave what he has to leave, it offers a large, wel built space between great arches on pillars- maybe the soul of Mithras.
Mithras a god whose initiation involved such things as pulling out all pubic hairs one by one, a kind of proto-Christianity for strange elites, many soldiers were getting initiated as well as that short lived emperor Julian who brought back for a short period the sacrifices to the old Gods.
Romans knew hard work and pain like no other people probably ever will. They hammered the world out of the ground.
Not my kind of sanctity. But I know what you mean, with the halos and stuff.
Testing one’s own pain. My father used to belong to a decidedly mithraic sect of the Catholic Church, the Opus Dei, whose adepts are encouraged to mortify the flesh and wear special dentured belts that make you uncomfortable all day or even make you bleed or itchy clothing and such things. Not as penance but, well you get it.
I did have some proclivity for it as a child, or no, rather admiration. A certain conquering Russian emperor had such proclivites.
Me? I have learned to have more respect for those who reap pain from the world than those who studiously inflict it themselves. The halo doesn’t impress me, and it really is just the idea of sanctity. The reality is that that Russian emperor was a maniach, the paintings of halos never actually pointed to anything other than the paintings of halos. S’why you need the mortification, to give it some realness, meanwhile it ends up that the mortification was the only real and the rest mania. Like a fever.
I started reading the Aenid once. I simply couldn’t deal with the dripping cornyness, so I stopped. Also don’t like Dante.
Romans knew all sorts of things. Aaaaall sorts of things.
Yes it corny. I read it with Latin, my teacher was trying to make it seem romantic but she needed a lot of mockery for that.
I didn’t know about the halos, but it makes sense from what Ive read about Julian.
He thought it was because it was righteous that Zeus should be revered.
Life is pain. mentioning pain in relation to something such as withdrawals, set right alongside of what society tells us, is one of those stupid things that we as humans do that become cliche, but we can’t really help ourselves from getting one good-natured bitch in. I think that many of us, having seen how many around us were whining and crying, and somewhat being blind to our whining and crying at times, each in our own way, those of us that mattered, found a way to take inspiration from others to not whine so much about certain things, yet can’t help but talk about it. It’s like, I knew better, I knew, but… -cry- …just a little bit, though.
Society doesn’t exist enough to tell anyone anything. S’just people.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1An3AkF_Sg[/youtube]
My friend thought this song was about they had killed someone.
Your compliment is an honor.
Life after Armaggedon seems to hold an endless supply of little gifts. Did I say little? I meant precious.
The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good.
Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. In trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest. But, as with most humans, he is more likely to have varied traits.
What usually happens? The show doesn’t come off very well. He begins to think life doesn’t treat him right. He decides to exert himself more. He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. Still the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?
Our actor is self-centered—ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired business man who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity? Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.
So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God’s help.
This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn’t work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children.
Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom.
In my case, it wasn’t really God. Like I said, I was too a snob. What I did was accept I was inadequate to run the show and let others do it for a while. Not that I ever stopped feeling resistance, but I was tired of the faliure.
At a meeting I went to the other day, a girl said the same thing. Putting her life in the care of God simply meant doing what her sponser told her despite thinking she knew better.
If you do this long enough, God will eventually appear all on his own, so that it is no longer any specific person or persons you are trusting.
So in lieu of God, I recommend putting one’s life in the hands of people and an honest idea of health. Pleasures can wait!
Good luck Gib. May the force be with you.
ehhh… this reads like the Communist Manifesto.
Pedro I Rengel
.
What is the strongest word or feeling which comes to you within this minute or minutes?
Luck?! Luck is when you are almost out of gas and yet you still, by the skin of your teeth, manage to get where you are going.
Luck has very little to do with it. Determination, hard work, endurance, courage, self-honesty, humility, self-caring, ad continuum got you from way back there to where you are now. There is a really exquisite, profound song which reminds me of what people go through or need to go through as they are in the fire so to speak.
LET ME FALL
Let me fall
Let me climb
There’s a moment when fear
And dream must collide
Someone I am
Is waiting for courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me
So let me fall
If I must fall
I won’t heed your warnings
I won’t hear them
Let me fall
If I fall
Though the phoenix
May or may not rise
I will dance so freely
Holding on to no one
You can hold me only
If you too will fall
Away from all these useless fears
And shame
Someone I am
Is waiting for my courage
The one I want
The one I will become
Will catch me
So let me fall
If I must fall
I won’t heed your warning
I won’t hear
Let me fall
If I fall
There’s no reason
To miss this one chance
This perfect moment
Just let me fall
[b]Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force… They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
William James [/b]
Arc- you’ve not been an addict, neither have I -
I see now how fundamentally it changes the universe.
If one has to admit to having no power before one is healed, that leaves a gigantic confusion about the truth, which is that one does have power, is power.
I really dislike and distrust AA and rehab philosophy, it is a religious surrender to the world of cowards, and the misguided belief that these cowards will become the bedrock of ones own self-worth.
It is the opposite to Heideggers place-giving philosophy, which grounds a human in his power; what rehab does is uproot the person from his power, so that he no longer has the power to “destroy” (or improve) himself, to grow.
I know an older guy who went to rehab, you can always see when he shifts into his “Im John, Im an alcoholic” mindset - he used to be a wild politician and a lawyer, now he is happy to take care of a demented cat and sit in his garden. Since he was “rehabilitated”, he has never trusted himself with anything worth mentioning again, including following through logical arguments to their end. His IQ used to be 180 or so, an absolutely brilliant man full of passion for all sorts of beautiful things and people. But the rehab priests got to him when he was most vulnerable and indoctrinated him into their will-less world.
I hope Pezer is too strong to take this path. But if not, I thank him for what he has accomplished as the autarkic will I got to know him as, and which purely for my own enjoyment I will continue to honour. It has been a privilege.
“The group” will alway only represents the collective weakness. Opposed stands the Clan, or the pack.