pretending, I arrange
pillows, I arrange and
I imagine
the space
you would fill, your
breath’s rhythm, your
mouth’s heat
by my shoulder,
in my hair, the
movement on my hip of
a single finger tracing
my pale skin.
I imagine
the causal tangle
of our legs.
and then
I close my eyes,
lean into you,
and sleep.
So a friend posted this, The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think.
I read it, a few times, and while it is not completely without merit and makes some valid points, it is an oversimplification of a complex disease, and ultimately draws conclusions and makes generalizations from limited data.
I completely agree that the way we treat addicts, that the ‘war on drugs’ only contributes to the problem. Criminalization and incarceration simply do not work. I do not agree that simply by making a better rat cage we can prevent or treat drug addiction.
The “Rat Cage” experiment was this. Put a rat in a cage, alone, with two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with heroin or cocaine. Almost every time you run this experiment, the rat will become obsessed with the drugged water, and keep coming back for more and more, until it kills itself. The conclusion was that once exposed to the drug the rat became addicted and then ultimately died from the addiction. There are different versions of this test, another, perhaps more relevant, experiment involved direct stimulation of the rat’s pleasure center in the brain when the rat pressed a bar. Here the rat would neglect activities such as eating or drinking to press the bar, and ultimately died.
Addiction is caused by a combination of several things that basically can be divided into three categories, drug use, stress, and genetics. It is a combination of these three things that will cause addiction. This is why some people can use without becoming addicted (no genetics, and/or little stress), and why some become addicted with only a small amount of use (strong genetic component, high stress).
Addiction happens when the combination of these factors trigger a reaction in the brain that causes a shift in neurotransmitter activity.
Don’t believe me? Watch This
Back to the article. They made a nicer rat cage, with rat balls, rat toys, other rats and the rats in there didn’t want the drugs anymore. Interesting right? Then they correlated this with Vietnam soldiers who used heroin and came home and didn’t need it anymore. In other words they left the lonely rat cage for the nicer one and the need for drugs went away. The point the author keeps coming back to is that drugs don’t hijack the brain and cause addiction, that disconnection does, and here is where I have the problem. Addiction changes the brains neurochemistry, addiction in the form of alcohol, drugs, or behaviours such as gambling, food, or sex. It is when this shift happens addiction occurs.
The danger of articles like this is that the implication is that if only you had a better rat cage your loved one would not have become addicted. If there had been connection, beauty, and nice rat toys addiction would not have happened. That is the family’s fault that addiction happened, if only they had done a better job. If only.
If only. Words that have echoed through my head for the last five years. If only I had done more, done things better. If only I had done this or that, or not done this or that. If only breaks your heart. Articles like this make me angry, because my son had a fantastic fucking rat cage, and he still became an addict. He had support, he had early, early intervention (in grade school through high school), he had mentors, social peer groups, doctors, a family that loved and supported him, and he still became an addict.
And yes, we did make him leave our home, I let my own son live on the streets and in homeless shelters, that doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving him. I wrote about that here and here and here and here and so many more times.
The rat cage, the sad empty one that makes the rats want the drugs, that’s not an addict’s home life, that’s an addicts thinking.
The rat cage is their thinking.
There is no easy fix for someone’s thinking. It’s hard, heartbreaking work, and sometimes to be able to do this work, you have to get to a very bad place so you are motivated enough to want to change. I know this because I have done the work, I have been to that dark cold place inside me and I have crawled out of it.
We need to stop blaming the victim, blaming the family, they have been through a hell that you cannot imagine, and to say that addiction happened because of a lonely rat cage is unacceptable, short sighted and heartless.
And yes, I am angry. I’m angry that there are people who care more about how this makes them look than about helping people who need it. That people who should be a foundation of support, are defensive and outraged that I would even have this conversation. That people would rather be angry with me than examine why I keep talking about this.
Micheal Lee comes as close to showing what this has been like for me as a person in long term recovery, and what is like to love someone suffering from addiction. He does it in 2 minutes. I have been talking for years and it still seems like no one really hears me.
one more, if you want to see a simple, but very clear representation of addiction
I’ve been reading Neruda.
You’ll have no idea what
that even means, but
I stare at his words, and I think
here’s a man who would
get me,
and then I remember,
he’s dead.
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates
on says and does says everything about them and has nothing to do with you
So this. I’m
riding my own personal crazy train right now. One of my own making, from the full steam ahead steam engine that burns red hot, fiery coal 24/7, through car after car full of personal baggage of all shapes, sizes, weights and colours, to the caboose that can only look back and wonder what, the fuck, was I thinking?
Aside: I did quit that job, and I LOVE the job I have now, the rest, it’s a work in progress.
This quote, and a few dear friends are currently what is holding me together. Also, quite a bit of chocolate, and singing to very loud music in the car, off key, every single time I drive. I’m not kidding, tonight is was Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. This guy does it better. Yesterday it was Eurythmics, Smiths, and R.E.M. all day.
I used to think that when I turned 20 two major things would happen. 1. I’d be given the ‘adult handbook’, and 2. my skin would clear up. You know the handbook that ALL the grown ups had. The one that gave you the answers to life. No more teenage and young adult angst for me, I would finally have the ansewers, and then BOOM, I would figure life out and become a happy, well adjusted financially secure adult. Apparently there is no such book. You can imagine my disappointment at having to figure things out for myself, and don’t even talk to me about my skin. Honestly, how does anybody figure anything out? I am a hot mess with passable hair on a good day, and on a bad, I shove it into a pony tail.
My ego took a hit last week. It was not pretty. I wasn’t so pretty, except for my hair, I had a good hair week, so it wasn’t all bad. I was just mostly bad. I may have got a little crazy, or as I like to say, super sized extra crispy crazy with side of hysterical hot sauce. Yep, I’m a grown up, and I still cannot figure this stuff out. My brain has this section I call the the hamster wheel section where all my crazy ideas spin faster and faster. I’m not allowed to go there without a friend.
how do they know?
Fortunately, I have great friends. I spent tonight drinking pop, diet pop even… from a Wonder Woman glass, eating chocolates and watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding with a friend, and then confessed all my crazy thoughts and actions and, she still loves me and sent me home with cupcakes and a fortune cookie that said “Be willing to admit you may be wrong, you’re only human”. That’s love for ya.
They do not have Congratulations on Your Continued Recovery cards, or at least they don’t have them at Walgreen’s, which is where I go to get items for his care package. I’ve already sent him granola bars, almonds, and a new book from Amazon, but I have to go to Walgreen’s to get cigarettes, cigarettes, some car magazines, a bit of chocolate, and a card. I have a system, first at Walgreen’s painstakingly explaining the cigarettes are not for me, and later at home as I pack and label his bi-monthly box with trinkets and necessities so he knows he’s not forgotten and is still loved. I cry a little each time, sometimes I cry more than a little, sometimes I keep the tears in my eyes all day without them ever falling down my cheeks. My chest feels tight, and I am drawn back into the place where hope and fear co-mingle whenever I stop my busy mind and think just of him.
Today it really feels like Spring, and as I carry my reusable shopping bag of cigarettes (because cigarettes or not, I’m still me) into the house, I stop to look at my garden. My front garden has gone from snow to mud in a week, and for days I have been crawling in this mud looking for the first signs of life. Today the daffodils are breaking through the ground. Today I found the first buds of the Lenton Rose under the snow. Today my dog tore through the yard unimpinged by snow, and sent clumps of mud flying in his joyous wake, and today, I stood and listened to the cardinal I’ve named Oberon sing from the still bare maple tree. Today Spring is here. Today you can hear hope in the air, see it the mud, and for moments I feel it in my chest.
In the cycle of nature there is no such thing as victory or defeat; there is only movement.”
― Paulo Coelho,
There is no such thing as victory or defeat; there is only movement, and so we keep moving. As long as there is life, there is hope, and today there is life, today there is hope.
There have been other Springs, other hopes, some have lived, many died, but I’ll hold these little bits of it close, at least for today, and maybe when I’m mailing his package this afternoon there won’t be as many tears floating in my eyes, or maybe there’ll be more, but they’ll be the good kind of tears, maybe.
I likely shouldn’t be writing this, I’m tired, am nursing a migraine, and am not wearing my glasses; god knows what spelling mistakes and poor choice wording options I will make, but here I go, because it’s been too long since I’ve put words to a page or screen. Last night was the senior class party at the high school. My youngest, much to my surprise, is a senior this year so I, being the plucky parent I am “volunteered” (it was “mandatory”) to set up on Friday, and work part of the evening Saturday. It’s a big, fat, hairy deal. Twenty three different themed rooms, food, food, food, blaring music, and of course 700ish teenagers making their way through the whole thing. From my spot, in the pool hall (yes we had pool tables, and hoops, and foosball – I told you, it was a big deal) I watched various groups of kids swarm in, out and about. For a while it was really interesting, seeing kids that I had first seen in grade 1, now with facial hair and/or makeup and a bit of swagger. For moments it was poignant, the kids who had self injury scars that showed just below their T-shirts, the kids that were obvious trying really hard to fit in, and for a while it was painful, when I would see that kid who reminded me of Graham. That smiling, awkward kid, with the baggy pants, the baseball cap, and the bit of over the top swagger and laugh that may have been a cover. When I would see that kid, my heart broke a little. Graham was too messed up to go to his senior party, I can’t remember the particulars, but it was not even a consideration. Ironically, (maybe there’s a better word), he called me while I was there. And then I came across this video on Facebook this morning, and it did me in
What started Graham down his troubled path, was kids hitting him up at school for his ADHD drugs. He had problems fitting in for years and years, and only recently I found out how badly he was bullied on the school bus, but selling his ADHD meds was the way he found to fit in, to not be that outcast, to make “friends”. If you read this blog, you know where this lead him. So the video. In the video I saw all the places I could have done more, should have known sooner, should have tried harder, defended him more, but truth be told, I really had no idea really, what he was going through. Hindsight. He is doing better than ever now. Nine months clean and sober, and the meds he takes seem to have brought the unbearable mental battleground in his head under control, but it’s a long hard road. He recently was bullied at the place he stays, and put up with it for way too long, told no one, because that’s the only way he had learned to deal with it. Thankfully it was addressed, the aggressor removed and Graham is now being taught how to advocate for himself, five (at least) hell filled years after he was first bullied in school. When they told me about it, I wanted to say, hey, I really tried to teach him that, really. I did, and I had counselors, countless social workers, guidance counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, life coaches, tutors, addiction therapists, group therapists, martial arts instructors, peer groups, even a neuro-psychiatrist to help me, but it was not enough. I wanted them to know that I wasn’t that parent who buried their head in the sand, that I tried with everything I had to help him. That the times I sent him out and let him live homeless ripped out a piece of my heart that will not heal. That I look into the eyes of every homeless person I see so I can see what my son endured. That I read every day about the deaths, and the agonies that addicts and their families endure and remember what it was like, and feel so very, very lucky that my son is still alive. I wanted to say all of this, but I let it go, and talked about where he is now, but it still sits in my head, and in my heart. What could I have done better? differently? What did I do that made it worse? Could I have prevented this? I know the answer. No., I could not have prevented it. I know this in my head. I know I am far more fortunate than so many of the families I still am in contact with. I know this. My heart still hurts when I see these wounded kids. I know I’ve put this up before, but if you have the time, it’s worth watching again
Vermont 50 Shades of Gray Teddy Bear – WITH ACCESSORIES
Okay so Valentine’s day is not my favourite. Maybe it’s the relentless consumerism, the over priced flowers, the heart shaped boxes, or this year, THIS – what the Honest-To-God-FUCK? A Teddy Bear with fucking handcuffs! WITH HANDCUFFS.
But today, I’m actually having a grand time, and here are my top 10 tips for getting through this 
yourself a new damn copy. Read it. In bed.When all else fails, watch this
sometimes
I stay up when I should sleep, and
sleep when I should be awake
sometimes
I talk when I should listen, and
remain silent when I should speak
sometimes
I want to be still for days,
wrapped in quiet.
then sometimes
I remember you, and
the way you used to be, and
the way I used to be.
sometimes, I hold my used-to-be-self
in cupped hands, and
then place her gently down,
and go back to living.
It’s not my life h
as been any more or less difficult. There are no new crises pressing down on me. The old ones still wrap around me, their weight about the same as a heavy sweater, one that you sometimes forget that you’re wearing, and one that you sometimes wrap yourself up in, hiding your hands in the sleeves and your head in the collar. Sometimes I panic at the sight of its heavy, tattered cloth, my heart grows cold as I notice the bits of frayed thread and my world feels terrifying. These are the times I grow quiet, the times I pull inside myself and sit.
Outside it’s somewhat grey, cold and damp, sweater weather. This morning I slept late and moved slowly. My dog has gone from running outside to sleeping by the fire. There are birds in the feeders, cardinals, chickadees and a squirrel dashing from tree, to tree. For hours I’ve said nothing except the to the dog, and written very little.
Sometimes I think I could be silent forever, pulled inside myself, wrapped in my sweater.
I didn’t plan to do nothing today, there are many important and pressing things that I should be doing, but the stillness and silence had a greater pull so I leaned into them.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will do important things.
Emma and Toad 