In upcoming months I will be working with a group of really amazing kids trying to assist them in completing (hopefully - fingers crossed) some difficult athletic events. These kiddos are already equipped with some of the most natural mental endurance, and it's because they survive a daily battle with one of the most stigmatized mental illnesses in modern day.
How many of my readers believe (or know someone who believes) that addiction includes an element of choice?
Family members of the people who struggle with addiction, coaches of the people who struggle with addiction, heck, even the doctors of the people who struggle with addiction, often still rest their final judgement on the idea, "But YOU picked up the drink. YOU purchased the drug. YOU, the sufferer, knew what the consequences of your actions were before you ingested a substance that would hurt you."
And I mean I get it. To a degree I honestly get it.
Addiction is a horribly manipulative, confusing, wolf-in-sheep's-clothing little devil of an illness. But let me paint this picture for you in some different colors.
Imagine you are stranded at sea.
You're sitting on a tiny life raft.
The sun is beating down on you.
The hopelessness is starting to sink into your consciousness.
You're hot; you're deeply uncomfortable.
Your brain is starting to tell you that you really need to drink something.
Now,
It is common knowledge that drinking salt water will actually dehydrate a person.
You know this.
You are fully aware (as those with addiction are) that if you drink you will actually make yourself worse.
And that knowledge and that awareness keeps your from succumbing to the salt water for the first few days.
You tough it out.
You dig deep into your mental fortitude and you remind yourself that it's not good for you to drink the water.
But then day 5 comes around.
Or 6.
Whatever day it is that your brain starts SCREAMING at you that you need that substance that's right in front of you.
That substance is bad.
Logically, pragmatically, you know it's bad.
But as the need gets greater and the urge gets louder the logic part of your mind becomes more and more shut off...
Suddenly, you're drinking the salt water for the immediate relief and the long term effects of your actions are being thrown to the bottom of the ocean.
We, as a society, don't criticize or judge the person at sea who drank the salt water; yet, we damn the person with addiction who relapsed.
Both actions were technically a choice.
Both actions involved a person who knew the consequences.
But one is an understandable weakening of mental fortitude and the other is irresponsibility.
To those who are still with me, or to my open-minded readers, please consider this amendment to your view of addiction: That for someone suffering from addiction using / drinking is NOT a choice, rather, using / drinking is a compulsion.
I hope I am still alive for the day that neurology understands more of the human brain and where certain mental illnesses stem from - because I would be willing to bet my retirement that there are similarities between what causes an OCD compulsion and what causes addiction. Someone with an addiction who drinks / uses is feeling the same overpowering mental sensation as the person with OCD who touches a door knob 70 times. We scream at both sufferers, "Why can't you just stop!?" Yet the person can't stop. Despite an extreme awareness that using / drinking or touching the doorknob is destructive the sufferer is often unable to stop on their own.
Maybe, if we can amend our views of addiction to fit this notion into our understanding, then we won't be so critical of those who struggle. In this view, those who relapse are not making a lapse in judgment and/or an irresponsible, bad decision. Instead, those who struggle are simply having a moment of weakness in the daily fight against a difficult disease.
The people who overcome this are warriors, not villains.
Those kiddos are warriors too.
And I am excitedly awaiting the day that more people are progressive enough to see that reality.
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