The Blind Eye of Addiction

According to the American Addiction Center, as of 2017 19.7 million American adults suffered from some kind of addiction. The group I’m concerned about are those that deal with the down-stream impact and chaos of addiction, the family, and the lifetime of pain they may encounter as a result of a loved one’s struggles. The shame a family member may encounter because of addiction can cause us to fundamentally change who we are, or in the case of children, change them to the point they are unsure of their own self-identity. In society though, many of these battered souls hide their pain from the world because their fear of embarrassment stings like alcohol on a fresh cut.

If you’re in the sphere of an addict, whether that’s by familial relation or friendship, you likely have an idea where I’m going with this. It doesn’t matter what type of addiction someone is dealing with-alcohol, drugs, etc-the impact of the addiction will affect far more people that just the addict. The real-world pain the addiction causes could be felt for many, many years, if not an entire lifetime, by those who are sometimes forced by circumstance to deal with the addict. Each and every day the addiction takes center stage demanding undivided attention and commanding the stage like Baryshnikov. If you know, you know.

Imagine waking up every morning knowing that you’ll encounter a tiger when you walk downstairs for breakfast. You don’t know whether the tiger will be sleeping or awake; whether it’ll be in a good mood or sour mood. Whether it’s looking for a fight or wants you to pet it or possibly even cuddle up to watch a movie. Your mind races when your eyes open, immediately stressing your body, because you remember the damage the tiger caused the night before but you love that tiger soooooo damn much. You long for the day the tiger shows you the same amount of unrelenting and unquestioned love you’ve shown it. Maybe today is that day; if not, maybe tomorrow. Confusion is the one constant you know will always be there.

This is exactly what those of us that have dealt with addicts and/or abusers in our life think about (I say abusers because many times abuse goes hand-in-hand with addiction and can be just as damaging. Regardless the form of abuse-physical, emotional, psychological, they all cause tremendous damage). Not a day goes by we don’t think about the addiction in some way; then we go into our protection mode-we begin making excuses for the addict for our own happiness and to create some form of constant in our life. We find ways to diminish our needs to keep the order. We shrink ourselves in many facets so that there is some semblance of normalcy. We don’t want our friends or extended family members to find out what an actual shitshow our lives are because we don’t need ANOTHER issue to deal with. The judgement could be crippling and the drama never-ending.

That’s why many of us are so good at creating; our childhood was filled with the fantasy of living that perfect life we see portrayed on TV sitcoms or, in the current age of social media, that (insert any social media platform-Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc) friend that looks to have it all figured out. The power of the human mind to protect us from the pain of reality is astounding. I know I became incredibly good at this, like world-class good. If it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be an expert at something, then I became the Michael Jordan of justification at a young age. As excuses raced through my mind as to why my father broke nearly every promise he made me, why he asked me how we got home the night before or why each year he’d forget my birthday, I could compose whatever excuse it took to bury a reality I’ve wrestled with my entire life-that my dad likely loved alcohol and gambling more than me.

Yeah, I said it: my father likely loved alcohol and gambling more than me. That’s some heavy shit to say, I’m aware, but in your world and my world, actions speak louder than words. We do what we want and we say what we think others want to hear. Now does that mean my father didn’t love me? Absolutely not; I think he loved me very much but the demons of addiction demand unquestioned allegiance and attention. Dad dealt with his mental health issues like many, many men born in the boomer era-with bottles upon bottles of brown liquor and cigarettes.

I say all of the above to show you why addiction stays in the shadows of the family and friend groups we all belong to. The pain is intense but as a man society’s expectation is that we eat our pain (or drink it) and do whatever it takes to deal with life, collateral damage be damned. Most all of you reading this probably had no idea that addiction has been a part of my life other that when I’ve spoken about my issues with food. That was all by design-so that I didn’t look any weaker than I already felt as a fat handicapped guy.

We must confront this willing blindness of those whose world revolves around the addiction another person suffers so that we can get them the help and support they need to lead a life that is full of meaning and love. It took me 42 years to BEGIN to figure out who I am; to stop wondering why I was always searching for the meaning of me. When I discovered the book Adult Children of Alcoholics (check out this link to the first post I wrote about it) it finally began to help me crack the cipher that’s kept my mind locked from discovering the true me.

By no means am I saying you or anyone else needs to go to the lengths I have to shine light on addiction. Absolutely not; all I want is to make sure we begin to remove the shame of addiction in order to create open and constructive discussions that can lead to solutions. We need to normalize help for both the addict and those impacted by the addict’s actions. Shame is very, very powerful and will make us do things we normally would never do, OR, it will stop us from doing something that we may need to do for our own good.

If you’re reading this you likely fall into two categories: you’re interested in what I’m writing and possibly the drama associated with it OR you’ve dealt with the tiger. If you’re here because you’ve wrangled more tigers that any person should have to, please know that you aren’t alone. You’ve got a huge family that is rooting for you, people that know how to keep that tiger under control so that YOU can flourish but you’ve got to be willing to bring forth the vulnerability needed to subdue that tiger. That vulnerability, in my mind, is one of the hardest things you’ll confront in your life because you have to admit to yourself that people you may have placed on a pedestal aren’t who you made them out to be. It’s taken me a long time to square with the fact that my dad had terrible addictions but that he did love me, just not as much as I wanted him to. Check out the Resources page here on ManVsMood for information; if you think you may benefit from Adult Children of Alcoholics, head over to their website.

I’m bringing all of you along on my journey so I want to make clear that I am still in deep with a lot of this stuff. When I wrote the ACOA post last week, it nearly broke me for a day. Writing this type of material requires me to reach into a painful part of my brain that I shut out a long time ago. It’s fucking hard but I look at it like making a sword-I get heated, beat on the bad emotions by confronting them and then cool down. By doing this over and over and over I’m making myself stronger, even if it’s only a little bit. With time I’m healing, without a doubt, and I will do my best to help you and others to do the same, I promise. I guess I’m kind of like a life-SkyCap-I’m here to help you lift the baggage someone else forced you to carry lol.

If you have questions, please feel free to comment below, hit me up on any of the social platforms-I’m @onehandman77 on IG or go to the ManVsMood Facebook page-and check out the ManVsMood Podcast on all the major podcast platforms.