Today, we will talk about how asking for help is one of your most powerful tools. It might be hard, but we will address some of those concerns.
Today, we will talk about how asking for help is one of your most powerful tools. It might be hard, but we will address some of those concerns.
Hello there everybody. This is em again with another episode of thoughts of an addict. Feeling super lucky to be here again with y'all today started school today, and I am. Really fired up right now because I am indeed a nerd and I do love school and I'm super thrilled to see all of my classmates. So I'm in an especially good mood today.
Microphone Array (Intelr Smart Sound Technology for Digital Microphones)-1:I'm certainly not planning on launching another episode every single day. As school really starts to get ramped up. I'm sure this is going to lower infrequency, but right now, while I've got the energy and I've got the vibes, I'm going to keep turning these things out. And yeah, I hope everybody out there is having an excellent day. At the very least baseline you're alive right now. So I'm super happy about that. I hope you are too. And if you're not, let's talk a little bit today. Maybe, maybe something I say will activate something. Maybe something I say today will help you.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-1:Alrighty. So where did we leave off in our journey back to regaining a semblance of sanity, regaining an inkling of control over our lives. In learning how to live with, but arrest. This addicted part of our mind. So now we have acknowledged that. All right. This thing's got control over me. So, what do we do now? Do we just throw in the towel and say, well, yep. I'm PERMA. Fuck. This is it for me. This thing's going to control me forever. No. Absolutely not. If we were to. Say okay. Now I know that I'm an addict. Now I'm going to fix it. A hundred percent on my own. Yeah there. I think we might start running into some issues. So. This is the rub of today's podcast. And that is. We got to get help. Okay. We got to ask for help. Out from outside of ourselves, we can't just look within, because like I alluded to in the last episode, If we were to look within and we were to find the answer. Eh, we probably would've done it by now. And all of our addicts have. Pretty, uh, depending on the kind of addiction there, there's a very real expiration date on this thing. So we don't have a lot of time to dental around. It's time for us to ask for help.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-2:Makes me think of a quote by one of our, my favorite contemporary artists. Who said when I was younger. So much younger than today. I never needed anybody's help in any way. That of course is. The Beatles. And I think this resonates deeply with me. And I think it resonates deeply with all addicts. Maybe there are a lot of points in our lives where. Yeah, we actually really didn't need any help. A lot of the issues that we had, maybe we were able to overcome through the pure power of will alone. Through willpower, we could just push through those issues. But this is a different kind of animal. Because addiction. Is intricately linked. To ourselves. So all of that willpower that we use, uh, try to defeat our addiction. Is also willpower. That's being extended to keep the addiction alive. So we need to look outside of ourselves.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-3:Asking for help. Can be incredibly difficult. For anything really, but. I think it's especially hard to go out and look for help. And when it comes to addiction. And there's a few reasons for that. So the first one. At least for me. Was it's a tacit admission. It's a true admission that I am an addict. You can muse. Upon it on your own and think to yourself. Th you're an addict, but once you tell another person, once you put it out into the world, It becomes that much more real. And to a lot of people, myself certainly included. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to make this a real thing. My really an addict. If I never tell anybody, then maybe it'll go away. No. I put it out into the world and it became. More real than it seemed before. Which was crate news that meant I could finally do something about it.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-4:The second reason that I didn't want to go look for help. Is the fucking deep visceral guilt and shame. That comes along with admitting to another person that you're an addict. You have this image of an addict in your mind that it's the person climbing out from behind a dumpster. You know, the homeless person that you're walking over to get to work. That's a lot of peoples. Version of an addict. And you think to yourself, will. That could never be me. But as I've alluded to in earlier podcasts, There's a lot of different versions of dereliction. And the more obvious ones. Are actually in a lot of ways, easier to resolve because, indeed they're obvious. But. It is really fucking hard. And let me tell you, it takes. A lot of humility. To be able to sit down. And admit that you have this problem to another person. So why do I bring up humility? Because I think that leads into the third reason why it's incredibly difficult to admit. That you were an addict. And that's because of our egos. It's because of our narcissism. And I've said this before, and I'll keep saying it. One of the cornerstone pillars of being an addict is. Narcissism. And. You think to yourself? Or else I'll speak from the first person here. Okay. I would always think to myself. Em. You are excelling in college. You're doing well at work. From the outside people, pat you on the back and your mom and dad say, oh, you're doing such a great job. I have. I'm not an addict. I don't need help for this shit and hell. Even if I can admit that I'm an addict, I don't need help for them. Better than that. I'm stronger than that. But it's that narcissism, it's that huge ego of mine. That prevented me from going and seeking the help that I really needed.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-5:Everyone tells a story about themselves. What they are. What they are not. Who they want to be. But for the addict. Part of that story and indeed a very large part. It's very dark. And being able to admit that. Man. That's one of the biggest obstacles of that in this entire process. So once you're ready to get help. I think that's going to be the next turning point. The next cornerstone. And your journey of beating this thing. And the fourth reason people don't ask for help. And the final reason is. They don't know where the hell to go. Shit at first, I didn't know. I talked about this before I tried church. And. Christianity and, the God stuff. It was helpful. But it doesn't. Exactly. Speak to the disease of addiction, for example, you can go to church and you'll get a lot of great things from the sermons, but that's not going to cure your diabetes. And exactly the same way going to church. It's not going to cure your addiction. Maybe it'll make you feel better. But the problem is still going to be there.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-6:And after that I tried therapy. I would highly, highly encourage. Everybody to do therapy. And this doesn't just go for the addict. This doesn't even just go for the recovery on it. This goes for everybody. And then I, this has always been a strong, maybe hot take of mine, which is if you have the insurance to cover it and you're paying what, 15,$20 for a copay. You're spending an hour each week. Literally just talking to somebody who understands your mind better than you understand it. You might have every single thing in the world going for you. But how could it hurt to talk to somebody who studied the human psyche for 10 years? It just makes no sense to me. Why you wouldn't do it? But yeah, for the addict. I would recommend therapy. I think it's incredibly valuable to do cognitive behavioral therapy. I don't know if that's enough in its own, right. To get you over addiction, meeting with somebody for once a week for an hour might not be enough. But it's certainly a good starting point. And in the same vein of therapy. I don't hate psychiatry. Sure. It's drugs. I'm an addict. Shouldn't be doing them, but. I think that there can be a lot of value in psychiatry if, and only if you're honest with your psychiatrist about what your problem is and what your addictions are. Your addiction is going to try to. CAEP itself out as hard as it can. When you're at that psychiatry list in the back of your mind, you might be wondering who let's see if I can get the doctor to prescribe me X, Y, and Z. Ugh, that's just going to compound the problem. If you do go to psychiatry, you're going to have to go in there. And be more honest than you've ever been in your entire life. Like your life depends on it. And indeed it does.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-7:So I tried all these methods and in their own right. Even combined, it simply wasn't enough for me. What I ultimately needed was a community. Uh, community. Of addicts. They constantly supported each other and had their backs. So I started going to. Narcotics anonymous. It's a 12 step program, as I'm sure I've mentioned. And I remember that first day I went in this individual, greeted me there. And. For no reason. He had a smile on his face and I was messed up, man. I she's as Christ probably my first day being clean in. At least a month. And I did not want to fucking be there. But. At the end of the meeting. This nice friendly older guy with a smile on his face. He tells me young man. I want to see you back here next week. I'm thinking to myself, fuck. I don't want to fucking come back here. And it starts getting closer and closer to Sunday. And I'm thinking to myself. Damn. I don't want to let this older dude down. And of course. Wanting to go to not let somebody down. Isn't the best reason to continue seeking help for addiction. But Hey. It got me back into that, that next meeting and the rest is history here. I am. About to be five years clean and it wouldn't have happened. If I didn't have a community. I'm not suggesting that. Everybody you a hundred percent needs the narcotics anonymous community. There's plenty of other communities out there. There's rehabs. You can go to, there's a new way of getting clean. I hear called smart. And if you just Google communities for addicts. There's other ones that exist. But my key point today, Is you need to find. Uh, community, you need to find other people that you can relate to with this problem. Because if you can't relate to anybody else, you're just going to continue to feel alien and you're going to continue to beat up on yourself. And the more you beat up on yourself, guess what? The more you're going to continue to use. That is indeed. A vicious cycle. One that needs to be broken. Because your life depends on it.
Microphone (Yeti Stereo Microphone)-8:And sorry if this, because your life depends on it. Sounds so fatalist, but. Man being part of these rooms full of addicts for the last five years, I've seen people. Come go. Dive left and right. And. Yeah. I, if I have any opportunity to prevent what happened to my best friend. I am going to take it. And I'm going to fucking tell you how it is, and I'm going to tell you that people fucking die from this, and you cannot take any of this stuff lightly. All right. That was kind of a heavy one today, everybody. But. If you've managed to stay with me. I am incredibly grateful that you've given me the opportunity to help you today. And I hope you have an absolutely blessing and wonderful rest of your day. And please keep tuning in if you're finding this helpful. Maybe you just like the sound of my voice. I know I have a nice tambour to it. And I will see you again, next time on thoughts of an addict. This is M.