Addiction is a Social Issue - Individualism is Inhibiting Recovery

We live in a society rooted in individualism which has relentlessly chipped away at the presence of true community and has likely contributed to the horrendous mental health outcomes we claim to care about. Individualism says that you and you only are solely responsible for your life’s outcome. It encourages us to place all the blame on the individual rather than social factors. This is convenient for government because they don’t need to change anything so long as you attribute all failings to others rather than the social structures controlling your life.

For me, the destructive nature of individualism can be easily understood through the way in which we treat addiction and manage recovery. As we enter into this crippling phase of humanity on a global scale, it is crucial to understand these implications. Inevitably, the current social, economic, and political circumstances we are all facing WILL exacerbate the already devastating presence of addiction in America. And if we are not prepared to approach this issue with true compassion, empathy and social support, we may never pull ourselves out of the gutter. Contrary to popular belief, the mass prevalence of addiction in America is a social issue requiring social solutions, not an individual failing on the part of the addict. As such, it is crucial that we begin to reimagine addiction and what OUR role is in healing our culture.

To do this, we must first understand that we are conditioned to believe we are all solely responsible for our failures and successes. If someone falls into addiction and fails to find their way out, we say that’s their fault. We say they’re choosing drugs over their family and friends, over their education, over their children. We ignore the fact that they were severely abused as children, never had access to proper support, have no sober family to back them up through recovery, or have suffered decades of trauma while fighting every day to try to do something better (yes, even IN active use).

Addiction is not, in fact, a choice. If you have been there, you should know that. You should know that rock bottom is different for everyone. Why? Often because our upbringings were different. What feels like rock bottom for one, feels like just another Tuesday for another. But even those who have found recovery often internalize and regurgitate self-accountability over the social factors that led to their use.

Case in point, I once had a COUNSELOR tell me, in a group setting, that it was my fault I was raped repeatedly by the same man (who was also my boss), because if I hadn’t been using, I would have chosen a different employment. It was my fault, and I was failing at recovery if I failed to own that. Let me tell you, when you have a mental health professional driving this idea into your head as you are throwing everything in you behind your recovery, it’ll change the way you see yourself AND other addicts. It kills your empathy for their suffering and their trauma… because they chose to use, so they chose their trauma, too.

What a crock of shit.

Let’s be clear, I did not CHOOSE to be raped by that man who was 40 years older than me simply because I was an addict existing in active addiction, and I refuse to take ANY accountability for the choices that man made. I did not even choose my first high which eventually led me to that situation. My first high was forced on me by my mother when I was 11, and many of my friends who ended up in addiction had very similar introductions to their downfalls.

When someone spends their entire childhood being fed drugs by those who were meant to care for them, they did not CHOOSE that lifestyle. They were born into it. And when you are born into it, you have a VERY different path to recovery than someone who wasn’t. Your path includes a sequence of traumas and identity complexes to heal leading all the way back to birth. And this is incredibly frustrating for those who landed in addiction later in life and recovered more easily.

Different addicts with different backgrounds have different access to recovery, and this concept of individualism IN recovery… this idea that addicts are CHOOSING to use or are individually responsible for their lives in active use… inhibits access to those who need it most.

When you are born into the lifestyle, you know nothing different. Everyone uses drugs. Everyone gets arrested. Everyone sits prison time. Everyone gets evicted. This is just life. When these things inevitably happen to you, they do not have the major impact society thinks they should. They do not have the impact they would have on someone coming from a middle-class, college educated, law-abiding family. For the latter, any of those experiences would likely equate to rock bottom and lead to an attempt at recovery. This recovery would be celebrated. We would see this individual as making a “good choice.”

On the other hand, the former’s lack of “care” for their consequences would be deemed a “bad choice.” We would place the accountability squarely on them and compare them to the addict who sought help without ANY consideration for the social factors impacting their mentality. “They chose to get sober, so can you. Therefore, you must be choosing to not care.” But their mentality does not mean those consequences are any less traumatic. It does not mean they are less worthy of your compassion. It simply means that the trauma inflicted on them across their entire life has normalized the presence of more trauma. And sometimes, we cannot fully undo that normalization. This is not an individual failure. It is a social outcome of the environment they were born into. It should be a blaring siren screaming at us that this person needs MORE compassion and empathy, not less. It should tell us that access to recovery is not equal.

Sobriety does not equalize these two. Recovery is NOT an equal journey, either. The level of trauma these two individuals must overcome to achieve true recovery is drastically different and that is the result of social factors. One is conditioned to believe that traumatic loss and upheaval is normal and expected. The other is conditioned to believe that support systems are present and consistent, or, at the very least, accessible—their upbringing offers an invisible cloak of armor we often fail to consider when judging addicts for their successes or failures in recovery.

When I first entered recovery 11 years ago, I tried to buy into this concept that I was personally responsible for my addiction and everything that happened to me during active use. I cut out everyone from my past because they, too, were choosing to use and therefore choosing their own self-destruction. That’s what I was told to do. “They’re sick,” and their sickness is contagious. I went to meetings to listen to the newcomer so I would remember how terrible it was and why I must maintain distance from active addicts. I was conditioned to believe that anyone in active addiction was a threat to my life and the solution was no contact. “I cannot help you if you’re using and unwilling to seek the help I CHOSE to seek.”

Surely, early on, this was effective. I needed the separation to establish a new lifestyle. I needed space to heal where drugs and alcohol were not an option. But as the years dragged on, I found it more and more difficult to find belonging in rooms where my childhood traumas and the actions of others towards me throughout my addiction were seen as secondary complications to my “choice” to use drugs and alcohol all those years. I could not reconcile my new existence with my past existence which was perceived as a bad “choice” while simultaneously labeled as a disease. I felt shame and hatred towards the “me” who suffered for decades just trying not to die.

You can say I was doing it wrong. You can say I didn’t follow the program correctly. Maybe you’re right. I’ll never know because I chose to leave the rooms about two and a half years in. And when I left, I healed. I returned to my inner child and honored what I went through. I stopped blaming myself for becoming an addict and chose, instead, to recognize the role that domestic dysfunction and social stigmatizations played in leading me towards and down that path. I found my way back to my Self, back to my empathy, back to my humanity, by rejecting the dogma that I was solely to blame for my actions in my addiction. Through recognizing how the actions of others impacted my life and my choices, I inadvertently accepted that those who impacted ME also had a social background that made them who they are, too.

I know many others who have reached this conclusion as well, and most of them come from the most severe backgrounds. That does not seem to be a coincidence. That, to me, speaks to our insufficiency in accommodating the needs of the most traumatized in the realm of recovery. Demanding that someone “find their role” in a lifetime of traumas without adequately supporting that person in understanding their social history is excruciatingly traumatizing for those with CPTSD. It is detrimental to the cause. It creates more shame where healing should be happening. And they will likely never tell you how it affects them because the response is always, “you’re not working your program right.” Again, more individualism where social supports deserve to be.

I do not say any of this lightly. Yes, I was only in the rooms for two and a half years. But I had been doing treatment and attending meetings off and on for 10 years before I finally got sober. I went to my first inpatient treatment at 15 years old. I was no stranger to the 12 steps when I finally decided to walk away. To be clear, the program saved my life, initially. The program saves many lives, regularly. My point is that it also isolates those with the most complex backgrounds by implying that addiction is an individual problem resolved only by making individual choices. This is simply not true.

Collectively, we have work to do. We are all actively watching our world crumble which, as stated earlier, will inevitably lead to more addiction and alcoholism. We need to approach that trajectory from an understanding that our social world is greatly contributing to that outcome. What we are currently facing is not a short-term issue. We will not recover from this damage in four years when there is another presidential election, partially because we likely will not have an election and also because our social issues are not strictly political. These issues live in our belief systems. We treat people the way we do because that’s how we are conditioned to treat them, and our social conditioning is currently fucked.

The social consequences of our current world will impact us for decades to come. We will never return to the life we knew before, and that uncertainty alone will be enough to send many folks over the edge. More folks will fall into addiction because of the strain and stress of the times we are heading towards which means more children will be born into addiction. More humans will suffer complex, lifelong trauma for which traditional recovery rooted in individualism will be ineffective at best, and detrimental at worst.

I understand why many folks in recovery actively choose to shun anyone in active addiction. I understand that this is for self-protection. But please understand that your expectation for perfect sobriety is unattainable for some, and they still deserve support and kindness as they struggle.

I, personally, do things differently now. When someone I know is struggling, I welcome them in. I maintain the distance necessary for my mental health, but when you stop personalizing their actions and judging their progress, that distance need not be so extreme. I recognize that there is more going on than we can see on the surface. I am patient. I’m in it for the long haul. I check in on them rather than waiting for them to take the initiative. You’d be surprised what having ONE person care can do for their progress over time.

I ask about their upbringing. I listen to their trauma… because, no, not everything can or should only be processed in therapy. We need real people who are not being paid and who can receive our text at 2am to know us inside and out. That’s community. And yes, everyone deserves that whether they’re sober or not. No, it won’t always meet your expectations. Sometimes relationships are one-sided. We should flow with them, anyways. Humans are humans. Please stop expecting perfection.

Harm reduction is real and valuable. I do not shun those who fail to give up their addictions entirely, or at all. I honor where they are on their trajectory, and I respect that their outcome may not be the outcome I’d envision for them. It’s not my life.

I am not afraid that I will return to that lifestyle. I’ve spent many years tearing down that false belief. Boundaries are crucial. But boundaries need not always equate to no contact. It is possible—though, often incredibly challenging—to implement boundaries while holding space for empathy and continued connection.

It truly is possible, and in my opinion, absolutely necessary, that we find a new, communal, holistic approach to the suffering behind the “lost causes” in our society. We need to expand our capacity to process the grief and pain that accompanies our ties to those who are suffering so we can reject the social expectation to cut them off for their “personal failures” like active addiction. Isolation will never be the solution to social problems. And addiction is a social problem.

Dig deep. Your empathy is needed now more than ever.