Sunday, May 11, 2014

My Favorite Peoples

Are actually recovering addicts. And one has to be careful here, and by one, I mean me or perhaps it's grammatically correct to say I meant I. Let's not bother pointing out that I could just go back and fix shit.

Anyway, I gotta be careful because people don't become addicts for no reason. And thus despite being my favorite people, they are not ideal housemates, life partners etc. Nor should anybody gather into a social circle of former addicts, that would probably be a bad bio-psycho-social environment.

But to just hang and shoot shit with, I have really come to love former addicts. The why came to me only yesterday. It's because most people will go to extreme lengths not to work on themselves, to avoid confronting themselves or overcoming themselves and gaining control of themselves. It's really rare. But not among recovering addicts.

Because to be in recovery, by default, addicts have to have overcome themselves. It's a survivorship bias thing. There's no way to overcome addiction and not hold yourself responsible (except maybe if you got exiled to some pacific island with no drug dealers). It's impossible I believe.

It also seems to require disassociation from the people in everyone's lives they tend to either blame, or 'fix' the problems of. It's a form of egocentricity, of self focus that actually is an altruistic act toward everyone else.

It's a pity that so many people that have overcome addiction often have residual issues like attachment disorders, mental health issues or mental illness. Thus even though they are in my experience always working on themselves and their recovery, which I love, the tragedy is that they are often working from a starting point emotionally that most people who won't work on becoming their best self are ahead of.

Oh well, they are still incredibly refreshing to talk to. 

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