There's a major movement in therapy these days to try to "de-shame" addiction. I think this is potentially deadly in terms of getting in the way of overcoming that addiction.
As I myself have chronicled, I was handed an accidental drug addiction to benzodiazepines and a massive overreliance on mountains of anti-depressants. During those years, I partied and drank, often to get my own pent up energies out. When you're on a maximum dose of anti-depressants and you're bipolar without knowing it, you have a LOT of pent up energy. So I drank and partied and overate and generally didn't give a rat's ass. I wanted to be free of my pain and I wanted to release it. When I partied, I also talked and and talked and talked. The world was my therapy appointment and I was going to express myself and share as much as I could. Looking back at it, I'm ashamed of all of my behaviors and I SHOULD be. I got sucked into the modern therapy trap, that you can solve all your problems with drugs. I was like a kid with laundry detergent. "If a little detergent gets clothes clean, a LOT of detergent will get clothes REALLY clean!" And, of course, too much detergent destroys the clothes.
I feel very torn over having taken therapy into my own hands. After all, it is me. I take the stuff. I feel the effects. I have to live with how it makes me feel. That I've been forced onto medication makes it all the more tougher. The medication makes me feel bad yet is supposedly "working." I got that in therapy all the time in the early days. I'd go in, tell my doctor how terrible I felt, he told me how well it was working and I'd leave. I remember trying to figure out as much as possible so I could organize my thoughts as best I could before each appointment. Those appointments felt like the thin part in the middle of an hourglass. All that bad sand on the bottom but, if I could just tell the doctor well enough what was happening at that choke point, maybe healthy sand could then spread from there. All I got in therapy was the medical model. "Just take your meds and thanks for coming." So I took my therapy into my own hands, specifically the drugging. If I felt terrible, up went the dosage. If I felt horribly sad, up went the dosage. If I felt horribly anxious, up went the dosage. After all, I had my world of comfort to protect. What mattered was work and functioning. Who cared if I was healthy? Is anyone? What mattered was producing and being able to be out there. In my stupidity, I ended up destroying my functioning as much as anything. You can't function with a head full of mania and a nervous system completely dominated by downers. I inadvertently ripped myself apart. As I've also noted, my GP was psychiatrically incompetent and all but forced me to take it into my own hands. I communicated the symptoms of mania several times and he missed it every time. In telling me, "It's you not the drugs" I ended up identifying with my lunacy. That guy couldn't have murdered me any better if he'd put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. Massive malpractice in the psychiatric community (though he was a GP) is rampant, I guarantee it. Sadly, patients have to let go and let God on this one as far as it being worked out.
Back to my addicted behavior, I am embarrassed. I don't care if the damn doctor messed it up. I don't care if my mother all but forced me to take drugs I didn't understand or was prepared for. I don't care that I'm a legit victim. I SHOULD have known better. I didn't have to know everything. But I should have known BETTER. And I'm ashamed I let it get that far. That's my attitude now. I don't care if doctors threaten me (and they have threatened me.) My place in this world is my place. Doctors don't make my destiny. Drugs don't make my destiny. I do. My fear was taken advantage of when I was younger and I resent that. If anyone asks, "Are you saying you should have known everything about alcohol, addiction, co-dependency and everything about psyche meds and mental illness as a kid without any training or education?" My answer is, "Yes."
