Yeah, but the anonymity is yours, not mine to break.
I knew it was a doozy and wasn’t about to pry, but man! That stuff is virtually guaranteed death these days.
Meh, there have been a few things about that in the past. I’m still not too crazy about overexposure, and I’m literally nobody and virtually nothing.
I just couldn’t pass up a good ball busting though.
Any time man. Depending on the where, what, and rules and stuff, feel free to drop me a line. I’m always around or available, but also know that some times that simply isn’t allowed or available. You know the vocabulary-Helping one self by helping another, yaddayaddayadda.
Seriously deconditioned, am shaking as I type, lol. First day back, going to take it slow and do a mini LP until I get back into enough condition to run a 5/3/1 thing.
@The_Myth I don’t have any follow up for you right this second, life and sleep will happen first but I’ll swing back tomorrow as I do have questions. And thanks for the @. And being open.
My only experience with substance abuse is that of alcohol abuse, and there saw a long period of overachieving be fueled by legal stimulants and using alcohol to wind down which evolved/devolved into a substance reliance and later a substance abuse. The root cause for the overachieving is definitely tied into a question of self-worth, and if you don’t have that little of loving oneself can be said to remain.
I wonder if addiction ever occurs in someone who’s otherwise happy and content. Discounting coffee, and nicotine the answer is not obviously “yes”. Discounting alcohol and I’m just hypothesising.
Would you like it if I caught up on your log first before asking questions?
@The_Myth, you have a very dim view of my peers, don’t you? I’m really sorry that your experience has left you so…disappointed. I wish you’d encountered someone better. I don’t know if I’ve said, but my high school pushed me into counseling when I was 15 or so, and I’ve been in off and on pretty much since (lotta tries at marriage counseling over the course of my first marriage). Most of the therapists have been duds. Not bright enough to challenge my thinking, not better read than I was BEFORE returning to finish my undergrad degree, much less my master’s. So I get that there are some vapid therapists out there. On the other hand, the couple I’ve worked with who were GOOD were fantastic. So. That said.
@Voxel, in order to get a master’s degree in any of the therapy/counseling disciplines here, a year-long internship is required. My bachelor’s also required an internship. My undergraduate placement was in a high school and my graduate placement was at a community mental health agency, where I worked on the child and family team. I assumed at that time that I would eventually work in schools. I was a runaway at 16 and that first therapist I had was a complete dud. I was after saving kids like myself and my brother. I certainly saw a good variety of issues in both of those placements, including substance abuse and eating disorders, but I trained as a generalist on purpose. I have currently 4 young women with eating disorders on my caseload - only one is at a level of acuity that potentially exceeds my level of competence. Though on the other hand, the girl who died did so after being placed in an inpatient facility, where presumably the level of competence was appropriately high. Think of it like doctors…you go to your primary care physician, your family doctor, for most things. If your blood pressure is high or your cholesterol is bad, they treat it. However, if you’ve had a heart attack or stroke you are moved to a cardiologist or neurologist. It is beyond the scope of a family doctor’s practice once the situation is known to have become deadly - even though those family doctors have done all sorts of rotations through various specialties during medical school.
The vast majority have no understanding of addiction, in my opinion, and are not open to understanding it. I think that’s why many former addicts go into some type of support role for addicts after dealing with their own addiction
Most former addicts who go into “the business” do so for reasons similar to mine: they want to rescue their former selves, whether because like me they were let down by someone who should have been better, or because they encountered someone in recovery that helped them, and they want to be a hero of that sort. Don’t discount the second - I meet them all the time. I work with a young woman coming up on 4 years in recovery from heroin (Valentine’s Day was her last relapse). I’ve been with her since her first attempt to stop, which was probably a year before she actually did, but there was a time (prompted by that VD slip) that she additionally did groups and therapy with a drug and alcohol counselor. She wants to do this work because it was so positive for her on the receiving end.
A couple of years ago I began working toward my LADC (Licensed Drug and Alcohol Counselor) credential, but then decided not to for a couple of reasons. One is that I felt that it would pull my career in directions I might not want it to go (that the demand for that piece would overwhelm the rest of my practice) and the other is that it absolutely DOES require a paradigm shift, but “not open to understanding it” is a different matter entirely. As with eating disorders, the disease is self-protecting. Addressing it requires a hardness I frankly don’t want to cultivate. Not because I’m uninformed, not because it’s haaaarrrd, and not because I don’t care, but because there are a great many needs and I have chosen to work with the set I have chosen to work with. I’ve just brought on a client whose spouse was murdered less than a year ago. There are gay people struggling to come out. College kids who’ve been raped. Parents terrified that they’re doing it all wrong, kids whose parents did do it all wrong. An agoraphobic. People with cripplingly low self-esteem. These are not less relevant than someone dealing with substance abuse, and neither is the skill set.
I’m sorry to sound defensive. You’re just so jaded in the direction of my people, but at least three people said some variation on “I feel so much better” to me just this week. So I guess I feel defensive of it and its power to do good.
