A Crossroads

This is not going to be new news to most of you, I'm sure. I'm kind of embarrassed that it was so enlightening to me. However, it's in the category of my pro-choice revelation so I think it deserves sharing.

Via a couple of prompts from Twitter streams I wound up reading some painful and discouraging personal stories about addiction*. The popular debate about whether addiction is a disease raged gleefully on in a million comments. I've always had trouble with that. Addiction does seem like a disease to me but you can't prevent a heart attack with will power can you? Unless that will power gets you on a tread mill I guess but that's no guarantee. On the other other hand guarantees aren't something our world is exactly rife with.

Finally in or around the one millionth comment I skimmed someone suggested a...compromise or a blend of sorts of the convictions. What if the addiction itself is a disease but the handling of it places responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the addicted? So, for instance, you have diabetes and you can choose to keep eating tubs of ice cream and passing out on the ground and getting bits of your body lopped off as they develop gangrene or you can manage your diet and medications and exercise so that you live a long and healthy life that's of use to yourself and those around you. You can choose to keep using and keep stealing and keep crushing the spirits of those who love you or you can choose to really muscle yourself into a manageable life using whatever medications and meditations and support systems are required to keep you on a productive and lengthy life path.

That makes a ton of sense to me. It balances the lack of control that I think is evident in addiction to certain things with the personal accountability that I think is a vital component to living with the disease. How did I not figure that out before?



*For the record this is the story of the addiction, overdose, beating and eventual death of Katie Allison Granju's beautiful oldest boy, Henry. She's someone I read for a long while but some time ago exercised my right to click the X button on the browser because differences in our philosophies were leading me down the path to become a nasty, trolly commenter. Nobody needs that, neither she nor I. I tell mean commenters that they have the ability to click away so it was only right that I practiced what I preached.  I remember proud and happy stories of Henry's childhood and was shocked to hear of his illness and death. As Katie said in one of her blogs from beside Henry's hospital bed, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I wish it had turned out differently and in that I'm sure I am not alone.