Barriers for Shame

Addiction - what a topic to choose for a theme!

How to write about a disease that creates such havoc, 

with hopes for a credible suggestion that there is a need 

for compassion for the folks that are afflicted with the disease of addiction?

And who really knows who is addicted?

Someone may be drunk, stoned, high or intoxicated,

but that doesn’t mean addiction has come knocking at their door.

There is much more to the disease of addiction.

Families of alcoholics and addicts can certainly tell you in great, 

and sometimes very horrific, detail about more than a little intoxication.

Oh, certainly there are diagnosticians in our medical community that, after matching symptoms and signs to an individual can come pretty darn close, if not right on the bull’s eye, to diagnosing an individual’s addiction.

However, it really is the addicted one, the alcoholic, that truly knows how affected they are by their ‘drink or drug of choice’. (Such a quaint turn of phrase!) And, by extension, knows that they alone are responsible owning their addiction.

In a society where drugs (yes, drugs) and alcohol are socially acceptable in many ways, forms and times, marketers advertise many addictive and addicting products, including nicotine products, shame creates barriers for these folks that they must face 

in order to find sanity and sobriety.

• the shame of being a belligerent, or violent, angry, or mushy, and maybe even psychotic individual or all of the above

• the shame of not knowing how to participate in many forms of celebration without drugs or alcohol

• the shame of being unable to control the effects or amounts of alcohol or drugs

• the shame of being shunned, pitied, disliked, even hated because of intoxicated behaviour.

• the shame of just being and, I’m certain, there is shame as individual as a finger print.

A clamour of voices rises up in great anger and frustration -

‘Well they should be ashamed of themselves! 

Look at what they’ve done to the family, to me, to the children, to the community..................’

So my question is - 

Do we want sobriety for folks so our lives better, 

or so their lives, inside and out, are better?      

And which should come first?

“I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake 

saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next 

day memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.”

~ Amy Winehouse (14 September 1983 - 23 July 2011)