Who Is An Addict?

Here is what I believe about addiction: our society is sick from the disease of addiction; we are all addicts to one degree our another. Addiction stems from our feeling that something is not right in our world, an emptiness a desire for something we can't have. Some see it as a spiritual malady: a searching for something beyond ourselves. Others see it as an existential pain. We all suffer from it to some extent, but we all react to it in different ways. Some seek to fill the emptiness with money, with power: they seek power over those they see as less then themselves, they become judgmental of anyone not like themselves: they turn to war and violence. Others seek it in work, others in helping others to their own detriment. But it is the world, our society that is sick. We are addicted to little pieces of paper which we call money, which actually has no value yet controls our lives. It is created by us. Our whole society runs on it. Our society runs on natural resources that are quickly running out, but we refuse to change to find other ways to live. We are killing the very thing that sustains us: our natural world; the planet that gives us life, This is the mark of addiction. We fight wars over this. Others who turn to taking drugs to find relief from the chaos and pain, and in turn create more pain for them selves and the people around them. They are cast as the villains of society: but are they really? Who is creating more pain and suffering? The world leaders who are putting children into cages: fighting wars, spending trillions to create weapons of war, but then claim there is no money to feed people? Or the drug user on the street who has turned to drugs because there are no jobs for him: no hope ... none of the imaginary pieces of paper he supposedly needs to eat pay rent, and there is none because other people are stealing it all to create vast mansions of luxury for themselves. And the ordinary people want to have that and strive for it. They become obsessed with celebrities and the mega rich, and they buy into the fantasy that one day they too can be like them. So they buy the clothes they wear, the food they eat: model their lives on them. They don't realise that it is all a big con: that they can never be like them.

One of the reasons i turned to drugs is because I am gay, and because of that I have never been able to find someone to share my life with , a partner, someone to love and cuddle at night. Yes someone to fuck. Because of that I feel alien and alone: I feel empty. Every night climbing into bed, alone. Every morning waking up, alone. I feel like like I am missing out on an essential aspect of human experience. I am constantly asking myself : Why cant I be like other people and find love. And yet I know- we all have these stories of pain, of suffering, of trauma. There are people in the world that have suffered far worse of then me: children that have had to watch their parents being blown to smithereens, little girls being raped by their own fathers or sold into sexual slavery. This is the world we live in. It is sick. So we indulge in our addictions, and turn a blind eye to the reality of the world, and blame the addict saying he is the root of all evil

Look to yourself. What is your addiction? What are you using to make the world a more tolerable place? We despise the addict, because he reminds us of how sick our world is. Instead of blaming the addict and the drugs which for him are his solution, we need to find a way to heal the sickness of the world. The first step is to realise how sick the world is, and say to ourselves: "I will no longer part of this blind rush to destruction." To stand up and take to the streets if necessary to demand change. The first step is to realise that essentially the drug user on the street is no worse than any of our world leaders, and to start to treat him with empathy and respect he deserves as a human being. To start to say "No we will not let you steal our water, and put it into bottles to sell to rich people, while our children die of thirst. No we will not let you take our oil and use it to drive machines that kill us, No we will not let you put our children in cages, No we will not let you kill any more of the beautiful wildlife with which we share this planet in, the name of greed..."

So i ask again ...WHO IS THE TRUE ADDICT? What is your addiction? What are you doing to overcome it, and to make the world a better place so that we don't need to hide away in our little bubbles and pretend that everything is OK while the world burns.