Drugs and Alcohol Lie

 

It can be tempting to anesthetize our way through grief. Staying with painful emotions is hard, especially in a society that pushes the happiness cult (Cacciatore, 2017).

 

But, drugs and alcohol lie. They promise a good time but pilfer any chance at simple joy. 

 

They promise solace for past anguishes but bankrupt the future. 

 

They promise comfort for unanswerable questions but they destroy any chance at real meaning. 

 

They promise happiness but leave any chance at trustworthy connection in the wreckage.  

 

They promise liberation but they are the trap from which there are few escapes. 

 

They promise to assuage grief but they actually incite more, less honest, grief.

 

They promise a life without pain but they create a life of misery.

 

They promise a shortcut, a way to circumvent mourning. But it is a detour to a desolate place where we cannot find our true selves.

 

Drugs and alcohol seductively propagandized the belief that they are necessary to cope with breadth and depth of traumatic loss. This is a lie. 

 

Instead, they ambush those who try to leave them, anchoring them to a superficial and very small life.  

 

Please, consider for a moment, before you pop that pill, before you put that needle in your arm, before you pour that drink, that your life doesn’t have to be defined by drugs and alcohol. 

 

Contemplate the possibility that, with the right support from others  - compassionate people, animals, and the earth - you have within you the capacity feel without being artificially altered. 

 

Feeling deeply, learning to trust your capacity to bear the unbearable, is the most beautiful gift you can offer yourself: the gift of fully inhabiting your own life.

​

Said with love and compassion from my heart to those ears who may want to listen. 

​

Please, get help from a deeply compassionate someone who can help you feel.

​

​