A Hole in Your Back Pocket


Living with addiction is no joke.

Whether or not you are an addict, whether or not you are seeking to recover, or perhaps you might be living with someone who is contending with addiction, there are the traumas, the underlying issues, and the proverbial hole in your back pocket.

This expression hit me during various discussions at recovery meetings. Recovering alcoholics will tell you how money seemed to vanish (though it would sometimes mysteriously appear instead) during their life as an addict.  They would have spent too much on alcohol for themselves, rounds for others, stocking up their cupboards for those long nights.

With that, there is probably an alleviation of guilt somewhere. You break your car irreparably, drunk-driving. You fix it, not because it's worth doing so, but to atone for your sins. Someone makes financial demands on you and because when you last were pissed you made a fool of yourself, you pay up. It's never-ending. The outflow never seems to stop. You go on online shopping sprees while bingeing on wine, until your card is maxed out.  You buy some jewellery, you buy yourself gifts - when drunk because money is of no consequence, and when you're sober, as a reward for not drinking. But then you drink again anyway, because the addiction is unsurmountable without help.

With drugs and gambling it probably gets worse - there is the problem, here, of the drama of the loan sharks, and those from whom you've borrowed to gamble or take.  The sums are insignificant and you become homeless without money for food or anything else. The begging becomes cyclical - you borrow from Peter to pay a little of Paul's and the minute you are given money for food, for a place to live, for doctors, to feed your kid or any other basic needs, then the sharks know that you have money and will terrorise you into parting with it.  The worst is that, no sooner you have appeased one monster, another raises its ugly head and it seems never-ending.

It is difficult to get off the debt merry-go round. Cleaned up, you need to atone for the stupid things you did and often it means that you are paying for things you might not otherwise pay for, simply as an appreciation to those who have supported you. Or, you might just need to fix something you broke when in the grasp of the addiction - like a car you crashed, someone's money or precious items you stole, damage you caused to someone's things or even, their business.  Or yours.

You may have to spend considerable time with money rolling out like there was no tomorrow.

But the proverbial hole isn't just in your jeans pocket, is it?  There is the emotional devastation, the healing process that never seems to progress since you've last looked.  The racking guilt feeling. It comes back in the form of nightmares, bad dreams which you wake from with a raised pulse rate (and for no good reason), and sudden anxiety when you find yourself in a situation analogous to one in which you've absolutely made a fool of yourself.

Unless you have really healed, there will be repeated upheaval, the drain which sits on you when you have failed others time and time again.  And if you are living with a struggling addict, the affliction is no less serious, no less painful, because those emotions are felt with the same intensity and the same despair, if not worse.  There is a feeling of absolute helplessness; for the addict, it is time to do something about it and for the surrounding members it may very well be time to step back.

With hope, and with some courage, the watershed moment soon arrives and change begins to slowly materialise.  It is a long and painful process, for addict and loved ones. The addict is as much a victim as the surrounding family and friends - this is a mistake that's often made when taking into account the highly charged tensions that exist.  The family may have been tricked by the addict in order to cover up for increasing support, money needs, and other failures; their generosity may have been milked over and over again.

The real sufferes are those who are genuinely struggling with the addiction and any underlying or additional issues.  Note that I separate the two, because 'underlying' may still be a problem despite dealing with the addiction, whereas 'additional' refers to the pain brought about by the addiction itself, which may very well cease once the abuse ceases.  Again, it often appears that there is no end in sight.

And there isn't - not unless the addict is willing to recover.

And always, one should remember that this, too, shall pass.

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