VIEWING ADDICTION AS A CHOICE

Bullshit, "There's no choice with an abuser.

There's no choice when your uncle gives you heroin at seven." That's what
nurse Caroline Brunt says in your October 10-17 Georgia Straight cover
story "Street Saints". My uncles and father, aunts and mother gave me
alcohol at six. The priests gave me marijuana at 10. This "hard drug/soft
drug" differentiation is a lie. Different people react differently to
various drugs.

What's "soft" for some is "hard" for another.

But that's not why I'm writing.

I'm an old lady, a survivor.

I'm visiting my foster grandkids.

I was glad to come upon your article.

I'm a big reader and a thinker and read all I can on drugs and sobriety and
so on. I can tell you, as an aboriginal person and as a woman, that I was
told for decades I had "no choice", that "once an addict (alcoholic),
always an addict (alcoholic)." That I had a "disease". That there was "no
cure", that my "disease could only be arrested". Doctors, nurses, social
workers, alcohol and drug counsellors, psychiatrists, clergy, even Native
court workers, all told me I had "no choice". I was "powerless" over the drug.

I thought this was great.

It got me off the hook. I was in a lot of trouble, but I "found out" I was
"sick", therefore what I had chosen to do was not my responsibility. I
spent well over 10 years totally abstinent in 12-step groups.

I was enabled to stay on the dole by all those who continued to tell me I
was "unemployable" because of my disease.

I worked the steps.

I did missionary work (they call it "12-stepping") for the
Sobriety/CleanTime Cause. I had a "higher power". I had many friends.

But I had no inner power, no self-worth outside this fellowship, no clue as
to how to get (legal) work. I believed there were "normies" (people who can
drink safely) and "us". I was rewarded in those fellowships. I saw a lot of
people around me--not all--feeling helpless about everything in their life
that didn't involve 12 steps.

While at a powwow in the States, someone took me to an SOS (Secular
Organization for Sobriety) meeting.

We also went to a gathering of elders talking about responsible drinking,
choices, Native ways, saying that there was no proof that Natives "lack the
enzyme" to process alcohol, that this was another way to keep us feeling
hopeless, predetermined losers in the "white society". It blew my mind. It
was like I'd been in a big slumber and was jolted awake.

Before I was over 10 years clean and sober, I'd been in 12-step groups and
become two years clean and sober.

I "slipped", as they tend to call it. I say I chose to do that stuff again
because I wanted more pleasure in life and excuses not to deal with things.

I be-lieved that I was predetermined to fall off the deep end. I believed I
was a "drunk" and an "addict", so I did what they all said would happen.

I let it get really bad and ugly. I felt guilty, too, and very bad about
myself.

I went back to the 12-step groups. They welcomed me. I had trouble agreeing
ideologically; I got come on to by some men who go to the meetings. (Many
people who go are beautiful souls, but some are predators.

Only women--and a few men--in the "anonymous" groups can attest to this.)

Anyway, I drink socially now. I studied books on addiction and recovery
other than the 12-step stuff I'd memorized.

I read Addiction Is a Choice, by Jeffrey Schaler. Although I disagreed with
some of Schaler's ideas, I do agree that "someone who's been there too"
knows deep things compared to a scholar who hasn't "been there". Think
about cigarettes. Many people quit all the time. I quit myself years ago. I
didn't need a program or religion or scientific facts. (Though for those
first few very hard days, I took pieces from all of the above to help me
get through.)

The disease model is widely accepted, unfortunately. It is not based on
truth, or for Natives, or for women.

There is no fact to it. I say I drink socially, though I haven't had a
drink in over three years.

But I will if I want to. At first, when I came into my own inner power and
learned to love and value myself on my own, I went a little haywire.

But I kept asserting my choice in drug abuse, not just now and again, then
realized I'd matured out of it.

I'm not against 12-step groups.

I got physically healthy with the help of some of their members.

I still have good friends who go to those meetings. One of their mottoes is
"open-mindedness". Yet I find many are totally close-minded when it comes
to alternative ways out of drunkenness and drug abuse.

That's too bad. I'm happier these past five years than ever before in life.
I went to school, am now working, have hobbies, and feel better about
myself as an individual, as a woman, as an aboriginal person.

I'm a better parent and a grandparent because I can think for myself and
trust myself to make a good choice.