Hi, My Name is X, and I’m an Addict

“Admitting I’m an addict has come with a wave of realising –

I’ve been an addict since I could form habits around my unmet needs

A wave of realising that I am one of most in this way

Realising that our markets depend on this –

Moisturisers that make our skin dry

Soaps that make us dirty

Foods to make us hungry

Drinks to make us thirsty

Medicines to make us sick

Pipelines of Sugar to alcohol to harder stuff if their life gets hard enough  …

And with the harder stuff, life will get harder,

Not least of all with the power of others thinking you deserve it causing you to think that too.

Every realisation followed by a gun toting spaceman saying “always was”

Wish me success in treatment- I need it.”

X thought back on when she wrote the undeceived letter, she did succeed, but at a program built to fail, so, what? If it wasn’t the substance, there would be other things, people. Without them there would be habits formed of abuse to be abused. Without action there would always be stories to be addicted to, ideas of fixation, sources uncertain, obsession with the questions. The addiction to clinging to a cope for the sake of strained survival. Without them she would nonetheless be sealed to an addicts end.

Her relative sobriety maintained onward with unexpected effort when her understanding shifted away from achieving compliance and qualification in a malicious machine, toward a striving for freedom.