Addiction is a Bully: Session Seventeen of the Second Steemit Book Club, Plus Details for Session Eighteen

“The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame
He might get burned, but he's in the game
And once he's in, he can't go back
He’ll beat his wings 'til he burns them black." ― Aimee Mann

How many times have we heard the following story? A friend of a friend is an abuse relationship that they cannot escape. Everyone keeps urging the person to leave their partner but they just don’t seem to be able to put a foot after another.

The abuse syndrome some people call it.

The victims often feel frustrated by their inability to effect change so they just remain in the same situation no matter how bad it gets.

This phenomenon is not strictly exclusive for relationships, in fact the very same thing occur in politics all the time, and all over the globe.

Every four years people get together, and elect one of the two most despised people in their nation. Each one of those candidates then proceeds to propose a series of promises that will most likely never fulfill.

The candidates themselves know that they have no intention of fulfilling those promises, and the public of course also are fully aware that the candidates are lying to their face, but they go on with it anyways.

And everyone ends up playing that zero-sum game called “The big pretend”.

In essence, the politicians pretend to care about the public, the public pretend that the politicians care about them and meanwhile they keep getting screwed year after year, cycle after cycle and they accept that jus because they got used to that situation, they don’t feel like they can escape that toxic relationship just like that abused woman aforementioned.

Everyone is afraid to face what they need to face, so they remain dancing until the music stops.

“So when with the devil asks you to dance, you better say never. Cause a dance with the devil might last you forever.” ― Immortal Technique.

Dancing Till the Music Stops

Escaping addiction in many ways is very similar to the the victim-bully relationships, people often feel unable powerless when it comes to breaking free from their addiction to the substance to such degree that they start to accept that as a part of real life thus resigning themselves to their role as unwilling victims.

As they days pass, their will power gets even weaker and then start to even refuse to think about their situation anymore.

They seek escapism at every waking moment just as long as they don’t have to think about how their substance-addict relationship is affecting their life, their work and their personal relationships.

There’s a big problem however, the sub-conscious still remains aware of how much pain and damage you’re suffering because of your inability to effect change and so it keeps sending messages of discomfort to your brain.

When that happen you have two choices, either listen to those messages and see what they are telling you.

Or keep trying to silence it and use more substances to numb your feeling by recurring to the same substance that caused the problem in the first place thus creating a vicious circle that you cannot escape from.

Or in other worlds, keep dancing with the devil until the music stops.

Infinite Jest

In Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace raises some serious questions about support groups and AA meetings.

He floats the idea that there two main groups of people who go to these support groups. Those who realize that they have a problem to face but they don’t want to face it alone.

And those who have totally accepted their role as a victim and they exclusively want to keep complaining without ever having any intention of facing the nature of the beast, let alone take action and change their situation.

Those are referred to in Infinite Jest as the elders, or the crocodiles.

In the politics example aforementioned, this would be the group telling you something in the lines of: “This is how things are, this is how things have always been, so leave it be.”

A prime example of that is when Joelle Van Dyne took the mic and started to face the reasons that caused her to fall in the addiction trap as a way for her to finally escape it.

The elders took huge offense to that and immediately tried to silence her claiming that the purpose of the group is just to complain not to actually solve the problems.

The tragic irony of the whole thing is that your brain already normalizes any situation you get trapped into, even if you’re victimized by an addiction. You need to break free from that identity your brain has now associated to your person.

You can do that with the help of others true. But maybe you cannot do that by surrounding yourself with people who have accepted their roles as victims and want to subject you to the same.

Without further ado, here’s the recording to the entire session of teh last meeting:

https://soundcloud.com/user-655948001/infinite-jest-session-17-of-the-steemit-book-club

Details for the next meeting:

Book: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Reading Assignment: Chapter Eighteen “YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDER-GARMENT” (pages 682-719)
Date and time: Every Monday at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9 p.m. EST / 2 a.m. GMT
Call Length: One hour.
Phone Access: (800) 719-6100 or (218) 339-7800, access code 629-1831#
Web Audio Access (sound quality isn't generally as good as phone): https://hello.freeconference.com/conf/call/6291831

P.S. You can these links to help guide you as you read Infinite Jest:
http://faculty.sunydutchess.edu/oneill/Infinite.htm (THIS LINK HAS SPOILERS)

http://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Main_Page#Page_by_Page_Annotations (No spoilers)

Best,

@neilstrauss, @the-alien and the #steemit-book-club

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