“The addict is not born but made. His addiction is the result of a situation that he had no influence in creating” Dr. Gabor Mate
In 1972 an 20-year-old girl named Chelsea found herself living on welfare, no supportive family or friends, and an ingrained sense of worthlessness from her early life of abuse and neglect. When a man came around promising the world to her if only she would give him sex, Chelsea felt as though this dream may be the one shot at a changing point for her life. After one heated night together, the man was gone, and Chelsea soon thereafter found herself pregnant and utterly alone.
She gave birth to Joseph. She knew that she didn’t have the money, the support, or the skills to raise Joseph, but her sense of shame was already so incredibly heavy that adding on the shame and loss of giving up a child to adoption would not be a decision she would make.
Chelsea continued to seek out acceptance from abusive men. She continued to crave the sweet sounding—albeit empty—affirmations that they offered to her in exchange for the only thing that she believed gave her any value in this world: her beauty. But beauty fades, especially when heroine and alcoholism are mixed with it; and so with it faded the line of men willing to promise the world to her. Chelsea would eventually die at the early age of 32 after being beaten to death by a man that she was living common-law with at the time.
Wait a minute… what about Joseph? You want to know what happened to Joseph don’t you? You hope that this sad story about Chelsea would be enough, and that Joseph grew up into a successful man, right?
Joseph was “in the way” his whole life… or at least that’s what his mother told him. He was ignored and neglected, and when he sought out things that many children take for granted—good tasting food, a chance to play with some friends, a new and coveted toy, or even a kind affirming word from his mother—he was told that he was not worthy of any of these things and more so—that his life would never amount to anything. One time when he was 4 years old, he was left alone for almost a full day and—so desperately hungry, he searched the house for food but only found cat food—better than nothing, right?
Joseph also experienced abuse—sexual, physical, and verbal—from most of the men that his mother brought home. For him, however, what hurt more was witnessing his mother being beaten… eventually to death.
At age 12, Joseph was placed into foster care. His sense of low self-worth seemed to cause a succession of self-fulfilling prophecies that caused every foster parent he had to reject him and send him on… until he turned 16. He would be competent now, he would figure out his own life now! He didn’t need any help. But then came crack cocaine. The first time he tried it he experienced a sense of love, of connection, of being loved… like he had never experienced before. All the trauma in his past, all of the pain, all of the emptiness, all of the feelings of having no control, all of the boredom, just disappeared—in almost an instant. And in that same instant, Joseph became an addict.
No, that’s not true actually. Joseph became an addict long before he found crack. Every time he was neglected, every time he was abused, every time he was told he would amount to nothing, every time his basic needs as a child were withheld, … he became an addict; reinforced continually hundreds of times over.
Today Joseph is 45. He lives in a homeless shelter. He can’t keep a job because his addiction is so strong, making it impossible to go to work every day. When he does work, he works temporary jobs anywhere from 3 hours to a week at a time. He does excellent work and he is bright, with a good amount of knowledge about almost every construction related job you could think of. Yet he is paid a mere $15 an hour—that is, whenever he can find temp jobs.
Joseph has a new addiction now: meth. It’s cheaper than crack cocaine but it is more damaging to him. He knows that after coming off of any drug that he feels way worse than he did before using, yet the moments when he is high and has even the sudden glimpse of escaping the pain from his past that continues to weigh so heavy on his life, are so very tempting.
In fact, if you did a brain scan to measure and compare aspects of Joseph’s brain to a normal brain, you would almost certainly find that the Prefrontal Cortex, the part of the brain that considers long term consequences and plans for the future, is considerably smaller than it should be. If you introduce a trauma to a growing body you will notice major deficits and malformation; the same happens when you continually introduce trauma to a developing brain—except that you can’t see with your eyes the impact of this in the same way that you can see a malnourished body.
Joseph says that he is not afraid of dying… rather, he is afraid of living a life without any drugs; without any relief.
One day, while waiting for a bus, Joseph got to chatting with a stranger. Joseph was obviously high and the stranger figured he would offer a piece of what he thought would be wonderful, paradigm-changing advice as he told Joseph: “I think you would be much better off if you stopped using. Why don’t you just stop?”
“It’s facile to demand that anyone should be able to “just say no” and to judge them as morally lacking if they can’t” –Dr. Gabor Mate