I've been a lot of places in my life and met a lot of different people a long the way - each person has impacted me in some way (good or bad), and that has played a huge part in who I am today. As an observational person, I have picked up on many things that most people don't. Add that to my outgoing personality, and you end up meeting people from all walks of life and really understanding a lot about humans.

The most common theme I've picked up along this journey of life is pain. Every human is in some type of pain that is so unbearable that they have to combat it with some type of behavior/substance/thing and typically that addiction causes even more pain. I don't believe addiction is a bad thing - I thin it is what keeps us from blowing our heads off everyday. But I think our relationship with addiction is bad.

People are surprised when I tell them that there are heroine addicts who do it for a long time without overdosing or dying. Or that some people are addicted to sex, but they don't suffer the worst consequences like STDs or hurting other people. What's the difference between them and other addicts? Their relationship with their addiction - they practice harm reduction.

Harm Reduction 101

What is harm reduction you might ask? Harm reduction is informing people of how they can engage in their using or addictive behavior in safer ways and mitigate the damages that their substance of choice or risky actions It's meeting people where they're at in life and helping them protect themselves from the worst consequences of their risky behavior until they either (a.) stop or (b.) pass on from this life, and not necessarily because of their risky behavior. I believe that Harm Reduction is the most effective way of saving lives in the realm of addiction and mental illness. 12 step homers and war-on-drug soldiers, hear me out here for just a minute - you will save a life if you do, I promise.

A.A. works for some people, but for the majority of us, it does not. Here's the thing about A.A. - there are no reputable statistics, a strict definition of "sobriety", and there is an enormous problem of group think that occurs within those 12 step groups. I will credit A.A. for giving me a place to go during one point in my recovery, but personally, I believe it does more damage than good to people in recovery. Before you start firing off in the comments about how I'm in denial, blah, blah, derp, just give me another couple paragraphs to share why I feel this way.

We Know Everything - Without Using Real Science...

A.A. doesn't keep statistics in the sense of real scientific data collection - they rely on people giving up their anonymity (one of the 7 sins of A.A.) and actually sharing about their sobriety. For one, people will lie. Number two, there is no unbiased collection of this information occurring in a random manner that is required to provide results that can be relied upon. Anytime I hear an A.A. statistic, I have to automatically assume it's biased, either good or bad, and that it is not a good number to make a judgment upon. Maybe 66 million people around the world have gotten sober or stayed sober because of A.A. according to the Big Book in 2003. Since Covid and all the other fucked up shit in this world, that number is probably lower, if it were even truth in the first place. How would one know or confirm such a claim?

If You Drink, You Die...

A.A. has a strict definition of sobriety. If you are not sober for 30 days, you are not sober and don't get your first chip; If you are not sober for 90 days, you don't get your 90 day chip; If you are not sober for 1 year, you are not sober; If you are not sober for 5 years, you are not sober; If you are not sober for 100 years, you are not sober... Do you catch my drift?

A.A. expects you to not even have a sip of alcohol or else you have failed. Seriously. And don't tell me it's not failure and relapses happen - relapses happen and are expected to, but it is treated as failure in A.A. Why can't minimizing your use forever and not harming yourself as much be called sobriety? I understand you can fuck up just once using or drinking and die, but that is not always the case, and this strict definition causes many people to either give up, or even worse. Somebody using heroine could not use for a long time for "sobriety". One day, they break up with their girlfriend after a fight and decide to go use - they haven't used in 2 years, have no tolerance, are all alone, and they shoot up and they die because they don't want their 12 step group to know. See the danger here?

Think For Yourself, But You're an Asshole if You Do...

Point number three is that there is way too much group think in 12 step groups. Ever feel like you hear "keep coming back" and "keep it simple stupid" in 12 step rooms so much that you start saying them yourself? Me too. You also start to believe all the stuff everyone is saying about this God, despite the fact that two weeks ago you decided that God was an asshole for not watching out for you when you drank a bottle of booze and you got jumped in a parking lot. Group think isn't inherently dangerous in these situations necessarily, but I'll tell you where it is.

You'll often get bitched at in A.A. if you are on adderall or taking something that they deem "mind altering." Then others will come up and guilt trip you as well for "ruining your sobriety". This has resulted in people dropping their mental health medications or getting on stuff they shouldn't because they listed to 84 year old Tony, who got sober when he was 16 because he couldn't stop getting drunk and shooting cats on his farm, and he believes that all medicine is mind altering because he once took a roofelin that was intended for a female, but she caught his drift and switched it on him and left his ass naked in the street. This is the real tragedy of group think in the 12 step groups - getting people to conform to ideas that are harmful to their wellbeing.

Saving Lives, One Narcan At a Time

I hope you take these three arguments seriously, but I don't want you to use them against me as the reason you skipped your home group and went out and drank - you wanted to do that anyways so that's your fault. I merely want to point out the fact that we have more control over our behavior than A.A. lets on, but we can't stop our addictions without serious disruptions to our current life. That is why I believe harm reduction should be the primary method of recovery for everyone who wants to save a family member's life.

I've met so many people who have lost a child to heroine overdose and it is the most heart crushing thing to hear them say, "If I would have known about this, (insert name here) would still be with us today." If we all understood that we should all carry narcan around because you literally never know when somebody will fall out in front of you at the checkout line in a grocery store, because all of our drug supply is being tainted with deadly fentanyl and our only hope is narcan, we will save so many more fucking lives than letting 80 year old know-it-alls slam their bibl-er I mean Big Book over our heads and righteously shout at us that we need to confess our si-er I mean shortcomings as humans to them because if we don't, the-er I mean WE WILL ALL GO OU AND USE DRUGS AND DRINK AND DIE. And they won't get their sick satisfaction of seeing you get better by only listening to "their suggestions, and only their suggestions, for a god of your choosing". Yeah it's all a fucking religion disguised as principles to live by - possibly even teeters on a cult-like behavior, but I'll stop there before my disappearance is a bigger mystery than what is really happening about the A.A. office in New York...