I struggle with labels. I always have.
When we make statements such as, he’s autistic, she’s an addict, he’s gay, she’s anorexic etc., we immediately place that person, or ourselves, in a box.
Assumptions about who we are as a person are immediately formed based on that label
.
When in fact, those labels are such a small piece of who we are as human beings.
They are part of us, but they do not define us.
We are so much more than the sum of our parts.
I recently saw a post that was going around Facebook that really struck something in me.
It was posted by The Macedonia Police Department in Ohio. It was a picture of a leather clad hand (assuming an officer) holding a small baggie of meth.
The post went on to say that whoever threw away their bag also forgot their drugs inside and should come down and pick it up.
The tone of the post was extremely condescending and shaming. My heart sank.
I did something I never do and I clicked on the comments, hundreds of thousands of them, all carrying the same tone. A lot of them calling the person names and making rude disgusting remarks.
That post by an officer created a platform for public shaming. It created a space for people to spew anger and hatred toward those who are addicted to drugs.
During a time when our country is facing the largest drug epidemic in history, why on earth are we publicly shaming addicts?
Why is there an assumption that those kinds of thoughts and words are going to somehow, what, change how a person views themselves when they have an addiction and encourage them to get clean?
Doubtful.
It can and will, however, encourage more shame which is part of the very vicious cycle people with addictions face.
The shame is not on the addict here. It is on the Macedonia police officer who posted it.
Here is what I know to be a fact…
There is absolutely nothing any of us can say or do to make a person with addiction feel any worse about themselves than they already do. Nothing.
If shaming worked there would be no addiction.
Sprinkled throughout the vile comments on that post were people who were trying their best to get others to understand that this isn’t the way to treat another human being who is hurting.
Sadly, the majority of those comments were only met with more vile responses.
I began to really think about what was being said, how ignorant the comments were and how I was pretty sure no one commenting like that had ever loved an addict.
I may only reach a small portion of my audience with this post (and I hope that you share it to reach more people), but if I can help one other person on this planet understand what it is like to love an addict then I will have reached my goal. If I can get only one other person to view addiction differently, then I’ve done what I set out to do in sharing this.
You see I once knew this little boy who was the shyest sweetest child you could ever meet. He was quiet and empathetic. He took in everything around him and internalized it.
He was given a hard time as a kid…everyone said he was a “mama’s boy” because he found comfort by staying close to her most of the time and would only go places if his big sister was with him.
That mama’s boy grew into a man who wasn’t afraid to hug and kiss his mother in public and never failed to tell her he loved her.
He loved animals and did whatever he could to help them. He was known for taking in stray pets and stray people.
He could never handle it when people would cry especially if he thought he was the cause of their tears.
He was a clown and always good for a laugh. You could always count on him to lighten a heavy moment. To turn your tears into laughter.
He went out of his way to help friends and family in need and never said no when someone needed him. Even if he really didn’t have it to give, he’d find a way.
He loved big.
He had this way about him that he just knew when he was needed. He was a man of few words because he didn’t need to speak for you to know how he felt.
He always had a big bear hug waiting for you.
Inside he struggled. He struggled to love himself. To see what others saw in him.
He struggled to know his worth in the world.
He struggled to make connections outside of his tight circle of friends and family because he was so quiet and never quite felt like he fit in in this world.
He often felt as though he was an outsider in his own body.
He tried drugs and alcohol, recreationally at first, because taking them gave him the courage to connect with others. When he did it he felt free from his thoughts. He felt connected.
He had no idea that he would have the genetic make up that would lead him from trying to fit in to a lifelong struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction.
He had no idea that something that he at first thought would set him free would eventually become his worse nightmare. His prison. The thing that would haunt him for the rest of his life. The thing that would threaten most of those connections that he had made.
This is what he told me when I asked how. How did all this happen? Why?
There is no amount of shaming that could compare to the self-loathing that he battled.
Every. Single Day.
We talked about it a lot and I feel for the most part he spoke very openly with me.
He knew how much I hated that he had to battle those demons and he knew how much I loved him regardless.
There are no words I can use that seem big enough or meaningful enough to describe how you ache when you love someone with addiction.
The way your breath hitches in your chest every time the phone rings.
The lump in your throat while your heart races 90 miles an hour as you drive around in the middle of the night searching.
That little freckle-faced boy was my first best friend, he was my partner in crime, my confidant, my fashion consultant, my body guard.
He was my brother.
Brandon died at the age of 31.
His death was the single most devastating moment of my life.
I will never “get over it”.
My brother was an alcoholic and an addict, but he was SO much more than that.
He had the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known. He would give you the shirt off of his back.
He loved hard and passionately and when he loved you, you knew it.
He never held a grudge. He never failed to let those he loved know how much they meant to him.
He was a hard worker, who despite his addictions had always managed to hold down a job.
He was ridiculously funny and thrived on making those around him laugh.
He loved kids and was a big kid at heart himself.
Brandon was a son, a brother, a brother-in-law, an uncle, a grandson, a cousin and a friend, who also happened to struggle with addiction.
His addictions did not define him.
There’s no possible way to slap a label on all that he was to those who truly loved him.
My hope is that the next time you hear something about an addict or an alcoholic and you find yourself placing judgment on them that you think of my words here today.
That you try to remember that person is someone’s brother or sister.
That person is someone’s child.
Your child could someday be that person.
Addiction does not discriminate and none of us should be so naïve as to think “that will never be my child”.
There is someone out there that would give anything to not have to watch that person struggle.
And more importantly…
You don’t CHOOSE to be an addict.
You don’t wake up one day and think, “hmm, maybe I’ll start doing drugs and alcohol for the rest of my life and see how bad it fucks up my life and the lives of those I love”.
Most of all I hope that you are kind and loving and realize that they are people too.
People who are hurting.
People who hate themselves for what they’ve become more than we ever could.
There are truly few things harder than loving someone through their addictions, but I can guarantee that one of those things is being the person who is struggling with the addiction.