Lately I’ve noticed myself feeling resentful during Tempest calls when other members talk about their experiences with good therapists, psychiatrists, EMDR, psychics, reiki, massage, acupuncture, psychopharmacology, and other expensive routes toward healing. I get mad because lacking a driver’s license has limited my job opportunities and income to $12.25/hour. I get mad because my state-funded, Medicaid-based insurance only covers therapists who are still in school. I get mad because my financial situation does not allow me access to the specialized care that I deserve.
Years ago, before I turned 26 and was still covered by my parent’s upper-middle class insurance, I did have access to those things. I understand what holistic, evidence-based care looks and feels like. Of course I get angry that people with privilege and money can supplement their recovery in ways that are no longer available to me.
Earlier this week I was listening to an interview with Gabor Mate on a podcast called Pulling the Thread. Mate says that everyone numbs - whether it’s with drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, sex, pornography, overworking, shopping, social media, the list goes on and on. The point is that everyone does it. So why do we criminalize and dehumanize people who numb with drugs and alcohol? Why was my eating disorder treated in a humane way, but my alcohol addiction was not?
People like me are forced into a criminal justice system that strips us of our dignity, our money, and our ability to get a decent paying job, which also impacts our access to proper care. The legal system believes that this is a choice, that we keep choosing stupidity. But let me tell you from first hand experience that NO ONE chooses to get addicted. The system has never been interested in helping me find the root cause of my addiction. They are only interested in further punishment and financial exploitation. The system is impossible to escape from unless there is a heaping pile of money and privilege involved.
Mate says the word addict is useful in shorthand, but it does not express the richness or complexity of reality. Imagine what would happen if instead of calling myself and other people “addicts,” we said, “that is a human being who has suffered a lot in life and carries a lot of emotional pain from which they try to escape in certain behaviors that are compulsive, that have caused harm, but they can’t give them up because they have so much pain.” Imagine what would happen if instead of stripping drug addicted folks of their rights, sending them off to jail, and traumatizing them further, we gave them proper insurance and the same access to care that privileged people have.
Maybe someday if I ever get my driver’s license back, I will start a program for folks like me who are trapped in a system that literally works to keep us sick. I have been given the blessing and the curse of experiencing both sides of the insurance coverage spectrum. I know that better care exists and I know how unfair all of this is. It makes sense that this boils my blood.
Every single day that I stand up and keep going down the path of sobriety is a miracle. Attempting to navigate an unjust system is no easy feat. I will remember, as Mate says, that I am not some low-life addict who doesn’t deserve proper care. Instead, I am just a human being who attempted to self-soothe after decades of emotional pain. That’s all. The societal rhetoric around addiction is all wrong.
It’s okay to be angry.
It’s okay to keep pushing for equal rights.
It’s okay to stand up and say enough.
Progress.
“She should be mad,
Should be scathing like me,
But no one likes a mad woman.”
-Taylor Swift
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