Addicts are Predictable and Infuriating

Doing the Same unwise thing, getting the same expected bad results. Another form of insanity afflicting those who deal with addicts. We had torrential rain and wind in Honolulu this January 2020. I remembered what it was like to be homeless in the rain and I invited an associate ( not a friend) to spend the night. He does not find me at all attractive. No working girl wants a man in her space who hounds her for sex. I knew what would happen. He would resent having to look to me for help. He would reason that everything I had was ill gotten and he would not hesitate to steal from me, with a touch of verbal abuse. He’d rifled through and left disorganized. I’d have to turn meaner than him and kick him out.

Remember the negatives of film from cameras? Before digital? You only had so many pictures on roll of film. Once the roll was developed you’d get the negatives and the pictures. Negatives were miniatures of each of your pics–they looked like the pic above. As long as you had the negatives you could exactly reproduce the picture as many times as you wanted. Helping an addict is like living your life by reproducing the negatives of film. Doing the same thing, expecting and receiving the same bad results. You’re very unhappy. Without making any changes you do it again, and you receive the expected bad results. You do it again and–you get the point.

Insanity isn’t just doing the same thing and expecting different results, as Albert Einstein defined insanity. I favor a more inclusive definition of insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing, expecting different results, and insanity is doing the same thing, expecting and getting the same unhappy results. Then, without making any changes, you feel compelled to do it again. And again. Why? I don’t know?