The Show Intervention Aggravated my Jealousy

Intervention is a show that I find interesting because the details about the addict’s background are given. Drug Addicts always seem to have trauma/rejection/abandonment in their past, imho. Food addicts have sexual abuse in their past. Hoarders have loss, a literal loss of a person more often than not, rather than the figurative loss of something like status. I agree with A.A. when they say alcohol is but a symptom. Alcohol can be replaced with something else and that addiction switch can be flipped on. The processes of addiction, the attitudes of the addicts are remarkably similar across the board, including denial, blaming others, deflecting attention to something else, enabling. I watch and learn when I am not too emotional. I can get lost in bitterness and I will tell you why.

I wish I were SLOW to anger

I am quick to anger. I admit it. I also acknowledge that the anger I feel and destructively express has had as much of an impact on my life as my drug use. I have always been angry about not having a family. I have been intensely jealous if people who have people. People who need people are not the luckiest people in the world when there are no needed people. I would watch Intervention and think bitterly, “things can’t be that bad for them if they have enough people who care about them to form a group.” Most people who are long term people in the dope scene don’t have anyone. Maybe they are like me and never had anyone. Perhaps they drove people away. I did a lot of that so I have something in common with the second group of loners as well as the first. It is true that there are many of my peers who could not get an intervention of the ground. I am sure of this fact. But I now know that it is not necessary to hate those who have the blessing of loved ones who want to intervene.

Just bc people care does not mean all is well

I understand now that love is not enough. I love my1 cat but bc I don’t know how to train an animal I unwittingly taught him to bite. Which causes friction. How much more friction could there be if instead of a cat I had a child to screw up with the very best of intentions? With no example to guide me I shudder at the thought. Fortunately I am blessed with no children. I am sure you won’t argue with me when I tell you I had no business having kids.

Support is not as least supportive. What looks like support on the outside might feel like pressure to someone on the inside. During the Tokyo Summer Olympics they showed the large groups of family and friends of the athletes assembled in the United States bc there were no spectators allowed by Japan bc of COVID. Lots of cheering for the medal winners. I am sure the losers had groups assembled who would have cheered for their athlete but their athlete lost and they didn’t make it on tv. How must it have felt to come in fourth and disappoint all those people! Sometimes an entire small town was hoping an athlete would medal to put them on the map. I would not have wanted to return to face those people had I failed them. There have been times I have enjoyed the enormous freedom of being my own person, without the obvious downside putting a damper on my enjoyment.

Now I know that having people doesn’t make life perfect and I don’t have to feel that the people on Intervention have nothing to be upset about if they have someone to call “Mom.” I admit, I am still jealous.