He is Ramping up Please give me Strenght.

[Littleboylost]

• lbl. i read qbout two sisters both writers. both about 70 now. lily and doris brett. actually, doris is a psychologist primarily. born in poland of a holocaust survivor family and immigrating to australia.
  
  lily is the more famous one. huge feud. almost 40 years, about their experience of their mother and their common childhood which they saw as differently as night and day.
  
  lily used her writing to explore holocaust pain and horror through the dysfunction of her mother who she said was ever depressed and rageful.
  
  doris says mother was placid and ever loving. that it was lily who raged, terrorizing her. she began to write she says to defend her mother's memory.
  
  i am completely estranged from my own sister. it is not that we see our lives differently but more as we perceive and experience each other. kind of like what you infer about your son and your own experience of each other , at least in the last few years.
  
  except in your case i really do believe that there are not two fully functioning brains at play. due to immaturity your son is not playing with a full deck. his moral development is affected by this. his ability and willingness to take responsibility for actions and events. and the feedback loop of the drugs.
  
  none of this speaks to his eventual capacity to one day live a full life. i believe he is like the grand majority of vietnam vets gabor deacribes whose addiction to heroin was circumstantial-- and who recovered.
  
  of course life can intervene with these "normal" kids can before they mature and recover. (you see, i believe the preponderance of energy is towards health. ) but that is fate. we all of us deal with that fortunately for most they can remain oblivious. we cannot.

  Thank you Copa. I agree 100%. I am going to seek some literature out from the sisters. It sounds very entreguing. Do you have titles of any of their books?
  

 

[Copabanana]

lily brett-- it could be worse.

doris brett--eating the underworld.

if you google their two names and "feud" you will find a review of the latter book from 2001 which describes it.

i really liked 2 reviews: a literary feud... and sister pact....they came up for me on google as the frst and the third results

 

[Littleboylost]

Thank you! Ordering to read.

 

[Copabanana]

did you ever read the nightingale, lbl? did you like it? i have been reading sand and ash. love it, too. but trying not to finish it. and it's sad.

 

[Littleboylost]

I have the nightengale partially read. It has been so disruptive I have not finished it yet. I must.

 

[Copabanana]

i have been reading gabor mate interviews, trying to learn what he believes to be an effective intervention and treatment strategy. i cannot find anything that addresses individual recovery except for compassion, support and stress reduction.

i really agree with him at the population level. the vulnerabilty that comes from repression/suppresion of feelings and consiousness of trauma.

but the thing is: how is this translated into change at family and individual level? at the social level, i get it.

but what do professionals and others do with one addict or a dozen? what are the interventions?

m, my so, is an alcoholic (recovering). yes. he has a history of childhood trauma. brutal father and loving but abused mother.

except one day m decided to stop drinking.
actually twice. once he stopped 19 years. this time it's been 7. no treatment. no tapering.

i am not understanding this whole argument about "choice. " if we do not factor in an element of choice involved to stop (or continue), are we not denying the full spectrum of humanity in a being?

we are not just bearers and carriers of our history. we are actors, too. it is not just the so called oppressors who have responsibility.

"victims" do too.

thoughts?

 

[Littleboylost]

You have interpreted exactly what I have from his works. It is truly cognitive dissonance; How things are vs how they aught to be. And why does one individual choose addictive behaviour while others do not? What forces drive some to sustainable healthy addictions and others to highly destructive ones?
Gabor does believe in treatment, he also believes in embracing the addicts as a part of our communities and not applying punitive measures towards them. This I agree with. He also is a great believer in harm reduction. This too I am ok with. He believes in a community based treatment path and this is where the dissonance begins for me.

We do not live In a society that embraces open communal recovery for addicts and the resources offered are sorely lacking. He recognizes this and pushes for this change.

I as well as you and many others ask what do we do to best treat the addicts in our current social state? We do not yet have in our respective communities the wisdom to embrace, employ and house them in order to lead them to a path of healing and recovery.

I take what I need from him and I leave the rest. Long term in patient rehab is the only chance my son has of recovery in the current state of society.

I believe we need to change societal perspectives on many things, homelessness, mental health and addiction are among them. But I do not believe these changes will come in my mode time of ever at all. This is the way of the current world.

We have more Homless that suffer from mental health and addiction than any other first world nation (speaking to North America as a whole) this is a blight on our society and is failure of care and compassion.

Yet it is what it is and it is what we have to deal with. Not fair, not right but is.

I would prefer my son be out into care for a minimum of 6 months. Roger being allowed to make any decisions for himself. He is a harm to himself and others in his current state.

But I am left with having him lead a life he has been allowed to chose and setting boundaries to protect myself; both emotionally and physically. And for that matter financially. Living with an addict breaches my basic hierarchy of needs. So I am left with no choice but he one I have made.

His work has taught me a lot about addiction and I have gained new perspectives that help me deal with my son. But we do not have the utopian society that can alleviate pain, trauma or addiction.

I also beg to differ with his comments that there were no addicts in historical times. I don't believe that for a minute. Al long as there havebeen men, there has been addiction. It is in the fabric of our nature. Power, greed, wisdom and faith go along with the human condition. We just are not clear how they managed them. Perhaps when he speaks of the native tribes with there mind altering drugs for enlightenment he can also pause to recall many of these tribes also believed in human sacrifice. Maybe that is how they dealt with their undesirables and addicts. Who is to know.

 

[Copabanana]

i hear him saying we have to accept the reality of our lives. which entails accepting our suffering. stepping beyond what he calls the "the dream" of our lives. i wrote something snarky but then i just found he is giving seminars in a therapeutic method called "compassionate inquiry." to be held in toronto and vancouver in nov and jan. not wanting to travel so far right now.

if he does these again i would like to go.

 

[Littleboylost]

Hungry Ghost & Myth of Normal - Dr. Gabor Maté