Primal Scream
The addiction
— (versión en Espa?ol aquí) —
Hi, my name is Bernadette and I am in an abusive relationship with this civilisation
?Hi Bernadette!
Hi, my name is Bernadette and I am addicted to privilege, being abusive and abused
?Hi Bernadette!
?Hi Bernadette!
Hi, my name is Bernadette and I’m a racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, and aporophobic person who also has strong anthropocentric, cis-hetero patriarchal, imperialist, settler-colonialist, capitalist tendencies.
?Hi Bernadette!
Hi, my name is Bernadette and I am addicted to violence as a method to compulsively dissociate.
?Hi, Bernadette!
All those admissions are one and the same. They speak of the particular addiction this civilisation ensures we all develop to survive its grind. What this means is that if we are born inside of it, we all end up with (overt or covert) right-wing/conservative/fascist traits. As babies born from junkie mothers develop a taste for dope in utero, we acquire some tools from the master’s house to make it this far.
That is the hypothesis I hold and I consider it a key assumption to navigate my life, as it brings sanity and emotional sobriety to my experience.
This is not an out-of-the-blue assumption; it is based on the extensive study of a pattern performed by the members of the ACA fellowship (adult children of alcoholics? & dysfunctional families): we are likely to re-transmit the abuse we received from our dysfunctional families though not necessarily in the same way.
ACA has been able to identify not only the personal traits developed when growing up victimised in a dysfunctional household but also the violent traits inherited after surviving that experience. These latter traits make us behave as victimisers.
I am simply expanding that awareness to include the Behemoth and the systemic abuse we have received at its hands. The key point is to admit that we have also become an abuser after being systematically abused.
I have heard in the ACA rooms talk of an inner lab that serves us the chemicals we are addicted to when we encounter circumstances we underwent as children. I believe that the inner lab also produces highs that are related to oppression.
I appreciate that ACA and SLAA (and possibly CoDA but I am not sure) speak about dependencies to experiences in a non-medicalised way because that has allowed me to train my attention to identify compulsive feelings/sensations/thoughts without losing myself in the scientific explanation of the highs I am pursuing. I find said scientific explanations insufficient for my experiences and an ungrounding hindrance for my hyperactive mind. Chapter 1 of the SLAA book illustrates how non-chemical dependencies operate in a similar fashion to chemical dependencies with a personal story in which the narrator presents withdrawal symptoms and other elements that he is able to match to chemical dependencies because he followed an AA program before he began sobering up from his addiction to unhealthy sexual and romantic situations.
I know it is painful to consider the assumption I am presenting, especially if we claim we don’t consciously identify with any of those alt-right ideas, that we are not like our parents, that we are nothing like the system of our birth, that we have nothing to do with those fucking oppressors.
But, to me, the truth is that we do; we have a lot to do with all those people and institutions we reject, and despite all appearances, we aren’t that different.
We all have a little Elon Musk inside of us, running the show right under our?noses.
I call mine Melon, Melon Tusk, to be precise. Once I spotted him I chose to address him with that name. He doesn’t like it but at the moment I don’t care. He’s been calling me stupid and a piece of shit for quite a while; so for now, we are in a sort of Mexican standoff (pun intended) about how to address each other.
I put forward this assumption, that we are Tory asshats at heart, not to go on the way of:
No, none of that is the point of this assumption.
I introduce this assumption as an invitation to be aware that we have these neoliberal traits operating inside of us all the time, as this is a condition to guarantee our survival. The amount of traits or how they manifest may vary, so this is about investing some of our attention in identifying them and learning to manage them.
In addition, we have to keep in mind that even if addressing those traits might reduce them or even make some of them go away; there might be traits we will never get rid of, and our work will be to learn to live with them and teach others how to live with us and our ‘mean’ traits.
To me, this means we have to research the addiction behind these traits and learn to navigate the situations where they arise.
But sure, you can feel all upset when I make it very clear that I don’t believe you are free of those traits. You may holler back “you’re projecting!!!” and I’ll confidently state that you are one of us (gooble, gobble, one of us!) because just like me you are a child of the Behemoth, you were born inside this place that is essentially impossible to escape from.
Yeah, you come from the Behemoth and you belong to the Behemoth as much as I do but I have no interest in dealing with the feelings you have about your place of origin.
I know this is a tough story to swallow, so if you have a strong aversive reaction, consider that this story might not be for you, and stop reading.
If not, take a breath and read along.
In ACA, we speak about the inner child and re-parenting them. Recognising the elements of our inner family, in particular, our inner parent (who can also be our inner critic) and our inner child might be a harrowing process, but more often than not, an inner child is a cute thing, so there’s a reward in reconnecting with them.
However, admitting the Behemoth is our dysfunctional parent/elder/mother and acknowledging we have an inner Behemoth isn’t cute or part of the ACA program. I’ve found only a handful of people from ACA who are willing to openly expand the perception of what’s dysfunctional and speak of the “culture of origin” in the same tone as “family of origin”.
So, to be precise, for this work, if you are anti-patriarchal/capitalist/fascist/transphobic/etc like me, then that clusterfuck of all we hate at a personal and systemic level is alive and well inside of you and me and, and, and,?… well, gee WTF!!!! is an appropriate response to this fact.
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I believe that for people like me, the journey of recovery and emotional sobriety can’t really start until we acknowledge that we aren’t that different from those whom we despise the most. For us, it takes precedence to constantly admit we behave alike and enact similar harms (though possibly in a different order of magnitude) that we may not be aware of.
In addition, for all of us operating in the wellness-sphere (that goes from mainstream therapy to the most out-there ‘shamanic’ practices passing by goop), once we ground this assumption in a practice, the wellness to alt-right pipeline is easily perceivable.
That is because in the wellness-sphere (and I suspect in activism too) it is very easy to believe one has the upper hand because one ‘has done the work’. Thus, so many folk are fairly unwilling to admit they are part of the very thing they criticise. See the crash-and-burn trajectory of Russell Brand and the Ultra Spiritual Guy for some prime examples from the mainstream.
I move in that sphere and I have noticed how efficiently this pipeline operates. So, unsurprisingly, every other day I see much lesser-known influencers openly demonstrating racist, aporophobic or transphobic traits. See the Healing from Healing gram for some examples.
Because this phenomenon is so widespread there, my suggestion is that if you operate in the wellness-sphere, then identify and address vehemently the traits you have inherited from the Behemoth, or you are likely to find yourself in a land of extreme hatred, violent speech, conspiracy theory, and parroting Jordan Peterson (at best!).
The point of being aware of our inner Behemoth is not only avoiding ending up like an alt-right influencer/clown but also learning to negotiate with the very thing that is entrapping us. Unlike some people who can manage to do geographics and prosper after leaving a violent relationship, we can’t leave. I mean we can try, but the Behemoth is everywhere we can live, so at best, we can keep a low profile and hope that works because we can’t hide from it.
We take part in a violent relationship where we are in captivity so we ought to learn to negotiate with the very thing that brutalises us no matter what. (I know this is a hard pill to swallow).
My sense is that we know that and that’s why we try to dissociate so much, but if we truly believe we are on a path of healing or wellness (whatever those words mean), we can’t avoid facing the beast.
So, to me, a grand first step is to learn to negotiate with that inner asshole, understand their pain and motivations without feeling those as foreign, and possibly find a path of resolution. And, if that works, then maybe, just maybe, I can extrapolate that path and find said resolution outside myself as well and integrate the shit out of it.
And if I can’t do that, that is OK. Not finding resolution or integration is OK. Not being able to shift our relationship with the Behemoth is OK. Not dissolving any of our inherited traits is OK. Shying away from this work from time to time is also OK.
My take on all that is that maybe I can’t do all that work, but that doesn’t mean I get to detach from it and feel superior to those ‘other’ nasty voices. Nope. Since it is a matter of capacity, if I don’t have it, then I ought to put the work into admitting where I am incompetent and/or incapable, and that’s it. No biggie.
I may never fully recover and that’s OK.
I may recover some parts and then relapse, and that is OK. Relapse is a part of recovery and the journey to sobriety and serenity.
It’s just about starting up by admitting I am also that thing, that Behemoth I criticise so severely, and opening a way to identify and face my inner oppressor.
As I said before, this awareness is not about perfectly completing a program and resolving all the issues.
This awareness is about understanding we are prone to repeat the harm we endured in ways we can’t foresee or fathom. All the oppression and abuse we have suffered has to go somewhere and, given the conditions in which we exist, we are likely to repeat the damage at a personal and systemic level.
That is why I don’t speak in terms of healing or self-development, but recovery and emotional sobriety. At some level, there might be some resolution, some wisdom but those aren’t the goals. The goal is to face our relationship with reality, with what we the people have created, with what is.
My intention with this approach is to dismantle the narrative of good versus evil, them versus us because all of us are truly in this together. Again, the starting point is to admit and accept we all have it in us, to be like any of ‘them’, the villains. Should the circumstances be equivalent, we wouldn’t be any different. We all are like broken toys in a way because of our upbringing.
I admit that for healers, star-seeds, wellness-sphere dwellers (and possibly for activists too!) this can be very confronting.
Circling back on the recovery-sphere, I believe that people in ACA are doing this kind of work, even if they have never gotten close to dealing overtly with Behemoth-level systemic issues.
I believe that, despite all the flaws the AA program may have, those fuckers (which include myself as I’m a friend of Bill) are doing the work because many of the elements they directly tackle are pervasive elements of whiteness (and therefore part of the Behemoth), such as compulsively lying, for example.
I suspect many other fellowships operate on similar terms (SLAA and CoDA, for example).
From my experiences in the rooms with a variety of fellowships and my own experience trying to catapult myself out of the Behemoth, I can say that detoxing from the Behemoth cannot be done in one go (unless you plan on unaliving yourself, though what you believe may say that you’ll come back to face again the very same thing you tried to escape from).
If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine. Go try exiting the Behemoth by taking part in a sort of witness protection program where you can’t contact anyone else you’ve known, and you are also in charge of making sure no one from the dominant culture finds you. And not only that, don’t take any rubbish with you that you can transfer to people who, for whatever reason, are able to live on the outskirts of the Behemoth. Mind your poison, I say. Good luck with that endeavour.
So, taking into account all the above, what does it mean to slowly detox when in captivity?
To me, it means admitting I am an addict and opening myself up so I can identify my addiction points and learn from them together with a group of captives who are similarly addicted and willing to focus on this kind of recovery.
This entails lovingly confronting ourselves until we squeal, gently asking ourselves from time to time “why is that?” until it hurts.
?él es Dios!
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