Glorification of Use

I was watching a YouTube video tonight that got me thinking about glorifying lifestyle, glorifying drug use, etc. etc. So the video is of Onyx and Biohazard (yes, I know, how terribly 90s of me...) from a song called Judgement Night. Judgement Night is movie that came out when I was living in Austria. A guy in my group had the soundtrack with him there and I borrowed it from time to time. If you go and find that video, you might be surprised that I am listening to it. It's basically rap and it's pretty graphic. I am not exactly sure if I even like the song, it just gets stuck in my head from now and again. When I watched the video tonight, there is a sense of glorify gang lifestyle. I immediately starting thinking about all the things in my life that have seemed glorified to me, especially in the arena of drugs and alcohol. 

I hit google to find myself a nifty little picture to use for my blog and the image above came up. I had seen this picture several months ago when I got an email from one of the 1,000 drug and alcohol listserves I belong to alerting me to these shirts that were for sale through Urban Outfitters. They were asking me to sign a petition to tell this company to stop glorifying drug use and remove these shirts from the market. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to write about tonight with regards to glorifying use, but now as I listen to more songs and YouTube and wade my way through the 1,000+ photo google spit out when I typed in "glorification of drug use pictures", I had lost my original sense of indignation I had about the topic in the beginning. 

Now, the picture of above, I don't support this at all. Kids at that age shouldn't even know what these drugs are. Xanax and Vicodin mixed together can kill you. Adderall is horribly addictive and overprescribed. Xanax, for that matter, is also overprescribed and opiates are WAYYYYY too available. Do I think they should make T-shirts glorifying these drugs....no. However, then we need to look at everything else out there. Shot glasses were a staple of my glassware collection up until about 25 when shots were a joke. How many birthday cards make some swipe about going out and getting wasted to celebrated. Oh, let's not forget all the TV shows out there like Breaking Bad and Weeds in which the foundation of the story is the drug culture. 

My original train of thought when I grabbed this topic tonight was to talk about the guys I work with right now. Most of my guys are products of the criminal justice system. Some of my guys have spent most of their adult lives incarcerated. I have guys in their late teens and early 20s with 3 different probation officers and the threat of 25+ years of jail hanging over their heads with they don't complete treatment. When they are outside of the treatment groups, these guys glorify everything from the drug use to gang affiliation over to living the life of an incarcerated individual. In my opinion, most of these guys just don't know what else to do. It's all they have ever known. They also suffer from "jail mentality" in which they are trying to assert their dominance in order to have the power. I don't look at them the same way I look at a company who distributes shirts like these. These guys are about survival. If they aren't from the jail mentality, they are certainly of a street mentality (again about survival, not about being "cool" or "awesome" like my teens to see these behaviors as). These mentalities are hard to work with because group therapy, in particular, is about developing a cohesive group of people who are willing to get vulnerable with each other and work on the core issues that keep them in this cycle. Surprisingly to me, the hardest, "years in the pen" type guys are the ones who have the power to drive change in my groups. They command respect. They get it too. You know that saying...."If Mom isn't happy, then no one is" ? The same concept applies with some of my toughest clients. If they want to change, you all better want to too....if they don't, they generally won't assert authority. They will just sleep through the process or walk out the door. So, that dude on the street with tattoos on every inch of his body and looks like he could beat someone up with his eyes? Yeah, that guy....is my greatest asset. He can drive more change than I ever could. My job becomes to manage the chaos......

After I started writing the first paragraph this blog, I was having a problem focusing so I decided to take a bath. While there, I started thinking about all the things that seemed glorified in my life. Drinking and drugs were definitely glorified in my high school experience especially when I went to Austria for a year where it was legal to drink for someone my age. And as we are all aware, no good story starts out with "While I was eating a salad.....". In my personal experience, travel abroad was something that was very glorified to me. I used to listen to the stories from the other groups coming back and thought "yeah I need to have stories like that too....". Yeah, I have some funny stories from that trip, but many of my stories are really kind of sad. Stories of severe homesickness, sadness, depression. My expectation for that trip was greatness. I saw glimpses of it. I didn't want people to know that I didn't "have the best time of life" while I was there but you would have never known that from how I talked about it. Same with my trip back to Germany a few years later. I felt that I should really like this idea of living abroad. Again, my expectations were dashed when I had almost the same experience. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be back with my friends and family. Hmmm.....

My senior in college, I was filling out an application to become a Fulbright Scholar in Germany. This would have been another year abroad. My advisor at the time was proof-reading my essay. He looked up and said "this is kinda shit for you. What's up with that?" I just shrugged my shoulders and he then asked me why I  was applying for this. "I don't know, I should because I can probably get it and people seem impressed by it." He looked at me and asked me again if I really wanted to do this and it was OK to say that I didn't. I teared up a little bit. "Julie, if you need permission, here it is. Go home. You don't have to do anything. Go home and be happy. Do you want to go home?" I never looked back again. I never ever for one minute regret my decision not to apply and go on. I have had a few people I know go and they LOVED it. That is great! I wished I would have the same experience but I just didn't. When I talk about these experiences now, people tell me how lucky I am that I got to do all that. Yes, I am, but it is wasn't right for me and it accelerated my alcoholism in the span of a few months. 

In my 20s, I glorified the hell out of alcohol use. Everything was either related to alcohol, because of alcohol or interesting because of alcohol. I never felt much out of place about this. I had a pretty active social life. Many of my friends were not married and we were all about having a good time. It was pretty easy to hide dysfunctional drinking patterns in this phase. I used the glorification of use to normalize my relationship with alcohol. I made sure that others around me had a great time while using too. Yippeee, the alcoholic does not stand alone!

Ultimately, was my use driven by the glorification of others? Others are always going to be talking about stuff. It's was I choose to listen to and choose to build my expectation of fun upon. I watch Breaking Bad - meth use is not really of all that much interest to me....Weeds - great show - doesn't make me smoke weed. I see the glorification of use from a much different lens these days. I try to help my guys see that when others are wandering around glorifying their use, they are trying to normalize it and also to assert some dominance. "I did more of this than you....You will never be as addict as me...." Blah blah blah. If you don't want to listen to it because you are trying to change, then don't. Walk away. That is their disease talking. If you engage, your brain will engage and I can bet that you will be in my office telling me that you are triggered. 

Is there too much glorification of use? Yeah, of course. My question would be is how to draw the lines in the sand about preventing it. When a prevention specialist came into one of my classes last year, I did not give her the time of day. She was talking about prevention techniques and being politically active against stuff like the Xanax shirts. I blew her off, honestly, because at that moment, I didn't believe that prevention is possible. There is nothing that anyone at any point would have told me that would have convinced me not to pick up that first drink. My Mom warned me about the strong family history of alcohol problems. I had the D.A.R.E. guy come and talk me to in the 4th grade. Nothing and I mean nothing was going to prevent that first drink. Now, that is me....there are people who can be prevented from walking down this path. The question for this blog - does attempting to stop the glorification in the media, for instance, work? How do we move to define the acceptable nature of drug use or gangs or jail. Is it OK on TV as long as we throw a disclaimer out there saying "if this were real, it's actually pretty bad?". As you can probably tell, I remain a bit on the skeptical side mainly because I lack the appropriate knowledge to make an argument other than what I know from my own life. 

Well, I hope you have all enjoyed one of my more disjointed blogs to date. Maybe in a week or two I will re-read this one and have a clearer idea of what I really wanted to say. I just know that I still glorify some of my use. It's like when my therapist was counseling me through my divorce - she said it hurts to think about the past relationship with your ex-husband because not all the memories were bad. Break ups would be a lot easier if the total relationship was crap. I agree and I still feel that way about my use. Oh, there were some good times for sure. However, at this juncture, when I look at the reality of my use and the use of others, I think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse. We all knew they were using...and we lost them. When I see the Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, I see them sitting with Lindsay Lohan at some fancy treatment center in California. I see nothing fun or glamorous about their use. Maybe, now, in this 24/7 world, we don't just see the pictures of awesome fun at the party, we see the aftermath via mugshots, passing out in the bathroom, looking like crap at the end of the night. I just see the glorification of use another defense mechanism in my world. It's an attempt to minimize the impact of use and an excellent way to deflect responsibility. 

Well, I better get to bed. 

Peace out, yo!

Julie

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