Last time I was in Vancouver, a friend took me to a homeless park (literally tents set up). One of the folks living there was freaking out as we were walking thru, bc he’d dropped some of his drugs…I mean full on panic attack…he needed his fix. The friend I was w actually got on the floor to help him find them. She told me – he was withdrawing & his body was in need of that substance at that moment.
She said – in the moment, yes he needed it, but as someone who used to live in one of those tents, she now houses folks in her permanent house, & helps them get off the drugs & taper over time. She wasn’t condoning the usage…but she got that they needed them IN that moment, to “avoid the crash of the low.”
As a society we semi understand addiction. There’s a slide here, that shows just SOME of the things we get addicted to: from drugs & alcohol, to work & shopping.
It got me thinking the other day – we accept those, yes, but they seem to be more abt pain avoidance (avoiding the low) than abt getting the “high” the way it’s portrayed on tv.
This made me then think abt relationship “jumpers”…& ANY type of relationship: friend, fam, romantic. Isn’t what happens there: one to the next to the next, also – an addiction spurred by pain avoidance?
Most of us have had a friendship that ended…where someone who we were super tight w, now feels alone, & you see them latch on to that “mutual acquaintance” you both had previously talked abt was toxic, & not healthy to be arnd. Why jump to the toxic person? They need the validation of friendship/to avoid being alone.
We’ve all had friends/fam break up w someone after a meaningful relationship only to jump RIGHT away (wks or a month) into something serious again. Does love at first sight happen? Maybe. Do ppl have existing connections they can latch right away on to? Maybe. But isn’t the jump in relationships & the NEED for validation that you’re a worthy friend or lover, or you’re “still desired,” an addiction like all the others. To avoid the low?
We have to learn to love ourselves, alone, first – just like an alcoholic needs to love themselves sober before they can “go out.”