Just for today I will admit that "just for today" might be an effective coping mechanism after all.

About ten and a half years ago, I quit crystal meth for the last time. After a few wasted hours in NA meetings I declared NA a bunch of magical thinking bullshit and never went back (apart from a single meeting at 5 and again at 7 years clean because I was bored and wanted to announce to the magical thinkers that I could be clean too without being one of them.)

I still despise their programs and 12 steps of bullshit, but just for the record, “just for today” sorta kinda does help, with some modifications that I thought I’d share with my friends and hopefully mostly fellow unbelievers and critical thinkers here.

My kneejerk reaction to “just for today” was, “Fuck this shit! I’m going to be clean for the rest of my life”, but I do see how it can be helpful to those tempted by addiction. So yes – taken at face value “just for today” is silly. A day is an arbitrary segment of time. Why a day? That’s just how long our planet rotates on its own axis. It doesn’t really mean anything. Why not a just a minute, or an hour, or a week or a month or a year, or… Just for the next 20 years?

So if we take “just for today” to mean just in this moment, I will not use my substance of choice, be it meth as in my case, or alcohol or coke or whatever the fuck sinks your boat, then it makes sense. It means that although I love my drug and want very much to use it, I will not give in and I will not use it RIGHT NOW. So with that in mind, I still said “fuck this shit” and decided that although I would tell no one for a while, I would say to myself “Just for the next twenty years”.

So… that’s what I did. And it worked. On 1st September 2013, I said it to myself… Just for the next twenty years, I’ll be clean. Thus I’m allowed to use meth again on 1st September 2033. I’m about six months over half way though my “day”, folks. Just another nine years and six months or so, and I’m allowed to use meth again. If I live that long.

I honestly don’t know what will happen if I do live that long. Will I carry on saying “just for the next 20 years” like the NA cult members say “just for today”? Will I give in? Only time will tell. I’ll probably not use though… it is a really good psychological trick to play on oneself. Just not a day though. A day was not enough for me.

Update (for clarification): I wrote the above as a Facebook status yesterday, and then copied it here verbatim. To be clear, I am not interested in using meth ever again, even in 2033. I’m being somewhat facetious here… but also I do like the ambiguity. I think that considering myself above the temptation somehow would be arrogant and unwise. Acknowledging it keeps me cautious.

Exploring the Enigma of Divine Negligence: A Thought Experiment

The other day I struggled with a minor case of insomnia, a rare occurrence for me these days, but as I lay in bed deeply engrossed in my thoughts, it turned out to be a welcome one. I tried an interesting thought experiment: Imagine what it must be like to be God. Not getting into any of the things any particular god worshipped now or before is claimed to have done, let’s play this game here, but imagine that you or I became God, at least one with one of the properties that gods are claimed to have, omniscience, and then let’s see where it goes…

Feel free to join me in this experiment. Imagine it to be as you read on. I’m God. I have a brain a tad bigger than a human brain, not for the intellect itself but simply for the capacity. There’s a lot to know when you’re omniscient, and I do mean a lot. Imagine creating a whole universe, and actually let’s forget about most of the universe for a moment and just focus on planet Earth, and the race of humans. Let’s assume that every human is made in my image, so they’re just like me, apart from that brain capacity problem.

Let’s assume that I could potentially have a personal relationship with every single human, alive or dead. I know their thoughts, their dreams, what they have done, what they will do, what they could do even. “Could do” is a problem that requires an unimaginable brain capacity in itself. Every choice could lead to a wildly different life, and you know them all, for every being alive and dead and every being that will one day live, or might live if their potential mom or dad have sex at just the right time, or even meet.

To know all of that, you have to exist outside of time and space. It’s the only way that it makes sense for everything to be knowable at once. Past, present and future all at once. All these people, crying out to God because someone broke their heart, and knowing full well that in almost every case they will have forgotten about it in a short space of time, when time itself means nothing to me.

And therein lies the problem… (And please forgive me as I now switch to the second person. I’d have been marked down in my school essays all those years ago, but here on this blog, dear reader, I make the rules. Case or tense matters little to a god.) When you know all these things, hear all these prayers, they’re not important anymore. Sure, you could intervene, but for what? All these lives… knowing how all they turn out – none of them are significant. Everyone lives. Everyone dies. Most everyone suffers. So what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t lead anywhere. They’re like stories. When you look at them from outside of time, they feel complete. Since you know all their details all at once, you see a much bigger picture of the entire species and its progression over time. Knowing so much, I don’t think I would care to intervene at all, ever.

That’s exactly what the popular god looks like if we are to assume He exists. A god that never appears, never answers a single prayer, and in fact, every story about Him is a myth copied from some other older myth. A god that has a personal relationship with everyone but never shows himself, not even once. Every bit of “evidence” from Him is nothing more than a believer begging the question, taking something they assume to be created as proof of the creator. But hang on a second… that’s just the same as a god that doesn’t exist at all outside of the imagination.

Now let’s factor in the things I deliberately left out. All those other planets, solar systems, galaxies, maybe even other universes… Maybe all of those universes eventually expand, then cool down over a time that we cannot even comprehend, then collapse and (Bang!) explode and expand again into new universes… There must be other intelligent life out there somewhere, or at the very least, complex life. How are we to assume in all seriousness that a magical entity called “god” could create all these things, know all these things, and then still care? No, friends, this god is nothing more than something we made up, a magical answer to everything that we don’t understand, but when one stops and thinks about it, this answer doesn’t answer anything at all.

During/after meth addiction photos

Hey, I’ve been meaning to post something like this for ages, and since I shared it to Facebook today for throwback Thursday, why not here too?

I hate seeing those before/after meth addiction photos, generally shared by the weak of mind to shame others for their misfortune, so here’s the reverse, where the before pic is me at the height of addiction, and the after pic is me more than ten years clean.

So here I am with infant Josh in 2008, when I was 37 years old.

And here I am last month on vacation, ten years and a few months clean, age 52, while he’s 15…

Ten Years Clean

Wow. Every year for the last few years, I found myself keen to write my yearly milestone post a couple of months in advance, and almost every year I did write it weeks or days ahead – I just couldn’t wait to share it. Every year except this one. I totally forgot. I mean, I remembered it was coming up a few months ago, made my usual mental note to write about it, and then forgot. I did make a Facebook share about it a day late though.

Anyway, I’m sorry for neglecting this blog lately. I have some stuff on my mind that I wanted to write, an update about me and my son for the last few years, but I’ve been struggling with how to write it without encroaching upon anyone else’s privacy… Until I can figure out how to express that, and there really is stuff I want to share, but until then… it will have to wait.

Anyway, I’m ten years clean, and already a couple of days into year eleven, since my starting date was September 1st, 2013. I don’t have much new to say about it. It’s good to have reached this milestone, and I do like it when people congratulate me. Of course that feels good. But I think, my choice to ignore recovery “culture” has made it easy for me. It might have been harder at the start, but now, ten years on, with no belief in 12 step programs, no sponsor, no magical thinking bullshit, I have no attachments to anyone who gets nostalgic about using drugs.

I still get that knot in my stomach every time I read about some celebrity, like Eminem or whoever the fuck… “So-and-so is X years clean, says he couldn’t have done it without his sponsor, other-so-and-so”. It gives the impression that everyone who cleans up does so via some “spiritual but not religious” nonsense and that we all must have a sponsor. Fuck that shit. It didn’t work for me and I ended up doing 3 more years of meth before I found my own way of being clean, which involves no magical thinking, no sponsor, no program, no bullshit. I don’t get angry anymore, I don’t think of those meetings I attended where some dogmatic dickhead insisted that the only way to be clean was following their stupid program. Last time I attended a meeting was to announce I was 7 years clean, and I had not attended for about 5 years before that, and that was the last meeting I will ever attend. If such a program works for you, great, but don’t pretend to know what is better for anyone else.

I don’t know what works for anyone other than myself, but I’m happy to be clean, and I hope that every addict who struggles can find their way to sobriety, whatever that way may be. And I hope that my words may inspire and motivate someone else. I don’t know if you can be clean without becoming a happy clappy or some kind of cult member such as in NA, but I have done so, so I know that it can be done. And that’s what counts for me.

Even ChatGPT is smart enough to know that 12 step programs are bullshit

Check it out! I’ve been using ChatGPT a lot lately, primarily to help me with programming problems, but this time I had a go asking it about 12 step programs. And it is spot on. Folks, even AI knows that NA is bullshit. What follows is a quote that was my prompt, followed by the response generated by the AI.

I have read that 12 step based programs are no better than a placebo for addiction treatment, since they are not evidence based. Is this true?

The effectiveness of 12-step programs for addiction treatment has been a topic of debate and research for many years. While some studies have shown that 12-step programs can be effective in reducing substance abuse and promoting recovery, others have suggested that their effectiveness may be limited or even no better than placebo.

It’s important to note that the effectiveness of any addiction treatment program can depend on various factors, such as the individual’s unique circumstances, the severity of the addiction, and the quality and type of treatment received. Additionally, addiction is a complex and multifaceted condition, and no single treatment approach is effective for everyone.

There is some evidence to suggest that participation in 12-step programs can be beneficial for some individuals, particularly when used in combination with other evidence-based treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy or medication-assisted treatment. Some people find the social support and accountability provided by 12-step groups to be helpful in promoting long-term recovery.

However, it’s also true that 12-step programs are not based on empirical evidence and may not be effective for everyone. As with any treatment approach, it’s important to consider the individual’s unique needs and preferences when choosing a course of treatment.

Ultimately, the decision to participate in a 12-step program should be made in consultation with a qualified healthcare provider and based on a careful consideration of the available evidence and the individual’s personal circumstances.

A couple of common fallacies about addiction and recovery that I’d like to address

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. At one stage in a previous job – feels like a previous life mind you… I had time to write while at work. These days I work at work, and at home when I’m not sleeping or playing Diablo 2 resurrected, I don’t even have my laptop on, so I don’t write at all. So, for once I have some time to write, and I hope you like it…

No, I did not “live my life”.

Maybe I’m guilty of promulgating this one? I tend to tell people amusing anecdotes about all the crazy shit that happened to me back in my years of addiction, and more than one person has proclaimed, “You lived your life!” I did not intend to glamorise or romanticize my years of addiction, but I wonder if I, and others, have done so unintentionally, so this is a good thing to address.

You need to understand that living as a meth addict is not exactly a fun time. It isn’t interesting either. It’s boring. You want to know what tweakers get up to most of the time? Nothing. Fuck all. People on meth spend most of the time (assuming they have meth) sitting around and smoking meth. Granted, we did get up to some crazy things because being inebriated most of your time leads to some very poor choices and the taking of unnecessary risks (mostly to obtain drugs), but that time is few and far between what we do best of all most of all, which is fuck all. Mostly we were zombies, without the eating of brains but also without the brains.

When I first started using meth, I’d mock the other users because they never did anything. I hated hanging with them, because all they did was sit around and smoke meth, while I used it and then went about my normal life… But eventually I became one of them.

You see, drugs like meth work by hijacking the pleasure/reward system of the brain. That brain region is naturally hit up when you do something pleasurable, and “feel” a reward. Eat a good burger or have some good sex, and your brain releases dopamine that tells you to feel good. Have a few hits of meth, and you get the same result. So it’s a shortcut to the pleasure you get from doing something, without doing the thing. The more you use, and the further addicted you become, the less you do other than simply sitting around and using your drug. That’s just the way it is.

No, I did not quit because “it was time”.

Another one I’ve probably pushed and an easy mistake to make…

The other day I read a funny meme about smoking weed… I didn’t save it so I’ll have to paraphrase it as, “If smoking weed isn’t addictive, why do you smoke every day?” It’s true of course. If you do something every day and rely on it, you’re addicted.

But that’s not the point. What got me laughing was a comment on the meme. One person commented that he knew he wasn’t addicted because he had smoked every day for 8 years, until he stopped because “it was time”. Doing something every day for eight years is not evidence that you are not addicted. On the contrary…

I could say the same for quitting meth. I quit because “it was time”. And I used to say it, but I was wrong. Here’s the problem with such a statement: Of course it was time. I quit successfully, therefore it was time by definition. But what about all the other times I felt that it was time and then I only managed to quit for 5 minutes, or 3 days, or 9 months? I guess it wasn’t time after all, huh? Easy to forget all the times it was time when it actually wasn’t.

Claiming that “it was time” is an example of a logical cognitive error called survivorship bias. Feel free to follow the link and read all about it. It’s the same error people make when claiming that 12 step programs work, by looking only at those people who stayed clean and ignoring all the ones who didn’t, all the ones who found that the program did not work for them – and I’m sorry to say this, but that probably includes most of the smarter ones. The critical thinkers, the skeptics, the intellectuals… they see right through magical thinking nonsense and programs not based on evidence. They show up in 12 step meetings for the first time and go “What the fuck is this?” when they realize the programs are not based on, well, anything really. They show up and find they feel even worse, even more alone than they did before because it seems like the only way to get out of addiction is to join a fucking cult.

On a personal level, when I say that I quit easily because “it was time”, I trivialize how difficult it really was. And I insult all the people who have tried to quit multiple times and failed. It’s really easy to make this mistake in retrospect when you finally do get clean, and to all who have read my words and been insulted like this before, I’m sorry. It isn’t easy and if you have tried and failed, don’t give up. Let the fact that there are “survivors” who can make this cognitive error be inspiration because it means that it is possible to beat addiction.

I wish I had an easy way, a step by step guide to give you, but the fact is, it’s different for everybody and I can’t tell you how to stay clean. I can tell you only that it can be done. That’s all I’ve got really.

No, it does not involve faith to be an atheist

Yesterday I saw this bullshit on my feed:

I’ve written on this subject before, so I won’t go into this too much… rather I’d like to use it as a starting point for a post.

But briefly, atheism is about the rejection of god claims… It’s like this: You claim a god created the universe. I see that as no different to claiming a wizard created it by waving his magic wand, and atheism is me saying, “I don’t believe you”. That’s all. I don’t know how the universe came about, and my disbelief in your god claims doesn’t imply some kind of alternate claim.

What puzzles me is this… Why do creationists make this kind of argument over and over again? I’ve seen it too many times now and it has never made any sense. I can remember the moment I stopped believing in religion… I was sixteen years old when I realized that I rejected the concept of a creator, and it left me very confused at the time. But I didn’t go, like… “Oh no, I can’t claim to be an atheist because I don’t have an alternative explanation to creationism”. I didn’t fully understand science and/or evolution. It’s not about that and never was. I just don’t accept your magical thinking.

I went home and told my mother. Actually she was the only family member I told in the early stages of my religious disbelief. Her response was quite surprising to me – she accepted my disbelief right away, but asked me to promise her that I would not join some other religion, anything other than the Roman Catholic church. And I accepted right away. She missed the entire point. It’s not about Jesus, or Mary, or resurrection, or any of that shit… That doesn’t even come into it. In fact, even as a child I thought the Jesus bits of the religion were nuts… I reject the creator, the god concept entirely. No, mommy! It’s not like I’m suddenly gonna become a fucking Presbyterian or whatever.

So, why do creationists assume atheists have some alternate claim to creation? I don’t know… but maybe they’re just projecting. But when they do make these silly arguments trying to refute science (or some misunderstanding of it), they get very confused at my response – so I’ll share it again here, without any attempted answer: OK then! Indulge me with a little thought experiment: Assume all of science is false. Now, tell me why I should believe in your god.

The fact is, we humans have been inventing gods as magical explanations for what we don’t understand. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Just because you were taught to believe in a particular one of them, and you are indoctrinated to accept this without question, doesn’t make it any different to any of the others. They’re all myths.

Regarding recovery… We all start somewhere

Hey! I don’t have much time to write these days, but this came up in my Facebook memories yesterday and I figured it’s worth sharing here too.

That was a weird time. My ex had convinced me to use “one last time”, which then lasted for a week. I managed to stay clean for a month, and was prepared to continue, but then someone contacted Child Welfare and my son was put into foster care, and… I took that as an excuse to reasoning like, “if they’re gonna treat me like I’m using even though I’m clean, I might as well use…” Self destructive, I know.

And I continued to use for another whole three years. But I did stop. I did get my son back. And now I’m into my tenth year clean.

My point is… sometimes it might seem hopeless, but it isn’t. We all fail. Failure isn’t the end. We try again, and we keep trying until we succeed. I’m not special. If I can do this, so can you.

Being a parent is tiring sometimes

Last week Thursday my son called me at work to tell me about a grade 7 school project he has, for EMS (which Google informs me stands for Economic and Management Sciences). He had to prepare a survey, and speech, like a sales pitch, for a product or service, and include a poster with fake ads, comparison to a competing product/service, show his costs, and so on. He had no idea what to do but since we have no printer at home it would require me to download some pictures and info on his pretend product, at work…

So “we” decided on the phone that he would be selling a radio controlled toy car, with USB charger for greater convenience. And sure enough, such products actually exist. It’s amusing in a way… it’s only two or three years since he grew out of such toys, and USB charging cars were never a thing a few years ago. So toy technology has already moved on since he played with toys, and will likely do so again by the time he’s a parent.

I gave him what he’d need and assumed he’d get on with it, until yesterday when he told me he’d lied to the teacher, telling her his project was done but forgotten at home. Eventually he did it last night, but I had to spoon-feed him just about everything… the title being something like “Josh’s omnidirectional, all terrain, USM chargeable vehicle”, the selling points being something like…

• Do your kid’s toy cars get stuck on the grass or carpets?
• Do they need to be manually retrieved from under sofas and other obstacles because of the poor controls?
• Did you get home only to find “batteries not included”?
• Is it a major inconvenience to replace spent batteries?
• Can they be damaged by water?

Well, fear no more because Josh’s omnidirectional yada yada yada can travel on all surfaces, the replaceable battery pack is USB chargeable, and the powerful motor allows control forward, backward, left, right, and can turn clockwise or anticlockwise… and so on. (Not exactly what he did – this is just more or less what I gave him off the top of my head.)

Kiddo eventually finished it in the dark (because we have rolling blackouts euphemised as “load shedding” here in South Africa) after midnight. His poster looks pretty cool actually. Good job, Josh. Eventually.

But here’s the weird thing… The little bugger is almost a clone of me, his problems getting started are so similar to my own that he is virtually identical to a younger me. His inability to take his friend’s example questions (her service was a bakery) and apply them to his product, his procrastination, his endless farting around doing everything except his project, his lack of ideas, even given he had such toys and knew exactly what could be improved compared to his own ones… It was like watching a little me with all the same problems I used to have.

The only difference is, I have had years of experience to get past those starting issues, years to learn these skills, which I call bullshitting skills but whatever… It’s fucking exhausting though. I’ve taken decades to overcome my limitations, taken so long to learn these skills, and for what? I can’t just pass them on to him. He has to go through the same trials and tribulations to learn the same lessons, and then we die. It would be so much better if we could somehow inherit these things, but no – we all spend years learning the same shit as our parents, repeating the same mistakes and struggling the same struggles. All for nothing. I wish I could make it easier for him, but there’s only so much I can do.

Being driven by hatred works for a while, but it isn’t sustainable

My last post was a little dark, by design. It came out like that because of my perspective while writing it – I was motivated by a colleague who remarked that I had “lived my life”. I wanted to make it crystal clear that this was not the case, and paint a bleak picture of what life on meth is really like. It wasn’t pleasant. It isn’t something I remember fondly. In fact, I associate my years of addiction with pain, hatred, bitterness, and regret. I was driven to get out of it mostly by hatred. A weak, pale reflection of myself – who ate only once every 3 or 4 days at the end, I didn’t have much to motivate me. No energy, no will to live, but plenty of rage, plenty of self hatred… There was only one person who I hated more than myself, and with nothing else left, it was initially hatred that drove me.

I even shared a similar thought on Facebook – saying that life isn’t all lollipops and rainbows. Sometimes life is negative, and sometimes responding negatively is healthy. Sometimes it’s OK to be driven by rage and hatred. (I think it’s important to state this. There are only so many sweet sick saccharine stories of recovery I can take – and by so many I mean zero. I loathe toxic positivity. I loathe it in the workplace; I loathe it in NA meetings. I hate fucking church. Save your happy clappiness for kindergarten and grow the fuck up.)

It (the hatred motivation) doesn’t last though, because it doesn’t need to. Once you reach the other side, there is so much more to life. There is also love. There is joy. There is pleasure in things that have nothing to do with drugs. It isn’t always easy… Life is still not all lollipops and rainbows, but it is better when you are facing it rather than anaesthetising yourself with drugs.

Strangely, I have found that the last few years, I am no longer able to remain angry for more than a few minutes. So last time I used some effort to “channel” the feelings I had back then, and make it as clear as I can how unpleasant life on meth was. But life after meth, is good.