Addiction and Recovery

Addiction and Recovery

Mike Hupfer presents Hot Potato. As part of Detox Sector, Addiction and Recovery provides information and resources for help overcoming addiction. Everybody is uniquely flawed one way or another. After all, we’re only human beings. Even the most enlightened person in the world has some kind of issue. People usually have some part of themself they may not like, and may not want to accept, and may not even recognize. Much of this takes place at a subconscious level, and is buried in the basement of our brain. I will refer to this subconscious burial as a person's shadow side as referenced by Carl Jung.  

A great way to gain insight into your shadow side is to explore your pet peeves. Discovering what you don’t like in other people is usually telling of what you don’t like about yourself.   

Exploring our pet peeves may help to provide an illuminating window into our psyche. By paying attention to our pet peeves, we can learn a lot about ourselves by examining them.  

I will use myself as an example. Listed below are some of my pet peeves.  

1. Soft spoken people  

2. People who are too friendly 

3. Plastic people  

Let me start with the soft spoken pet peeve. In the beginning, the person I thought I was annoyed with is a friend who is soft spoken at times. After some digging, I discovered that the person I am actually annoyed with is myself.   

Sometimes, I can be hard to understand when I talk quietly, and mutter to myself. I usually do this when I can’t find the right word, and my brain grinds to a crawl with all the mental tabs left open. It frustrates me because I like to think that I am on top of my game all the time. Of course, I’m not on top of my game all the time, I’m only human. I have to accept what seems obvious now, and learn to be more patient with myself and others too.  

Next on the pet peeve list is people who are too friendly. On the surface, the pet peeve sounds petty. I try not to judge the pet peeve, and allow myself to just examine it. I was at a large grocery store the other day, and made contact with a super friendly store associate. I found myself wanting to yell at this person, and tell them to take it down a notch. Of course, I didn’t do that, and remained pleasant. 

It dawned on me that this friendly store associate was similar in style to my personality during my working hours. I got annoyed with this friendly store associate because I annoy myself sometimes. I discovered when I pretend to be happy and friendly when I’m not really feeling it, I envision myself slithering down a pretentious slide, and that scares me. This fear of being pretentious aligns well with my next pet peeve.   

The final pet peeve on the list is people who are plastic. A wonderful example of this plasticity comes from a golden couple in the extended family. Every Christmas, the golden couple mails out a mass shipment of picture cards.   

The Christmas picture cards are custom made, and feature the golden couple standing in front of their beautiful home. In the picture, the golden couple is surrounded by their lovely children, the family dog, and the nanny to pay homage to all the little helpers.   

In the picture, everyone is looking the part of the dandy. Even the dog is wearing his Sunday best. The Christmas picture card omits non-essentials like Jesus and Santa.

When I thought more about the golden couple, I discovered some interesting insights. What difference is it to me how the golden couple choose to live their lives? I should focus more on my own life.   

While I have little in common with the golden couple, I’m still a bit plastic myself. I use face creams, and hair products to keep myself looking pretty. With my lifestyle devoid of alcohol and smoking, I strike a pose of a good looking guy, and that pleases me. I am learning to accept the plastic part of myself and other people too.   

Let’s continue forward and talk more about our thoughts. Our own thoughts are extraordinarily powerful. We talk to ourselves all the time. It’s called self-talk.   

We have thousands of thoughts every day, and many of our thoughts are negative. The critical voice in our head affects how we feel, and subsequently how we act.  

Envision all the negative thoughts that have been festering in our head throughout the years. It’s likely that these negative thoughts have not been challenged.   

The negative thoughts have gained momentum, and some have become a permanent recording. Some negative thoughts are particularly vile, and we work hard to get rid of them quickly. I will share two of my most vile thoughts below.   

1. “I’m a failure.”  

2. “I wasted my life.”  

These are some horribly vile thoughts. The thoughts can surface anytime, and are more frequent during periods of heavy stress. These heavyweight negative thoughts are what I call “hot potato thoughts.”  

Picture a giant potato that just finished cooking in the oven. Now imagine that we forgot to use an oven mitt, and then grab the hot potato right from the oven. We soon discover that the potato is painfully hot, and we toss it from one hand to the other to avoid getting burnt.   

It’s a similar scene when these hot potato thoughts surface in our head. Hot potato thoughts are so vile that we want to get rid of them quickly. We then pass the hot potato to other people who are connected to us in some way. Passing the hot potato is far more egregious than having a bad day, and taking it out on someone. These hot potato thoughts are the most negative thoughts we have, and these vile thoughts have been allowed to fester like emotional black mold.   

I will use one of my most vile hot potato thoughts, “I’m a failure.” In the example that follows, Vincent stopped over to watch some football.  

1. My hot potato thought: “I’m a failure.” 

2. Me passing the hot potato: “Vincent, why didn’t you ever finish college? You were only a semester away dude.”   

See how I passed my hot potato onto Vincent. For now, I feel a little better about myself. Later, I will feel guilty about being a jerk to Vincent. The feeling of guilt will feed the “I’m a failure” thought monster, and it will continue to gain momentum. 

In the process of passing the hot potato, I made Vincent feel bad, and probably incited his hot potato thought monster too. Hot potato thoughts will continue to be a long time monster. Unless the thoughts are challenged, the cycle will continue. 

There is a book that can help. The book talks about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will help challenge negative thoughts. The book is called “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy” by David D. Burns

Addiction and Recovery

Mike Hupfer presents Friends and Family. As part of Detox Sector, Addiction and Recovery provides information and resources for help overcoming addiction. I feel pain, not for the loss of flavorless friends, who have long come and gone, but the genuine friends still with me, in heart and spirit, and in person. The genuine people in my life have accepted me. In years past, I occasionally dumped on these genuine friends, sometimes deliberately, and other times, I was just being a knuckle head, and lacked insight.

I spent years hanging out with flavorless friends drinking, smoking, bar-hopping, attending parties and just random nothingness. Looking back, what a waste of time. One flavorless friend didn’t even know my first name, and this was after hanging out for years. I didn’t discover this until after I attended his milestone birthday party, and in our drunken conversation, he asked me my name. This was after 5 years! I felt like an idiot. In all those years, he just called me “hangover."

We may think that our friends will always be our friends. I get it. Of course, for some people, this may be the case. That wasn’t the case for me at all. Not even close. I am fortunate that a couple of genuine friends are still with me after the years of incremental neglect. Some of the time, I was not a very good friend. I prioritized flavorless friends, over my real friends for the sake of foolishness, and hedonism.I paid the fool's price, and have the pointy dunce hat to prove it.

So, take time, and do an inventory of your friends, and prioritize your genuine friends, over the social media type friends. As we move down life’s bumpy road, our most important friend, and confidant, will be our life partner, you know, the one we will share our home. Give this person exclusive stage pass to you. This is this person who is, and will be, your very best friend. Treat them like royalty, with Grey Poupon, of course.

The family part is a bit more tricky. I suggest breaking down the “family” into individual parts; more specifically, to each individual person within the family. Individuals in the family can be a source of sparks, including good and bad jolts, and everything else in between. The spark may be ignited by one or more individuals in the family, or every individual in the family. What we really have is a family of individuals, and individuals make mistakes. Sometimes, the mistakes may be repeated over and over, accidentally, or otherwise.

As the years flow like a raging river, individuals in the family change. Of course, we all change one way or another, whether we want to change, or not. Change can be viewed as positive, or negative, but more likely, change will fall somewhere in the continuum of good and bad. At many points in our life, individuals within our family will ignite some emotional event, and it's likely the emotional event, or spark, will fall somewhere between pleasure and pain, good and bad.

Just like reviewing our friends list and Family Playbook, take time to review our own family to determine our direction in the family, or the level of participation in functions, events, and life stages. The direction and participation part is entirely our choice, and subject to change without notice. Remember: the only person in the family, and in life, we can control is us.