trans rigs

Me: I mean depends on your tolerance for this type of racism, but like I said it's my favourite show, it def has some great parts if you're up for it.

Them: Oh so it's not racist.

Me: It absolutely is.

Them: So you're saying racism is ok??

The substance I was addicted to was heroin. While I was actively addicted, it absolutely came before everything else. My life shrank around it. I kept using despite very real, very obvious negative consequences. If you’re looking for something that fits the “compulsion + harm + loss of control” model, that was it.

But what’s always sat strangely with me is what happened when that context changed.

Once my abusive relationship ended and I was no longer in an environment where it was readily available, it was shockingly easy to stop. I’m not saying it was physically comfortable. My body was pretty pissed off for a while. But psychologically, it just didn’t have the same hold anymore. I wasn’t spending my days white-knuckling cravings or constantly thinking about it. It dropped out of my life in a way that, according to the 12-step model, is not really supposed to happen.

And that’s where my issue with that framework starts.

Because 12-step ideology tends to assume that if you have ever had that kind of relationship with one substance, it reveals something fundamental and permanent about you. That you now have a generalized “addictive nature” that will attach itself to other substances or behaviors if you’re not constantly managing it. That you are, in some essential way, always on the verge of transferring that pattern onto something else.

And that just hasn’t been true for me.

I was a near-daily cannabis user for years. When it started consistently making me feel physically uncomfortable instead of good, I stopped. No drawn-out battle, no existential crisis, just “this isn’t giving me what I liked about it anymore” and I moved on.

I drink occasionally, in social or celebratory contexts, and I genuinely find alcohol kind of boring outside of that. It doesn’t have much pull for me.

I tried gambling once, got annoyed at how tedious and overstimulating it felt, and left the casino in under an hour. I have not felt remotely compelled to revisit that experience.

I use the internet a lot, and I play a handful of video games, but I can also go on a camping trip with no signal and be completely fine, unless you want to try and find something pathological about nature photography, in which case you can blow it out your ass. If anything, I generally enjoy the change of pace. There’s no sense of panic or withdrawal or “I need to get back to my computer/consoles immediately.”

So when I hear the idea that addiction is this broad, transferable trait that will latch onto anything with quick reward or low friction, I just don’t see it reflected in my own life.

What does make sense, looking back, is context.

When I was using heroin, I was in an abusive relationship. My environment was unstable, stressful, and honestly pretty bleak. The substance didn’t just exist in a vacuum. It fit into a specific set of conditions where it functioned as relief, escape, and regulation.

When those conditions changed, the behavior changed with them.

That doesn’t mean there was no dependency. There obviously was. It doesn’t mean there were no consequences. There very much were. My grades suffered. I dropped out of college. I lost my apartment because staying out of withdrawal and numbing out from the abuse felt more important than paying rent.

But it does suggest that what we call “addiction” might not always be this permanent, identity-level trait that needs to be managed forever. Sometimes it looks a lot more like a relationship between a person, a substance, and a specific environment.

When that’s the case, then a framework that assumes universality - “if this happened once, it will always be waiting to happen again, with anything” - is going to miss a lot of variation.

I’m not saying 12-step programs can’t help people. Clearly they can, or they likely wouldn’t exist in the way they do. But I do think they’re often treated as the model of addiction rather than a model that fits some people and not others, and when your experience doesn’t match that model, many people who swear by them will assume that you are misunderstanding yourself, in denial, or “not taking it seriously enough.” This paternalistic attitude only serves to make me even more skeptical of the framework.

For me, what mattered wasn’t declaring myself permanently “addictive” or treating every pleasurable behavior as a potential threat.

What mattered was getting out of the environment where that pattern made sense in the first place.

2nd base: exist in a public space together

3rd base: you witness me have a real, candid emotion

For example, emotionally, I genuinely think less of someone who buys into stupid conspiracies about organ donation. I think that morally, if you are unwilling (unwilling, not medically unable) to donate organs, you should not be an organ candidate. I don’t think you should be able to say ‘If I’m dead I want all of my organs to rot, even if they could save lives. But I also want to benefit from other people’s sacrifice.’ Fuck you.

But I do not believe it would be ethical (or practical) to legislate that. I think it would be a horrible ethical violation and medical coercion. I recognize that, even as I’m disgusted by people who would let someone die when saving lives would cost them nothing.

But what I want to highlight is the political bloc who were most effective against the law, and led to its defeat: community healthcare workers who were on the frontlines, whose careers very often were at that intersection of drug abuse and child suffering. 

Their argument wasn’t primarily about the parental rights of the mothers, or about the criminalization of substance use disorders. Instead, it was about what public health policies work in the real world, and what policies cause more harm. They argued these women would be afraid to access resources for harm reduction during pregnancy. This would result in heavier drug usage during pregnancy than if they were able to access harm reduction strategies and resources. There would also be an increase in abandoned infants, babies who are very sick and need immediate medical help. Fear of punishment wouldn’t help anyone.