Springing off of my addiction post once more, I am also skeptical at best of 12-step programs, because their framework has just never remotely aligned with my actual experience.
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 youâre looking for something that fits the âcompulsion + harm + loss of controlâ model, that was it.
But whatâs 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. Iâm not saying it was physically comfortable. My body was pretty pissed off for a while. But psychologically, it just didnât have the same hold anymore. I wasnât 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 thatâs 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 âaddictive natureâ that will attach itself to other substances or behaviors if youâre 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 hasnât 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 âthis isnât giving me what I liked about it anymoreâ and I moved on.
I drink occasionally, in social or celebratory contexts, and I genuinely find alcohol kind of boring outside of that. It doesnât 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. Thereâs no sense of panic or withdrawal or âI need to get back to my computer/consoles immediately.â
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 donât 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 didnât 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 doesnât mean there was no dependency. There obviously was. It doesnât 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 âaddictionâ 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 thatâs the case, then a framework that assumes universality - âif this happened once, it will always be waiting to happen again, with anythingâ - is going to miss a lot of variation.
Iâm not saying 12-step programs canât help people. Clearly they can, or they likely wouldnât exist in the way they do. But I do think theyâre often treated as the model of addiction rather than a model that fits some people and not others, and when your experience doesnât match that model, many people who swear by them will assume that you are misunderstanding yourself, in denial, or ânot taking it seriously enough.â This paternalistic attitude only serves to make me even more skeptical of the framework.
For me, what mattered wasnât declaring myself permanently âaddictiveâ 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.
Rat Park, people. Stop forgetting about Rat Park.
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