2-3-4 Friday: An invite

‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’

1 thought

First off, happy Chinese New Year! You don’t have to give me a red packet this year - though it’d be much appreciated.

But secondly, new year festivities often bring with it dangerous threats of addictions, as the stressors of family, solitude, and alcohol, bring the perfect storm of temptations.

Believe it or not, we’re all affected by addiction in some way - especially in our loved ones, or our clients. You might see it in an uncle that drinks a little too much, too often, and ends up screaming at your aunt. Sexual addiction, gambling, shopping, phones, are all common addictions too.

The thing is, we don’t quite know how to talk about it.

Addiction can be like the elephant in the room. 

I remember the first time I worked with someone whose life had been torn apart by alcohol. He’d been brutally kicked when he was begging for money on the streets of Nottingham, and later when he entered our homeless hostel, he finally found the respite he needed. More importantly, he found the respect he craved. It was this dignity that led him to rebuild his life. But still, when I made the occasional visit to his new home, I would catch the occasional whiff of weed, and wonder if I had smelt wrongly.

There would be the shine of a bottle in the corner of the room, hidden just behind the couch.

I didn’t know how to talk about it. I kept avoiding it.

For many of us, addiction, is the elephant in the room that we dare not speak about.

Why? Because it fills us with shame. To confess that a loved one is struggling with addiction, or that we don’t know how to deal with the client struggling with this.

One way might be to learn from Al-Anon, a 12-step group. 

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All drugs - and all behaviors of addiction, substance dependent or not, whether to gambling, sex, the internet, or cocaine - either soothe pain directly or distract from it. Hence my mantra: The first question is not “Why the addiction?” But “Why the pain?”

• Gabor Maté, In The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts

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Al-Anon is a 12-step program, often known as the sister group of Alcoholics Anonymous, built to support the family and loved ones of alcoholics. When I first went, I was shocked to find that everyone was raw. In the cold, unheated room in the church, we would sit in the silence, as we waited for the urge to share something that was weighing on us.

When I look back at Al-Anon, I’m often surprised at how these families crave for a community that understands and wants to journey alongside them.

No one is paid. Everyone does it out of the goodness of their heart. At the end of the day, we realise this:

in the addiction journey, you will only get far, if you go it together.

Cliched, but true.

That’s why next Thursday, on 26 Feb, we are organising a panel on addictions with Dr Terry Spokes, who is Clinical Director at The Winslow, a private rehab facility I was working at.

If you’re in Singapore and you’d like to learn:

1. Why addiction happens, and how some of it is rooted in our trauma
2. How to speak about the elephant in the room - addictions, and why we struggle to talk about addictions, and how we can better speak about it
3. Why addictions seem so hard to cure, and what we often misunderstand about it
4. How to help better

Here are the details:

1. 26 Feb, Thursday, 7-9pm
2. The Foundry, 11 Prinsep Link
3. Free, with cakes!

Come join us? You can sign up here and share the EDM above with your staff or friends.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love