No money for the weekend (Pocket full of shame)

It won’t look like the above later, but this is shame being sold.

I.

If you don’t know the difference between guilt and shame than this is for you.You read it because, well, your supposed to. Not unlike television. If you saw it, it was meant for your eyes. Welcome to advertising. Except I’m the anti-advertisement, prophet. 

sub·li·mate - Verb:

(esp. in psychoanalytic theory) Divert or modify (an instinctual impulse) into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity.

II.

If you want to understand a behavioral disorder, watch the behavior.

  One common explanation alcoholics offer us is that it is the novelty that they crave, and when enough people with pathology agree on something you can pretty much guarantee that that agreement is part of the pathology, i.e. an unconscious defense.

  The novelty is in fact trivial: yes, different bars maybe, but the same kinds of drunkenness, with the same kinds of people, in the same kind of places, in the same ways, bolstered by the same kinds of partying. Repetition compulsion masquerading as novelty seeking.  "You don't understand," says the alcoholic, "I'm always looking for the next drink." 

  The important point is that in alcoholism the addict is not satisfied by the drink he just had because he is self-consciously aware that something unidentified is missing, and that lack leaves the now drunk with an abundance of disgust and shame.  

  This “movie” plays out nightly with the alcoholic, after he has some drinks, he then immediately has some other kind of drink. This isn't an overactive thirst, it is trying to get the first drink right. That's the dialectic. After he has a night out of drinking, he goes home and drinks. Like a sex addict who after sex with a hottie, goes home and masturbates. He climaxed with her, he was done, but it didn't take. Its always about the next one because this one didn’t do it. 

  It is easier to get it right with masturbation, not because the hand knows better than the vagina/mouth/ass/breast but because there are always micro-corrections to the fantasy happening in real time-- so the movie you're shooting in your head has a woman blowing a guy, but then she gives a certain look, and then you make her repeat a half-second of that scene using a different look, then you reverse time by two seconds and make her phone her husband; then that disappears and they're outside on the deck, and it's not her but another woman, now it's a whole other scenario with a different cast, and an instant later back to her again; nudging it this way and that to suit that moments arousal. In effect, you are not watching a movie but improvising from a melody, or, basically, playing with yourself. Hence the reason you have marathon sessions of masturbation. 

Likewise our drunk on the bar stool can’t seem to get the movie in their head just right either. Nothing quite matches that first encounter with alcohol. Something is always missing. They retreat to the lonely house, shelter and then overpass. And now, even when she doesn’t want to drink anymore, she must. It’s how she puts herself to sleep. How she negotiates life. Telling them to quit is like telling them to commit suicide. Irony abounds, I know.

III.

  The key to understanding the problem is not just to look at the  types of drinks/sex they pursue, but also their attempts at having normal relationships. That's behavior, too.

   He’s drinking beer after beer after beer and chasing with shots and come next afternoon, he's disgusted with his life and decides he needs to become a normal person.  

  This is your Dexter/Matrix moment: he knows he's whacked, and he knows what normal looks like-- he can fake it-- but he can't feel it inside. What to do?  Our addicts create an alternate universe and then get confused about which one is real-- they become psychotic. You try to create a fake world where you act like a normal person and substitute it for the real one where you are not: Wake up Neo...

This is why addicts of all types walk around as one who is in a dream.

  Everything our addicts see is sex or a cold beer. In the staggered brick pattern of the wall he sees a 69 and a Miller High Life; the rounded elevator button reminds him of a clitoris or a cap popping off a ice cold long neck; a footstep behind her is someone sneaking out of their spouses bed or the bartender with the first round. These are instantaneous and millisecond association flashes that happen all the time.

   So they decide to try a normal relationship-- No hooking up but a real, honest date. Connect, love. Tonight, you declare, your just not going to drink. Of course you run the date like it's a movie scene, you do things you assume normal people do in normal relationships: you ask out a nice person, take them out to a nice dinner, order, talk about where their from, etc. The alcoholic attempts to just have a few O'Douls instead and nothing more. 

  But what drives our characters is their addictions. So why would we assume Matrix addict’s pursuit of a girlfriend/sober evening comes from a different power source than his pursuit of his addiction normally? Everything he sees is porn: Even his choice of a “nice” female is apart of his addiction. I propose that he chose this particular female because he knew it would fail with her, and when it isn't failing he will hit the failsafe: impotence.

  I simply mean that there is a good chance this character would have diminished expectations for the relationship he was attempting relative to other women, which is why he attempted it. He’s not trying to be normal - he’s trying to fail. 

Likewise our alcoholic may try near-beer. Alcohol-free beer but this choice is a part of his addiction. He’s in the matrix. He's in the bar doing all the same things. He chooses that precisely to fail and he will be drunk very soon. “I tried to change. I can’t.” Right.

Neither want to change. Not really. 

If this is true, it brings us to a very important conclusion: They are both using others. No, maybe he wasn't going to use his normal date for sex, but he wasn't going to really love her either.  He was using her for his identity. Which says, I’m the kind of guy that this kind of girl would be seen with. The alcoholic wants his identity to. As a guy who just has some very bad luck of late with cops, courts and bosses. It’s not him you understand. There is a word for this level of personal deception. Narcissism.

Read this again and understand: when he uses the whores and the quickies to get off he feels SHAME, but when he uses a very nice girl with a legitimate interest in him for his pathetic charade at normality, he feels NOTHING for her.   

When the other gets drunk and passes out he awakes to intense SHAME, but when he tries to spend the day NOT drinking and being ‘normal’, he feels NOTHING for that life. And some shame is always better than nothing.

IV.

 I do not assume normality for you, I let you decide that for yourself. This is not a rant about what sex and beer and how much of each is appropriate. 

However, if you tell me you are unhappy, if you tell me you are all mixed up about the life you are leading, then expect a critique of the life you are leading, not just the pathology you are projecting it all onto. "I'm a sex addict!" says the guy who can't get it up with his new monogamous relationship and is again looking elsewhere. You picked your life. Saying, "I had no choice," is itself a choice. Your choices may be stupid, but they're still choices.  

And I get that most addictions looks like fun taken to excess, but a real addict doesn't think any of it is fun, he thinks it's all terrible. Sit in an AA meeting one afternoon just to see. So that's where we start: why are you doing terrible things?

V.

  Well, what makes it terrible? The bible? Your Dad said don’t do it? Your own buried commitment to never really enjoying anything, ever?

   No one uses the actual consequences as a reason to stop. Yes, you get to feel "shame" for falling short of some standard out there, but the real problem with addiction isn't that it destroys your life but that it destroys everyone else's life.  Thats reason enough to stop. 

  The risk of alcoholism isn’t that you drive your car into a tree but into a SUV with children on board and set them on fire. While your own family is withering away, neglected and damaged. And the risk of sex addiction isn't that you contract a disease, the risk is that you spread the disease. This is the difference between shame and guilt. Shame is about me. Guilt is about what I did/do to you. Shame is to narcissism what cold is to beer. What lotion is to anal. An enhancer. Let that sink in. Let the understanding sink in, not the anal, oh, never mind...

  Our addicts know they can get any kind of sex/booze any time they want, so it always fails. Not sometimes. Always. 

But they keep trying, in the same ways, over and over. As if freedom to do otherwise itself was the enemy. Well, it is. When you sign a contract with narcissism there's a clause you should pay attention to: if it's easy, it doesn't count. Try again.

  If you are a product of your behavior, start wearing a watch again to discover who you actually are. If the alcoholic gets a watch what she will discover is that she has practiced no other skill more diligently than pursuing empty drinking that she knows is unsatisfying to her. That's what she's spent the most time on, that's what she knows how to do the best. Better than driving, better than speaking, better than Xbox-- she has that mindset down to a reflex.  As does the sex addict. So why would you expect she'd use any other technique for any other life problems that comes up? 

VI.

The solution to your problem -- is not to refrain -- you can't resist your desires forever.

You must practice a new skill, you must become the kind of person who wouldn't turn to porn/sex when you are: lonely; horny; bored. If you practice a new skill enough times, it will become second first nature, and you will be a different person. Please note that it is that last part, not the giving up of porn, that makes the change difficult. Giving up porn is easy. Giving up bedding the first guy who buys you a drink is easy. Becoming the kind of person who doesn't need to do this on Thursdays at 11:30pm because that's when you have a few hours free is hard. 

This is exactly what AA seems to do for the alcoholic. You surrender to a higher power to become someone who doesn’t drink all day and night. Who turns to alcohol as a cure all. The actual quitting is easy. Alcoholics are always quitting. But the 12 steps (and numerous other programs) help them move into the realm of being a new person, who acts in new behaviors and who finds, amazingly, they no longer need alcohol.

I'm supposed to say porn, glory hole sex and black outs is bad for you and you shouldn't start, but too late. That you deserve hell. At least thats what your shame wants me to say.

But the practical thing addicts do wrong with their addictions is put it in the Matrix: pretend to themselves it's bad, pretend it's not something they do, and yet spend tons of time, in fact doing. So it drags on for hours. Years. Lifetimes.  Accept it. If after reading this far you think I’m on some crusade against porn and drinking, your a nincompoop. You should do the exact opposite of every gut feeling you ever have. 

VII.

 Finally, there is a crucial instance of guilt: You should feel shame but that just keeps the cycle going. Guilt is the sign your thick head is starting to get it.

You know shit is your fault with total certainty even when it isn’t.  You just...know.

What we often actually feel guilty about isn't that we weren’t there for another who needs us-- that's too easy to get out of-- but that our commitment to our own life made us not be there for the other.  Anyone who has ever lost someone to suicide knows this feeling, and everyone else does not.  The guilt, re-framed relentlessly, over the rest of your life: if I hadn't been so into my work; if I hadn't been so wrapped up in defeating my nemesis; if I hadn't been cheating on my wife; if I hadn't been so religious; if I hadn't watched TV every night and instead devoted that time to him; if I X, if I hadn't Y.

The truth is there is no real answer there, because when you hit the bottom of that devotional cycle you end back up the other way: maybe if I had given her more space, if I had given her more time alone, if I hadn't forced him to spend so much time with the family, if I had worked longer hours to teach him that life is work, or X...  

The only thing I've ever found that works, is a God who can forgive you, and/or to understand your guilt as not coming from the failing but generated by you as self-punishment, so that you can go on with the rest of your life. Have you suffered enough today? Then go have a Pastrami on Rye, they're tasty. You've earned it.  

The guilt always stays with you. Always. It never goes away. Never. I'm of course not saying you deserve it, but I know it is your inevitable tormentor. So either you reach some kind of stalemate with it or it beats you down. That stalemate is sublimation.

In the addicts case it is this graduation from shame to guilt which motivates him to try and change his life, so when he sees the married woman again in the store he doesn't go over to flirt with her. He doesn’t enter the liquor store, he goes home. He lets her go, he has decided to be the kind of person who sublimates his sex drive, his desire for a cold beer, to devote more attention to his sister with cancer and her kids, or her own dysfunctional kids or his church or his community or her political party. 

To being a better person.  

N.

The life that we wanted / to live without warning - sung by Alberta Cross