When\npeople tell me how amazing and brave and strong it is that I quit drinking and\nusing drugs after more than 25 years of abuse, I feel quite uncomfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although\nI was there when it happened, and although I was the one suffering through a\nyear of agony and confusion and boredom, it doesn\u2019t feel like a personal\nvictory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And\nit never has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe it sounds strange, but it wasn\u2019t me, Marnix, who was doing the changing, although it totally felt like it w\u00e1s me living through the consequences of my decision to finally quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\nwas me waking up each morning, staring at the same pale, tired an defeated\nface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\nwas me trying to read myself out of the darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\nwas me who wanted to give up a million times, yet life just didn\u2019t let me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stubborn and deeply loving, utterly insisting drive to go on, that<\/em> wasn\u2019t me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nsoft voice that told me to hang in there, \u2018just for today\u2019, wasn\u2019t me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\nwas life showing kindness after many years of physical and mental neglect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\nis probably why I don\u2019t get along very well with people who say that other\npeople are lazy, or weak, for not being able to kick their destructive habits\nand change into \u2018better versions of themselves\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\njust doesn\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For\nmany users it\u2019s truly confusing to keep doing the stuff that fucks them up, and\nin a way we are ALL users, addicted to thinking our way through life, hoping\nfor the next batch of sweet thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But\nwe\u2019re not doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When\nI tell people how I see this, I often hear that it\u2019s dangerous, that it takes\naway responsibility from the addict and will give him or her an excuse to give\nup, that it disempowers people and brings life back to a random stream of\nexperiences with no personal interference whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So\nwhat if we are somewhere in between?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Life\nitself AND this struggling bag of bones?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Endless\npossibilities AND the capacity to trip over our own misconceptions and fears?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nuniverse, lost in the eye of a needle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\npost?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wasn\u2019t\nme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ______<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Photo\nby Bobby Stevenson, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When people tell me how amazing and brave and strong it is that I quit drinking and using drugs after more than 25 years of abuse, I feel quite uncomfortable. Although I was there when it happened, and although I was the one suffering through a year of agony and confusion and boredom, it doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30235,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,96,117,100,105,116,113,103],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30237,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30233\/revisions\/30237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}