All we have to fear is fear itself -- gee, that's easy

The following is another excerpt from another chapter in my book manuscript, called 'Who is That in the Mirror?' Hope you find it interesting, and any comments are appreciated, as always. If you are a publisher, please feel free to buy my MS and make me very rich.


When I worked as an addictions counselor I would periodically ruminate on what might be the most significant factor that led a person into a life of substance abuse.

All other factors notwithstanding, including the obvious need to escape reality, I concluded that fear was the salient motivator. Overwhelming, mind-boggling, pants-wetting stark terror with life and all its travails, threats and uncertainty must be the culprit. In group and individual counseling sessions I regularly turned the discussion to fear in all its manifestations, and how it predictably compelled the client to return to the bottle, pipe, needle or joint, despite the best of intentions to the contrary. Since I was dealing with a group of adult males, I initially thought they might be loath to admit to harboring anxiety at such a 'running away' level. After all, the clients of the rehab were often streetsmart tough bastards, many of whom had done time inside assorted penal facilities and had been exposed to situations that might make most of us cry for our mothers.

But, I was wrong about their reluctance to address the factor of fear in their lives. The majority was candid about the knot of anxiety that had settled in the gut at an early age, and had never gone away until their first foray into substance use brought about temporary, yet almost mystical relief. No wonder so much mythology has developed around drugs.

"Wow, man, the world just seemed so much better. There was no way wanted toto go back to the way I was, so I just kept using and using."

The dope and the booze were irresistible to the budding addicts because these substances, as if by magic -- and there is a magic therein, and it would be disingenuous to deny it -- made the fear go away. Decry mind-alteration by psychoactive substances as we might, we cannot disregard the fact that the shit does what it promises to do. It enables the victim to actually spend a certain part of his or her day away from white-knuckle terror and paranoia. If he has access to enough, he or she can be 'altered' all the time.

Of course, there's a downside to all of this. The stuff is addictive, it's illegal, it plays hob with the health, and it can either kill the abuser, or lead him or her down paths of dishonesty and depravity that they would never have, before the addiction, gone to.

But, there is a wondrous and chilling rebound effect with all drugs, including booze, and that is whatever emotion it obliterated chilled out during intoxication, will return with a greater vengeance. This leads, of course, to a dependency on larger and larger quantities of the substance. Talk about a double-edged sword. The distress you were trying to get away from, comes back wearing brass knuckles.The majority of addicts made their initial steps into indulgence at an early age. Often (though not always) they were children who felt 'apart', and were lacking in emotional resources to challenge a life they perceived as being fraught with peril. Consequently, they discovered that their first indulgence, whether it was a beer or a joint, evoked a calmness that had been alien to them theretofore. The next time, the result was the same: peace, merriment, loss of sexual inhibition, and sometimes even bravery.

Thus the spiral began.

While most addicts and alcoholics began their behavior early, not all did. A sizable minority of addicts comes about their involvement later in life. Usually at a crisis point, when the forces of daily existence assume a magnitude that conventional mechanisms of coping no longer seemed able to address. Work, economic and domestic pressures assumed frightening proportions, and a substance that had formerly been a social lubricant became an essential coping mechanism. And, if the beer or scotch no longer make it all go away, then something more virulent, like cocaine, just might. Not only might it -- it does -- for a time, until the world falls to pieces, and former fears turn to mindless paranoia about virtually everything.

One of my clients was in his late fifties before booze caught up with him. He had always been a slight social drinker. But at one point, his older wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. As he watched his beloved partner fall to pieces, he took to the sauce to escape the obviousness of her deterioration, and to allay his fears of being alone when the inevitable happened. By the time of her death he was in his early sixties, and was a full-blown alcoholic. In the year following her death he ended up as a street-rummy, living with a hooker (who regularly robbed him) and panhandling for the dollars to buy him his next bit of liquid salvation. Fear had been the essential factor in putting him there.

Combine that fear with abject loneliness and loss of a love, and you have the potential for much ugliness in the human soul.