Self Care

Yet another death of a music star was reported this weekend.  Mac Miller, a young, rising star in the world of rap music died of an overdose on Friday.  I didn’t know much about Mac Miller until this weekend.  My kids liked his music and I found out that he was from my hometown of Pittsburgh.  I checked out some of his songs on iTunes and I was surprised by how much I liked them.  His rap has a jazzy, improvisational quality.  It is not as angry as some of the rap music I have listened to and it seems to have a more reflective quality than most.  If you can get past profanity, I highly recommend listening to some of his songs.  Mac Miller’s improv podcast on NPR is particularly good.

What affected me most about this tragedy though, was that the world lost another great talent to the jaws of addiction and through its sadness and despair was looking desperately for someone to blame.  That target to blame for many was Ariana Grande, his former girlfriend and also a great talent in the music world.  She had to shut down all commenting functionality on her social media because of the the vitriol that was being spewed at her during a time when she was grieving the loss of someone she deeply loved and undoubtedly had tried to help rescue from his demons.

I read that more than 2/3 of American families have had to deal with the alcohol and/or drug addiction of someone they love.  In 2016, the surgeon general put out a report that 1 in 7 Americans will face substance addiction and only 10 percent of those addicted ever get treated.  These are dismal statistics.

Addiction is a nightmare.  Watching someone you love in the throws of addiction is a living hell.  The level of denial that overtakes an addict is almost impossible to understand.  When someone loves an addict, don’t you ever think that they have not tried to help that person.  Most people who care about an addict, go through a period of giving up their own sanity trying to bring their loved one back to life and reality.  People who love addicts often become addicted to trying to help their addict and this condition is called codependency.  When someone is in a state of codependency they lose sight of reality, too.  They take the focus completely off of their own lives and put their entire focus on trying to save their addict.

The only person who you have control of in your life, is yourself.  Our human nature wants to feel safe and secure and often tries to gain those feelings of false security by trying to control the “outside” – the people and circumstances in our lives.  Sometimes we have painful feelings and inner issues to work on ourselves, but that scares us.  It is easier sometimes to put all of that focus on “outside” projects than to deal with our own “inside” problems.  Ironically, the only concerns that we really can fix and that we do have any control of, are the ones that are our own.  People can help us and guide us through our problems, but the hard work is an inside job and it doesn’t begin until we admit that we have the problem in the first place.

I imagine Ariana Grande did everything that she could to try to help her friend and lover, Malcom McCormick.  I imagine all of Malcom’s family and friends did everything that they could and some.  Money was not an issue.  Mac Miller could have afforded to stay in the best rehab centers in the world.  The biggest hurdle that any addict has to cross, is admitting to themselves that they need help.  The largest hurdle for any addict is to be able to cross over from the stronghold of Denial and reach out for help, fully knowing and understanding that they have lost all control over to the grips of Addiction.  This is the hardest part for any addict to do.  Many addicts, like Malcom, will lose their lives before completely surrendering to the idea that they have lost all control.  They believe fervently that the only thing that is keeping them alive is the very thing that is killing them slowly and methodically on a daily basis.  Addiction is treacherous.

Imagine that you are on a burning ship with all of your loved ones.  You know that you must jump into the ocean to save your lives.  Someone you love with all of your heart is burning on the ship but refuses to get off of it.  This person is on fire but insists that they don’t need help.  They actually get angry at you for trying to help them.  You try to embrace this person, to reason with this person, but the closer you remain to this person, the more you burn in the flames.  You finally have to make the heart-wrenching decision to jump off of the ship, praying that your loved one will come to their senses and jump into the pure water with you.  You know in your heart that the only life that you can save is your own, as desperate as you are to save theirs, too.  That is the terrible choice that Ariana and the people who loved Malcom had to make and they deserve only our deepest sympathies and understanding.  No one who has ever loved someone deeply can make that decision lightly.  Addiction is devastating for everyone it touches.  Everyone.