https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=k3Co9G74gpM
I want to talk to you a bit about the 12 steps and the model for handling addiction that I’ve written about myself in my book, Recovery, because I want to see what you think of it. So like the 12 steps have anonymous fellowships, which I, if I were to belong to them, I wouldn’t be able to say I belong to them without breaching their code of anonymity. But what’s positive about this approach to addiction is, as we’ve discussed off mic, that it creates community, like the other people that have got a similar endeavour, and in fact, it was Jung that identified this solution. He said that like people that have got chronic addiction issues will struggle to change unless they have a spiritual realization of some kind and the support of a community. Well, the spiritual realization component, that’s actually supported by the relevant addiction literature. One of the classic cures for addiction is spiritual transformation. And the hardcore scientists have laid that out as a reality in the addiction literature. I agree, because to use more secular language around that, a spiritual transformation could just be a change of perspective, a renewal. It’s a radical change of perspective. Yeah. And typically in my experience, that’s from a self-centered view, a self-obsessive view about getting your own needs met, a solipsistic, narcissistic perspective of life is this is just an adventure where I go around trying to accumulate and accrue to, oh, wow, I’m here to be of service. That’s sort of the transition. Right, right. Microscopically. But in addition to community, like having connections between one another, the 12 steps themselves, I think, are an interesting model for transformation and shouldn’t be overlooked. And in fact, what my book was about is could that method be transposed to anybody who’s interested in change? So I wanted to talk to you about that to get your perspective on them. The first step is acknowledging that you are powerless over your addiction and that your life has become unmanageable. Just admitting this is I don’t want to be in this situation. OK, so there’s two parts to that admission. One is that you’re in trouble. Yeah. And I guess there’s three. You’re in trouble and it’s serious. Things could be better and you don’t have the wherewithal at the moment to make them better. So the thing that’s interesting about that is there’s a kind of radical humiliation and humility that goes along with that. So you say, I have a problem and what I know at the moment isn’t sufficient to solve it. Great, because now you’ve opened yourself up to the possibility of learning something. As you say, well, I don’t know. I don’t know enough to fix this. It’s like, OK, well, you could learn. And one of the things that’s so interesting about people is that if they decide they have a problem and they also notice that they could learn, the probability that they will learn goes way up. That’s very interesting. You’ve actually conflated the first three steps there in your analysis of the first one, because the first one is admission that there’s a problem. The second one is recognizing that things could improve, like came to believe that power great in ourselves could restore us to sanity. And the third one is made a decision to turn our life and our will over to the care of God as we understood God. So like, yeah, we could talk about that from a secular perspective. Well, we could talk about that from a secular perspective and say, well, there’s a there’s a higher order moral principle that needs to be brought into the situation. And you sort of describe that right at the beginning of the question, because you said, well, what partly what you do when you move from an addicted state, from a psychological perspective, is move from a viewpoint of the gratification of immediate desire and and maybe the accumulation of things as a marker of success to the notion that, no, you actually have a higher purpose. And that higher purpose might involve being of service. That could be of service to yourself, which means you wouldn’t be addicted anymore, because that’s not a good way of being of service to yourself, but of service to yourself and the broader community. However, you might define that. That’s a higher order purpose and it can integrate your motivations at a level that doesn’t leave you at the whim of impulse. That’s the purpose of a higher order motivation. So, OK, so we’ve got three. Yes, that’s the first three is to get you to that position where you’re willing to change, believe in the possibility of change and accept help in order to achieve that change. The fourth and fifth steps are about inventorying. This is where the 12-step program becomes a fusion of spirituality and psychoanalysis, because the fourth step is like a four-column method where you write down a list of all your resentments in your life, your childhood resentments, your resentments against the government, people you work with. You write it all down and then there’s a diagnostic tool where you identify what it is in you that doesn’t like that. And also, interestingly, in 12-step theology, let’s call it, it says that anything, any time that you are personally disturbed, you have to take responsibility for it to a degree. There is something in you that’s been affected. Yeah, you should at least ask yourself that question. Yes. Is it me or is it the world? Yes. Like, well, let’s consider first the possibility that it might be. I wrote about that in the sixth rule, right? Put your house in perfect order. Yes, yes. In fact, I’ve got our two rules, like I did a truncated and somewhat more linguistically explicit and expletive laden version of the 12 steps, and I’ve got your 12 rules for life here, and they don’t necessarily correlate. But like, because like, you know, say your first one, stand up straight with your shoulders back. That’s a great chapter, I think. I love the, you know, the lobster stuff and this sort of the ancient, timeless, almost roots of hierarchies and the chemicals that are at play. What’s happening when you’re, what is at play when we talk about self-esteem? And like, and this, yeah, the sixth one, set your own house in perfect order. I said before you criticize the world, steps four and five in the 12-step program, deal with that. Inventory, what’s going on in your life, inventory, what your baggage is in your own personal narrative. Well, you think it’s very practical, that. It’s like, well, let’s say you want to fix up your house, which is actually quite a lot like fixing yourself up, which is a very common dream metaphor. Yeah. Well, the first thing you want to do is go look around and see what needs to be fixed. You know, and the interesting thing about that, and this is akin to what comedians do, is that as soon as you’re willing to admit, comedians look at a problem and then rise above it right away and make a joke about it. But as soon as you’re willing to admit that you have a problem, then you immediately contacted the part of yourself that’s at least strong enough to admit that you have a problem. And so the act of admitting the problem is actually the first step to solving it. Yes. You might say, well, and it’s an optimistic step because you might say, oh my God, I can’t admit to that I have a problem because what if I can’t solve it? Well, exactly. So then maybe you won’t admit to it. If you do admit to it, you’re simultaneously admitting to the possibility that you could solve it. Yes. And then it can actually become something that’s optimistic. You can say, well, my life is horrible. It’s like, OK, but I’m doing 50 things wrong. Well, great, I could fix those things. And then maybe it wouldn’t be so horrible. It demonstrate the admission itself demonstrates progression and possibility for further progression. I think it relates. That’s why humility is always stressed in great religious traditions. Humility is precisely that. It’s like you have to look at why you’re not so good. Yeah. And you know, that that has to break down your pride to some degree and your arrogance. Well, that’s great, because if you break down your pride and your arrogance, then you’re primed to learn and you can solve your problems. So there’s nothing in that. It’s a bit crushing to begin with, because you might think, oh, my God, there’s really a lot of things wrong with me. But at least then you’re on the on the road to fixing them. My personal journey of recovery has been like a kind of death. Like, you know, like when I was 27, it was like the death of the drug addict self. That guy died. That’s funny, because I told Tammy when we were coming here today that when you were 27, you made the decision to live. I knew it was 27, because that’s when people I’m going to say like you. But, you know, celebrities who who are sort of on fire, they die all the time at 27 because they don’t make that decision. They decide that they don’t decide that they’re going to take that final step into maturation. They want to hold on to that Peter Pan thing, that that possibility. You bet you exactly that they want to hold on to that. And you you can’t hold on to that and live. Yes, and then there’s a further death I’m noticing now in my early 40s that like are now at the midway point. At the midway in a sort of Dante-esque way. And now I’m moving towards the grave. And now I’m like there’s a different kind of alertness emerging.