Substance Abuse

More "pun"-ishment...

I've been thinking a lot about substance (drug) abuse for various reasons. One is that, tomorrow, I'm to go to Waianae to supervise a rehab clinic, with interns below me performing the NADA protocol... As it is part of a pilot program for research, I CANNOT deviate or add to the protocol in any way. I'm to simply oversee the treatments, insuring that the interns perform the needling properly.

I've been thinking about the tortuous dilemma of solid drug addicts. There's a distant fear in the backs of their minds, not that they will eventually hit rock bottom, but that they will fall forever... That it is always possible for them to fall even further, to degrade even deeper. Not even the ground can stop them. The very ground beneath their feet could collapse, even after rehab, even after all of those prayers and promises... Perhaps it's only when they fall "six feet under" that it stops. But then again, maybe not.

If we think of the word "substance," we can break it down to "sub" (meaning "under") and "stance" (meaning a stance, a position of standing). It summons to mind the image of Atlas, struggling to hold the world on his back... or, in Chinese contexts, Peng, holding the heavens up (although this is a bit more elevated). Substance literally refers to that which "stands beneath" us...

When "understood" this way, substance is actually similar to another commonly used word: "understanding" ("under" "standing"). To understand something is literally to be able to "stand under" it, in the sense that one can find the common ground that supports something, the foundations...

"Substance abuse" literally is an abuse of "sub-stance" and "under-standing." As I said, for addicts, it is ALWAYS possible to fall through what appears to be solid ground... Their addiction "abuses" the solidity around them, the solidity within themselves. It makes it impossible for those around them to feel any (moral/individual) "substance" within them, any "backbone." It makes it impossible for those around them to "understand" them...

I love my sister, by the way. She's doing well at the moment; but even if she weren't, well, I would still love her. I can't help it. I knew her from the start: I knew her when she was the brave one, the compassionate and unquestioning one, who always accompanied me when I was afraid. And I feel responsible for her (even though I intellectually know that I'm not); that, somehow, it is and was all my fault. Perhaps a lack of attention (attention = love)...

I'm not naive about things (or I'm less naive). I can't protect my sister, or turn things around for her. I can't do much of anything. But I love her, even in my utter powerlessness. And I dream of a day (maybe after all of this "life" and "living" stuff is over) when we can meet and talk and play like we once did, so long ago, brother and sister. I have an image in my head and in my heart of us lying down on chalk-rock boulders in an empty and unused field of California grass, all warm, staring up at the changing sky and talking dream talk. Someday, it was, someday, it will be.