A few words on the industry.

OK, it's been a few months. Health has been up and down. Money has been up and down.  Life. Life and the fullness thereof.

This long delayed post is not about adventuring down the highway with some puking, boasting, human shipwreck. It's a little note about the actual nature of my previous work, stripped of the human drama.

I pretty much came to the conclusion that the recovery industry is a fraud. Not to say that people don't recover, and yeah, some people are so fucked up they need close medical supervision to survive detoxing, but the idea that you can pay some guy some money and he'll fix your addiction is just bullshit.

That sounds kind of naive to me and it's coming from me. You can't really pay anybody to fix what's in your heart and there's nothing new about that. I've known that for a long time. Thing is that treatment centers are aimed at people who were cursed to find a magic bullet. They know for a fact that they can hand a man some money and he will fix them right up. They've had that experience. It changed their lives and gave them new hope and meaning. The promise of consumer society is realized in the addict. Most people wander around buying shit and hoping that it will contribute to their happiness. Some of us have bought something that instantly relieved us of a life time of pain.

Instantly.

So then it stops working. It's just one more problem. One more failed attempt at living. At this point, the industry steps in and promises a return to comfort. Just give them some money and they'll turn you into the happily productive sucker you always dreamed of being. You'll work more, make more money, lose weight and finally be happy and there's the holy trinity of consumer inner realization: Productivity, money and weight loss. What else could there be? I just read a book by some smug asshole, all about how he cured himself of alcoholism without having to question one single assumption about his pathetic life. He knew his plan worked because he was working harder, earning more and losing weight.

And that's what we all want. Isn't it?

Behind all of this is an empire built on bullshit. Insurance companies, healthcare bureaucrats, psychobabble scammers, and behind them the world empire of violence that we all call home. To make it all work a certain percentage of us are sacrificed. If we're lucky we're not worked to death in a mine in some impoverished backwater. If we're lucky we'll just have our spirits crushed and our minds shattered in some institution of civilization like the family or work. We will look for something to restore us to a sense of completeness and we will find we live in a world that offers only product. So we will eat ourselves to death. Or dose ourselves to death. Or struggle to control the universe by playing god until the universe finally breaks us.

Then we'll go looking for something else and in steps the industry because our failed society can't really sell you anything but more of the same.

I won't be coming to pick you up this time, but someone will.