@obambii - Tumblr Blog

Chen Chi-Kwan, 1977

Lobsang Rompa. The Third Eye. 1968.

slope point, the southernmost tip on new zealand’s south island, is hit with such persistently violent southern antarctic winds that trees grow in the leeward direction. (click pic or link for credit x, x, x, x, x, x)

perfect-plumage

Crested Pigeon (Ocyphaps lophotes)

road0flife

nobrashfestivity

Yutaka Matsuzawa Untitled (White Circle Collage). c. 1967

matchagirl

adicttive

2022dirt

Animals that rolled around in sidewalk chalk.

junglejim4322

It’s interesting because so many people understand and echo “you can’t change somebody who doesn’t want to change” when it comes to addiction but more in some sort of mythological sense as if there’s people wandering this earth who are just too stubborn to stop doing drugs and not the reality that they have no means with coping with the real world and are understandably not going to want to be pulled away from the only thing they know that makes being alive manageable overnight. Over the years with addiction and eating disorders and other self harm behaviors I really believe a huge aspect of getting off of them can be understanding a period of time that people have to still be doing this stuff because it really can’t usually realistically be taken away overnight especially for people who don’t have the ability to take time away from average life like idk I think you on a personal level don’t need to be around anybody you don’t want to be but if you’re going to then making the prospect of being imperfect punishable is probably not going to do anything for harm reduction in a lot of situations

sentient-carrot

I actually remember years ago when I went to a conference on humane drug policy, and one of the speakers was a researcher on alcoholism. He suggested that while quitting fully would of course be the ideal alternative when struggling with alcohol, but for many that was just never going to happen.

If the only attempted treatment then was abstaining completely then there would be no treatment, because that would not work. Instead he said for some, as a realistic harm reduction measure, it could be to reduce the amount one drinks per drinking session or maybe reducing drinking days in total to the weekends or such.

Because even if the person would still have alcohol addiction, at least one could more realistically make a positive impact on it, something you could not if you're insisting on being all-or-nothing about it. Approaching it with an individualised treatment path might also make quitting fully more of a possibility in the future too.

I've been involved in harm reduction and humane drug policy activism for quite a while now, and time and time again I see that help, support and having community is key to recovery. If you're not focusing on fixing the underlying issue -causing- the addiction issues, then it will usually not work. Addiction is as you say, a coping mechanism. You can try to replace it with a different and hopefully healthier coping mechanism, but generally as long as there are real, practical reasons causing the need to cope, the issues will continue.