When Society Becomes an Addict

Anne Wilson Schaef

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780062548542
• eBook ISBN: 9780062291103
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

II. THE ADDICTIVE SYSTEM AS A HOLOGRAM

INTRODUCTION

The White Male System is the Addictive System; the Addictive System is the White Male System. They are one and the same, signifying that the system in which we live has set our society on the path toward nonliving.

It is important and useful to approach the concept of the Addictive System as a hologram. The new holographic paradigm is an approach to science and understanding the world that is nonlinear; it is coming out of the new work in physics and brain physiology.1 The essential feature of a hologram is that each piece of the hologram contains the entire structure of the entire hologram; each piece is not just a part of the whole, it has the entire pattern and way of functioning of the whole embedded in it. This is a useful way to look at the Addictive System. The system is like the individual, and the individual is like the system. In other words, the Addictive System has all the characteristics of the individual alcoholic/addict. And because we live in this system, every one of us, unless recovering by means of a system shift, exhibits many of these same characteristics.

This part of the book names and describes the characteristics of an addict and illustrates how they function within both the individual and the system as a whole.

SELF-CENTEREDNESS

Addicts are notoriously self-centered. They may claim to care about the people around them, but their fix begins to overshadow everything else. The alcoholic thinks only of the next drink, the relationship addict of the next affair, the workaholic of the next item on the agenda. The Addictive System considers self-centeredness a virtue.

Self-centeredness has many facets, the most obvious of which is a total lack of consideration for others. Not too long ago I witnessed a shocking example. I was taking a nap beside a hot mineral pool when I was awakened by someone making a great deal of noise. A mother had brought her young son to the pool, and she was banging a lounge chair around. She clearly did not care that she was causing a disturbance.

She also did not care about her son’s needs. I overheard her telling someone else what had brought the two of them to the pool. Her son had pulled a muscle, and she had kept him out of school for the day to give him a chance to soak in the hot water. When they arrived, she learned that children were not allowed in the pool. By now, however, she wanted to stay.

There was only one chair that was not in use; she took it and told her son to sit on the concrete until another became available. He obeyed and happily began listening to music on his earphones. The mother asked if she could hear “just a little”; he handed the radio to her, and she kept it for half an hour.

He then asked if he could have the soft drink that she had packed for him. She took it out of a bag and gave it to him. He opened it, took a drink, carefully set it on his chair (he had managed to find one), and wandered off.

In his absence the mother picked up the drink and finished it. When the child came back and found it empty, an amazing conversation ensued.

“It’s all gone!” the boy said.

“I only had a little sip,” his mother answered.

“But it’s all gone!”

“Well, maybe I had a big sip, but I didn’t drink it all.”

“You did drink it all!”

“Stop whining. I’ll get you another one later.”

“But I’m thirsty now!”

“I said later!” his mother shouted.

The child’s needs were every bit as pressing as his mother’s (actually, I thought, more pressing), but that did not concern her at all.

Unfortunately, self-centeredness is contagious. When we are around people who care little about us, it becomes important to protect our turf, hoard our belongings, and think only of ourselves, because no one else will. I could imagine the boy growing up to believe that he had to be selfish or he would never have anything.

I witnessed a rather amusing example of self-centeredness recently on a whale watch. One of the participants became progressively depressed and withdrawn. When I inquired what was wrong, she stated that she had spent all this money and come all this way and the whales did not even notice she was there! This is self-centeredness!

Another aspect of self-centeredness puts the self at the center of the universe. Everything that happens is perceived as being either for or against the self.

Some years ago when I was married, I often needed some time alone (I still do, we all do!). Whenever I expressed this need to my husband, he would say, “Why do you want to go away from me?” I would try to explain that I was not “going away from him”; I was going to myself, and it had nothing to do with him. He was assuming that everything I did was either for or against him.

We all have plenty of opportunities to be self-centered. In our culture, self-centeredness is accepted and even encouraged, and for me it often becomes a matter of fighting a learned behavior. Whenever I speak in front of an audience, for example, there is usually at least one person who gets up and leaves the room for some reason. It would be easy to assume that the person’s leaving had something to do with me. Most likely, however, it does not. (I know, because I have often walked out on a speaker for reasons entirely my own.)

This kind of self-centeredness operates on a national level and is prevalent among the people in our government. Everything that happens in the world is perceived as being either for or against the United States. Actions in the Middle East, in Central America, in Africa are all directed at us or in opposition to us, or so our leaders seem to believe. Having bought into the Addictive System, they cannot help but think this way.

Still another aspect of self-centeredness has to do with what clinical professionals call ego boundaries. Self-centered people do not know where they begin and end and anyone else begins and ends. Self-centered people cannot respect others, because they literally are unaware of them as separate entities. (We can clearly see this on an international level.)

Because there are no clear-cut boundaries, two things happen: the self spreads out, and the world rushes in. Everything becomes ME (in Women’s Reality I called this the pseudopodic ego), and everything starts coming at ME and is perceived as either for or against ME.

The first is overwhelming; the second is terrifying and leads to the feeling of needing to control. Later I will discuss the illusion of control, but for now it should be evident why self-centered people tend to be very controlling. They feel that they must be in order to protect themselves from a universe that they perceive may overpower them.

As I began learning about self-centeredness as described by AA and in the literature about other types of addictions, I saw almost immediately that everything about it applies to the Addictive System.

In the Addictive System the self is central. Everyone and everything else must go through, be related to, and be defined by the self as perceived by the self. Addictive System persons find it difficult or even impossible to be objective (though they are always correcting for subjectivity) or to see another’s perspective. They do not know how; they cannot learn because the self is always in the way and they cannot get past it.

In the Living Process System relationships are central. Living Process System persons are in a constant state of transcending the self. Because relationships are philosophically conceived of as peer until proven otherwise, each new encounter holds the promise of equality. People who perceive each other as equals form the habit of seeing self and others and seeing and respecting each other’s points of view.

Another aspect of self-centeredness is arrogance. The Addictive System is quite arrogant. Like the White Male System, it really believes that it is possible to be God as defined by that system. In holding this belief, it also assumes that it has the right to define everything, which is the epitome of self-centeredness. Addicts are arrogant. The Addictive System is arrogant. We even see this arrogance on a national level.

THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL

One of the major pitfalls of any addiction is the illusion of control.

In an addictive system everyone tries to control everyone else. The family tries to control the addict, the addict tries to control the family, the spouse tries to control against being controlled; everyone is involved in some sort of manipulative behavior. The worse the addiction becomes, the more desperate the need for control. The belief that anyone can get a handle on it is an illusion.

Addictive relationships are founded on the illusion of control. Many people are convinced that they are not loved unless the loved one is trying to control them. They define love as either controlling or being controlled. This attitude is particularly obvious in adolescent girls, some of whom literally do not know what to do unless their boyfriends tell them.

One of my teenage friends described what happened the first time he took a certain young woman out on a date. They were riding in his car when he asked her what she wanted to do for the evening.

“Whatever you want,” she said.

“Well,” the young man answered, “do you want to go to a party, go to a movie, rent a movie and go home and watch it, or what?”

“Whatever you want,” she repeated.

He stopped the car in the middle of the street and said, “If you are going to go out with me, you have to have an opinion.”

He was not interested in starting a controlling-controlled relationship. This is rare in our culture. Most people believe that relationships should revolve around control.

We often confuse control with responsibility. When we talk about “taking responsibility” within a relationship, we often mean taking control over all of the decisions made about it (such as what to do for the evening).

In the Living Process System responsibility is the ability to respond. In the Addictive System responsibility involves accountability and blame. The common belief is that responsible people are “in charge” and should be able to control everything. It therefore follows that they should be held accountable and blamed if something does not go as planned. If that is how we perceive responsibility, no wonder it seems like such a burden!

We also confuse control with power. In Women’s Reality, I said that the White Male System concept of power was that of power over, while the Emerging Female System concept of power was that of personal power and had nothing to do with power over anything. To borrow from an old saying, personal power ends where the other person’s nose begins. But even our (Addictive System) dictionaries define power as “ascendancy over others.” We learn to equate power with authority, domination, and sovereignty; in fact, these are all synonyms for it. The Living Process System is beginning to reclaim the word.

The illusion of control is prevalent within any addictive system. We are all subject to it, even when we are sure we have gone far beyond it in our own personal development. I was made painfully aware of this illusion when a friend came to visit and stayed with me for two weeks. At the time she was very much functioning in addictive patterns, and although I thought I was long out of mine and “safe,” I slipped right back into them.

I began to feel as though my house were falling apart around me. I described this to another friend, “It’s as if I’m sitting in the middle of a hot stove, surrounded by pots with their lids popping off, and I’m trying to keep the lids on!”

The illusion of control is only an illusion, because none of us can really control anything. We think we can, we think we should be able to, we think we ought to try, and we cannot.

In an addictive system the illusion of control starts with an attempt to control the self with a substance or a process. Drinking, taking drugs, worrying, working late, and having affairs are perceived as ways to avoid dealing with what one is thinking, feeling, and doing. They quickly expand into attempts to control what others are thinking, feeling, and doing.

For instance, a lot of people firmly believe that they can make someone love them. They forget that love is a gift that must be freely given. Instead, they get involved in saying the “right” things, wearing the “right” clothes, and behaving in the “right” ways. They think that they have the power to change someone else’s mind and arouse the desired feelings in that person.

This belief is so common within our culture that many people would rather feed their illusion of control than risk getting what they want. If they find that they are more successful at making people dislike or even hate them, they opt for that. My definition of true neurotics is those who would rather feed their illusion of control than take the risk of getting what they want.

It is staggering to realize how heavily we are invested in something that simply does not exist. I suppose that is why the first step of the AA Twelve-Step Program involves admitting that one is powerless over the addiction, and that one’s life is unmanageable in relation to it. Coming to grips with the illusion of control is essential to recovery.

The illusion of control is closely linked to three other characteristics of an addictive system: crisis orientation, depression, and stress.

CRISIS ORIENTATION

Addicts and their families live from crisis to crisis. Every event or issue is perceived as a major turning point, and one barely ends when the next one begins.

I have believed for some time that crises serve the purpose of giving addicts and their families the illusion of being alive. When they have a crisis, they are at least feeling something.

Actually, crisis orientation is also a very subtle form of control. Creating a crisis feeds our illusion of control because the crisis is something we have created. Even when the situation gets out of control, it is satisfying to us because it is our situation and we made it. A skilled crisis-causer can weave a crisis out of the most mundane event. Getting the kids off to school, making a decision on the job, planning what to have for dinner, telephoning a friend—everything is done in a state of panic.

A colleague of mine is becoming aware of how frequently she turns ordinary living into a crisis. As she struggles to confront her own illusion of control, she is finding that she has fewer crises to contend with. The more quickly one relinquishes the illusion of control, the less crisis-oriented one’s life becomes.

We see this crisis orientation on a system level, also. There is no doubt that a crisis is good for the economy and keeps the public believing that our government is “doing something.” Sometimes we need to create a crisi...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• I. THE ADDICTIVE SYSTEM
• II. THE ADDICTIVE SYSTEM AS A HOLOGRAM
• III. PROCESSES OF THE ADDICTIVE SYSTEM
• IV. TOWARD RECOVERY AND HEALING
• Notes
• About the Author
• Praise
• Credits
• Books by Anne Wilson Schaef, Ph.D.
• Copyright
• About the Publisher