What Would Happen if We Outlawed the Labels Addict and Alcoholic?
- Brainz Magazine
- Dec 8
- 7 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
For nearly 14 years, I've helped individuals navigate the complex landscape of addiction in order to achieve recovery. Nicknamed "The Casual Counselor", my approach is unconventional but undeniably effective.
I hate those labels. I hate them with a deep and burning rage. Addict. Alcoholic. Stay with me for a minute, imagine, if you will, hypothetically, that those two labels were stricken from the English language. They ceased to exist. Like they never existed at all. No one was familiar with the moniker.
How, then, would we refer to our loved ones who struggle with substance and alcohol abuse? Or the abuse of any vice, for that matter? There would be only one way to describe these individuals. We would call them what they are, people who are in pain. Treatment in this culture? We’re doing it wrong. Even my own website and the hashtags I use on my professional social media pages incorporate the term. Addiction Treatment. Alcoholism Treatment.
I hate it.
Want to know why I hate it? It’s because it steals away the humanness of the person who is in pain. We’re doing it wrong when we try to provide “treatment” for these people in pain because we continually focus on the ‘what’ and not the ‘why’. We focus on the symptom(s), and not the underlying issue(s). We look at the problem, and not the solution. We turn people in pain into data points. We turn them into a personification of a diagnosis.
An addict. An alcoholic. And in robbing them of their humanness, we stigmatize them. We’re doing it wrong. We need to stop looking at the drug, the drink, the gambling, the sex, the retail shopping, the overeating, the food avoidance, and the self-harming. We need to instead start looking at the pain. The why. The whys. Plural. The wounds. The trauma. The needs that were not met during that person’s formative childhood years.
Children absorb whatever is happening when they’re developing. Children do not have the benefit of things like a basis of comparison, critical thinking, problem-solving skills, insight, foresight, hindsight. They are veritable sponges, and all of them, all of us, are going to be imbued with essential needs that are not met by our caregivers and communities. These unmet needs may very well compel us, when the opportunity arises, to develop a proclivity for having a problematic relationship with a dangerous substance, alcohol, or any other self-destructive vice.
Here’s the paradoxical rub, for a very long time, our relationship with whatever the vice is, whatever it is we are self-medicating with, is a healthy and life-saving relationship. It helps us survive whatever is going on in our heads, our hearts, our families, our peer groups, our schooling, and our ability to self-regulate and cope with feelings. We use in order to survive, and it works. Until it doesn’t.
As much as I hate the word, I’m going to use it anyway. When our relationship with the drug or the drink turns into an ‘addiction,’ it’s generally understood to be something that used to serve us in such a way that gave us pleasure, relief, soothing, and peace. Then it morphs into a source of diminishing returns of those benefits and begins to create a narrative of increasing pain, associated consequences, increasing tolerance (needing more of the substance just to feel “normal” and functional), and physiological dependence that predicates withdrawal symptoms so severe that if we can’t get our fix, whatever it is, the pain we will experience will be immeasurable.
Along with all of that unpleasantness, we are branded by those within our families and communities with the dreaded scarlet letter, a big ol’ capital “A.” Addict. Alcoholic. Those terms, in addition to stealing away our humanness, also carry an association of an individual who is problematic. Often desperate not to get sick, people with problematic substance or alcoholic use will do desperate things to try to stay in some semblance of balance and functionality. Most have jobs they need to go to, families they need to care for, groceries to buy, and the various tasks, errands, and responsibilities of this busy and serious adult life.
Unless they are able to satiate the pain, these important duties will be nullified, and the individual responsible for completing them will be vilified. Stigmatized. Outcasted. Shunned. Driven into places where the ragged people go, often losing resources like housing, employment, connection to community, and any and all other touchpoints that allow us to remain “a productive member of society” or, to dumb it down a bit, “a part of our tribe.”
They become addicts and alcoholics, relegated to the shadows, locked in institutions, their reputations blemished and ruined, bridges burned, relationships fractured, financial stability destroyed, and they are casually discarded into the for-profit 'addiction" treatment industry that absolutely loves the notion of repeat or even lifetime customers. In this American culture, being “sick” equates to trillions of dollars made by people in high seats of power within the corrupt system of privatized healthcare.
I can’t even count the number of people in pain I have worked with who have told me that they left treatment “feeling worse” than when they went in to get help. Why? It’s because they did not get help. They were told by experts and specialists and MDs that they are sick, they’ve always been sick, and they’re always going to be sick. There’s no cure for what they have. The sickness they carry is chronic and fatal and has no cure. The very best they can hope for is a daily reprieve from using the substance that relieves their pain, with an encouragement to reshape their lives in a way that will mitigate the possibility of relapse, but that relapse is likely at any rate.
They are not asked about the underlying issues of why they were using to begin with. They are instead taught about the likelihood that there was a genetic predisposition for this sickness, this disease. It’s a story of a wonky amygdala, neuroscience, and brain chemistry. Although those are sometimes factors that influence substance and alcohol abuse, they tell such a tiny part of the story. And, typically, they’re prescribed a cocktail of various powerful psychotropic medications.
If you sit with the person in pain for an hour, and you hear their story, and they feel safe enough to open up and tell you about the “why(s)”, the tales of unmet needs, abuse, neglect, abandonment, rejection, shame, being ‘othered,’ being on the receiving end of heartbreak, bullying, or a broken home, you start to better understand the story of the humanness of the person in pain who is trying to recover and just live a good-enough life.
When you meet someone in this life who has a problematic relationship with drugs, alcohol, or any other dangerous vice, you’ve just met a person in pain who is dying to be seen, heard, understood, known, valued, respected, and loved in the way that we offer the many people in our communities who are not branded as “addicts” or “alcoholics.” It’s their profound pain that prevents them from “putting themselves out there to be known,” and it’s not something you can just talk or push someone into doing. But it needs to happen if there’s going to be a shot at a real recovery. A real healing.
Motivating people in pain with fear doesn’t do them any favors. Think about it. When faced with a crisis or a conflict or a disaster in this life, when a person is scared, do they tend to cope with those situations in healthy ways? The answer is an obvious and unequivocal “no.” With those among us who self-medicate with drugs or alcohol, it typically turns into a story of an inevitable relapse, and all the shame and self-flagellation that comes with it.
Motivating people with hope. That’s the direction in which we need to start looking. Hope inspires. It inspires self-confidence, self-belief, and self-efficacy. The confidence that they can cope and self-regulate their feelings without the aid of a pill, a powder, a potion, or a pipe. Hope inspires love, and love can only be truly transmitted in a space that honors the humanness of the individual beyond the story of their label. Their scarlet “A.” Their diagnosis. Their fear.
We’re doing it wrong. Words matter. We’ve got a lot of work to do in order to help people heal. We need to see past their behavior and honor and share a gentle space for them to share their pain. We need to feel to heal, but we also need to get it out, and we’re only going to do that in a space that feels safe. One of love, hope, and respect, one in which we see, hear, respect, value, and love the person who is in pain, and strike from the record the inhuman label that only intensifies their immeasurable disconnection from self and from this world.
Healing can happen, but only in a space of shared humanness. Healing doesn’t happen in a space between an expert and a patient. We, as treaters, need to deviate from the playbook and share our humanness with our clients if we truly want to give them a shot at getting well, staying well, and building that good-enough life.
Should we choose to continue to motivate them by fear? Well, it’s a good business model. You’ll get your revolving door of relapse, and maybe even a customer for life, but I ask you this, at what cost? And will it help you sleep at night with a clear conscience? If the answer is no, it might be time to re-evaluate what compelled you to work in this field to begin with.
We’re doing it wrong. We’ve got a long way to go.
Read more from Joshua Bennett-Johnson
Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Counselor & Owner of JBJ Counseling
After working for 7 years in an amazing clinic, I launched into private practice in 2018. I love my job. I can say that without reservation. Watching people rebuild their lives is something that is worth more than any dollar amount.
