Survive America the way an addict survives detox and recovery: 15 non-negotiables
The leader of the free world relies on conspiracy theory, fake images, lies, and the imposition of a false reality on the public in order to maintain his obnoxious power. All the while, we have unleashed, unregulated, into this environment of unchecked sadism, ignorance, and fear, AI which intends to render almost all of what humans value most in public discourse and their private lives—trust, privacy, stability, creativity, freedom of mind, meaningful work and restorative leisure—extinct.
Cool, cool, cool.
The temptation is to tell ourselves it’s going to be fine, but I don’t see it. I see violence, fury, rage, incompetence, and catastrophe. I see collapse, and I can’t say I don’t think it will be necessary. In a situation as desperately sick as this one, the detox, as are most, is going to be gruesome.
Maybe my view is just my view. It’s possible, especially since I don’t hear many other people just saying it plain. Maybe we won’t annihilate ourselves. But maybe sure seems a slippery thing to try to hold sacred at the moment. Our first encounter with AI was social media, which is absolute trash. As a collective it would seem we’re categorically doomed.
Meanwhile, I’m taking a vacation. From chores, from fear, from internet, from robots, and work, and obsessions. From pressures self-imposed and otherwise.
I’m three and a half years sober and this is my fourth extended beach vacation not drinking. It’s weird and it’s the best, and I am still incredibly energized by my commitment to recovery.
Recovery is for anybody, though. And I want to stress this. Because it’s the way to survive: today. Whatever this ridiculous, overwhelming, bat shit crazy moment in history is. Maybe it’s the end, maybe it’s the beginning, maybe it’s always both and always has been.
In any case, here’s some solid ways to handle it, and everything else, by maintaining not your sanity (because, I mean, come on) but instead a more core requirement: your integrity.
If you know something needs to be done—go the fuck first.
Think for yourself. Be straight forward. Be willing to change your mind.
Choose your thoughts and how long you let yourself stay in them.
Love yourself which means respect yourself—don’t take other people’s shit.
Love your people the best you know how. They are scared, too. And they are brave. Too.
To every possible extent that you are able: get yourself out of toxic environments—no excuses.
Detox from victimhood. Own what’s yours. You know what it is.
Enjoy the hell out of the sunrise.
Don’t lie. To yourself or anyone else.
Go slow. Assume it will take exponentially longer than you want/hope/expect it to.
Major transformation will require destruction, violence, the breaking and decay of things that need wrecking. Get a tarot card deck and get acquainted with The Tower. Things aren’t cute right now. No shit.
Don’t be so quick to gang up on yourself. You are doing a really good job. Consider the circumstances.
Don’t be naive on purpose. Recognize when you are deliberately glossing over what you can absolutely stand to face head on.
Don’t be so proud or assume you know everything. Stay humble. Stay focused, but also nimble. In turbulence, objects are bound to shift during flight.
Laugh. As often as possible. In the face of all of it.
And when you learn to laugh and rage and grieve and stay and love all at once—you will know what recovery is. That it never ends because it’s part of what it means to keep living life well as a capable, trustworthy human, in a world hand-dipped in poison sauce. To live it with a kind of truthfulness that makes no promises and takes no prisoners.
There’s just you and your commitment to yourself, which is the only thing you will ever have that’s worth anything to anybody else.
Some other stuff:
I wrote a resonant Substack Note about America being an addict and how I see this whole situation, it goes like this:
More and more America’s story proves itself to be one of addiction. To greed, to power, to fame, sadism, and moral ignorance.
And as a recovering addict, I just want to offer these three truths as I have personally observed, witnessed, and experienced them in my own life:
You do not get the years of addiction back to do over better. They are lost for good and some of the damage will never be undone.
Recovery requires a level of truth-telling that has never before been fathomed by the addict, let alone undertaken. It is not for the faint of heart, the weak, the meek, or the deliberately oblivious.
The grueling work of doing what is wildly difficult instead of clinging helplessly to illusions, false-promises, and false-gods, never ends.
Addiction to power, greed, and the adrenaline rush of cruelty isn’t some grand mystery. Addictions are real and can be recovered from. Regular people do it all the time.
But recovery is not—by any stretch of the imagination—a given.
I’ve been writing on my other site which brings me great quiet personal joy. It’s a place where I can display my innermost mind-workings, in a most unconventional way. A place where I do not explain any of my many selves and I do not follow rules of any kind. (Highly recommend creating a place like this for yourself, either online or off.)
Here’s the two latest:
I don’t drink anymore but I still read Bukowski
detox and a few additional notes
I’ll see you in a week or two. Time is sort of a strange thing in apocalyptic circumstances, right. As are schedules, rules, assumptions, and holding on to old ways of thinking or being that are surely sliding away like sand through a sieve, whether we cut ourselves a break or not.
Oh! And happy summer. Here’s to those who absolutely can take the heat—and still get the fuck out the kitchen.
So accurately said.
I'd say that's good advice in general.