You meet an addict suffering from an addiction, the conversation might perhaps go somewhat as follows. You say “hello”, they don’t. You say “it’s a nice day” – they say nothing. They hear and see things you don’t. They describe fears and terrors you cannot see and do not believe in. They talk in ways that make no sense to you, and about things you cannot possibly understand or follow. The dialogue is not really a dialogue, more two monologues. There is no meeting of minds – there is no consensus as to what you are talking about, or indeed about the reality you are both sharing at that moment. What usually happens in a conversation between two people – indeed the underlying purpose of any and every conversation – is the overlapping and mutual confirmation of what reality is like just then. But this simply doesn’t happen when one participant is labouring under a pronounced addiction. That’s what an addiction is, and that is all that a addiction is. An escape from reality. The rest is pure embroidery.
So the cure, obviously, would be to re-synchronise these two realities, yours and theirs. This requires establishing a common point, an agreed foundation or basis from which to start. Without this, you are running on parallel lines, your two versions of reality diverge. You are talking, not so much at cross-purposes, more at cross-realities. Addicts thinking is unreal. And the origin of this unreality is fear, serious fear, best labelled a profound flight from reality. Addiction does not occur unless the sufferer has been deflected from today’s reality – and the only thing powerful enough to deflect the human mind from finding out what is currently going on, is drug and alcohol addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous attempts to bridge the reality gap, not by thinking but by a course of simple actions that reintroduce reality to the addict.
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