Prurient Solidarity

(I am all about the sexy post titles today.)

There’s this thing I do, where if I know or suspect that you have a let’s say intense and troubled relationship to drugs or alcohol, I will immediately think your art is better, your writing is more insightful, your skating is more sublime, you are cooler and funnier and more physically attractive. If I start to catch that scent from you I will start sniffing, and if my suspicions are confirmed my estimation of your personal awesomeness will skyrocket. (“Yeah uh, celibacy sounds like a good plan for you” <- sane people’s opinion. But who listens to them?)

I don’t love this tendency in myself, because I know people don’t want to be esteemed for or evaluated on the basis of their addictions. The nicest term I can come up with for this thing is “prurient solidarity.”

But I do want a nice term for it, because I think it helped me get sober. Recovery Options: The Complete Guide (great book) uses the “stages of change” model, and stage 1 is “pre-contemplation.” This is the part where you haven’t admitted to yourself that you need to change. Or you can’t imagine ever changing. And one thing which gets you past this stasis is simply getting really interested in stories of addiction and recovery. The more interested you are in other people’s struggles with this stuff, the more likely you are to find the stories which resonate with you and illuminate an upward path. The more models you have for addicted people you love, the closer you come to caring for yourself a bit.