What Looks Like War is Often Really fleeing a war

​I guest lectured yesterday at a child and adolescent psychology class. It was the session on substance use disorders, and my friend and the professor of the class, Barry, annually invites me to speak to this topic.

I always tell the class that I think the biggest mistake we make when diagnosing substance use disorders is believing that the substance use is one's real problem. I think it's the biggest mistake we make of diagnosing anyone's choices and behaviors.

My oldest son Elliott once shared, with much exasperation, how frustrating it was to watch one of his favorite NBA stars get suspended for using drugs. How on earth, he asked, could a guy who has it all make such a stupid choice?

And I told him, we have to be careful about so quickly reducing anyone's choices to a simple act of stupidity.

I know from experience that what looks like someone at war with themself on the outside, is often someone trying to protect themselves from the warzone that lives inside them. I don't think anyone would call that stupid; protecting yourself from entering a warzone.

The reality is, for many of us, our addictions and habits and obsessions with pleasure are layers. They are barbed wire fences wrapped firmly around the edges of our memories, around the edges of the unhealed parts of our lives, put there to assure us we never have to go to those parts.

It's true, most of us long to be healed. Far fewer of us, however, want to face the hell of healing. For at least a moment, what we can pretend is unknown feels much more pleasant than knowing.

That is what our addictions and habits and obsessions are; they are pretending. They are fighting to keep the unknown as far away as possible from the land of the known.

To you, pretending may look like stupidity, irresponsibility, recklessness. To you, pretending may look like war.

To the pretender, however, pretending often feels like avoiding a war.

Which is where we all end up: avoiding.

If you can pretend my addiction is my problem, my own personal stupid choice, you can believe there's no need for you to enter my warzone. And if I can embrace my addiction as a solution and not my problem, I can come to believe there's no need to enter my warzone.

And so it continues. A world at war on the outside without getting one step closer to knowing the wars we are all battling on the inside.

We double down on pretending to know the problems without getting a single step closer to where the problems really live.

In the warzone.

And so the war goes on.

Only, it's the wrong war.