“I always thought my life was over”
Thanks to the experience, still too brief but striking, of psychoanalysis and the strength of a community of Narcotics Anonymous, this subject has been able to detach himself from the abuse of poisons and begin to get rid of the petrification of his childhood. A path that he will continue in an addictology institution. It will take time for him to get rid of the mortal identification to which he could only consent. But a possible future is emerging beyond the melancholy certainty that inhabits it.
“I’m 52 years old. Until eighteen months ago, I had thought myself a mundane alcoholic.”
“And then there was cocaine. For four years. And there, I lost everything: job, money, housing … and confidence in me. In the space of a year, I lost control of my life, I did not control anything: it became daily and massive, I took advantage of the coke of others and when I earned money , everything went in: 1500 € in one evening by watering everyone because they had provided me before.”
“I lost my priorities: the professional seemed to me secondary. I had a late teenage crisis, a total letting go.”
“And during that time, the voice of my parents echoed in me constantly: that I was” zero”.
“And then the catalog of solutions, of things to do that I was a child. I never felt that I could appropriate things to do, things that would be born of my experience. And it continues today.”
“My mother was an inhibited feminist, but she was an assiduous activist in her family: she brought my sisters back to the men and castrated the men around her: my father and me. She was an immature person who constantly complained to others, always a victim. With the legitimacy of the trouble-bearer carried by the feeling of an eternal misunderstanding.”
“I have suffered a lot from these all-powerful women around me. My sisters have adopted this battle horse of my mother. It did them service initially but to finish it all serves them: they are castrating, assured … But it hides a great weakness and underestimates; like me.”
“The men were ridiculous. Me too. When I complained about being abused at school, I was not listened to children, our tears were quirks for them. My mother threatened to leave us alone: to abandon us if we complained about anything: “I will leave and leave you alone”.
“Everything turned to ten years for me, and this moment is present all the time for me: I was dysorthographic, I wrote “and” instead of “ is”. My mother said to me, mad with rage: what did I do to God to have such a child? And she hits me.”
“I forgave: I think that my mother, herself, was spoken by her parents because when she was criticized for her attitude, she did not understand. I call her “the bitch” because she has not grown up but I think of her as “the little bitch”. What characterizes her is the opposite of what she says and thinks she is: wise, not proud, patient. But I did not understand this until late. She did not let me go.
“ My father? He asked what we had done today to deserve our meal!”
“I have never been able to have a long relationship with a woman: they scare me. And this fear, I masked with consumption. And also with my compulsions: I went with the household: clean, tidy. For them too. And I often found them too good, too beautiful for me.”
“Yes, I feel illegitimate.”
“And then my anger was also masked, which is in me and eventually exploded, violent with my last friend. I insulted her and ended up abusing her. And I urged my mother at the same time. In fact, I was trying to make myself loved, by giving my money … And emptying the garbage cans, keeping quiet, accepting everything without saying anything.”
“But I realized one day that I must also be infuriating for others, to want to make me accept at any price: by accepting all the requests.”
“In my professional life too, I said yes to everything. But that’s how I managed, worked regularly, with my relationships.”
“And then I ruined everything: I wanted to be elsewhere all the time, I did not feel good anywhere, I took refuge in the work to find legitimacy. It must be said that I did not graduate … My parents did not help me, on the contrary. So I work without being able to assure myself. I must have a good star, I never had a problem. But in the end, I have nothing, I will have to work until the end, if I can: if I stop, I will have only the minimum old age.”
“I always harbored an underestimation that prevented me from building, from appropriating what I built.”
“Now it’s been eighteen months since I’ve been abstinent. I did a psychoanalysis ten years ago. At the first session, my psychiatrist told me — it was after a breakup: “you tell her your problems while she was looking for a prince charming”: I heard that she meant it was normal that she put me down. I came out annoyed, angry. Then I thought she was right: that I was creating the break. that I was doing everything in the air. In fact: that I could be responsible for something in what was happening to me, that I could no longer be a victim.”
“This trauma of the “con”, uttered by my mother, who is very strong, this hatred of my mother born at the moment when she called me stupid, is branded with a hot iron; I want women for that. Yes, I believed it! But it was not an intellectual belief, but in the body: shame was my only appearance.”
“And then I had the chance to meet anonymous narcotics. Thanks to a friend who has been there. I have been in a center for 14 months. On arrival, I was in a total fog. The group acted on me like a mirror with facets: I saw my dysfunctions, I relativized a lot of things, and this gigantic emotion that has eaten my life. And then I discovered other fashions than anger.”
[He is on the verge of tears]
“I need to rebuild my life. Rebuild? You are right: build! I have the impression to be born.”
“Analysis? In the center, there are not many possibilities for individual follow-up: we have interviews with the referent psychotherapist addict when we need and a psychologist on demand when we have things to discuss that do not fit into the group psychotherapy. This is good but it is not frequent enough and the schedule is very busy: we have little time for us. It is heavy, what we are asked: to find consequences: I forgot! But it was indispensable: I could not have arrived where I am without it. And the confinement was useful: we were bored with all that it did to do, we had no time and at the same time I was bored. But I knew that if I left I would die.”
“So I took my chance. But it was still very hard because I still had a denial about my anger, very strong. And it started to fart. She let go. I had confrontations with residents who told me what concerns about the household. I judged others: that they were doing their job wrong. I fled and was afraid of others. I began to look at my fears, of which I am petrified. I put a mask on it. I have dreams that resemble what I am able to produce to hide my fear.”
“Of my dreams, one emerges, persists, marked me, that I had told my psychiatrist: in a corner with luxury villas, walls, at a crossroads, I meet the brother of a friend of the family. Time: Although he was my youngest, I admired him: he is very intelligent and comfortable everywhere. He intimidated me. I ask him which way to go to the city center. I am the way he told me. It leads me to a cliff with a staircase to the stairs more and more spaced and replaced by basements of bent fortifications that make me think of a final slide. I said to myself: did you want me to go there? Well, I’ll go! A suicidal challenge without possible return. The end is chaotic: there are no more stones, I can not go further.”
“It taught me the dimension of my underestimation, of not being able to say to the other: “you stupid, you know it’s a dead-end”,”.
“I want to come to your apartment, therapeutic apartment because I was told that the follow-up was excellent. I want to start from a new foot … for what remains to me to live. Does it surprise you that I say “what’s left to live”? It is true! I always thought my life was over.”
“Yes, I am in good health.”
Report of a single interview, barely overhauled, barely redacted for anonymity.
