Boy, that sounds severe. Especially from someone who thinks of concentration camps, “Work Will Set You Free” propaganda, Hitler’s design to convince Jews to work themselves to death.

But some people who work the Steps tell me that they don’t get five minutes off. No time to play. They’ve played for as many years as they used and abused drugs and alcohol, and want to make up for time lost. The world needs them. People need one another, and as a person, they’ve joined the human race.

So people in recovery work when they work. They don’t cheat the boss, and when anything goes wrong, they immediately look within themselves, assume some responsibility.

Anyone, addicted or not, can look at just about anything, any interaction, and find himself, find his piece of the problem, maybe just a tiny reactive moment or impulse, an unintended cross, insensitive word. It’s hard to control our negativity, our impulse to lash out at others when we feel hurt, and that happens when we interact with people.  We feel hurt.  Being addicted, to add insult to injury, tends to go together with projecting blame onto others, avoiding responsibility, and finding a place on the proverbial “pity pot.”

The therapeutic objective, of course, is to feel the hurt but look inside, examine it to see if it really came from anything at all. Sometimes we think people mean things they don’t mean. If we’re too easily hurt it means we’re not looking beyond ourselves, we’re stuck licking our wounds. We call these narcissistic injuries because we’re thinking everyone else had us in mind, or should have us in mind, when in fact, nobody’s really paying attention or cares.

By narcissistic injury we mean ego slam, as opposed to body slam. It hurts about as much.

A person in recovery will first look at the 12 Steps and puzzle over the words of people who theoretically hurt him intentionally, the possible motives. Deciding that it can’t be, that people in general aren’t out to get him, he’ll admit there’s a great deal about people and their motives that he doesn’t understand. Rather than say the motives must be negative, he’ll turn the whole problem over to a Higher Power, let G-d take care of the issue, the conflict.

Or even better, he might check it out, discuss the problem at a meeting, or maybe with the person he thinks caused him harm, or thinks meant to cause him harm.

And at a meeting, a person in recovery ultimately looks at behavior and talks about better responses, taps into strategies for coping under stress, outside of blaming everyone else. A person will take what is learned at a meeting out into the world, the big playing field. The common denominator in all of life’s aggravation is always ourselves, addicted or not.

So we try to change that person, ourselves.

We’re the people feeling the aggravation, we’re the ones, some might say, creating it. So we change us.

The good thing about this dynamic in the 12 Step program, is that it works on universal principals. Everyone makes drama where there shouldn’t be any, is the truth. Alcoholics and drug addicts might be a little more paranoid and angry than most, a little more depressive-anxious, but everyone gets aggravated. Which came first? Did the emotion cause the substance abuse, or the substance abuse cause the emotion? It doesn’t matter. We’re all emotional creatures and we all have to manage our feelings, especially our aggravation in the great outdoors.

In sobriety, a person working a 12 Step program has had enough alcohol, enough drugs. The thought of another drink, another toxic episode, another foolish social drug-hazed encounter, is aversive. He can’t stand the thought of continuing on this way, comes to see that looking inside, taking a hard look at himself is the ticket. It is his own ego, himself that is the source and the solution of his problems.

And sober or straight, if a person hangs around with other humans, that ego stands to take a beating. Especially with a job in the real world. It can be very humbling, working with people. We take a lot of aggravation, feel a lot of aggravation in our personal concentration camps.

So an addict in recovery is bound to hear someone like me say,

“Sure your job is a hassle and it’s aggravating dealing with people. Life’s tough. But it is on the job, right here in real time, where you and your ego intersect with other souls.  It is on the job that we test ourselves.”

It is you who will have to change, have to take a step back.  It is you, a person controlled by a need to feed your head, who must ask that ego inside the old ‘bod any number of magical questions about socially frustrating interactions. As in:

Did that other person really mean to hurt me with what he said? Or am I too sensitive?

Am I interpreting this situation correctly? Are my feelings creating my thoughts? Are my thoughts upsetting me? Shouldn’t I take a better look at the situation before I go CRAZY emotionally and feel the need to drink?

No better place to work through this stuff than on the job.

Right. You don’t get five minutes to play. The world is your playground. Every second, every encounter, a test. Should be fun and can be, assuming you can stop taking yourself so seriously. It’s possible, although not always, and we’ll get to the not always another day, but it’s possible that your ego can use a little bruising and you’ll be better off for it.

What a therapy. So cognitive. So rational. So effective.  And with a little help from your friends, so hopeful.

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