Re: Crutches and Tools...

Are psych meds a crutch or a tool? Is alcohol a crutch or a tool? I'm inclined to say that both are a form of medication but alcohol is used to self-medicate and for this reason, among others, it will be considered an inferior crutch or tool.

I've known lots of people who have self-medicated with booze, including me. For a period of time, alcohol helped me. In some instances I used it to numb myself from pain; in others I used it so I could feel my pain. As I worked through those feelings of despair, I found myself using alcohol less frequently. I also discovered other methods that could help me, such as tonglen practice, connecting with others, exercise, journalling, completing a task that brought with it a sense of success or accomplishment, etc. All of these were tools/crutches that I could make use of in my recovery period. The question that must be asked of any tool we might lean on for whatever period of time is: Is it helping or is it hindering?

Meantime, a little something I learned about moving out of despair is... you have to find someone who has it worse than you. This is imperative. If you cannot find another human being who's had a more difficult or painful life than you that means that deep down, you believe that no other human being has ever suffered as you have. This becomes a limiting mindset because if you alone have had it the worst out of all the human beings there have ever been, how could a person ever be expected to move past something like that?

It's also important to find role models, people who've had a rough go of life and yet, are still finding a means of personal triumph. These sorts of mentors should never be shoved in our face -- they should never be held up in comparison to who we are or where we're at. Rather, we should find and choose them ourselves. Speaking of crutches, here's one I found that inspired me:

[Audio File].

Moving beyond pain should never be equated with suppressing it, ignoring it, or pretending it's not there -- it's there, and if we don't deal with it, it simply worms its way out in other ways. But pain and despair can also be incredible teachers, we can lean on them too and find a way to make them work for us.