Kindle Notes & Highlights
The context of our elephant—our society—is the fact that the system in which we live is an addictive system. It has all the characteristics and exhibits all the processes of the individual alcoholic or addict. It functions in precisely the same ways. To say the society is an addictive system is not to condemn the society, just as an intervention with an alcoholic does not condemn the alcoholic.
In order to perceive the Addictive System for what it is, one must be in it but not of it. In other words, one must be recovering from its effects. There are people who fit this criterion.
Women’s Reality identified and described three systems: the White Male System, the Emerging Female System, and the Reactive Female System, as I then called them.
I called the system in which we live the White Male System because the power and influence in it are held by white males, and it is perpetuated by white males—with the help of all of us.
This system is supported and sustained by four myths. The first myth is that the White Male System is the only thing that exists.
The second myth is that the White Male System is innately superior. Anyone who does not operate according to this system is by definition innately inferior.
The third myth is that the White Male System knows and understands everything. This myth means that anything that is not known and understood by the methods and technology of the White Male System theoretically does not exist.
The fourth myth is that it is possible to be totally logical, rational, and objective. If one believes it is possible to be logical, rational, and objective, then one ignores the ways one is not and uses only a small part of the brain and senses.
All four of these myths can be summarized by another overriding myth: that it is possible to be God as defined by the system.
This God is all the “omnis,” omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. The major role of this God is that of ultimate controller.
The female companion system to the White Male System is what I have called the Reactive Female System. This system is a stereotypic, externally defined system that tells women what they should think, feel, and do.
The basic concept of this system is the Original Sin of Being Born Female. In the Reactive Female System, women are taught that they are innately inferior by birth and that there is no absolution except through the intervention of an outside mediator, which is always a man.
The third system identified in Women’s Reality is what I called the Emerging Female System. I called it that then because it was a system that I heard from women as they began to trust their own perceptions. The Emerging Female System is variable and changing and would be described in system circles as an open system. It is a system in process, a system of process.
That which goes unnamed may exert considerable influence over us, but because we have no words for it we cannot address it directly or deal with it.
I now realize that the White Male System and the Reactive Female System are not two separate systems; instead, they are two aspects of the same system. They cannot exist without each other.
I no longer believe that. The two systems are not “just different.” Instead, what I called the Emerging Female System is life-supporting and life-producing, and what I called the White Male System is nonliving-oriented and entropic.
Now is the time for renaming. What I called the White Male System-Reactive Female System I am now calling the Addictive System. As I have said, it is a system that has a nonliving orientation. What I called the Emerging Female System I am now calling the Living Process System.
I began to realize that it is rare for a person to have only one addiction. Instead, the addictive person, or the individual operating within an addictive system, usually has multiple addictions. These work to trap the person in the Addictive System. Even secondary addictions can keep one actively functioning as an addict.
Why had I resisted this step? Because as long as I was able to convince myself that the two systems were similar but separate, I did not have to face the enormity of the problem. I could treat alcoholics, put “Band-Aids” on addictions, and go on accepting the White Male System as just different, neither good nor bad. If I acknowledged that the White Male System and the Addictive System were one and the same, I would have to deal with that system as a whole and no longer be “nice” in my complicity with what I had called the White Male System.
I am talking about a whole system that has such elements as confused, alcoholic thinking (AA—Alcoholics Anonymous—calls it “stinkin’ thinkin’”), dishonesty, self-centeredness, dependency, and the need for control at its core.
For example, Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, a pioneer in co-dependence research, defines co-dependents as “all persons who (1) are in love or marriage relationships with an alcoholic, (2) have one or more alcoholic parents or grandparents, or (3) grew up in an emotionally repressive family.”6 According to Wegscheider-Cruse, this includes approximately 96 percent of the population.
Earnie Larsen, author of Stage II Recovery, states that there are between ten and fifteen million alcoholics in this society and that each one directly and adversely affects between twenty and thirty persons.8
She then went on to explain that the primary addictions in the Addictive System are the addictions to powerlessness and nonliving, and that all secondary addictions lead to these two primary addictions.
In both places, whenever she was “alive”—happy, noisy, full of energy, excited, exuberant, sexual—she was labeled a “bad girl.” But whenever she was “dead” or nonliving—quiet, sick, depressed, and showing none of the other signs of “life”—she was labeled a “good girl.” She learned that to be alive was bad and to be nonliving was good. To be accepted by her world, she had had to be personally powerless and not alive.
The ideal woman is the dead virgin. She is neither sexual nor alive.
Those of us who work with addicts know that the very first step toward recovery involves dealing with the choice of dying.
Those of us who work with addicts also know that choosing not to die is not the same as choosing to live. That is a completely different and separate choice. When we think dualistically, we assume that saying no to one means saying yes to the other, but this is not the case.
The third is the most common. One can (1) choose not to die and (2) choose not to live. The result is total adjustment to and acceptance of the Addictive System.
Choosing to live means that we can no longer support the system as it is. Choosing to live means that we cannot eat much of the food in our supermarkets, breathe the air in many of our cities, allow our groundwater to be polluted by toxic wastes, or sit back and wait for the nuclear holocaust.
For most addicts the thought of living—and by this I mean living fully—is far more frightening than the thought of dying or being only partially alive. Since addicts have high control needs, being addicted gives them the illusion of having control (they are in control of being not alive and not dead). Living fully seems the same as having no control, and that feeling is experienced as unbearable.
If we love this society in which we live, we must be willing to confront the reality that it has a disease. Like an alcoholic, it is not bad and trying to get good. It is sick and trying to get well.
It is caring to confront the disease in the individual, and it is caring to confront the disease of the system. By definition, addiction has control of the individual. By definition, addiction has control of the society.
An addiction is any process over which we are powerless. It takes control of us, causing us to do and think things that are inconsistent with our personal values and leading us to become progressively more compulsive and obsessive.
An addiction is anything we feel tempted to lie about. An addiction is anything we are not willing to give up (we may not have to give it up and we must be willing to do so to be free of addiction).
We are aware that something is very wrong, but the addictive thinking tells us that it could not possibly be our fault. This kind of thinking also tells us that we cannot make things right, that someone else will have to do it for us.
Addictions can be divided into two major categories: substance addictions and process addictions. Both function in essentially the same way and produce essentially the same results. Although I shall describe each separately, it is important to remember that addictions are quite common in our culture and that most addicts have multiple addictions.
Nicotine and caffeine are not as deadly (at least initially) as alcohol and drugs, but they can be just as addictive, both physically and emotionally.
In a process addiction one becomes hooked on a process—a specific series of actions or interactions.
For many of the couples I work with in therapy, “getting enough sex” translates into avoiding tensions and feelings. They use sex (and each other) to keep from having to deal with themselves.
Religion can also be a process addiction. I am not talking here about being religious or being spiritual. Rather, my concern is with “quick-fix” religions, those that avoid thoughtful prayer, meditation, and dialogue and claim to have all the answers.
It should be obvious by now that almost anything, substance or process, can become addictive. Television or running also can be addictions. On the other hand, it is equally true that there is nothing that must become addictive; it may even be that the whole system that develops in conjunction with a specific addiction is more important than the specific addiction itself.
Because we live in an addictive society, temptation is all around us. The society in which we live needs addictions in order to perpetuate itself. We do have other choices, however (and I hope this book will make them more obvious), but first we must understand our present situation.
A system is a series of contents and processes that is larger than the sum of its parts.
An addictive system is a system that calls forth addictive behaviors. The individual begins to operate out of an addictive process. An addictive system is a closed system in that it presents few choices to individuals in terms of roles they may take and directions they may pursue.
Meanwhile I began looking more closely at addictive relationships. I had been in some myself and knew very few people who had not. The more I learned about addictive relationships, the more I realized that they are the norm for our society.
An addictive relationship is the basic relationship within our culture. It is a “cling-clung” relationship. Both persons involved are convinced that they cannot exist without it. They see themselves as two half-persons who must stick together to make a whole. They arrive at decisions in tandem. They practically synchronize their breathing.
We are taught from an early age to call the addictive relationship by another name: true love. True love is when two people are incapable of functioning or even surviving without each other. We are also taught from an early age that the way to attain “security” (a static, nonprocess concept) is by establishing such a mutual dependency.
Addictive relationships are very powerful and seductive and hard to resist. Though some people actively choose and move into them, others seem to slide into them unaware. In Women’s Reality, I discussed something I called the American Fairy Tale: the Perfect Marriage. As I noted there, this marriage wears two faces, the public and the private.
We can see the addictive process in action when an addictive relationship breaks up and each person scrambles to get another fix—a new relationship—as soon as possible.
According to AA, alcoholics cannot stay static. They must either get better or get worse. Both addiction and recovery are processes. The goal of the addictive relationship, however, is security and therefore stasis. The relationship addict is invested in the idea of security and holds onto the illusion of security even when it becomes obvious that the relationship is deteriorating. A relationship is never static; it is either getting better or getting worse. Its very nature is dynamic. It is a process, not a product. Therefore it is difficult if not impossible to keep it static.
