I Have No Problems

No picture tonight, because I said so.

I have no problems. Sure, I need to replace my faucet, my roof, fix the dangling mirror on my car, that type of stuff. But I have no real problems.

I've watched "COPS" from the beginning. When I was a teenager, my mom would say, "Why do you watch that?" Something about a dude in a tank top, in cuffs, screaming his head off while blood runs down his face turned her off. I said, "Because it reminds me of what I do NOT want to become." So far so good.

I watch "Intervention," where individuals addicted to this, that, and everything else are profiled and, surprise!, at the end of the show are intervened with, to be whisked away to treatment should they consent. Most do, a few don't. Now, the whole addiction they are experiencing is a problem, yes, but what I've come to notice after watching that show faithfully every Monday for a year is that I don't have any problems. I'm not speaking of the addiction issue, I dodged all that yes. The real issue with these individuals is the underlying stuff that's going on in their lives. I mean, they have real problems, big stuff . . . things from their childhood, ridiculously stunted adolescence issues. Real problems. So I realize, I don't have any problems.

Now, that's not why I watch the show. I've always liked to vicariously live on the dark side, that's why I watch it. What the show shows, which I guess any good show does--it shows--is that these addictions are, well, not necessarily complex but multi-faceted. You have to treat the underlying issue before you can crack the addiction. Now, addiction is a disease, I buy that, but when someone drinks, for example, and it's all rooted back to some crazy traumatic event 17 years ago, is it a physiological disease? I guess maybe it's a mental disease. Anyway, the show definitely rids of the idea that addicts are just big ol' partiers. Layne Staley, former Alice in Chains lead singer, died of long-term heroin abuse/addiction, and he once said, and I paraphrase, "People just think I like to party. That's not it at all. I don't even feel anything." (He hated those people). Yet he still continued to use, till death. And lots of people traced the hell-bent demise of his addiction to the death of his girlfriend--heroin related. He had a real problem.

Anyway, I have no real problems, knock on wood. Life's good.