What is Freedom?

What is Freedom? And where can I buy it?

 I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you wanted, when you wanted to. I used to think freedom meant that that’s what people striving for a lot of money ultimately reached for — financial freedom. I thought freedom was the thing that stems from love, not the other way around. I used to think freedom was the destination everyone so clearly wanted. I thought freedom was the purpose of life.

I lived most of my life, contrary to these beliefs, not free. I wasn’t free from my trauma, I wasn’t free from financial distress and I never experienced or understood love. What did give me a false sense of injected freedom was drugs.

When someone is not free, they take drugs to feel free. There is this lyric from a song I used to love called: “Take this and be free.” I thought the only times I could be free were when I was incapacitated, with drool spilling out of my mouth and in awe at everyday objects, like trees, or grass. Since I never understood freedom, the closest I could come to pseudo-freedom was believing it was full of lies. I thought freedom was only attainable on something like DMT. I was deluded into thinking drugs were a portal into something else; I ignored how everyone who had an “ego death” became more egotistical afterwards. 

I lied to everyone during my period of drug use, but I still had the guts to say that I was free. Sure, maybe I was free when I took the drugs, but what happened after the drugs wore off? Simultaneously, what else wore off was my wonder and curiosity towards life. I started seeing my periods of sobriety as something evil. I stopped seeing sobriety as the default state of the brain; I started seeing it as something to avoid at all costs.

That is not being free, and nobody who relies on drugs is free. And, contrarily, it doesn’t mean that people who are off of drugs are free either. Sobriety doesn’t guarantee enlightenment just as a drug-induced state doesn’t either. There is no default state of enlightenment; the gap can only be lessened by trying. These external things only make the gap farther apart.

Everyday, when I popped Percocet like it was my scheduled prescription pill, I used it to falsify the documents that say whether someone is free or not. I lived as a fraud. I would be knocked out for several hours, then the remaining hours of the day were spent being ignorant and waiting for the next pill. How did I ever think that I could take those pills and subsequently be free?

And, the last thing I want you to do is look down on me for doing such a funny thing. Yes, you can laugh at me for thinking that taking drugs made me free, when in fact they made me shackled, but you are no better than me. I know this because after being an addict, I see addiction in everything, like a sixth sense. I see that everyone is addicted one way or another.

People love to look down on addicts and call them stupid for not realizing such an obvious thing. Should I laugh at you for the amount of hours you spend on your phone? Should I laugh at you for craving validation from others and not from yourself? Should I laugh at you for binging on food every time you are the tiniest bit upset? No, we don’t do these things, yet addicts are still villainized.

During every NA meeting, I am forced to repeat that “I am Amanda, I am an addict.” I’m not allowed to forget it in NA and I’m sure as hell not able to forget it in the real world because none of you guys let me. I am labeled a drug addict for the rest of my life, but why do I get a bullet wound and everyone walks around with scrapes and bruises? Why are some addictions deemed as worse than others?

I see jokes everywhere online about people obsessing waiting for a boy to reply to their text, and instead of the comment section calling them an addict, it’s flooded with corresponding remarks, such as “Me too!”. Do we tell these people to go to Codependency Anonymous? Do we tell these people they are trying to fill a void in themselves like we do with drug addicts? 

We are all not free, yet there are some that are more than others, but it’s more of a spectrum than a black-and-white diagram like we see it today. If someone took away your phone for a week, you would crumble, but I am demonized because if I’m without a drug for a week, I would crumble as well.

What they teach us in addiction recovery is the function of the dopamine chemical. But outside of these treatment centers, we make light of it! We suggest doing a dopamine detox for a week to “cleanse” us of our addictive tendencies. Why am I expected to be sober the rest of my life, while you get to do whatever you want, do a week break of it and continually suffer, go right back to it not having learned your lesson, and still have the nerve to tell me you are more free than me? 

The dopamine detox trend is hilarious. It shows how much we don’t know about addiction and how much we are controlled by it. We are afraid of being addicted. We all live in denial. Drug addicts are just the ones who are not supposed to. It’s hypocritical.

Freedom does not mean independence. It does not mean getting to do what you want when you want it. It is to be free of fear, and all of us are so burdened by this daily. We are afraid of dying alone, so we marry the first person we find that likes us. We are afraid of dying, so we spend our whole lives trying to maintain a legacy, or circumvent our aging process, or find the root to immortality. 

Is our fear not an addictive quality itself? We think we can live without it, but we cannot. Not if we keep walking the road we are on right now. We treat our fear like it’s normal. We treat our fear like this because we were never taught about it. Instead, we celebrate people who take dopamine detoxes. We celebrate weddings of people who are incompatible and fight all the time. We celebrate bodies at all sizes. We celebrate the age that one is able to start drinking. 

We celebrate addiction except when it comes to drugs. And that’s why none of us are getting better.

It’s an invisible barrier that is made against drug addicts — it separates the general population from them. We talk on the news all the time about murderous fentanyl and face-picking meth and the zombie drug flakka. We make it scary. We make it another thing to be feared, when we should be focusing on the increase in junk food being produced everyday, the amount of alcohol commercials everywhere, the shared acceptance of porn websites, the widespread amount of locations of casinos. But, no, drugs have to be illegal because they make you look ugly.

I doubt as many people who have claimed to have felt love have really felt it, because love only stems from freedom. I did not receive and accept love when I adhered to everything I knew; I received it when I let it all go. Love is not dependence. 

Why is it we fear-monger drugs but everything else remains okay? Why is that I’m the one who has to recover and everyone else gets to remain addicted? How in any way is that fair?

I urge you, for one time, to look within yourself and see what you are addicted to. And don’t say nothing. Don’t try and say you are better than drug addicts, that you would never let yourself get so weak to the point where you rely on an external source for happiness, because you do. If you didn’t, you would be spiritually awakened, and nobody has done that yet to my knowledge.

You are in denial. Let that sink inside you, let it fester and let it turn into an angry tumor that you want to remove at any cost. That is the only way you can help yourself, if you stop lying to yourself. 

I’m tired of seeing everyone grow fat with ignorance, while I have to sit here sober watching it all. It’s painful to see. You people deserve better; I just wish you would see that.