Marketa: "I have quit the belief that I have to keep on using..." (with Eng subtitles)

Leaving family. Heading for dreams. Adventure. Methamphetamines. Workoholism. New people. New life. Reflections. More reflections. New insights. Settings the rules. No way to go. New people again. Not alone! Energy without crystal meth! Psychosis. Injecting. Giving up the concept of addiction. Quit. Not believe in the addiction theory. Not acceptable. Working without crystal meth. New rules for work. Trying everything. Changig stratégy. Close friend. Her support. Healthy approach fo life. Showing way to go. Starting to find my way around...

What is this blog about?

This blog is dedicated to people who managed to overcome an „addiction problem“ (to be explained later) without help of an institutionalized setting. It is a tribute to these people. Firstly, because they were able to completely change their lives and secondly, because they did it despite the common notion that „you cannot recover without treatment“.

Last year, after I published my first book about natural recovery from long-term methamphetamine use (still only in Czech here), I received a grant from Taos Institute that enabled me to invite my colleague Petra Detersová for shooting videoclips of people who recovered (or are recovering) from any kind of addiction. I will be uploading these clips to this blog. The grant also made possible translating my book to English (will be available soon) and starting this blog.

I wish that this blog would specifically target the relational aspects of the process of addiction and recovery. From my point of view, relational quality is inherently present in the word „addiction“. It is a specific way of relating to a substance or activity. And to go further, it is a specific way of relating to the individuals, social system or culture that this substance is connected to. And the same applies also to recovery. Leaving the culture of addiction means entering a different culture, as W. L. White described in his book.

In this way of thinking, I find the relational version of social constructionism very inspiring. People like Kenneth Gergen, John Shotter, Harlene Anderson or Tom Strong published many inspirational works though not dealing specifically with addiction and recovery. Of course, there are many other influential streams of ideas that are in sync with natural recovery and the relational aspects of addiction and recovery. And I would also like to make space for them here.

So how would I state the main idea of this blog? The starting point is that if someone manages to quit some kind of addiction without treatment, we do not need to regard it only a „spontaneous remission“ as if it would be an unexplainable exception from the rule that „we need to treat the illness of addiction“. On the contrary, we can regard it as a more natural process, though very complex and hard. And as I see it, it is not a lonely journey, it is a relational adventure.

I wish that other people will contribute to this blog by their experience and ideas – I am happy to post different kinds of material. And it doesn´t have to be just in line with the ideas mentioned at all. I would like to open a space for conversations wherever it takes place – in the blog comments, on Facebook, at conferences or at informal meetings. Please, contact me on nepustil@narativ.cz if you have any ideas towards this.

I would really appreciate if you follow this blog.

Pavel Nepustil

This is an invitation to my blog about natural recovery and about relational aspects of addiction. Marketa is talking about her interview with an addiction specialist when she had problems with her methamphetamine use. His only offer was in-patient treatment. Marketa decided to find another way. There was a lot of people on her way to recovery, especially friends. Though, no doctors, no addiction specialists. She did it naturally way… Welcome to this blog!