Snake Oil

Nothing conjures up the image of what I’m talking about here better than the phrase “snake oil” – that miracle product that will cure whatever ails you, buy one get one free, it’s the secret doctors don’t want you to know about.  It’s amazing to me that people still fall, on a daily basis, for snake oil salesman and what they’re pitching, but I know it is human nature to want that one thing, that special secret, that will fix you just-like-that.

There really isn’t any snake oil to fix addiction, although there are one or two snake oil salesman out there these days selling “cures” and saying they know something the medical docs don’t.  Everyone is lying to you! You don’t have a disease! All that research and clinical evidence? Mumbo jumbo!  I personally have figured out the SECRET to fixing you so you never have to do one more thing to stay clean and sober another day in your life! Poof! You’re sober!

We fall for snake oil because so many of us are naturally lazy.  I’m not saying this in a mean way.  I think it’s part of survival of the species. The homosapiens who needed to use the least energy to meet the basic needs of survival had more time to procreate and populate the earth.  It’s Darwin baby.   Sounds counter-intuitive but in reality, it makes perfect sense.  If one cavemen figured out how to take down wild game in a way that took a lot less energy than another cavemen, he was less likely to starve.

How many of us have bought a product because it said it would help us lose weight?  I think I bought my first “weight loss miracle (or talked my mother into one) when I wasn’t even old enough to drive a car yet, and I have still not discovered the thing that will make me miraculously thin with “No Dieting! No Exercise!”

Needless to say, it seems to be human nature to want a miracle cure that makes it “easy” to accomplish whatever we desire.  Who wouldn’t want to work from home making $100,000 the very first year? With just  computer! Well, and this $50 DVD…

Fortunately, most of us only need to be burned once (or twice) to start figuring out that there is no easy fix to life’s challenges.

Sobriety is much the same.  How many of you woke up one day after years of drinking and drugging and say, “Gee, I think I’ll go get help today!”  You went out, got a little help, and BINGO, S-O-B-E-R. No more desire for a drink. No more craving for a drug.  No more depression. No more hating your self nor resentments nor selfish behavior. Wow. That was so easy? Why didn’t I do this years ago?

Maybe there are a few people who have a cathartic experience and they get sober and stay sober, but I really doubt they just kept on living the same way they always did, happy as a lark in sobriety, without some kind of plan and program to help them do that.

Did you know that only about 5% of people who go through the effort (and those of us with the pudge know it takes effort) to lose weight actually keep it off?  The rest of us just gain and lose the same 10, 20, 50 pounds over and over and over again.

Change is hard. It takes work. You have to modify not just the actions you take, but the behaviors that led you to those actions.  That’s not something you can fix reading a book or going to treatment for 30 days. It’s a lifelong process that requires vigilance and care.

But hey, ain’t it worth it?