Thanks. Always good to hear more stories about drug dealers fighting over turf. And I just got myself cooled down from Sicko reminding me how American pharmaceutical companies stiff us by preventing foreign competition. But then my drug of choice was cheap beer.

Best

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

Cary's letter is all you need to know. I'm chiming in an afterword. I only read thru page 6 of the letters, so I may be repeating.

Back pain can respond to meditation techniques used by Jon Kabat-Zinn. If your friend says, "What! Meditation for MY pain? I need DRUGS!", this I take to be essentially diagnostic of addiction. Doctors refer pain patients who are beyond help from pain meds to Kabat-Zinn. He has books, and local pain clinics may well use his or similar techniques. (But some just deal drugs.)

You and your friend's husband are Al-Anon members. You might want to check it out.

No word from you on the 13 year old son. How's he with all this? The 15 year old carries possible family addiction tell-tale markers of know-it-all stridency and control; and is he doing the laundry? which could be cool, but could be another one of those markers, of boys being, not so much just boys, but parents.

Your nephews are Alateen members. It would likely settle them out a great deal.

It's tough, what you can and can't do in this situation, and her so blinded by desperate love for her doobie; more than for her son; maybe for all of you. Maybe she'll get help, maybe not. Almost because of its denial-seducing seeming benignity, pot addiction is one of the toughest. But by all means express your deep concern for her in this situation.

I didn't pick up addiction as quick as Cary because I didn't hear you talking about lack of contact with your friend; lack of contact when you're with her. Lack of personal, inter-personal, contact; that she's not quite all there, and you sorely miss her. (Potheads, of course, say she's all there; supra-there. Yeah, yeah.) But I ask you, in as kind a way as possible, Are you all there? Is something intruding between you and your own contact-making apparatus? Are you not contacting her lack of contact? Here's this huge potential disruption in your world, specially with someone who is clearly a dear friend, and I hear you upset by the artifacts of this more than the moment-to-moment experience of you and her; which, I assume, used to be rich and now not so much.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a drunk, a recovering drunk, and I'm family and friends with many drunks and addicts. Plenty of lack of contact on my part, early and late. Practice makes, well, better.

Best,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")

The Salon interviewer tips her hand in titling the interview, "Does self-help breed helplessness?" The psychological self-help book fad has been dutifully followed by the anti-self-help book fad, which too often doesn't know what it's talking about. Though self-help may seem like today's easy target, beware. Combinations of "just get over it"'s condescension, shaming, sarcasm, and otherwise veiled cruelty at people who seek ways out of emotional pain/lack of fulfillment belie having one's own unfaced emotional pain. That is, people who spout off about psychobabble - though there is real psychobabble - often are in denial. If the lack of bed of roses that you (so manfully) lie in yet are not a victim of has anything to do with behavior of yours that you cannot help, ...What more to say?

Fortunately, many of the respondents have found help where they sought it.

These things said, there are self-help cautions (this is not meant to be exhaustive):

Learn to sort the good from the bad. Learn something about the field.

Avoid those who do not know that the glass is simultaneously half full and half empty.

Know that someone else is not fixing you - You fix yourself, at times with the help of others. You in fact have the necessary resources within you, but your realizer may be bent.

Do not confuse knowledge with being.

If powerlessness is being suggested - helplessness, surrender, giving up, letting go - understand it in the context of letting go of a sick damaged self in order to enable your healthy self; your true self; which is empowerment.

If you are a danger to yourself or others or unable to care for yourself, get yourself to a professional or a psych emergency room, pronto.

Most good psychological self-help doesn't take work, in any conventional sense. If you are willing, your letting go to your health and your healthy process, to the situation, changes you.

Examining your dysfunctional family is not about blaming your parents (though you may pass through that as part of the grief process. Don't get stuck there.) Rather, you can't sort out who you shaped yourself into being without knowing who you shaped yourself in reaction to. Wee you grew in a land of giants.

It is wonderful to thoroughly examine what victimhood you experienced. (A major conservative trick has been to say, "Don't be a victim!" They want you instead to be a victimizer. The liberal quest is largely about freeing victims, you included.)

Virtually every community has free shrinks, though there may be a wait. If after 3 sessions the two of you agree you can work together, proceed with your tutorial on you.

et cetera

Best,

Monty

(More, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")