While substance abuse is horrible, and being trapped in it is a pretty awful experience for everyone involved, there is often a silver lining. Many times, a person’s experience with substance abuse becomes a pivotal, transformative experience. Like a phoenix rising, the crucible of suffering related to the experience of using drugs becomes a turning point, a catalyst for growth and development. It is difficult to develop wisdom without first suffering, and drug abuse offers suffering in abundance. As a consequence, I also find many people in recovery have developed more wisdom than average. Watching people go from the lowest of lows to having happy, successful lives is a great joy in my life. But that does not always happen.
In my work, I also have a front row seat to monumental suffering– of watching people day after day, month after month, appointment after appointment– suffer, decline, and eventually die. Watching someone slowly die from alcohol is an awful experience, and bearing witness to that suffering weighs heavy on my heart. Because this type of tragedy is uncomfortable and unfamiliar for many, we tend to emotionally distance ourselves from it, by placing blame, shifting responsibility elsewhere, convincing ourselves it’s someone else’s problem, or pretending it isn’t real.
This distancing happens on a society level as well, where we have largely moved away from tragedy. As an art form, it is in heavy decline. As a narrative, we strongly favor the story of redemption to the story that ends in tears. Our movies and our books are filled with triumph and overcoming suffering, rather than succumbing to it. It makes sense, in a certain way; who wants to think about the downer parts of life? But in turning away from tragedy, in turning away from the bad endings, we may not be doing ourselves a service. Many stories end badly, without redemption, without resolution, without reconciliation– we need to remember those stories as well.
In ancient Greece, tragedy was one of the main forms of art. For thousands of years, we have told stories about catastrophe and failure in addition to stories of happiness and triumph. Telling these stories is important, because they remind us that not all outcomes are good, everything does not always work out in the end.
Tragic plays frequently highlight a character’s fatal flaw– and in so doing, remind us of that flaw’s perils. The negative role model can be helpful. They show us the consequences of these flaws, not as a means to greater learning, but as a route to downfall. We do not like stories of downfall though, we like stories of triumph. Our modern stories tend to have a temporary downfall as a consequence of a fatal flaw, leading to learning and growth, followed by triumph. In reality, often the downfall is permanent, and redemption never arrives. Our stories tend not to dwell on that latter possibility. Instead, they present the crucible moment as an inevitable step on the hero’s journey. In our stories, the downfall is not the end, the resolution, the outcome.
We have lived, broadly speaking, through good times. We often assume that things will work out in the end. While a myriad of tragedies may have been closer to everyday life in ancient times, they are not absent from our lives either. However, our refusal to look at them, to think about them, and to engage with them often limits our ability to imagine them. It is less in our current emotional repertoire to concretely imagine bad endings. This failure of imagination, born of a lack of exposure, often leads us to discount those outcomes as a possibility. Because we do not consider it, we limit our ability to take precautions against it.
Many people caught in destructive patterns postpone change because, deep down, they don’t believe their story could end badly. They assume there will always be more time—one more chance to turn things around, another opportunity for redemption. In addiction, some people are suffering terribly but are still certain that tomorrow they’ll stop, that this run will be different, that they’ll get back to normal before anything irreversible happens. Or, I talk to people who see problems growing in their life, but do not seriously consider those problems’ natural consequences. They don’t imagine the ending where their health collapses or their relationships finally give way. Our collective disbelief in tragedy feeds this personal denial; when every story we hear bends toward recovery, it’s hard to take seriously the idea that some endings don’t bend at all.
This happens on a larger, collective level when we do not really imagine what failure looks like. Diseases we once declared conquered are returning, not because science has failed, but because our imagination has. We can’t picture the tragedy of polio transverse myelitis– the consequence of polio that leads to paralysis– so we discount it as a real possibility. The tragedy of measles encephalitis– brain damage that can be permanent or fatal– is not considered a real possibility. I’d offer that part of the reason we have failed to confront so many of the massive challenges facing us– global warming, inequality, species loss, erosion of democratic norms– stems from our distance from tragedy.
Tragedy does not mean giving up hope— it is a reminder that failure is both really severe and real. This gives us the impetus and courage to act. On the individual level, it means recognizing that postponing change can have irreversible consequences, and that imagining the worst-case outcome is not pessimism but preparation. On a societal level, it means giving credence to what could actually go wrong, rather than assuming that somehow, miraculously, technology or something else will save us. Tragic awareness trains us to move with urgency, to plan for failure, and to take responsibility for outcomes we might otherwise assume will resolve themselves.
Love,
Doc
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