From Chapter 2: Prepare Your Sober Self for Action
People who use addictive substances are notoriously hard on themselves. The reason is partly that the world is hard on people whose substance use has become too obvious, and we internalize those value judgments. There are elements in the traditional recovery protocol that reinforce these negative judgments, as we’ll see in later chapters of this book. But there’s an internally generated reason as well.
In the previous chapter, I showed how there’s an A and an S inside of the addicted person. The A is the voice that tells you to drink and use. It does more. It tries to keep you in the appropriate state of mind so that you will keep feeding it. That state of mind is miserable and stressed.
The A does not want you to feel good about yourself, to feel confident, to feel capable, except perhaps in an exaggerated, grandiose way that makes you seem foolish and that deepens your despair when your tall schemes come to nothing. If you begin to see your strengths realistically and to make small but real gains that give you confidence, you may no longer want or need to keep using the substances. So, when you “beat yourself up,” what’s really happening is that your A is beating up your S.