afriendof

As someone who is not in AA, but having a brother that is an addict and one of my best friends, it infuriates me when they pull the "you don't understand because you're not in recovery" card. To me this is not only offensive but I don't get where they are coming from. I've had to deal with addiction (with others, not myself) my whole life. Addiction runs in my family and almost every other day I speak with my uncle about his addiction and gain experienced advice with helping my loved ones with it. I've often heard this from addicts and just don't understand that I don't understand. Do I aknowledge that I don't understand each of their experiences, of course not but to me it is a term that is used so often and is very hurtful. please help

kyles

Yeah, my ABF or RABF? I don't know... pulls that one a lot too. I think it's important that we don't pretend to know exactly how they feel or what they've gone through/are going through because we definitely can't. Like cynical one says, we can just try to educate ourselves about it and try to understand what they are going through. We can read all we want about it and we can talk to as many addicts as we want, but we will never truly understand what it's like to go through addiction and recovery from their side. If I were an addict, I'd probably hate it if people who had never had this issue acted as if they knew exactly what I was going through.
Sometimes, but not all the time, I think this line is used as their attempt to make excuses for themselves for certain behaviors, to try to make us think, "Oh, you're right, I've never been an addict and gone through recovery, it must be hard, carry on doing whatever it is you're doing, even though you're not supposed to be doing it..." That's when it annoys me.

kyles

You're right. I just think sometimes they pull that "You don't understand..." card to try to excuse it. It's up to us to not accept that and give in.