Entitlement

Sadly, many of our clients have a sense of entitlement.  So what is entitlement?  And how come it shows up so frequently among drug addicts and alcoholics?

Well, I believe most of it has to do with how the person is raised. Many of those who display this attitude were raised by permissive parents who gave the child anything he or she wanted as they were growing up.

I'm not sure why they did this.  Maybe it was parental guilt because they didn't feel they were doing a good job of raising the child. Or maybe their own parents abused them as children and it was a way for them to compensate for what happened to them in their childhood.

I'm not educated enough to know all of the ins and outs of raising a child – or the psychology behind it.  But I do have a strong opinion about about how children should be raised – even though I did a lousy job of raising my own.  Because I was in the grips of a long-term heroin addiction as they were growing up.  I wasn't there for them, because most of my money went for drugs and parties.  And when I was making a lot of money I was always Santa Claus when I went to visit my children.  When I had money I showered them with gifts and when I didn't have money I just didn't show up.

I believe our primary job is to teach our children to be resilient and tough.  And educated enough to take care of themselves when they're adults.  But many of the addicts in our program weren't taught the basics.  Some of them didn't know how to make a bed when they got here.  Nor did they know how to cook, do laundry, clean the bathroom and many other basic chores of daily life. 

Myself, I was raised in a strict household where everybody took care of their own stuff and did their share.  They had to clean their room and do chores, including taking out the trash, cleaning the fireplace, and helping with food preparation or cooking.   In other words, we learned to do things for ourselves so that when we enter the real world we could face the challenges of life,

As we live in recovery we learn to take responsibility  When we see clients cross over from the world of addiction into the world of sobriety we have hopes for them.   

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