[dooce] gettin' clean's easy, and then comes life America is Wrong | 08 . 10 . 2022 I know many of you may think that I took the ball and went home in the game of depression. And I did, too. I thought I had taken the ball and gone away forever. Because this is all just a game, right? But I can still kick, motherfuckers. I may be old, and hell. I’m almost 50. But I’ve always been in The Game. I invented The Game long before I named my daughter after a drug dealer in the streets and nicknamed her after a heroin addict. Marlo Stanfield and Bubbles. My daughter, Marlo Iris “Idris Elba” Arsmtrong. They are one of you. Kids, I’m taking to you today, mostly — and I know who you are because there are more than just one they/them in my house — I have a lesson for you today and it is brought to you in part by The Wire and Radio Free Europe. A dude named Michael Stipe knows a thing or two about the latter up there. Google REM kids. Get to know the band and get some good shut eye. Trust me, you’re gonna need some sleep after what I am about to pull. Click those links and then google the fuck out of them. You’ll want to be familiar with them by the time you get to the end of this post. Or don’t google them. Whatever. I just want you to keep up with today’s lesson. I’ll explain it all in a couple of sentences later. Just stick with me, okay? You can trust me. Four months ago I wrote a post in which I celebrated 265 days of sobriety and then… wait. How many days are there in a year… is that a typo? What day is it. Period. No question mark. Ughhhh. I’m tired. Better get out your calculators. There’s a shit ton of arithmetic in today’s lesson, motherfuckers. I don’t know what end is up because I kind of understood that when I quit alcohol after 22 years of trying to drink myself to death that I was in recovery for my addiction. Four months ago I wrote a post celebrating a year of sobriety. From alcohol. But here’s the thing about addiction, and it’s why I am sitting here today talking to you only a few days after celebrating 16 months of a life free from alcohol: I am an addict. And I always will be. Recovery is a lifelong process. People in recovery know this, but y’all need to stick with me here, too. I have so much to tell you along with everyone else. I quit eating processed sugar six weeks ago today, so that’s one, two, three… 42 DAYS OF SOBRIETY. FROM SUGAR. From sugar you ask? Yes, from sugar. Sugar is a substance. Duh. If you don’t think you are addicted to sugar, just google it. Try to cut it from your diet completely for just two whole days. See what happens. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Recovery experts know that almost every person on Earth is an addict, but they can’t run around telling you that every time you pop a rainbow gummy bear into your mouth you’re probably trying to swallow a tiny bit of pain. These experts know that addiction — all addiction, even to sugar — addiction is a response to trauma. Trauma these days, kids, has been tossed around willy nilly by folks who want to dismiss someone’s depression or addiction as a character flaw. You can’t have trauma because trauma belongs to them. They say to addicts all the time, “Just stop what you’re doing. Quit that drug you’re taking. You’re choosing that drug over every important thing in your life, you pathetic cortically subilluminated dimwit.” Ask me how I know what people in recovery are thinking. My answer would be, “I am an addict, remember?” Why don’t you just start referring to me as capital T and capital A: The Addict. I am The Addict. You know what T and A refers to, kids. Right? Because today’s lesson also includes a little sidebar about sex which none of you seem to be interested in these days. So freshen up, buttercup: T and A is slang for tits and ass. You think you know what that is, but you don’t. So sit down. We will get to that part, and it should be your favorite part. For now, just refer to me in your head as The Addict as we get through today’s lesson. Just stick with me and remember that The Addict is talking to you. Do you want to know why people think addicts aren’t traumatized? Because they think that you have to live through something as harrowing as World War II in order to experience trauma. Have you ever heard of the Battle of Normandy? If you don’t, that’s okay. All you need to know is that it epitomizes the worst and most traumatizing battle scene in history. They have made a million movies about it. And those war veterans and the war veterans in every war ever fought on Earth, they are held up as the kind of people who are traumatized. And they are. They spend the rest of their civilian lives after war attempting to cope with haunting PTSD that most people will luckily never experience. It’s just people like your mom and dad (who don’t know what the hell to do with you) — they are sending you to talk therapy and that therapist is sitting there going WHY ARE PARENTS NOT DOING THEIR GODDAMN JOB. So that therapist diagnoses you with social anxiety or depression or whatever diagnosis they can come up with to explain YOUR NORMAL TEENAGE SADNESS and they are saying, “Here, put your life into this box right here. You are this diagnosis.” Because they have to. And then your parents look at that diagnosis and go, “Okay, you are a they/them with depression. I don’t understand you at all, and I paid for your therapy. Get out of bed. Are you complaining about how hard life is? Were you a soldier who stormed the beaches at Normandy? You weren’t. Those people are traumatized. You? You just have social anxiety.” Your parents may not ever hear this as distinctly as I can say it to them so it is gonna get super loud and clarion clear here for a minute: STOP TELLING YOUR KIDS TO COMPARE THEIR PAIN TO ANYONE ELSE’S PAIN. PERIOD. No one wants to hear this. It dismisses their existence outright. Please, stop saying it. And kids, the wars that will be fought in your lifetime will the be the stuff of the apocalypse. They will be far worse than World War II. The wars fought in your lifetime could potentially be the end of the human race and all traces of life on Earth. There will be more lessons about this very thing here in the very near future, so come back after this lesson is done. And if you can’t tell by now, this lesson is long. People throw around the word TRAUMA as if they own it, as if trauma is separate from addiction. People who are not addicted to hard drugs — and for those of you who don’t know what “hard drugs” are, they include heroin, cocaine, amphetamine, LSD, and ecstasy, and I have tried and abused every single one of them — those people think addiction is weakness. They think addicts are pathetic human beings. But since The Addict is bringing you today’s lesson, you need to believe me when I tell you this: Addiction is a biological response to pain. Period. The end. Let me let you in on a little secret that everybody is too afraid to admit about themselves: Everyone is an addict. People don’t realize that their addictions are more socially acceptable than hard drugs or alcohol. They are addicted to work, to exercise, to political discussions on twitter, to scrolling through household cleaning hacks on Pinterest. They are addicted to shopping at Home Goods. Addiction is a biological response to pain. Period. The end. And I am going to let you in on another secret. Because The Addict is telling you all of this, you can believe me when I tell you that all those normal things people are doing all day with their time? They are using THINGS and STUFF — gadgets, toys, games, magazines, even exercising — to distract themselves. “Distract themselves from what?” you might ask. From themselves. From their thoughts. From boredom. Because boredom is terrifying. How long can you sit alone in a room staring out the window doing nothing with your hands? I’m gonna guess that 10 minutes would feel like an eternity to most of you. Try it. Today. See what it feels like. We will come back to that. If you are left alone to think about anything without something to fidget with, then what tells you that you bring any value to this world? Are you working a job? A job isn’t an addiction. A job is a job. But distraction? Distraction is an escape from boredom. And people are terrified of boredom because they are terrified of being alone. Escape is an addiction. Let me say it again: Addiction is a biological response to pain. Period. The end. You want to know why 42 days of sobriety from sugar actually feels like 42 years? Because 42 days ago I also quit taking a prescription medication for ADD. And I am still in recovery. For the adults in the audience, ADD stands for YOU CANNOT FOCUS BECAUSE YOU’RE JUST FUCKING TIRED ALL THE GODDAMN TIME. It is a bullshit diagnosis. Yes, I am calling your bluff, Jackie Brown*. You know, I was going to litter this post with footnotes, but I have no fucks to give so I am just going to say it all out loud. Up front. So that we aren’t dicking around on this page and jumping back and forth. That asterisk up there, kids — it looks like this (*) — it would have been a link to a footnote. And if you don’t know what a footnote is, you need to start reading books and some of the best books ever written are full of footnotes. Remember when I told you that this was a lesson? You need to start reading about Black women. You are gonna want to remember the name Jackie Brown, kids. Pam Grier, the woman who plays the main character, she is one of the most badass motherfuckers who ever lived and white women need to stop co-opting Her pain. And that footnote I was gonna write? This needs to be said right here, instead. Up here, in everyone’s faces: Progressive white moms need to sit the fuck down. Now. And let me lean in a little bit closer so that everyone can hear: Progressive white moms, you need to let Black Lives Matter. I am not calling Pam Grier’s bluff, kids. I am calling the bluff of every adult who thinks that they have ADD. I am calling everyone out today, hon, on behalf of Pam Grier and every other member of an oppressed minority who has taken a backseat in the conversation about identity politics. For the kids who are still with me — and you’re still with me, right? You can trust me, and I need you to believe that. It will become very clear why. I may be a little scary because no one in your life is allowed to talk to you about gender dysphoria. Those words are super loud and clarion clear to all of you, aren’t they. Gender dysphoria. There. I said it again. Every adult in your life has been told by the government to AFFIRM AFFIRM AFFIRM your gender dysphoria because you are out there co-opting suicidal ideation. You are throwing that phrase around as if you own it, as if you have any fucking idea what it means. Yes. I am calling you out, too. All of you. And I will calm down a little bit, maybe, because you need to be able to trust someone who loves you. And I love you more than you will ever comprehend because I am you. This is the biggest fucking deal of all the deals I am making in today’s lesson about The Game. And so I am going to calm down and soften up a bit. Because I am talking to the 16-year-old girl that I was. Because I have had body dysmorphia my entire life. Body dysmorphia. Dysmorphia. You guys are throwing this word around, too, as if you know what it means. You really don’t have any idea what it means. It is not a diagnosis. It’s just a sad, awful state of being human. Today I am here to call my own bluff, too. Remember The Wire, that show I told you to google? I’ll save you the time, kids. Because all you need to know is that the whole show is about The Game. And The Game? The Game is about life. That’s it. That’s the whole game. And for most people, life is all about suffering and pain. We’re human, and everyone is trying to make sense of it all. Pretend that I am talking to you in a gentle whisper about suicidal ideation because when I talk about death I do not do it with loud emojis or Halloween masks. And you really do not want to know what I know firsthand about threatening suicide. What do you think happens when you die? What do your parents think? What does religion tell you? Are you religious? Are you an atheist? Do you believe in science? Is science real? Just keep that question in mind as I call your bluff on suicidal ideation. This is also a lesson in the form of show and tell. Last year on August 31st, 2021, I attempted suicide. Consider that for a long while. That day right there? It was my father’s 80th birthday. I was 46 years old. And I am your future calling. You do not want to be this suicidally depressed your entire adult life. I spent two weeks locked inside a mental hospital — and do not call it a “mental health facility” because that would do a disservice to the whole idea of mental health. Being locked up involuntarily — and that is what happened to me, they committed me against my will — is exactly what it sounds like: a form of imprisonment. Luckily for everyone in my life I woke up from this suicide attempt. I had made a plan and executed that plan, and I did not ever want to take another breath. But after they stabilized me I had to spend two weeks thinking, “This feels exactly like a hovel where someone would be sent to die alone.” Do you want to know what I think happens when we die? WE DON’T FUCKING KNOW BECAUSE NO ONE HAS EVER COME BACK TO TELL US. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Right now, I want you to do me a favor and pretend that nothing happens when we die and that well, we all just die. That’s it. Let’s just pretend that for the sake of argument. You just collapse into a pile of dust and return to Earth. Wouldn’t you have wanted to see your friends again? Just one more time? Wouldn’t you want to cuddle your dog one last time? Wouldn’t you want to grab them all and run around in the rain to your favorite music and feel a little bit of hope? Imagine yourself laughing and wearing galoshes on the wrong feet with mismatched rainbow socks. Imagine that now and think, “I have my whole life ahead of me.” Because you do. Today. Right now. You have your whole life ahead of you. Here, almost a year later after I tried to end my beautiful existence, I got to see my favorite band sing five of the best songs ever written and marvel at how lucky I am to be alive. Wouldn’t you want to see if you could get through that brief painful moment of hopelessness so that you could remember that life is worth living? That even the painful moments give the beautiful ones their meaning? This is life. The good and the bad. All of it. It’s just, life. Because, imagine experiencing suicidal ideation all day every day for the rest of your time on Earth. That’s me. Ask me again what I know about suicidal ideation. I am The Addict, remember. I am the adult you will grow into if you think for one second that altering your body with any chemical will make you feel better about normal teenage sadness. You know I’m talking about testosterone, right? Please tell me you know I am on to you and that you do not want to fuck with your body the way I have fucked with my body my entire life. The Game is about making sense of why we’re here on Earth, and I’m going to tell you about The Game. My entire family has body image issues. Women have body image issues because they are looking around at what their dads are saying and the images they are being bombarded with and thinking, well. I don’t look like that, so something is wrong with me. I have forgiven the men and women in my life who have played into my body dysmorphia — meaning they have played into my normal human sadness — because I am an adult and I have perspective on their pain. For centuries adults have passed this pain onto their children, and now you are where I once stood. And the buck stops here. We, the people of Earth, we are going to stop doing this to each other. My mother’s pain and suffering became my own. I internalized all of it. And I have hated my body ever since. It’s time we circle back to the ADD portion of the program, kids. Are you still with me, because *all* of this is super important when you keep playing fast and furious with your life. I do not nor have I ever joked about death. I will never joke about death. Because death of a loved one is the most traumatic experience that anyone on Earth could ever live through. Death is real and it is serious fucking business for anyone who has had to watch someone in their life disappear in an instant. Only they get to joke about death and it is always in memory of that person, be it their husband or wife, their newborn son, their mother. Be it their dog or their cat. Losing any living thing to death is the worst thing anyone will ever live through. For those of you who are unfamiliar with adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, I don’t have it. But you probably already knew that, right? You can walk into any doctor’s office and fake the symptoms which are SELF-DIAGNOSABLE and walk outta there with enough Adderall to build a meth lab in your basement. Adderall. Add er all all up, folks! For those here who do not know, Adderall, is the prescription medication for adult ADD. And it is meth in pill form. It is speed. People may tell you that alcohol is the hardest drug to kick because it is for the majority of drug addicts. But Adderall? That drug was the hardest drug I ever quit. I cannot imagine any other drug being as hard to quit as Adderall, and you can trust me when I say that because I have tried all of them. Here, today, 42 days after quitting Adderall, I feel like I might be experiencing a heart attack every other hour of the day. This terrifying side effect of Adderall abuse is one of the side effects you will experience if you ever decide to put testosterone into your body — and kids, today’s lesson is just one of a few hundred, and some of them will include my experience with SSRI’s and every other depression medication available to you and why none of them work. Adderall puts a strain on your heart. And because most of you and your parents refuse to consider what testosterone abuse will do to your body, I’m gonna list this out for you. And all y’all need to consider the irreversible damage this will do to your lives: . chest pain or pressure . pain spreading to your jaw or shoulder . swelling in your ankles or feet . chest pain, sudden cough, wheezing, rapid breathing, coughing up blood . pain, swelling, warmth, or redness in one or both legs . nausea or vomiting . changes in skin color Those are only a tiny fraction of the milder symptoms. But need I say more. Adderall has done all of this to me. So you have got to trust that I know what I am talking about. Because I have been taking enough Adderall for the last four years straight to kill a herd of elephants. I cannot believe my body survived this stupidity. See? I am calling myself out, too. I have known that I have had body image issues my entire life, and I used to post photos of myself here and on every other platform. But I never posted photos of myself during my recovery because I couldn’t bear to see how quickly my eating disorder was destroying me. My diagnosis after my suicide attempt? Anorexia nervosa. But I am not a diagnosis. I am a normal human being who is suffering. When I was your age I was angry at everything and everyone, and if I had thought that testosterone would make me feel better about how skinny I was or wasn’t, how curvy I was or wasn’t, how a pair of jeans never fit my body the way they fit the bodies of supermodels I had hanging all over my walls, I would have injected testosterone into my arms like heroin. Instead, I did was de rigeueur at the time. I tried to control what I put in my body. I tried to control the way I looked. That’s how fucking serious I am. When we shackle ourselves to an idea of happiness, and that idea can look like anything — a thin body, a man’s body — we blind ourselves to a million instances of happiness that don’t look like that image. We are shackling ourselves to a life of constant suicidal ideation that is in no way temporary. When I stopped drinking I returned to that eating disorder only this time I had Adderall. I had developed a whole new league of eating disorder. Let’s call it Anorexia on Speed. That’s how fucking serious I am. I want you to memorize this phrase and repeat it to yourself over and over again in case you ever think that you would be better off dead: Suicide is a permanent fix to a temporary problem. Moms, and more specifically WHITE PROGRESSIVE MOMS, you know exactly who you are because you want to be the fun mom, they need you to knock off your bullshit. Stop playing into this nonsense because you are helping them destroy their lives. Look at what happened to me. White progressive moms, I am talking to you now. And I have no fucks to give should any of this hurt your feelings. I feel your pain, too, because when my they/them told me they wanted to change their pronouns I believed they were riding this massive cultural shift in acceptance and inclusion. But I was wrong. America is fucking wrong. During my recovery process I began to realize that I was not asking the right questions about what we think is a radical new way of celebrating diversity. White progressive moms, are you asking yourselves the right questions? Maybe you should so that I don’t have to do the work for you. But since none of you are doing the work, lean in close and let me give you the answers to the questions you won’t ask. Gender dysphoria is social contagion. Should your theys and thems be afraid to read this or disinterested in the manic rambling spiral of some looney white anorexic on the internet, this part is for you and your kids together. Read this part together calling upon the pain of your childhood that in hindsight might have made you realize that your girls are experiencing normal human sadness. They are teenagers. They were once your precious baby girls. They are experiencing the same sadness you experienced when you were their age. Your children are perfect. They were born perfect. And you love them just the way they are. Let me say it again, and you need tor repeat this over and over again to your girls. Every single day for the rest of their lives because WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE: Your children are perfect. They were born perfect. And you love them just the way they are. That’s how fucking serious I am. I have been thinking a lot lately about how much I have destroyed my body, and that has made me consider death in a way I never have. I cannot imagine losing anyone in my life knowing how many memories I have decimated with drugs. And now, at last, we have come to the Radio Free Europe portion of the program, kids. And adults if you are still reading and not already writing an angry missive to your progressive congressperson who doesn’t give two fucks about your kids anyway, this is important for you, too. Desisters and Destransitioners, these women are my heroes. And they are going to save this planet because no one else has the guts to do it. And I am going to help them. Desisters and Destransitioners are being silenced. And they are being kicked off every forum and social platform for trying to tell you to stop doing this to them and to each other. They are telling you what they wish they had known long before they headed down a path toward transition, and I am the only progressive white woman alive who is willing to say publicly and proudly and authentically and unapologetically: These Desisters and Destransitioners, these women, they are right. I am a white progressive women who co-opted oppression and saddled my own teenage girls with all that baggage. These Desisters and Destransitioners are now tasked with the burden of undoing the damage done to them by their own parents and trying to figure out a way to get everyone to safety before the whole boat sinks. They are trying to megaphone the shit out of this goddamn tragedy of millennial proportions. They are screaming: Get off that boat because that boat is heavier than the Titanic. Celebrities won’t say it because they are buying into it. Celebrities are selling it. Celebrities are cloaking themselves in it as if they are aligning themselves with all that is good and right in the world and no one seems to be asking, have we lost our goddamn minds? These celebrities and white progressive moms think they are on the right side of history. And let me tell you, they are dead wrong. Desisters and Destransitioners — these genuine heroes of mine — they are being silenced and threatened and canceled by their friends and every one in power who should know better. They are the poster children for the question I have asked myself every goddamn day of my life, “Why are you agreeing with us when we are telling you that we hate ourselves?” And finally, the Radio Free Europe portion of the program which we will co-opt today, immediately, here on my platform and rename it: Trans Central Station Radio Free Europe was a broadcast news organization that hosted the free flow of information to parts of the world where free speech had been silenced by their government entities. Desisters and Destransitioners, I speak your language. My brain and your brain, they are one, and I will never dismiss your pain. I have messaged some of you to let you know what I am doing and I will host your stories here. If I can quit all these drugs and this pain and this shame, I believe that you will save the planet. Does that sound insane? I don’t care. Because I know you will. You kids, you desisters and detransitioners, you are my inspiration. You are the bravest kids who have ever walked the Earth. No one has ever really told you that yet. So let me say it to you again: You will save Earth. Here I am. I am here to tell you that you are perfect, now. Right now. In your body right now you are perfect no matter what damage you may think you have done to it. America needs your stories. You speak the language of the theys and thems the most. And their white progressive mothers need to read your stories over and over and over again. I will publish them here. And you can trust me. You will never be banned or censored. You can speak your truth here. I have contacted a few of the women here, and I will post those women’s stories after I emphasize again: Everyone needs to leave my family out of this. No one wants me to do this but when I realized that my whole life has been leading up to this point, I don’t really have a fucking choice. No one else on Earth is willing to do this work. The purpose of my life is this right here. If you are going to get angry at someone, get angry at me. If you are going to threaten anyone, threaten me. This is my cross to bear. And now for the totally bonkers portion of the program which will get me canceled in 17 languages. Are you ready for this? Good. Buckle up, buttercup. Okay, how do I say this without offending every single person in my neighborhood. Because I live the hottest bed of hot beds of gender dysphoria. This is also I AM ON THE SIDE OF TEACHERS portion of the program: Ready? Here we go. You have got to knock this shit off, kids. Because science is real. Biological gender is scientific. Biological sex is SCIENTIFIC. And we are tossing around these pronouns like goddamn candy. Therapists, doctors, lawyers, school districts — they are ALL tripping over themselves trying to keep track of your STINGRAY PRONOUN that you plucked out of the ether. A stingray pronoun. You know I’m talking to you over there, you worm pronoun-er. I love you because I was one of you, once, a very long time ago. But you gotta knock it off. Your teacher cannot possibly do her job. And when you start adding up the number of pronouns available for kids to assemble out of letters and numbers AND ANIMALS THEY HAVE NEVER HEARD OF and combine them with the number of kids who want everyone to honor that pronoun, Stingray’s teacher cannot do her fucking job when she is already being tasked with teaching you every goddamn thing about life while simultaneously fearing that she will have to be a human shield for you. Do you see how hard you are making this for teachers? Teachers already the hardest job on Earth. How many pronouns do they need to keep up with? Black communities are still suffering and we are tossing around pronouns like candy. If I were your age and questioning my gender like you are and I had my choice of 70 different pronouns, which one would I choose? Am I a “(H)ea” who laughed? Did someone try to convince “per” (meaning me I guess?) that asexuality does not exist? TIMEOUT. We will get back to the insanity of a fucking How To Guide for Worm Pronouns because, kids. I am only going to say this once and it should be enough: sex is the best thing on the goddamn planet. Period. I’m only going to say this one more time: when you mess around with your biological sex and gender, you are destroying any possibility of experiencing an orgasm during sex. Be it with your boyfriend or your girlfriend or yourself. And an orgasm is the highest state of consciousness a human can experience. Google “consciousness” and “meditation” and we will come back to that in another lesson for another day. Because I have so much more to tell you and orgasms are just the tip of the iceberg. End of the timeout. Are you ready to get back to work? Because your teachers are at work right now trying to make sense of this bullshit. Ready? Where were we? Oh, right here: “‘Xyr’ (is that referring to me, too? I’m getting confused already) favorite color is unknown.” Except that mine, Heather’s? Hers is pink. I know my favorite color. That pronoun card is “vis” fucked up, y’all. Do you see how fucking ridiculous this is? These pronouns are everywhere. Hello, New Zealand. Kids, do you ever sit around and think about having a family? Do you want to become a breeder? You know I am calling all of your bluffs, potential breeders. Because I know what you’re doing when you are referring to women like me and your mother as “breeders” but do you know? Do you know what asexuality is? Do you know how children are conceived? They are conceived biologically through sex with someone from the opposite sex. Your mother is a breeder and I am a breeder and we brought you into this world because at some point before you were a glimmer in our eyes we had sex with your dads. And they are dudes. They are men. They are male. And we had orgasms while we were doing it. And do any of your moms know what you are referring to when you deadname yourself? They will now when they read this link. And then they are going to think about you and your friends dropping the name they gave to you at birth in exchange for a new name you choose out of some random grocery aisle that means as much to your real heritage as a saltine cracker. Can you imagine what they are going to think if they named you after a female family member who was important to them? P.S. This post is really for all the strong Black women who taught me everything I needed to know about life. Kelly, this is mostly for you. You are the one person in my life who knew that I was a badass motherfucker who ain’t nuthin to fuck with. P.P.S. In case you didn’t know who I am. I am the original SAHM, short for Stay at Home Mom or what I like to call Shit Ass Ho Motherfucker.