THE 8 PATHWAYS: PATHWAY 7
Addiction
When the psychological core has never received sufficient positive mirroring and sustained significant damage, addiction is often born, desperately seeking momentary relief and sustenance at any cost. Drugs, alcohol, sex, money, power, influence: they all suck the life out of their surroundings and turn the soul to tinder. Hermes’ Web and the toys help demonstrate the dynamics of addiction and its most vicious forms and consequences. The toys bring to life real and fictional people who have succumbed, struggle, fail and recover.
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Duran & Duran
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Idea 1: Mirroring deficits, a plus or minus sign in the core, determines whether someone suffers from THE HUNGER or not. The vampiric hunger can overpower goodness and never sees the light of day, hiding in the core, except when it goes out hunting.
Idea 2: The Web is perfect for explaining the 12-Step program and why it works. The Hoberman demonstrates the effects of drugs on a human being, including the jailbreak phenomena.
Substance Abuse
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Quick Overview: This piece uses the classic split-personality story to illustrate how addiction hides behind a respectable public face while a very different reality plays out underneath. It's useful for addiction counselors and family therapists discussing denial, secrecy, and the gap between a person's image and their behavior.
Unfortunately, this toy from the SILENT SCREAMERS collection is hard to come by. What is unique about this toy is that Dr. Jekyll is hidden inside Mr. Hyde. And the opposite is true too - figuratively. Dr. Jekyll has his laboratory for experimenting with different combinations of chemicals, his own meth lab, compleat with books, test tubes, beakers and distillers, like any good addict! But, unfortunately, the wrong combinations can do a lot of damage, elicit death or unleash the inner monsters and demons. And, even if you find the right combo, crime may be necessary to keep you supplied with tickets to keep spinning on that thrilling carnival ride. But this kind of doctoring heals nothing, just digs the hole deeper!! After all, Dr. Jekyll is known for arriving on the scene of the crime, where Mr. Hyde has just beat someone down, then offering help and assistance – what we call split architecture in the psychological literature! The left hand doesn’t seem to know what the hell the right hand is doing! All too representative of the eternal desire to be comfortably numb!!
This toy is an amazing tool and transitional object for discussing drug use and its contribution to mayhem! It seems similar to when porn addicts talk about searching for hours and hours to find just the right image that excites them the most of any they’ve ever found. Searching for the right drug is similar except the negative trial runs can do a lot of damage!
In our current world, we have this same phenomena emerging: the return of the repressed, the hatred, anger, vengeance and jealousies that have been buried surging to the top, encouraged by bottom feeders who can only attain power by appealing to the lowest common denominator and the parts of ourselves we prefer to discard. However, they are never really gone - they lie there in the unconscious festering and fermenting, waiting to be called out by the next Pied Piper of the contaminated core!! Don those Brown Shirts and do your best - at least until you wake from the spell and realize your own Mr. Hyde - what you kept hydden and what your father or fathers thought they had hyded out of you with some good whippings - has gotten loose and possessed you long enough to violate whatever moral code you professed to live by and visited harm upon your countrymen and countrywomen, not for the sake of preserving democracy, but for the sake of someone’s thirst for power!
Like most of the silent films that came out of Germany in the 1920, of which all the toys in this series are examples, Jekyll & Hyde presaged the advent of Nazi-ism. Read Alice’s Miller’s THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD and/or THOU SHALT NOT BE AWARE to gain much more understanding of this dangerous split between ego and core, core contamination, and how many parents, through the use of poisonous pedagogy over many generations, broke the spirit of their children in the name of morality and maturity, leaving a dangerous and toxic reservoir of hatred and rage, yearning to visit itself upon someone, some scapegoat, some victim, in order to allow some relief from the inner turmoil, rage, and degradation.
And then addiction comes in: anything to get away from the pain, the torment. Self-medicate. Drown in it. Totally numb yourself out. Finding the right drug that lights your fires just right, allows one to escape culpability, guilt, shame and responsibility, at least for a while. And Dr. Jekyll resembles one’s preferred image and identity - the display of goodness. Goodness ain’t bad, it just needs to be synced with core level awareness so that one doesn’t “flip out” every so often, flipping into the core and thrashing out, and then flipping back into the ego to clean up the mess and switch back to some form of innocence and ignorance, at least until the cycle repeats itself again. And again. And again! And worse things could happen each time around!
These days we have all kinds of malevolent alchemists working on designing new drugs, new highs. Some can be toxic and damaging to the brain and other body parts. Some are murderously strong! Some addicts are invisible from the outside, at least until their liver gives out or they end up hospitalized. Their public and interpersonal persona can be as sophisticated and respected as Dr. Jekyll. It is amazing how well some people can keep the inner split segregated and invisible to the untrained eye!
Quick Overview: These easygoing, likable figures represent a quieter kind of harm: family alcoholism where the drinking (and drinking buddies) consistently come first. Useful for discussing neglect that doesn't look dramatic but still costs children a great deal and a jumping off point for more destructive forms of addiction, includlng generational.
These are not nasty figures, in fact, pretty easy-going, even cultural heroes in Canada.But they’re the best figures I’ve found for representing family alcoholism – when the drink and one’s drinking company are more important than anything else and your children reap the negative benefits of it all.These figures talk and make sounds and come equipped with plenty of beverages, a stove, and a cooler.They might be comfortably numb, or have an edge over which the nastiness begins, or they just ignore or neglect a lot of important things.It doesn’t require fireworks to damage the young souls in your care!
I remember as a youth sometimes waiting for my parents in the bar/restaurant in my home town. There were guys in there who spent the entire day nursing nickel and dime glasses of beer. Not sure what they were meditating about, or numbing out about, but they had their stool, their spot, their recognition, not to mention the big jar of pig’s feet sitting behind the bar. One would have to be drunk to eat those, given how long their had sat there like dead frogs in formaldehyde.
But I also saw their kids, who sometimes had to sit quietly on a stool for hours while waiting for their fathers or mothers to go home, not daring to interrupt their parent’s contemplative aura. I felt sorry for them and they seemed to flounder, estranged from their peers, lost in the ozone with no parent to center their lives or offer substantial attention and care.
I can not guarantee the talking part of the toy will still work as it would require opening the package and the platform they are set up on. Hopefully it will, but if not it is still a powerful visual tool that can prove very helpful in therapeutic endeavors.
Quick Overview: Janis Joplin readily represents addiction: how self-medicating with alcohol can mask deep self-hatred despite tremendous public success. Useful for addiction counselors illustrating that talent and fame offer no immunity from substance use disorders, no more than regular folks who seemed to grow up just fine..
Janis is one of the best blues and soul singers the music business has ever known and you can now proudly display her! Janis has some nice touches: bangles of different size and shapes on each of her wrists, beaded jewelry hanging from her neck, and removable sunglasses and hat. She also comes with a microphone stand and a detachable microphone. Then there’s the base/diorama: the peace sign, mushrooms all around, a tie-dye-ish sunset.
Janis aappears to have suffered from self-hatred and drowned her sorrows with alcohol, eventually dying choking on her own vomit while intoxicated. She lived the heights and depths of human achievement and human frailty: bullying by the frat boys (they voted her the ugliest man on campus), addiction, despair, and an early passage to the Beyond.
“The erotic quivers which shook [Janis’] frame when she sang told the audience she was enjoying every minute of it. When questioned about her singing..she said, ‘Maybe I won't last as long as other singers, but I think you can destroy your now worrying about tomorrow.’” -COLUMBIA DAILY SPECTATOR
Janis poured every bit of herself into her performances, living fully in the moment.
When she wasn’t singing was likely the worst days and hours of her life. Then she was not burning in the passion of the music, but burning in her hunger to feel alive as she did when performing. Perhaps it was the only thing that truly gave her peace, and when not singing she was lost in her wounds, her self-hatred, the misogyny she so often encountered, some say even from her own band. It is possible she wanted to drown herself in her off-stage life, disappear, go numb, turn off all the emotions and memories that plagued her. Perhaps performing was like being in the eye of the dream-time that aboriginals speak about: where the soul of the world is alive and moving and evolving and it is incredible to be there making music, making sounds from that place and letting it course through your body and being.
Eduardo & Bonnie Duran, in their book, NATIVE AMERICAN POSTCOLONIAL PSYCHOLOGY, speak to this: that chemical dependency treatment with Native Americans can not be successful if they don’t find their own way back to that place of dream-time, the living soul, and, that their drinking and drowning is grief for having sustained the loss of that place, largely due to hundreds of years of torment and loss due to their encounters with an “advanced society.” There was no Prime Directive honored in those days, at least not the one from Star Trek.
Duran & Duran state that: “What is not recognized is that alcohol use and even suicide may be functional behavioral adaptations within a hostile and hopeless social context.” It may have been so with Janis Joplin as well.
Quick Overview: This figure illustrates the addiction cycle — the illusion that one’s decision to quit will hold, and how craving inevitably rebuilds. A clear, visual way to discuss relapse risk with clients newly committed to recovery as well as the general cycle of addiction.
What is the real nature of addiction? How does it behave? How susceptible is it to treatment? Can you just decide you’re done with an addiction? When you wake up one day and see the mess your life is in and decide to stop, will that decision hold?
THE ILLUSION: people who are addicts quit drinking, sexting, cheating or whatever their addiction is on a regular basis. Then the hunger grows again, slowly at first, then getting to the point of intense longings making it impossible to get the drug of choice off one’s mind, and ultimately, too many times — the cycle continues. The heavy stone on the Vampyre’s tomb eventually moves away because the vampire inside is Jones-ing in a very powerful way!! Lifting a 3,000 pound slab of stone while lying on your back is no big deal when you’re hungry or desperate or motivated enough.
When a Cheetah has made a kill and eaten its fill, it may lie under a Banyan tree for several days, snoozing and languishing. On day 2, a Gazelle could come up to it, lick its nose, and the Cheetah may open one eye, take a look, and go right back to sleep. But, if the Gazelle were to lick that nose on the end of day 3, POW!! - that Cheetah would explode and that Gazelle would be bleeding out 2 seconds later. That is the nature of addiction!
You can see this same phenomena with people taking medications for serious illnesses: physical or mental. If the medication works well, they start to think they don’t need it and go off it. Thus, if the malevolent hunger disappears, we think it is gone but all too often it is really just sleeping, digesting or taking a nap. Watch a typical serial killer movie: they talk about how long the time is between kills! It can vary greatly, depending on the individual. Yes, the hunger is sated by a “kill” - but the hunger builds back up. A solution to addiction that doesn’t involve core-level change is almost a guarantee that the malevolent malady will return and be resurgent!
The Cheetah is a great image for addiction: Cheetah’s are powerful creatures with great endurance, resilient, dogged in their pursuit, unrelenting. Addictions can share all those qualities, which is why treatment for addiction can be so difficult - the addiction gets a grip the same way a Cheetah does and doesn’t want to let go. And in these cases, the addict is the “kill!”
Sex Addiction
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Quick Overview: This piece gives shape to the extremes of compulsive, out-of-control addiction — useful as a transitional object so clients don't have to argue about "how bad it really is" before getting to the real conversation. Especially suited to addiction and sexual-compulsivity treatment settings.
How bad does addiction look at its worst, especially sexual addiction? What is it like to be obsessed, compulsive, out of control, no brakes on your car! Is it like a shark – predatory? Is it a viral infection that devours you? This toy provides a way to talk about extreme states with people who know exactly what this toy is like because they’re been there, or they still are! This toy can take away the need to haggle about how bad things really are and allow the toy to be a transitional object that can allow the conversation to go straight to the depths - the nub of the issue - and actually take pressure off the client, leaving more space for honesty and accountability. It also allows the client to separate from the illness to some degree - to experience objectivity rather than just complete possession.
Toys like this also counter that therapeutic impulse to tell people “it can’t be that bad.” Clients, especially those with significant trauma, addiction or aggression, seem to respond best when there is clarity about just how bad it is when it is bad because that bad-ness is the wild horse that has to be tamed, if possible. It certainly doesn’t look like Mr. Mongroid is enjoying himself? After all, one can be self-aware even as you are destroying yourself and enslaved to predatory needs.
THE OLD BOOK ABOUTMASOCHIS AND SEXUALITY FOR STORY OF THE COMPULSIVE GUY AND ITS PARALLEL IN THE MOVIE STARRING THE INTERNATIONAL SEX OFFENDER ACTOR/DIRECTOR.
The Holocaust Self
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Quick Overview: A rare, intense figure originally used in sessions with incarcerated men, representing addiction and trauma at their most extreme. Best suited for experienced clinicians working in corrections or advanced addiction treatment settings.
First of all, note that this is a rare toy: the bottom of the package notes it is for age 17 and up! How often do you see that on a toy? But here’s the backstory of this toy entering my life. I saw it advertised by MacFarlane as the Tortured Souls series and found them fascinating, so I ordered 10 cases. Imagine that! (It was the minimum order, back when they sold directly to small time entrepeneurs.)
The night before I headed to Allenwood Federal Penitentiary for two days of meetings with inmates about the toys, 10 cases of Tortured Souls were delivered, Talisac being one of the collection of 6 figures. On instinct I took it along and showed it to the 90 men I was speaking to, explaining my thoughts about it as representing a human at their worst: no shame, absolute vampyric hunger, hanging by hooks, their favorite substance hanging in a bag and coming in through IV, a fetal alcohol monster child forming in their loins. It’s horrible, but as it was passed around the room, 6 different men stood and said they were this toy – the toy was them! The story the men had in common was that when they told people how bad addiction was for them, people would tell them: “It can’t be that bad!” This toy gave them affirmation for how bad it really was and is! They can point at the toy and say: “There it is – my existence – the shit is that deep, and then some!” This is one of the few toys that says on the package: not suitable for children under 17. This toy is special and powerful as it allows a therapist to “lead from inside” – to meet the client in hell and confirm how bad it is while seeking any possible exit that might eventually be available. But clients typically need recognition of the depth and degree of their experiences before being willing to engage in core-level change.
“When I feel recognized and have a sense that you understand how I am experiencing my experience (whether this is how you experience it or not), I can find your limit-setting tolerable and even a relief; if I do not feel recognized, I resent it as a violation of who I am - which is just what it is.” Robert Kegan, THE EVOLVING SELF
(I highly recommended Kegan’s book. I once spent an entire week reading that book on a porch next to the river in Taos, New Mexico. It’s a complex but very rewarding book.)
There are 2 sizes available: one is 6” approximately, and the other is 12” tall. Both have all the same details. This is one toy you may want to keep in the box as it has many pieces and is hard to keep intact unless you create some kind of secure mount for it.
This toy is horrible in many ways, but it helps some people feel seen and recognized and that makes them more open to sharing what is going on, as well as consider engaging in some kind of interactive, therapeutic process!
Quick Overview: This figure gives voice to remorselessness and defiance — useful for discussing antisocial traits, trauma history, and what it looks like when someone has stopped fearing consequences. A concrete way to open difficult conversations about accountability with clients or students who identify with bravado over vulnerability.
Death Row Marv is strapped into the Electric Chair! Next to him is a control switch. When you close the circuit Marv's eyes light up and the electric chair quakes and out comes his raspy voice saying: "Is that the best you can do?!"
You can't hurt Marv - he has no fear - he has no conscience. He does what he wants to do, what he feels like doing, regardless of how it effects anyone else. You don't want him coming after you. Thank God he’s not a mastermind!
And then there's his bravado! You can't really punish him as he seems to relish it and the powerless of those who seek to hold him to account! God knows he must have been traumatized in unbelievable ways earlier in his existence, but he's way, way past crying and whining about it now. He finds it satisfying to live as a brute and strike terror into the hearts of those around him!
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