Does 'rock bottom' exist?

Recently I saw someone discourage another person from outreach to a troubled individual because it would be enabling them and that they truly needed to hit a rock bottom of devastating loss to learn from their mistakes.

That's a bit of an extreme example in that I don't think most people would say something like that, but it's had me wondering if people believe so intensely in a well-defined rock bottom that gives people the illusion of a recovery that for them might not occur. And that perhaps we delay outreach because the individual hasn't hit low enough.

Thoughts? This is probably a complicated topic and that plus "death of the author" means take the discussion wherever it makes sense.

(which I would like to separate from the idea that there are obviously thresholds individuals may set to where they are no longer willing to engage an individual who is toxic to them, which is an important boundary)

https://i.postimg.cc/PxS7ZPY9/93f3eb0ba2f6aaf6f7f1b7a7b77c8291.jpg

aiui, outreach consists of assurances that others care about the individual and are prepared to help them deal with their problems, while enabling is more a matter of giving help that allows the individual to sidestep dealing with their problems. Those aren't always easy to tease apart when the level of problems has reached the point where the person can't function well enough to meet their basic needs for food, warmth and shelter. In that kind of situation 'rock bottom' is likely to be 'death'.

I'd say if the individual's problems have reached the point where just staying alive is an issue it's past the point where a few friends can turn it around. The person needs to get assistance from a source that understands the situation and can bring more resources than what a couple of friends can bring to it.

I mean obviously there are times when you have an experience which makes you reassess your life / values, but if we are talking drugs it's generally a slow slide and you numb yourself so much to the world anyway that the only life-changing-jolt would be severe injury or death, and waiting for that to happen doesn't sound like a good plan.

xpost that's for sure, and I wouldn't expect friends or family to shoulder a burden made for professionals to handle.

My sister is going through something like this. I would call it some kind of rock-bottom, for lack of a better term

However, I don't at all believe that you need to let a person get to this stage before a change in direction can occur.

It’s a very rough situation to be in and see others and loved ones go thru this, I’m sure.

Adam Johnson on an ep of CitationsNeeded pointed out last year when talking about things like addiction that “Rock Bottom” is not really like a definable, perceivable-in-real-time, it’s a media narrative convention. It’s a character arc: things were getting bad, they got at their worst, the person had a life-altering event or realization, they made changes, and are on the upswing with things are now palpably better.

You can only know when you’re not in it until you’re out of it and look back, so it’s not that helpful. Plus, it seems to rely on the idea that there exists a certain level of immiseration that once you hit a threshold, something always switched inside of you and you decide to get better. This doesn’t take into account that thing can get so bad you lose the ability to change them.

So yeah, I don’t know what the answer is other that one always has to try to help and be there for the person(if possible to do so safely).

i think this is a bad narrative trope because a) things can get worse right up to death, but mostly b) even as a moment you might choose to self-identify you are unlikely to be correct or to always agree with yourself about where exactly this rock bottom lies, but even more mostly because

lives do not have narrative arcs, only stories do (sometimes)

i'm not gonna articulate this clearly right now i can tell but that ^^^

yes we tell stories about other people and we tell stories about ourselves but god help us if we let those stories ossify and we mistake them for some value of reality

also if somebody needs help and it feels in your power to help them then letting them suffer for their own good is a monumental dick move however you justify it

typical 12 step crap

Kiss treated the concept as if it does exist, and I trust Kiss, so I think it must exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krm2alR4qwA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFrJtpzDG2Q

I think this is a horrible concept generally — it's the same kind of thinking that leads to "heighten the contradictions" political catastrophism. If someone's in trouble, and you care enough about them to want to see them get out of it (not a given), intervene now. Don't wait for it to get worse.

i think there is use in imagining an inflection point when thinking about the internal state someone has to be in in order to make a change, if only for that person to imagine themselves away from substance addiction. i think it can quickly become not useful when it's used as an excuse to withdraw support from someone or oneself. i tend to think that what occurs when someone wants a change is that they want something better for themselves - it's less rock bottom and more "i see i could be in a nicer or more hospitable place for myself."

relatedly i also think this has a lot to do with one's body/spirit instead of one's "willpower" or mental fortitude. there's a body-spirit state that happens imo. i think the spiritual element of aa is actually important but could be much better handled & not attached to christianity.

there is probably a lot of good stuff written about this out there & i hope someone with some knowledge will mention some things at some point.

I get a little worried of people believing that there is a line where you will at the least perform a dead cat bounce, like you can't get any lower, because we know that isn't true. my friend Pam actively tried for years to save a troubled friend and wasn't able to. she kept declining, eventually died alone and on the street, and this was despite active attempts at intervention.

I do think there's truth to "when someone receives consequences they might finally snap to it" but it's not true of everyone in the same way and usually that point doesn't involve, like, losing your home and family and friends and being truly on your own.

the person in my OP example isn't even in that situation - they're a local celebrity who is well-respected but has a non-negligible number of people put off by his bullshit (myself included), and he used his privilege to attack a woman he doesn't like in the press because she hurt his feelings, and rightfully got called out for it. I don't particularly think anybody should feel sorry for him, because i don't, and frankly I'm glad people finally took their blinders off and see what an asshole he is, but then as friends tried to intervene, publicly and privately call him out and get him to understand why people were so enraged, two vocal individuals actually admonished these friends to abandon the guy, because he'll 'never learn consequences' if he doesn't truly hit bottom and lose his friends and his livelihood. seems a very carceral approach to a crime that doesn't really warrant THAT.

extricating that to people I know who HAVE struggled with addiction, alcoholism, depression, etc, I'd be alarmed if that same line of thinking got used. I've heard of people cutting someone off to teach them a lesson and that's all kinds of fucked up (now, cutting someone off because they're being abusive to you and you can't have that kind of toxicity in your life...that's another story, everybody should enforce those types of boundaries).

I think NV and brimstead otm.

xpost I've heard the term "misery threshold" used which at least indicates variance at an individual level, i kinda like that.

map otm as well

what's that old chestnut? "If you remember the 60s, you weren't there"

As far as the rock-bottom metaphor, it seems like you can only view it in retrospect as the catalyst for a new direction, when sufficient time has elapsed. I can think of old friends of mine who seems to travel from nadir to nadir ("now I'm living in a car in Echo Park.. now I'm cashing checks I stole from my parents.." etc. etc.), and only at some point in their (hopefully) cleaner future will they be able to identify the new low that pushed them into action.

from a personal perspective i think the times i've told myself i've hit a low or a turning point i was almost always wrong about. it's easy enough to identify your own bad decisions and then repeat them, or make worse ones, at a later time, in a different mindset. and i also think that when i've been able to make better decisions and take better care of myself it hasn't been from the wreckage of some exceptional misery but because i've had resources around me - financial, emotional, mental - that helped me feel secure enough to behave differently. change has come from having alternatives rather than feeling that i had none

i've seen this with others many times in my working and social life too. i know it's pure anecdote and vibes but this is what i perceive

good posts

Okay. Haven’t read the thread thoroughly but yeah, that kind of narrative is maybe a little simplistic to say the least.

i think there is use in imagining an inflection point when thinking about the internal state someone has to be in in order to make a change

this. obviously there is no "there's nothing worse than this" -- depravity doesn't have a limit -- but we can all have our "this is unacceptable for me, and I must never see this stage again." it's a good framing imo.

but we can all have our "this is unacceptable for me, and I must never see this stage again." it's a good framing imo.

agreed. Though sometimes people (I include myself here) get there, and then a few years later return there, and then a few years after that return there again ... and idk if it's accurate or good to think, "well if you've been this low before, clearly you have to go even lower to really change?" I like to think that even the few years of improvement before going back down again ... I like to think that time does mean something?

change has come from having alternatives rather than feeling that i had none

good post

I think the CitationsNeeded ep I referred to is this one, with audio and transcript https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-99-the-cruel-voyeuristic-quackery-of-rehab-tv-shows-40665bec93e2

There does indeed seem to be a problem with the simplistic, single arc Big Bottom Behind the Music one-size-fits-all recovery narrative. Some have the idea of multiple bottoms which is already kind of a more realistic improvement. Maybe some of this is discussed in the link just posted.

Wow, Bob Forrest. I saw him once…while this was in the beforetimes, of course.

This part about What Really Works is good

You talk about your fears and your hopes and your dreams in an elongated way that allows you to overcome trauma rather than be retraumatized.

love multiple big bottoms

One way to think about rock bottom is when a person has burnt all their bridges, called in all favors, and their dearest loved ones are totally fed up with their shit and won't help them anymore. Or maybe it's when things are so bad that they happen to have a window of clarity and can see how far down they've sunk?

One of my best friends, a person I've known since kindergarten, spiraled down into meth hell. Her kids were taken from her, everybody was tired of letting her sleep on their couch and there was nothing that could be done. She made a gofundme in an effort to hold onto her kids and my wife and I gave her some money but there was no way we were going to let her stay with us. We've got kids and we were not willing to invite her troubles into our home.

Thankfully the last time she was in jail seemed to click; she went into rehab and has been off the hard stuff for a while. But at her worst it felt like a sinking ship that was going to pull anyone around her down with her. It was scary, when I wouldn't hear from her for a long time I wondered if she was dead.

Okay, the guest on that podcast was really, really good, Maia Szalavitz.

I wouldn't discourage help to a troubled individual just because they aren't at rock bottom. Seeing a friend in a downward spiral is tough, and helping is kind.

That said, there are definitely people who won't change their behavior until they absolutely have to. And only when it's their idea.

I may be one of those people. When other people have reached out to intervene, I brushed them off and said I had it under control. It was only when I myself felt like shit was out of control that I made any changes. Like, my wife giving me advice is cool (I respect and love her) but there are still some things that I needed to learn the hard way.

You could say there's an element of stubbornness to that - or spite. "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me. In fact I'll go the opposite direction." Or an unwillingness to show weakness.

But there's also an element of stoicism, self-reliance, self-sufficiency. I have always had a self-sufficiency fetish, it's part of my upbringing: I lived 10 years without a car and I'll still happily walk five miles rather than accept a ride, for example.

When I was young and poor I would shiver in a shitty apartment, with a negative bank balance, looking through the couch cushions for enough coins to buy pasta. My decidedly well-off parents were a single phone call or a 7-minute cab ride away. I just could not make that call. And I severely judged my sister, who still "borrows" money from them when she's short on rent or needs a car repair. Oh and I SEVERELY judged my brother-in-law who was living at home at age 31 - not so much the living with parents, but I knew that his mother still folded his underwear.

Uh, that's a little far afield of the topic, just typing here.

tl dr: do help people. But there are people who just absolutely do need to learn things the hard way, or the lesson doesn't stick.

Oh and as for "Behind the Music," this is old but it is a gem:

Ask VH1 Behind The Music Host Kris Kristofferson from the Onion when it was good, and their advice columns were absurd af.

I still use the phrase "nightmare descent into booze and pills" purely because of this piece.

I had a friend who was fired from his bartending job for stealing from the register. At the time we all rallied around him because nobody thought he was capable of doing that, he'd always been an honest and affable dude who was true to his word, plus he loved that job so why would he risk it? We all thought "surely someone miscounted something, or the cash wasn't documented properly, he wouldn't do that", but deep down I remember thinking "everyone loved him there, I really don't think they'd fire him for this unless they were absolutely sure he did it" and then "well if he did it then something bad is going on here and I should probably be a friend and talk to him". It probably wouldn't have mattered any, but when he died of an overdose a few months later I thought about that a lot. After that happened it slowly became clear that almost everything he'd told us in the last few months was total bullshit and if we'd just used a little bit of critical thinking we could have figured it out, but this guy was a lifelong friend and a very charismatic dude, you didn't exactly want to challenge him. At least I know the signs now, but unfortunately that entire friend group pretty much broke up after that.

I think when we think about how other people treat us, it's important to think about our tolerance levels. You might have someone commit an act so seismic and troubling against you that it reframes the relationship entirely, but that's not always how it goes. It might start off with "they're always late and they never bring cash" and you write it off as, well they're a pal so I'll tolerate it. Then they start cancelling plans completely and you say, well they've got a lot going on and they're a pal so I'll tolerate it. And you keep going until you find yourself with eg a troubled houseguest you cannot get rid of, well they're a pal so I'll tolerate it.

Excellent post

Abovementioned podcast guest weighs in a related subject:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/codependency-addiction-recovery.html

And a different view: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/opinion/letters/addiction-codependence.html

Thought this stuff was recent but is from last year, sorry.