Why Do Addicts Say Hurtful Things?

Why do addicts say hurtful things? I can answer that one, because I said them. Not things that came out wrong. Aimed things, said to the people who had done the most for me.

Seventeen years sober now. If you are loving an addict and reading this at two in the morning because of something said to you tonight, here is the version I would want.

This is lived experience from one recovery, not medical advice.

Yes, they were aimed

I am not going to open with the comfortable version. When I said the cruelest things to my family, I picked them. I knew where the soft spots were, because you only learn those from being loved by somebody for years.

That is why it feels so precise, and it is why people decide the words must have been true. They were not. They were accurate about where to hit, which is a different thing.

Why it landed on you

Because you were the one still there.

The cruelty went where the questions were. Whoever was still asking where I had been, still looking at me a second too long. Strangers got none of this from me. My family got all of it, not because they had earned it, but because they were close enough to threaten the using.

Being the person who would not go away is what put you in range.

What was underneath it

Shame, turned outward because I could not hold it pointed at myself. When I caught sight of myself in your face, I needed you to be the problem for a minute. That was the fastest way to stop looking at me.

Some of it was simpler. Hurtful things worked. They ended conversations. They made people go quiet and leave me alone with it. The addiction did not need to win the argument. It needed the argument to stop.

Did he mean it

Here are both halves of the honest answer.

In the moment, I meant it enough to say it. It came out of my mouth and nobody put it there.

And it was not true. Meaning a thing and a thing being true are not the same. Seventeen years out, I can tell you what those sentences were: true about where I was, false about the person I aimed them at. Every one of them.

Explaining it is not excusing it

I have no interest in the version where none of it was me. I hurt people who did not deserve it, and getting sober meant owning things I said, including some I do not remember saying.

You are allowed to understand exactly why it happened and still be furious that it did. Both of those sat in my family at once, for years.

The line worth keeping

If you take one thing out of this, take this. What he said was information about where he was. It was never information about you.

Read it again the next time it happens, because it will not feel true in the moment. It did not feel true to my family in the moment either.

When it is more than words

There is a line I cannot draw from where I sit. Cruel words are one thing. Words that make you afraid in your own home, or that arrive with anything physical, are another, and nothing here applies to that. There is a number below for exactly that.

If the last words were cruel

And if your person is gone, and something like this was near the end, hear me. That sentence was not a summary of them, and it was not a verdict on you. You do not have to keep the last thing said as the whole record.

If things are heavy right now

In the US, SAMHSA's free helpline is 1-800-662-4357, 24/7, for treatment questions and family guidance. In Canada, 211 connects you with addiction services in your province. If you or someone you love is in crisis, call or text 988, any time. It works in the US and Canada. And if what gets said in your house comes with fear, the US domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-7233, and in Canada sheltersafe.ca will show you the nearest shelter and its number.

Why Haven exists

My family took years of this with nowhere to put it. Nobody explaining what was underneath any of it, nobody checking on them afterward. Haven is what I am building for the people on the receiving end, and the waitlist is at joinprojecthaven.com.