Surviving an Addicted Friend...

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux addresses a listener's question about his wife's challenges in helping a friend with alcoholism. Despite her efforts to guide him toward professional help, his reckless behavior leads her to cut ties, prompting a discussion on the complexities of addiction and the emotional trauma involved.  Stefan explores the tension between willpower and self-destructive behaviors, emphasizing the moral implications of addiction and the danger of enabling harmful patterns. This episode encourages listeners to reflect on the balance between empathy and self-preservation in their relationships with those struggling with addiction.  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00All right, this is a question from a listener. Hi, Steph. My wife has tried to help a friend

00:04who is an alcoholic. She's told him to get professional help several times, but he nods,

00:08makes promises, and then goes out drinking with his clubbing buddies anyway. Last week,

00:12he almost died while drinking on a holiday with that same group. Only one week before that holiday,

00:16he'd sat down with my wife, and she had a very difficult conversation with him urging him to

00:19fix his life. He promised her that he would. She feels deeply betrayed by him, and now is having

00:24to cut him out of her life as he does not take her advice or listen. He also is quite overweight,

00:29but follows Christianity. She's had long conversations with him about his weight,

00:32drinking, and asked him what the church would say about his life. It's always the same non-response

00:36and empty promises. We have a son, and she made this decision with me, taking advice you have

00:41given previously on such life issues. We can't have an alcoholic in our lives around her family.

00:45Have you got any further words on this that could help her understand and process the betrayal she

00:49feels? She really tried to help him, but it has not worked. Thank you for your time from a UPB

00:55and peacefully parenting family walking across that desert. Ah, yes, the desert. Well, listen, I

01:01sympathize. I appreciate the help that you have tried to give this man. Now, I'll just tell you about

01:14probably a personal failing of mine. I'm certainly happy to have it characterized that way,

01:19but I will tell you my particular thoughts about this kind of stuff, which is it's simply a question

01:26or a matter of willpower. A question or a matter of willpower. Now, if you are born or have developed

01:36or have within you a good willpower, then people who don't have willpower are incomprehensible.

01:43We cannot understand. Sorry, repeat the phrase. We can't understand them. So, for me,

01:52you know, and this is, again, it's a fault and it's a failing, probably, right? I'm certainly willing

01:57to have that be the case. But when I look at people who just make crazy decisions, you know,

02:02like the borderlines and so on, if you leave me, I'll kill myself. People who just make crazy

02:06decisions, to me, it's just like, just don't be crazy. I view it as a form of self-indulgence.

02:13Just don't be crazy. Deal with your feelings. Don't be crazy. And I don't, for me, I don't think

02:21it's super hard in your life to just, I don't know, hey, not be crazy. How about you just don't

02:28be crazy? Now, when it comes to something like alcoholism, how about you just don't drink? And

02:38again, I know there's trauma. I get all of that. I really understand all of that, which is not saying

02:43I don't have sympathy. I do have sympathy. But at some point, you have to just not drink.

02:48Ooh, I was about to swear, but we're dealing with some of our Christian friends. So I will be,

02:52I will be delicate. I will be non-cussy. So your friend sounds like he is a triple addict. Number

03:02one, food. He's a food addict, which is why he's overweight. Number two, of course, he's an alcoholic.

03:07And number three, he's a social addict. Alcoholism, a lot of times, has to do with

03:15being a social addict. A social addict is, I need to have the distractions of a party. I need to be

03:22out there, quote, having fun. I need to be where it's loud. I need to be where it's chaotic. I just

03:30need to not be with myself. Now, of course, as I get older, I mean, I'm pretty much, I'm on the verge

03:40of old, right? I'm maybe 60 next year, right? So as I get older, I've sort of realized over the years

03:47that a lot of people who self-medicate don't just do it for the harm they've suffered,

03:55but they also self-medicate for the harm they've done. Because it's possible, I'm not saying,

04:04obviously, I don't know, right? I'm just saying it's possible that your wife's friend is self-medicating

04:10not childhood trauma, but a bad conscience. Maybe he was a real bully when he was younger.

04:20Maybe people have relied on him, and he's continually betrayed them as a result of his

04:27alcoholism, so it becomes a self-feeding cycle, right? So because he drinks too much, he betrays

04:33people. He lies to them. He alienates them, right? He promises to your wife he'll change, and then he

04:39doesn't change, which means that he has no integrity, and he breaks his word, and he betrays people.

04:45Now, obviously, I would assume he had a bad childhood and so on, but then he ends up betraying

04:52people. As an adult, he lies to people. He manipulates people. Obviously, he makes promises,

04:59solemn promises that he doesn't keep, and he doesn't even own that he doesn't keep them. Like,

05:04he doesn't call up your wife and say, listen, I know I promised this, but I'm so sorry. I fell off

05:08the wagon, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to get help, right? So at what point does it, is there a tipping

05:14point, like walking over the seesaw? At what point are people no longer self-medicating because

05:20of a bad childhood? They're self-medicating because they're Judas. They're self-medicating because they

05:26lie, manipulate, betray, harm, undermine, and hurt people. Alcoholics and other addicts hurt people

05:35enormously. And this is when you have to be strict with yourself, right? If you think that he's the

05:45only addict in this relationship with your wife, I would disagree. I would disagree. Now, you say your

05:52wife has cut him off, so I mean, I think that's for the best. But why would she want to help someone

05:56like this? Is she addicted to helping people? If she's addicted to helping people, then she will

06:02choose people she cannot help. If you are addicted to a drug, you would choose the drug that doesn't

06:08run out. If your wife is addicted to helping people, then she's going to choose people in

06:16desperate straits who fundamentally cannot be helped. And that's the real addiction. So there's a bargain

06:25under the table. The secondary gains, they call it, technically, right? There's a bargain under the

06:31table. I assume that your wife was raised by highly dysfunctional parents who needed her constant help

06:41and support, right? And so she's used to helping people and she's got a Simon the Boxer helping

06:47people. But if your goal is just like the welfare state, right? They need the poor in order to justify

06:52their paychecks. They cannot solve the problem of poverty because their careers are based upon the

06:57existence and continuity of poverty. So I assume that your wife was raised by chaotic people that

07:05she had to try and fix. And if she's addicted to fixing people, she's going to choose unfixable

07:10people so she doesn't run out of her drug. So I would look at your wife's addiction to helping

07:16people, which I assume comes from trauma. But she's choosing people who are probably unfixable

07:22because they're guilty as hell of a terrible behavior. And this is certainly true with parents.

07:28If you have, you know, chaotic, abusive, destructive parents, never underestimate the horror and

07:34hellscape of what's inside their minds, of what it's like to be inside your minds. Obviously,

07:39far from a perfect person, but, you know, I think I've done pretty well in life. I do a reasonable,

07:44for me, a reasonable amount of good. In this world, I've taken some significant risks to advance

07:48virtue. So my conscience is, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. And it's pretty fierce if it's

07:54not. So my conscience is pretty good. So it's hard to understand what it's like to live in a mind

08:04with a bad conscience. So what is this guy self-medicating? Why is he, why is he drink to

08:09oblivion? Why does he drink to passing out? Is it to shut up his trauma? I would assume not at this

08:13point in his life. I assume you guys are in your thirties or forties. So, you know, I give someone

08:18a pass for, you know, five, maybe seven years after childhood. So, you know, 23, 25, and so on.

08:26After that, the continued torments are arising from a bad conscience, not a bad history. In other

08:31words, you are manufacturing your own torment in the present through corrupt, evil, immoral actions.

08:38So, your wife probably has a tough time understanding, well, why does this person

08:43keep drinking? Why do they keep drinking to destroy their own consciousness? Well, because

08:50it's hell to be them. And why is it hell to be them? Well, it's hell to be them because they've

08:57done terrible things over the course of their life. And listen, I'm not, obviously, I don't know

09:01anything about this guy. But if somebody is self-destructive to this degree, I mean, my gosh,

09:07this is the kind of bad conscience that maybe he was a child abuser. Maybe he molested someone.

09:13Maybe he's done something really nasty and evil and wretched and corrupt. Maybe it's more than

09:20just betraying and lying to his friends and those who care about him. Maybe he's just done something

09:26like truly stupendously badly evil. And then he would drink, of course, to erase his own conscience.

09:34He can't stand himself. In other words, he drinks because, you know, the conscience counsels,

09:40if you've gone beyond a certain evil, the conscience counsels self-destruction directly.

09:44So, it's possible that, not entirely possible, that what he's doing is erasing his conscience

09:50and his desire to erase him because it's the only way he can survive is through drinking,

09:55if that makes sense. So, this is, of course, the tough love question. What does it mean

10:02to genuinely love someone or to care about them? Well, in my mind, what I do is I look at

10:12the question or the challenge or the difference between mortal and venal sins.

10:20So, a venal sin, you don't do something great, you've done something wrong, you know, you lie

10:26to someone or you betray them in some manner or you, you know, choose the lower path, the higher

10:30path, you know, you dodge someone you maybe owe money to or something like that. Nothing

10:35horrendous, but not great, right? And that can be dealt with. The question with the alcoholic,

10:42to me, is always look to the position or the place where restitution has become impossible.

10:52Can someone undo the damage they have done? Can your alcoholic friend, who I assume is in

11:00his 30s or 40s, can your alcoholic friend undo the damage he has done? I would argue, no. If he's a

11:09fat drunk in his 30s and 40s, his life is ruined. And he has also done significant harm to others.

11:17I guarantee you that if he is a drunk, he has encouraged other people to drink. Oh, one more,

11:24what are you going for? Come on, you'll be fine. We're having a good time. But he said he has pushed

11:30his drinking, his alcoholism, he has pushed on others, right? And because of that, he has done

11:40the kind of damage he cannot undo. He has encouraged other people to drink. He's portrayed the drinking

11:47as a fun party lifestyle. He has enabled other people, and so on. He also, most likely, being

11:58overweight himself, has undermined or harmed other people's intention or desire to lose weight.

12:08Oh, come on. No good story ever started with, I had a salad. So, he has probably pushed,

12:16almost certainly, almost certainly, he has pushed his addiction on others younger, and he has seduced

12:21them into the dark path, into the bad way, the bad place, the bad thing, the bad things. And because

12:31of that, he has corrupted others. I mean, it's one thing if you make a mistake yourself, you know,

12:38that certainly happens. It certainly happens that people make mistakes themselves, and that is

12:44survivable. Those are all venal sins. Those are all survivable sins. However, when you have gotten

12:51to the place where you have corrupted others, that cannot be undone. And again, I have made my mistakes

13:00over the course of my life, but I don't believe or I can't think of an example or an instance where I

13:07have corrupted others. The mistakes I have made have been largely borne by myself. I have suffered,

13:17right? The mistakes that I have made or committed. I can't think of a time, and I'm not saying there

13:25isn't one, I just, I'm trying to be fairly strict with myself about this and listen to my conscience,

13:29because I want to be a happy guy. But I can't think of a time where I have corrupted others.

13:37So, so I think all of that is survivable. Now, if you have corrupted someone or work towards their

13:44corruption, that's not the end of the world either. Because what you can do, of course, is

13:49apologize immediately and retract and change and blah, blah, blah, right?

13:53Right. So, what you want to do is try and weigh, and people won't often give you the truth about

14:01this, but what you want to do is you want to try and weigh people's hearts, minds, and souls and say,

14:07if I had done the kind of wrongs that they had done without fixing them, what would my relationship

14:16to my conscience be like? And it is very hard to understand what it's like to live with a really bad

14:25conscience. It's really hard to understand that. What is it like to live with a really bad conscience

14:31where you hate yourself, you loathe yourself, you've harmed and destroyed innocent souls, you've corrupted

14:37and undermined people, you know, hoary and old as you are in your addiction, you have greased the path down to

14:45hell itself for others to follow with a push and a shove and an enticement and an oiling. So, that is

14:54really important. Don't look upon people, especially in their 30s and 40s, do not look upon them as

14:59victims. That is what victimizers want you to do, right? The victimizers want you to look upon them

15:08as victims. And they will cry, how sad their childhood was, and this, that, and the other. And again, we can

15:13sympathize with the bad childhood, but the bad childhood does not dictate that you corrupt others.

15:19The bad childhood will mean that you have pain and sorrow and anger and hurt, but the bad childhood in

15:26no way dictates that you corrupt others. Corrupting others is a choice. And of course, it's pretty hard

15:33to have sympathy with someone who was corrupted as a child and as a teen, who then in turn goes and

15:42corrupts others younger than himself. Again, it could be children, could be teenagers, could be

15:46young adults. So, you lose the victim card when you victimize others. It's the most foundational aspect,

15:52really, of moral philosophy, because it keeps us away from pathological altruism.

15:57Once you victimize others, you no longer have the right to cry about being victimized.

16:02Once you hurt others, you have no right to cry about being hurt. In other words, once you become your

16:11abusive parents, if they were abusive, once you become your abusive parents, you have zero right

16:16to complain about being abused, because you now have become your parents. And if you have become

16:24your parents, you cannot complain about your parents. It would be like somebody becoming a thief and

16:30complaining about stealing. Somebody becoming a murderer and complaining about killing. Somebody

16:36becoming a criminal, dedicating their lives to crime, and then complaining about crime. You are

16:43the source of what you are complaining about. And so, if somebody is innocent, and somebody breaks

16:51into their house and steals their stuff, I have great sympathy and wish punishment, of course,

16:55upon the thief. However, if the thief who stole his stuff himself gets stolen from, I have no

17:01sympathy for the thief who is stolen from. In the same way, if someone goes to kill some innocent

17:07guy, and then the innocent guy kills him first, I have no sympathy for the killer. Right? So,

17:15turning off your sympathy to those who have harmed others is really, really important, because you do

17:22not want to enable the harm. Now, if he says, gee, you should have sympathy for me, even though I admit I

17:31have harmed others, you should totally have sympathy for me, because I was harmed as a child, and I'm angry

17:38at my parents. It's like, okay, but if being harmed as a child means that we have to have sympathy to those

17:46who harm others as adults, then you must have sympathy for your parents, and you cannot be angry at your

17:51parents. You cannot be angry at your parents if you, in turn, have corrupted others, particularly those younger

17:56than yourself. And again, I'm not just talking children, or whatever it is, right? Teenagers, even adults when

18:00they're young. I mean, one of the reasons I think instinctively why I avoided corrupting others was

18:05so I could remain justly angry at my parents. In other words, I can get angry at a thief because

18:10I've never stolen. But when people have turned from victims into victimizers, they lose all moral

18:17authority, and you cannot sympathize with them anymore. They have crossed over. They have become

18:21their parents. Because the only way you'd be sympathetic to them is to say, gee, your parents treated you

18:26really badly and unjustly as a child. It's like, yes, but now as an adult, you're treating people badly and

18:31unjustly. You've become your parents. You've become your parents. Now, again, I understand it's a power

18:35relationship. It doesn't necessarily have to involve children. Children are trapped. So there's definitely some

18:40differences. I understand that. But your parents were corrupt because they let or enabled their hurt, gave them

18:49permission to hurt others. And then the addict hurts others. It's one thing if you just live alone in the woods and

18:55drink your moonshine or whatever it is, that's bad in that you're, you know, society invested a lot in you and you're

19:00just kind of taking it and consuming it on your own. But at least you're not directly harming others. But if you're an

19:05alcoholic, and you say he likes to go out and party and so on, then for sure, he is corrupting others. And he is

19:12lying, cheating. He's stealing sympathy by promising change, which he has no intention of delivering. So you have to

19:22harden your heart when people start doing serious wrong to others. They lose all rational sympathy for

19:29the wrongs they suffered when they were young. Now, again, I understand this kid might have been harmed

19:35when he was five or 10. And maybe he's harming people who are 20 or 25. I get that there's a difference. I

19:39understand that. I do. But what he lacks in authority and control, he makes up for in repetition. So if you have

19:46parents and you corrupted two children, that's one thing. But if you're 35, and you corrupt 10 to 15, 20 year olds by

19:55advertising the party lifestyle, encouraging them to drink, mocking them if they try to lose weight, like just really

20:00harming people. Okay, so you've done less harm per individual. But instead of harming two people, you've harmed 10 to 15 or 20 or

20:06whatever it is, right? And then if you post, you know, having a great time, social media way, you fun party, party,

20:12party, right? Then you're also harming other people by advertising and drawing them into a corrupt, decadent,

20:18destructive lifestyle. So that is your, that is your life, that is your legacy. And once people have crossed

20:24over to doing direct evil, direct corrupt, corrupting others, which they cannot undo, then there's no hope.

20:33There's no hope for them. They're terminal. I've never seen it turn around. Because what you can't

20:38make restitution for, you just have to double down and keep defending. So stay away from people. They

20:44are elegant traps that spread corruption, and they cannot be fixed because they cannot undo the

20:51damage they've done. I hope that helps. Freedomman.com. Thanks, Emil. As always, talk to you soon. Bye.

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