CONFUSION

Subtitle: The expanded teaching of Charles E. Dederich, founder Of The Synanon Foundations.

People that have had addiction histories often regress to paranoid and self pity thinking.Charles E. Dederich, The Founder of Synanon, had 14 years of mental discomfort. He said that The pain is not as deep now. It doesn't incapacitate him as it used to. This discomfort in his life he now is able to accept.Chuck doesn't consider his situation unique.

A person starting a life of recovery of stopping addictions of any kind [drugs, alcohol, overeating]only to name a few, needs to look at systemizing his or her's life. Let's look at one analogy to start with.

See yourself as watching a movie. A reel of film is made up of thousands and thousands of picture frames.Each picture frame goes in and then another picture frame replaces it. The motion picture, "The Game" by Micheal Douglas will be our methaphor in looking at this recovery process. When the movie starts we see some scenes of Micheal Douglas's Fifth Birthday party. His father smoking a cigarette with his arm around his son as a photograher take pictures. You feel the happiness of the father at his son's birthday party.

Now let's look at an addictive person. If a photographer was taking a picture of this person, you might see a sad unhappy looking individuals. Unless they somehow could fool you by smiling, being well dressed and could be pleasant to the eyes.But inside they are a wreck.

So now let's go back to our movie production. We start out with this confused person. Lost touch with reality. Living from moment to moment. Seeking relief from mental, physical and emotional discomfort. Hard to watch this movie.He or she can not concentrate. the discomfort is in control of their mind. So our viewer only sees maybe 1500 frames of a million frame motion picture in two and one half hours.Compare this with a person not seeking help from addiction.

1. distorted ideas
2. limited ideas

Unable to understand what this movie "The Game" is all about. Can not understand what is really going on and at the end, our friend didn't understand the message of this movie at all. A normal person continues to go back to and the movies and see "The Game" many times. A more complete picture starts to fill in. Let's now compare this to human development during the period of latency ages 6-11, a human acts on things quickly and is satisfied. As a human comes into puberty their developing nature becomes confused. Some people back away from puberty not knowing that if they go through this they will can come out on the other side. Some people froze and didn't go back to the movie. They proceeded to go through life with this incomplete and therefore innaccurate pictures in their mind.

Chuck Dederich went back to the movie thirty years later. He started seeing 5,000 frames, then 15,000 frames. Then the pictures began to overlap, He became confused. He couldn't see anything. He lost his picture of the world. The picture wouldn't stand still long enough to see anything. The 'movie' wasn't going by fast enough.His eyeballs began to be tested beyond this point. Nothing to hang onto. The projector continues to move, what can he do about it? Nothing.

"Act As If"

Live as if you were living already for the second time. That I had lived a life that didn't work out and I am starting a new one. Chuck at the end point of abusive drinking:

1. Living
2. Thinking
3. Acting
4. Feeling
5. Mental Attitudes
6. Values
7. Ideas
8. Mental Posture
Brought him to the door of Alcholic's Annoymous seeking help. C.E.D openned his mind to listen. It wasn't mysterious.His last drink had finished the job of self perception. He had a good job, a good wife, real estate, bank account, friends, all his abilities to function normally was gone. So Chuck did as he was told. His problem was that he never grew up. Never lived life fully. Built up all kinds of resistance. Stopped worring about things. He had lived his life behind a curtain and found out it was time to catch-up. Each year life became easier. He said, learn who you are and where you are going. You will learn you are a man or women, not a kid. Faith is something you cannot turn on and off. First stepping stone to belief is faith. If camera and projector are working well, we are going to have a pleasant experience. While he's"acting as if", the camera is speeding up.

LOOKING AT THE MOVING PICTURE NOW

I. Nice background music
1. Knows who made it
2. Knows who wrote it
3. Knows who directed it

II. Projector man knows what he is doing

1. Camera is working properly
2. Sound track is in its' right place
3. Equipment & transmission is working well

He or she are going to have a pleasant experience.

A big period of confusion is in the early days of recovery. Confusion similar to a baby when it begins to howl.A pin is sticking into him and nobody rescues him. It's natural that a baby be confused. But not a person that is twenty, thirty, forty or older.

1. You get locked up
2. You fall down a man hole
3. You run out of money
4. You run out of friends

Damndest mess you could imagine, all because you stopped going to see the movie in your youthful years.In recovery, Things are happening for you.

1. You can go to the faucet and turn on the water.
2. Electricians are making sure you have electricity.
Don't be concerned about confusion. Anybody that can develop acceptance, casualness and easy-does-it-ness can go through this period, then nothing will confuse you again.When Chuck Dederich stopped drinking, He found God immediately.A year without booze, he became terror stricken; Couldn't get to work in the morning. " I found myself sitting on the steps of the A.A. club at 9:00 am when it openned and stayed till 12:00 midnite when it would closed. " I didn't even go out for my meals, I was afraid to be on the street. He didn"t know what was going happen. He had a terrible feeling of impending doom. He didn't know what it was? He didn't think he was going to get hit by an automobile. There was nobody after him. He was simply scared to death. During this period, Chuck never went to the store.Took a mental trip on the wild side. Decided to do a year of reading. Had six months of unemployment insurance to start. Walked everywhere, wouldn't spend money to ride a bus. In the past he always had a women to take care of him. He had lost his wife and home. He said, "it's the past reaches up into the future". He's had a good time for the last ten years.

"Funny how time plays trcks on us". .