The Reason We Lie
“Humans are interesting beings; born with love, kindness, hope and an urge toward survival. These four components define us as individuals and allow us to experience what it truly means to be alive.
“However, when we succumb to drugs and alcohol, all of these gifts are taken away from us. By ourselves. Our love becomes convoluted and manipulated to where we no longer know what it means to love or be loved. The kindness we once had towards our loved ones and others turns to hate as everyone around us succeeds while we fail. Our hope diminishes as we find ourselves sliding into a never-ending pit that we have no urge to pull ourselves out of to the point where our hopelessness eats us alive. However, we still carry in the back of our minds an urge toward survival.
“Lying in its simplest form is to keep someone from knowing the truth about something. The majority of the time, someone lies because in their minds they are pushed into a corner and believe their survival is threatened. I can tell you from firsthand experience, the reason I lied was because I thought I was protecting my loved ones from the truth. I believed if I told them the truth, I would be hurting them, so my ultimate goal was to ensure they never found out.
“I assumed if they didn’t know the truth about me, they wouldn’t be hurt. This was a completely bogus, false truth I used ’to survive’ on a daily basis. After years of lying and manipulating, the only thing that hurts more than the truth about being an addict is lying to your family about being one.
“During my stay at Narconon, I learned how important honesty was, but because of my track record with lying it wasn’t an easy pattern to break. Because of my own inability to confront something I’d done, I would even lie to myself.
“We don’t want to face the truth or consequences of our actions so we build up a web of lies around us. It gets so bad to the point where we even start believing our own lies because it’s the easy thing to do. All of the lies continue to pile up on top of us and we begin to cut-off communication with everyone to try and keep ourselves from hurting them even more.
“All because of one lie regarding our drug abuse and then we aren’t able to get the help we needed and have completely succumbed to our own demons. If we had never initially lied, then our problem with drugs wouldn’t have spiraled out of control and the relationship and bond within our families wouldn’t be in shambles.
“The bottom line is don’t lie, be honest, and seek help. You will be much better off confronting your issues instead of lying about them to try and protect yourself and them. They will find out and will be more hurt. The truth always finds it’s way back around.”
Written By: Zech L., Narconon Graduate
