Now or Never?
“Let’s get together to fight this holy Armageddon, for when the man comes, there will be no more dues. Have pity on those, whose chances grow thinner, for there ain’t no hiding place from the Father of Creation. Believe me.” – Bob Marley’s “One Love”
Introduction
We have written a series of works that are more academic for the purpose of solidifying our stance on the current state of psychology, medical model, and healthcare, as it relates to addiction, dissociation, healing, and recovery. We ultimately desire for this to be the last chapter in this meta-cognitive analysis, but know that as this information opens up to the world there will be more questions than answers.
As we start our journey to our next steps (O’Brien, 2025), what strikes us now is that what have to educate other professionals on what we have to come to know as the only solution left for man and womenkind to actually do: recovery. What is surprising is that they are unfamiliar with the moral implications of having a profession based in recovery; even worse, moral character clauses for legal professionals (HERE). The only way that we can see to educate them is by healing together as they walk the path of becoming a wounded healer (O’Brien, 2025a).
Our gym-style and spa-based business embodies our trauma-focused, dissociation-informed stance and recovery-focused approach. Based on our emerging research that stands ready to educate on undiagnosed addictions (O’Brien, 2023), we want to be able to show the way back insanity. While we can appreciate and respect what has already been created professionally, we must see a new path forward that incorporates an understanding of spiritual developmental, mindful dissociation, and addiction-informed models of care. Because their use of language represents who and where their implicit bias comes from (HERE), we must see the new path emerging. Tying their use of language, and which part of them is speaking or presenting their argument, speaks to their personal benefits (job security) and desire to maintain their status quo. When this language is what have to follow, when we do we get a subdued population that is dependent on technology, entertainment, government, and others professions to do what we all need to learn how to do for themselves.
What we observe as our lived experience of doing addiction research with people who have been addicted (O’Brien, 2023a) is that the game of semantics between the definitions of the words used and the words actual meaning depends on different factors (presented in order for obvious reasons): First, the implied and learned definition of the word; and second, their personal lived experience with the supportive words used AND third, the intended use of the word that the system that they came from (e.g., the societal developmental age of that system or society). When the observer interprets the meaning of the words that the speaker has chosen to say, they are also reading the body language, tone, and cadence of how and who is saying it.
Here are some examples to consider when trying to understanding the difference between and the observer and the observe, definition and meaning, and who (what perspective or part of self) is saying it: belief and faith, permanent and eternal, consequences and punishment, more and better, incentives and manipulations, impulse/compulsion and intuition/instincts, addiction and dependence or attachment, and me, you, and I. We would also have our readers explore their definitions of therapy and treatment versus what healing means (O’Brien, 2024a).
Orientation
Based on our observations that what is being labeled as addiction (disease) is dissociation (unconscious choice) or that dissociation (disorder) is addiction (cause/effect) or that the body is the unconscious. Moreover, what if the profession of psychology is doing to the people what religion has done to them historically (HERE), with the same means of how they did it with word play (HERE). What if psychology is doing what is being done to them by the medical model (HERE) that is legally and insurance-based (HERE)? What is being sold as healthcare isn’t meeting the basic definitions of the compound word. Let alone a respectable profession.
By installing a false sense of hope that their science works or cures, when it is really innate healing that is occurring (O’Brien, 2023b), what is being reenacting and is repeating is the type of relationship that the adults had to their parents (e.g., doing what was done to them). In their own thoughts and beliefs, they believe they are doing what is right and citing their children as the reasons why they are doing them. When future humanity instead of their children comes first, then humility could be seen to have set into the psyche. In a system of people fighting for the right to compete with each other’s illusion of themselves, the audience stands in silence wondering what kind of show they are at and why they spent money on a ticket. How does one know how old the questions are? If they have been asked before, don’t they already have their answers?
What is mentally healthy in the norm does not mean that it is healthy historically and psychology. How are professions still allowed to exist as a pseudo-moral business in an unethical and addicted socioeconomic system (society of business and economy culture)? In a country where the government was funded on the principle of separation of church and state and legally requires that citizens overthrow the government at their own expense and lives. Civil society says to do it through diplomatic and civil means, but that is on paper of course. In reality, everywhere is war. What truly motivates people to change? What does the research say? What change is needed to bring about a recovery of humanity?
Or another way to see it… Do they cross that line again, again, and again? Do they continue to do it despite the mounting and persuasive evidence? Do they ignore their denial? Do they provide poor excuses? Do they change or switch back and forth (democrat then republican)? Do they not live by their values? Do they avoid accountability and responsibility? Do they not get quality health insurance for life and we don’t? Do they poison us with chemicals in the food? Do they deny our claims for care? Do they create more work for their own benefit then it is worth? Who the fuck are “they” to not have an accurate and operational definition of addiction and be in charge of industrialized psychology, mental health, and human resources?
Reorientation
Recently former President Joe Biden passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). If we were to look at this as an historical example, we can ask why it took this long, why he asserted it had passed then as citizens, we can find our answers on conditions needed to make real change. We need to look at, what is required to get reasonable laws updated and changed, and the juxtapose this with how private citizens behave in their public professions. What appears to the historically informed citizens as an obvious solution, is what they are living dissociated from. What does it take for the reasonable and necessary changes to be made in our society and daily life after a disastrous debate performance and a lost election? But since Biden just honored the Grateful Dead in Washington D.C., maybe he could have legalized psychedelics on his way out instead of the ERA only, but we doubt that could have happened considering the inability of the government to break its dependence on Big Pharma money that citizens are supplying. Instead, he passed the ERA on his way out (was first presented to government in 1923). Legalizing the equality of women when they thought they already had it is the next closest thing to legalizing psychedelics; because if we know women, they embody what psychedelics are and will help bring about the age of change needed (HERE), if they can get out of their own way (HERE). A reminder to the women’s movement, this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius…
Data
If we, those who identify as being in recovery, ignore that Bill Wilson’s spiritual journey started with a mild psychedelic (bella donna), then if our dissociation-informed recovery healer profession is anything it is reclaiming what has always been ours. What the release of the endogenous DMT from the pineal gland right before we die suggests is that the body keeps the score in the pineal gland. Therefore psychedelics have medical value. If the medical model could stop mislabeling customers, maybe healing would more readily happen, but in this day and day age, what are the uses of historical context and traditions?
Traumas that bring one close to death and are basically forced experiences of enlightenment because once one almost dies and sees beyond the veil of death. Once seen, there is nothing else left to conquer or truly see. You will not know until you are there, but psychedelics offer a means for mind expansion into the body – not an ego death. So dramatic! Your body is your history and it is made up of memories. After an overwhelming experience, emotional memories can be cleared away, sometimes for a moment and sometimes for a lifetime. This is the spiritual knowledge and data that you have been looking for – or at least some part of you has. If you and your parts don’t know, at least, now they do now.
Discussion
What is “it” that is dysfunctional in this professional dissociative family system? Is it the legal application of poorly-performing science or is it a system that believes that it is too big to fail? How can a system that depends on abusive tactics to get what it wants and needs be a viable example of how things should be professionally done? Why is committing scientific atrocities on its own citizenry or permitting others to do it valid? We would argue that it is for the same reason as the answers are the same reason why neglect, emotional, developmental and attachment, and verbal abuse are not considered qualifiable for Criteria A in PTSD (e.g., sexual or near-death (vicarious or direct)). This is the same reason why the field of psychology created personality disorders without taking into account dissociation and addiction as transdiagnostic (O’Brien, 2023a).
Conclusions
Dancing around the elephant in the room, we acknowledge that a good death is all that is left for any of us to achieve. Human euthanasia and compassionate end of life are an interesting concepts to present as data, but why do we not allow people to kill themselves directly while permitting them to do so indirectly or slowly?
Implications
If there is someone better at something you want to do, then why do you want to do it? Where does that desire come from? Why do we need to have more “better”? Isn’t everything already a collective conscious? What do these imply to the reader who is only looking into books for their answers?
Future Directions
We realize we are saying the quiet part out loud and committing professional suicide is not pretty, but we know that the developmental age of our readers is varied psychologically. We reason that it is the same as the general population or everyone is addicted to not saying the quiet things out loud and keeping things the way they are. We understand the consequences of this reasoning and logic, but we understand that it is not ours solely, but what recovery would say if it had the chance. This reason also speaks to the questions that prisoners, family members of prisoners, and marginalized community members have been asking directly, but are told that “this is just the way things are.” Sooner or later, we all realize that we are all historically following someone else’s orders, wants, and needs.
References
O’Brien, A. (2023a). Addiction as Trauma-Related Dissociation: A Phenomenological Investigation of the Addictive State. International University of Graduate Studies. (Dissertation). Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023b). Memory Reconsolidation in Psychedelics Therapy. In Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2023c). Path of the Wounded Healer: A Dissociative-Focused Phase Model for Normative and Pathological States of Consciousness: Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024a). Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024b). Diagnostic Privilege: Meta-Critical Analysis. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 2. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024c). Meta-Critical Analysis: The “Science” of Pseudoscience. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and the healing profession as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Appendix 3. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/courses/addiction-as-dissociation-model-course/
O’Brien, A. (2024d). Moral-Ethics. In Healer and Healing: The re-education of the healer and healing professions as an advocation. Re-educational and Training Manual and Guide. Chapter 14. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2024e). Path of the Wounded Healers for Thrivers: Perfectionism, Altruism, and Ambition Addictions; Re-education and training manual for Abusers, Activists, Batterers, Bullies, Enablers, Killers, Narcissists, Offenders, Parents, Perpetrators, and Warriors. Re-Education and Training Manual and Guide. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025a). American Made Addiction Recovery: a healer’s journey through professional recovery. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute. Retrieved at woundedhealersinstitute.org/
O’Brien, A. (2025b). Path of the Wounded Healer’s: EMDR, Brainspotting, and Psychedelic Care Open Source Training Manual. Albany, NY: Wounded Healers Institute.
