The Heart of the Three-Headed Hydra

The Struggle is Real No one asks to experience trauma, mental health problems, or addiction — never mind all of these things together. Wrestling with this Three-Headed Hydra is a life-altering and life-defining experience. While all of us have different experiences with this beast, our stories have painful parallels. Typically, our struggles go on for years or decades — sometimes even a lifetime. We lose friends, family, opportunities, and dreams. We feel ashamed, broken, alone, and abandoned. At our best, we are desperately fighting our way through life. At our worst, we are wishing for death. This is a war of many battles and countless casualties, and not all of us will survive. Some of us will lose our lives through violent deaths of homicide or suicide. Others will die from accidents or overdose. While tragic, at least those of us in these groups die relatively quickly and painlessly. Far more of us will have our lives slowly choked out as our brains and bodies are ravaged by addiction. Although the Three-Headed Hydra seems to want us dead, it will settle for our misery. Even if we are somehow able to arrest our substance abuse to save our bodies, this monster will savage our souls if we don’t confront it. When Henry David Thoreau wrote about lives of "quiet desperation," he put words to the lived reality of the millions of people who escape one head of the Hydra but never come to terms with the other two. Countless people who finally free themselves of drugs and alcohol still fall victim to the vicious self-loathing and isolation that are the hallmarks of living with the Hydra. Now for some good news: While the stakes are incredibly high, this is a fight you can win. Never before in history has there been so much understanding of addiction, trauma, and mental illness. The proven success and accessibility of 12-Step programs, combined with a more enlightened approach to mental health, mean that those of us in this fight for survival have a much better chance than the generations before us. We have the tools. We have the knowledge. But more importantly than either of these is our willingness to grapple with this beast — because it is intimidating. Like Hercules in his battle with the Lernaean Hydra, we are in an epic fight for our lives against a monster with the ability to kill us. The good news is there is a way out. The bad news is no one is coming to save you. You will have help along the way, but in the battle with the Three-Headed Hydra, you must be your own hero.