On not liking asparagus

A large part of group therapy in a substance use treatment center is “psychoeducation,” which typically covers topics like the science of addiction, medication information, and models of addiction. Absent from these typical topics are those that students would find in a college or university environment. That absence has been made on purpose. Social scientists tend to disqualify certain topics from the treatment programs in substance abuse facilities because they (appear to) have no bearing on the problem of addiction and the practice of recovery. One example of an excluded topic is epistemology, the study of how we know or come to know anything at all. I have not encountered any research discussing this specific topic within the realm of substance abuse treatment, but I would not be surprised to find comments suggesting that clients either aren’t able to fully “get” epistemological issues (because of withdrawal symptoms, assumed levels of intelligence, or lack of formal educational experience), or, if they “get it,” then the topic itself is too boring and/or disconnected from the real world of substance abuse. People who know me will anticipate that both possible objections hold no water with me, and they may even be able to hear me thinking, “Let me give it a shot. Let me see if I can make this interesting.” 
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And that’s what I recently did in a group therapy session titled, “On not liking asparagus.” I was not going entirely rogue with my decision. The National Philosophical Counseling Association stakes its theory of change on the value of shifting epistemological frameworks in order to see oneself and the world anew. To interest clients in the task at hand, which, admittedly, has nothing to do with addiction, I introduced them to this imaginary child-like statement I first encountered in Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989):

I’m so glad I don’t like asparagus because if I did then I’d eat a lot of asparagus, and that would be terrible because I hate asparagus.

And then I transposed the same logic to a more familiar topic:

I’m so glad I don’t go to NA/AA meetings because if I did, and if I started liking the meetings, then I’d be at meetings all the time.

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