The Prodigy's Firestarter helps understand how self-destructive tendencies can be addictive – Karyn McCluskey

As the end of the month approaches, how many of you will have broken your promises to change?
The late Keith Flint of The Prodigy (Picture: Yui Mok/PA)The late Keith Flint of The Prodigy (Picture: Yui Mok/PA)
The late Keith Flint of The Prodigy (Picture: Yui Mok/PA)

Will you have reached for the wine, breaking your Dry January intentions? The end is so near, within touching distance. But. There are so many reasons to change your mind, to set yourself on a different course.

A number of years ago, I supported a man who went to huge lengths to change his life. He was navigated through this by a range of amazing people who walked beside him.

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This process was about to lead to a job and a relatively substantial sum of money. In the last two days before he was about to take this up, he made some catastrophic choices and we were left aghast.

Why, when he was so near achieving everything he had worked so hard for, did he self-destruct in such an intentional way? I spoke to a colleague who works in homelessness who said, “Aye, pressed the f*** it button”.

Despite the profanity and my delight in the phrase, there is something serious in this propensity in so many people who I come across in my line of work to press that button.

People who believe that they are not worthy of good things happening to them, not worthy of the relationships that they have and that history must repeat itself and things will go wrong for them and they will be back where they started. The end result of this way of thinking is to self-sabotage.

At the heart of much of this is neglect in their younger lives, post-traumatic stress, low self-esteem, low self-confidence and isolation, often compounded with a history where substances may have been used.

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Often we have no idea what these were or what they meant to that person, but what we see as bystanders is the manifestation of that unresolved pain and self-loathing – the seemingly inexplicable decisions they make with their finger on the button.

It’s incredibly complicated to unpick and there are numerous tomes written about it from ones by Sigmund Freud to psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s book about trauma, The Body Keeps The Score.

The ‘f*** it button’ is pressed when people become overwhelmed by a wave of fear. It’s fear they may fail or, sometimes even worse, fear they may succeed – mitigated by that self-destructive behaviour even before they have had the opportunity to try.

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I’ve come across this so many times in my career – women, men and young people who have been caught in the justice system and believe that they don’t deserve something better, that their previous life choices (if you can call them choices) mean that they are the undeserving. It’s so much easier to push people away, to stop before you even start.

Sometimes it feels better to go back to what you think works for you – anything just to stop the pain. The Prodigy got it right when they described the “fear addicted” in Firestarter and, like any other addiction, it is a long road to recovery.

Karyn McCluskey is chief executive of Community Justice Scotland

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