The Addiction of Victimhood

Dennis Prager adopted me at birth. At face value, I was set up for a successful and happy life. I was raised in a loving, values-driven, God-centered home. But in my teens, I started drinking alcohol and using drugs. I descended into years of self-destruction, broken relationships, and rock-bottom despair. I spent a lot of time blaming everyone but myself as my life fell apart.

But I didn’t get sober because the world gave me an apology. I got sober when I stopped waiting for one.

As it turns out, victimhood is just as addictive as drinking and drugs. It may even be worse. Once the victim mindset takes hold, the comfort it offers is hard to shake. A victim never has to take accountability. It’s always someone else’s fault: some government, some group, some policy, or some injustice committed by people who died centuries ago.

Look around today for similar symptoms: a hunger for recognition, moral superiority, a shortage of empathy, and an obsession with the past. Many on the Left have turned victimhood into a weapon, and have created an underclass of people told they are inescapably doomed by circumstances outside their control. Tell someone enough times they can never escape their circumstances, and why would they try?

I know firsthand because I lived it. For years, everything was somebody else’s fault, never mine. I didn’t even realize I was deflecting blame. That is the cruelest trick victimhood plays: Live in it long enough, and you start to believe it.

But ultimately victimhood is a choice. Real victims of real unfair circumstances exist. They deserve compassion. But that is different from adopting victimhood as an identity. Countless people have pulled themselves out of genuine hardship and built extraordinary lives. The choice remains: Step up and change your life, or retreat into blaming the world.

One moment crystallized this for me. In the depths of my addiction, I traveled to Zimbabwe on a service trip. I watched children happily kick a soccer ball around a dirt field without shoes, despite living with hardships I could barely imagine. I didn’t turn my life around on that trip. But watching people who had next to nothing find genuine joy stayed with me.

That trip taught me what almost always travels alongside a victim mentality: ingratitude. It is the inability to recognize what you have because you are fixated on what you lack. Gratitude doesn’t erase hardship or excuse injustice. It does, however, remind you that your circumstances do not have to become your identity.

You begin reclaiming your life the moment you reject victimhood and refuse to let a past injustice define you. But there is a darker side. People who feel victimized often project that feeling outward from a place of moral superiority. It goes something like this: Accuse someone of being immoral or unfair while positioning yourself as righteous, and suddenly you don’t have to argue on the merits. Because I am a victim, I am correct. Society is wrong.

We see that mindset in institutions that divide people into categories of oppressor and oppressed, and in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs that prioritize immutable characteristics over merit. Our culture too often rewards victimhood. The people who proclaim it loudest receive a lot of praise and affirmation. But praising victimhood instead of helping people move beyond it is not compassion. It is enabling.

The great hypocrisy is this: True empathy means helping people, not co-signing onto the choices and habits that keep them trapped. Coddling someone’s victimhood isn’t kindness. It is the same kind of enabling that kept me drinking long after everyone around me could see where I was headed.

There is another way: responsibility, accountability, and self-governance. The modern Left too often suggests deflection, absolution, and blame. 

I got sober when I stopped waiting for the world to apologize, and started taking my life back. That choice is available to anyone willing to make it.

And no one else can make it for you.

Aaron Prager is host of “American Recovery” at PragerU.

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