iMindShift with Steve Chandler

I wished for death often (...this might be how my addiction started...)

The betrayal is astonishing. The jaw drops. Are you kidding me?

  I have to take twice as much of this stuff to feel anything close to what I felt when I first took it?

  And that's not the worst of it. (I'm talking about taking the painkiller I took while downing the tequila sunrises I downed.) The worst of it is that now that I do have to take twice as much, the hangover, or the crash, is far worse. So bad that life looks horrible now.

  Life looks frightening. Some satanic guy with a violin bow is dragging his bow across the strings of a stand-up bass violin. No, not a cello, not a cello, not at all.

  What is that music that is waking my hungover body up? Isn’t that the theme from The Exorcist?

  Why would a human being feel this horrible on this bright (all too bright) morning? The sun coming in through the window is an interrogator's lamp. Why? Because of a little liquid pleasure I borrowed from the future? What's wrong with hitting the future up? Especially when the present is such a crashing bore?

  But now, in this hungover sun, why would God have me, or anyone, even a serial killer, feel this way? Is He messing with me?

  Well, just this once I need to drink in the morning, even though I know what that makes me. It makes me a cliché. So what. I'll make myself a Bloody Mary with a very healthy celery stalk in it. Time to drink and ponder.

  Hey, maybe that celery is getting me off on the right foot. It just might turn this whole thing around, because it’s a definite move toward health.

  Despite being mainly water, celery provides a fair amount of dietary fiber! The potential health benefits of celery are starting to cheer me up as I keep drinking and chewing on the stalk. Oh, it's mainly water, I know, but so am I! I start to smile. I bet I look sneaky right now. I grab my book on raw vegetables from the kitchen shelf and see that celery can lower blood pressure, and, wait a minute, reduce the risk of cancer!

  Another sip of the drink and my mind turns sick in its thinking. If I never get cancer, I'll never get those painkillers I've heard they give out so freely when they know you're terminal. That's sad. Sad on many levels. Sad that I'm even thinking about this.

* * * * * * * *

Back then, when I was lost inside the vicious circle I describe above, I had no idea what recovery would bring me. I had no hint of the joy and freedom on the other side of recovery, or the LOVE of life, this life, that would be mine.......here is something written by David Ignatow that expresses it for me:

I wished for death often but now that I am at its door I have changed my mind about the world.

It should go on; it is beautiful, even as a dream, filled with water and seed, plants and animals, others like myself, ships and buildings and messages filling the air -- a beauty, if ever I have seen one.

In the next world, should I remember this one, I will praise it above everything.

–David Ignatow

 

Daring adventure versus addiction and suicide

My death wish project (http://deathwish.stevechandler.com) deals with primary, dramatic, life-threatening addictions like alcohol and drugs . . . but it will also look at the other addictions we get stuck on, and how they, too, can lead to suicide.

Such as the addiction to security.

(You can never get enough of what you don't need.)

David P. Goldman wrote an article recently about the massive number of suicides occurring at France Telecom.

He identified sloth as "...the mortal sin that motivated two dozen suicides in 2009 at France Telecom, the dullest place in the habitable world, where people go to do nothing and make a living at it. Twenty-four employees at the French monopoly killed themselves in the past 18 months, and another 13 have attempted suicide."

Goldman goes on to say, "... the global economic crisis has shaken the foundations of state finances in Europe, and bloated entities such as France Telecom must adjust. A consistent pattern informs the suicide notes of France Telecom workers: the fear of downsizing, demotion and reassignment is too much for them to bear. The desire for security is an addiction: the more security one obtains, the less secure one feels."

That last observation reminded me of Helen Keller's observation that "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

 

One drink is too many for me but a hundred is not enough

(These are some notes I've been making for my Death Wish project
http://deathwish.stevechandler.com)

The problem in my life starts when I think I have to add something to this present moment to make it better.

Addition is seductive. It’s a lot like addiction. The words look a lot alike. Look too quickly and you'll mistake one for the other.

How much addiction comes from the lure of addition? The myth that tells you…whispers to you…that you have to add something to your life to make it a happier experience.

Let me add this strong drink to the chemistry in my brain and body. Now let me add more drinks. (One is too many, a hundred is not enough.)

It’s simple addition! And it leads to misery.

What if I were brave enough to turn my addicted life around? What if I were strong enough to experiment with subtraction? Subtraction! People fear it. What would be left? Just me?

Adding muddies the water. . .subtracting makes it crystal clear

 Some people have what they call food addiction. Carb addiction. Addiction to bread and sweets. Emotional eating, they call it. But what if I subtracted flour and sugar from my diet? (Versus the addition of a dangerous amphetamine diet pill that races my heart and speeds up the already-circular thinking in my brain...and soon turns into an addiction.)

What if I subtracted my drug, my alcohol? What if I were brave enough? Subtraction leads to freedom. It takes these chains from my heart and sets me free.

Addition: addiction.

For the word addition to become the word addiction, I just have to throw a “c” in there. You know “c.” It stands for cocaine, or cannabis, or cognac, or cookies, or catastrophe, or chronic alcoholism.

I’m not enough. I have to add something to me…something from the outside world.

Byron Katie talks about being addicted to love and approval. There are clinics for sex addiction and romantic love addiction.

Yes I have a happy marriage but I myself am not happy so maybe if I just added this one adventurous romantic love relationship to my life.

I read the tabloids to keep up with what addiction can do to people. Famous people in celebrity rehab. All of them. Adding like crazy. Look at Oprah’s five beautiful homes!

Ben Affleck has a good marriage to Jennifer Garner (I’m putting my groceries on the conveyor belt slowly now so I can read all of this) and he decides to add to that a romantic relationship with their nanny. In the following weeks and months I read all about custody, betrayal, heartbreak, financial penalties, bitterness…..in other words a major life hangover. So much for adding.

The famous beat generation author and drug addict William Burroughs killed his wife playing a William Tell game at a drugged-up, drunken party. He was the author of the books Naked Lunch and Junkie. He was actually a brilliant man, and never so brilliant as he was in his later years when he was clean and sober and said that there wasn't anything, any feeling, any high, that you could get on drugs and alcohol that you couldn’t get without drugs and alcohol.

And that’s because that treasure of good feelings is already in you. The drug (and I always include alcohol as a drug) just breaks down the barriers. It releases what’s already there. It took me awhile, some years clean and sober to find out that he was right. But you can go faster than that. Through meditation and working with others and an ongoing spiritual practice you can find out faster than I did that you can have an even happier life than you did at your best drunken moment.

I used to believe I had to add drugs and alcohol to my system to feel the things I wanted to feel. If I wanted to feel more relaxed or more courageous or more confident in a crowd of people, it was never going to happen unless I added something to my system. I did get (most of the time, at the beginning, until it turned really dark and desperate) the feelings I wanted. But they were all-too temporary.

But as Burroughs found out, the drug itself doesn’t directly produce the feeling. It just removes the barriers in the brain to the treasure that’s already there. And there are other ways to remove those barriers, thank God and the people who will help you.