to treatment patient, my active addiction went through many phases. Some were higher risk, more intense, and sped up the disease’s progression; others were less overtly hazardous and precipitated a slower pace of progression. I had been in one of those latter “safer” phases for about fifteen years when the onset of a chronic pain condition set me on a slippery slope that turbo-charged my acceleration toward self-demolition.
In the years prior to the onset of my chronic pain, the state of my addiction was analogous to riding a Flexible Flyer sled down a gently sloping snow-covered hill (as I did during winters as a kid growing up on Long Island, NY). There was always the slight possibility of running into a tree or the sled overturning, but the chances of serious injury were minimal. By contrast, the medically prescribed treatment for my chronic pain put me in the front seat of a bobsled speeding over an icy track.
My experience during the more perilous phases of my addiction was like that of an Olympic bobsled driver—intimately acquainted with whipping around sharp turns at dangerously high speeds while fighting to control the vehicle and maintain its balance in order to keep it from flipping over or going off the track and crashing. It’s an exhilarating and often anxiety-inducing rush unto itself, separate from, though related to the neurochemical detonation of mind-and mood-altering drugs in the brain. Each time on the track risks potential disaster, and the more runs even elite-level bobsledders attempt, the more likely it is that they will, at some point, crash.
Such crashes can be devastating, often resulting in serious injury or death. No matter how experienced and skilled we are (or believe ourselves to be), no matter how well we have our shit together (or think we do), the odds have a way of eventually catching up with us.
I found resourcefully manipulative and creatively dishonest ways of keeping that bobsled on the track past the point where it was beyond my capacity to control it. The grossly disparate parts of my life that I had worked so hard to keep isolated from one another—successful behavioral health professional, committed, loving, responsible husband and parent, and dissembling, practicing addict—increasingly began to collide. Ultimately, the walls that separated them crumbled and fell, leaving my sense of self, my family, and my career buried in an avalanche of rubble.
As the shitstorm blew up, it splattered me with the consequences of my choices and actions and my defenses started to fall apart. The psychological bulwarks that had protected me from too much conscious contact with the reality of my addiction and allowed it to continue came undone. The awareness that I was an addict could no longer be suppressed. It refused to stay put in the designated compartments of my cognitive closet and was now in my face, unleashing a torrent of mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish and demanding acknowledgment.
Nearly twenty years of post-master’s experience in counseling, many of which were in addiction treatment settings, was a double-edged sword. Being familiar with the formal criteria for “substance dependence”—drug addiction, in the parlance of the fourth edition of the bible of diagnosis, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (the fifth edition, due for release in May of 2013, will include a diagnostic category for “addiction”)—intellectually, I knew that I qualified. At the same time, my expertise continued to seduce me into believing that I was different because I was a “professional,” who, until the bitter end of my using, as impaired as I often was, still received stellar performance evaluations and demonstrated an ability to be effective with both staff and clients.
Change rarely comes easily. Making significant change in any aspect of life is really hard, as well as frightening. The greater the change, the higher the degree of difficulty and fear associated with it. Similar to physical workouts, there is a general correlation between the discomfort we are willing to go through and the outcomes we get—“no pain, no gain.” The greatest growth comes from pushing ourselves to go beyond the boundaries of the boxes of familiarity and comfort that we have constructed.
A lot of people stay in situations that are painful and unhealthy because they are familiar with the pain of their specific situation. They are well acquainted with it and know exactly how it works and what the results will be. Their current circumstances provide an incongruous comfort based on familiarity, predictability, and certainty. Even if it is horrible, they know what to expect. Usually, this dynamic operates under the surface of conscious awareness such that, even when someone knows that change is necessary and wants to change, he or she seems unable to do so.
What we know is always much more comfortable than what we don’t know, despite the potential other options may have to be better and healthier. The attraction and power of familiarity and the comfort it provides is not to be underestimated. This is the essence of the emotional cement that keeps people stuck in circumstances that are unsatisfying, unhealthy, and sometimes even dangerous, such as living situations; jobs/career paths; relationships, including those that are abusive or violent; and active addiction.
The fear of the unknown and the uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand with it is natural, normal, and understandable. Sometimes, it can be debilitating. For many people—in this case, me—change occurs only when the pain of staying the same outweighs the fear of doing something different.
After using for over thirty-five years, and using one or more substances virtually every day for thirty years, I could no longer live with drugs. But, I couldn’t see how I could possibly live without them. I was terrified by the prospect of trying to negotiate life’s emotional and physical minefields without mind- and/or mood-altering chemicals. I felt like I was being dropped into a foreign and uncharted wilderness in the middle of the night, during a snowstorm, without GPS, a compass, or even a map. I had no idea how to navigate this completely unfamiliar territory. I just knew that I couldn’t do it alone.
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned.”
THE BUDDHA
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Past experiences, especially those from childhood, are legacies that can leave lasting imprints upon us. The messages we receive growing up in our family of origin, neighborhood, and community cast long shadows over how we learned to relate to ourselves, to others, and to the world. As a result, my fundamental patterns of thinking, expressing emotion, decision-making, and behaving were established long before the onset of my active addiction.
The images are seared into my memory with crystal clarity, though everything floats in shades of gray. Even beyond the black-and-white television broadcast, the entire tableau was monochromatic like the all too common metropolitan New York day where the overcast is so thick you can feel the gloominess and the weight of the air on your skin. Although I was focused on the screen, I was also intently watching my mother watching and reacting in real time as the horse-drawn caisson bearing the body of the thirty-fifth president of the United States made its excruciatingly slow march as the centerpiece of the funeral procession.
The clip-clop of the horses’ hooves on the street surface seemed to echo off the walls of our living room. Although I could figure out from the overall aesthetic that this was a somber occasion, through observing my mother I began to sense how immense and tragic an event this was. Her sobbing filled the entire house, filling my small world. I hesitantly asked questions in an attempt to better understand what I was witnessing on TV and in the room, but even though she was there, she really wasn’t. Under her crying, she just kept repeating
