Mindfulness and Recovery

I don’t mind admitting that I used to be addicted to a few different drugs and alcohol. I think I’ve been pretty honest about the complete shitshow my life was for a very long time, and I’ve tried to be as honest as I can about the reasons.

Here’s the thing though:

I do not consider myself an addict any more, I don’t consider myself in recovery and I have a dislike for all the people and programs that told me I would struggle for the rest of my life.

I don’t struggle.

Rehab and Twelve Stepping and counseling helps a lot of people. I work with them almost every day.

For the people who connect with AA and NA and find resonance there, nothing is more effective.

Many people need rehab to get their feet underneath them and gain the skills necessary to thrive outside of it. I know these interventions gave me the skills to build a foundation, but they did not give me freedom.

It wasn’t rehab or counseling or the one year Christian recovery camp where the director told me God had told him that I would be dead in 6 months if I didn’t commit myself there that brought me freedom. It was a gradual process of applying the things I had learned over many years  in rehab and in counseling and changing the way I saw myself and the world.

The thing that really changed everything for me was the slow accumulation of readings and practice in Zen and Quantum Mechanics and an obsession with the stoicism of the Samurai.

This somehow brought me to a place where I realized that my problem wasn’t with “needing” a substance, it was with the comparison to how it would feel to have one.

It’s like having an itch. The problem isn’t the sensation itself, it is with the comparison to how it would feel to scratch it. Try it the next time you have one. Instead of just scratching it, observe the sensation without comparison, without labeling it as pleasant or unpleasant. See if you can just notice it without judgment.

This isn’t necessarily important with itching, unless you have poison ivy or something else that makes it unbearable, but it is very important when the “itch” is compelling you to do things to yourself that are harmful. This can be drugs, drinking, cutting, burning, cheating, pornography, eating, just about anything. I’ve met people who pull their eyelashes out or pour bleach on their hands all day or cannot leave the house because they get caught in a loop of checking things like the stove.

Mindfulness has been helpful with all of these things, and when viewed as a lifestyle rather than a practice it can change everything.

So much of our suffering comes from wishing things were different, and it is hard to think of a better way to understand addiction than living with a constant, desperate need for everything to be different.

Give it a try. The next time you feel compelled to do something, give yourself permission to sit with it for a few minutes. Observe the sensation, see what it feels like without the labels and judgments the mind offers.

What happens when you simply experience, without comparing?

Cheating Cheaters Keep Cheating

I am speaking to a class at Texas Tech later this week, so I am cheating again. It’s what I do.

I work with a lot of addiction, even if I don’t completely buy into what the medical model tells us about it. That’s actually probably why I get to work with addiction so much. That’s also probably a whole other blog.

One of the most disillusioning things in my life was to realize “nother” isn’t a word, like in “whole nother blog”. Disappointing.

What does it mean to be addicted to something?

A lot of definitions will reference compulsive behavior, self-destructive choices, and changes in the brain. The changes in the brain thing seem to be the defining aspect for the disease/medical model of it, but the brain’s plasticity is pretty amazing. A lot of things change the brain. Exercising, meditation (in just 8 weeks!) reading, trauma, all sorts of stuff. Shit changes all the time.

We get addicted to all sorts of things. These are some of the things I see in my office in that could be classified as addictive by generally accepted definitions:

Drugs (illegal, legal and OTC)

Alcohol (it’s Lubbock)

Video games

Pornography

Sexual choices that destroy their personal life

Exercising

Internet

Netflix

Reddit

Chat rooms

Food

Other human beings

How are these things addictions? What does that mean?

In general, it all seems to be about how we prime our dopamine production, what we sensitize it to.

If something brings us pleasure, we will seek more of it.

Addictive things very much change the brain in areas that affect judgment, decision making, memory, learning and behavior.

The thing is, all rewarding experience does this. Falling in love, having an intense spiritual experience, going somewhere new, all sorts of things. We don’t call them diseases and we don’t pathologize them, even though people can start making very destructive choices because of them. Do we classify things as addictive when they are more likely to encourage poor personal choices?

Really, all of this might just be about learning something really, really well.

It might be about our brain finding something that makes us really happy (in the moment), but also brings us all sorts of negative consequences. It might be about learning how to withstand this.

Tomorrow we’ll look at how mindfulness can help us with all of this.

That’s right, extending the cheating.

Weekends Still Aren’t Real, but We Can Still Do Something with Them

I still maintain that weekends are not real things.

I think I would enjoy living a life without calendars or clocks where everything was just the continual unfolding of days and nights rather than these fake cycles.

That is funny to say, because I am probably the most time-conscious person I know. My life is lived in 50 minute segments so thoroughly that I often don’t know what hour it is, just where we are with the minute hand.

Let’s look at three easy ways to stay intentional, even on the weekend.

I think, in this day and age, our primary time thief on the weekend might be our phones. I see a lot of people who just shut down and stare at that screen when they get a break, and this is affecting us on multiple levels. I’ve read a few studies about how it is disrupting the relationship between parents and babies as the child seeks contact but cannot get it because the parent is busy making a super important comment on Instagram. The primary complaint I get from people about their spouse often involves phone time, and the same applies from parent to teen, and vice-versa.

So, one intentional thing we can do on the weekend is simply put our phones, iPads, etc. away. Says the guy who crawls out of bed and immediately gets on his computer to write a blog.

Secondly, we can do the basic things we always do: get up at a decent hour, put on clothes, comb our hair, etc. It’s amazing how much these small things help us feel better.

Lastly, have a limit to how much we lay around. There’s nothing wrong with Netflix, maybe even binging a little, but 7 hours of It’s Always Sunny may be a little too much. For me at least, it leaves me feeling slightly concussed and robbed of all energy. It is tempting, but rarely worth the consequences.

So enjoy your weekend, but make something of it as well.

I am working on restoring two axe heads my grandmother gave me, they were her father’s. It will be fun.

A Blog About Emotional Balance from a Guy Who Once Punched Through Glass Because the Front Door was Locked.

Long blog, long title.

Ok, so I feel pressure to get this right because people have been asking me about it. Maybe I should have Lose Yourself playing in the background.

There is this idea in our current culture that you have a right to your emotions no matter what they are, and that others have an obligation to respect them and make changes in their own behavior to accommodate them.

I see this as being like the pedestrian right of way. Pedestrians have the right of way, and they are allowed to step out into the crosswalk whenever they choose, but if they do this without giving a bus sufficient time to stop, they get squashed.

Rights are conferred by humans, consequences are often simply built into the situations and do not care about the supposed rights one was exercising. No amount of postmodern ideology can circumvent this.

So, emotions.

I am not sure I get to define what is appropriate and what is not appropriate here, any more than I get the final say on what is good weather and what is bad weather. I don’t even tend to look at things as good or bad or right or wrong anyway, but as skillful versus unskillful or healthy versus unhealthy.

So let’s start there.

Emotions make us human; they help color the present with more than just a logical or calculated assessment.

When I say they make us human, I mean that they provide us with the means to address everything in the human condition. Joy, sorrow, pain, excitement, grief, etc. All of that fun stuff. They are the music that tells us what kind of scene we are in.

They can also lock us into a set of actions that are not beneficial. Emotions do not assess the situation, they do not make future plans, they simply exist. They can paralyze us when we need to move and tell us to make a quick decision when we need to sit for a moment. They tell us that the way we are feeling is the Truth, that it is an accurate reflection of the reality in front of us. This is not always the case. For many, it is rarely the case.

So, do we have to choose between living like a three-year-old with a sugar high and chainsaw or Spock?

I don’t think so, and the healthiest people I know have a found a sort of middle path, where they experience their emotions, but do not expect them to be clear guides to situations.

Maybe examples will help.

A man wakes up with overwhelming anxiety. Pounding heart, sick stomach, maybe even sweating a little. His mind tells him a story about everything that is going to go wrong that day, about all the impending doom headed his direction. He is certainly allowed to feel all of this, he probably has no choice, but he can do so with an awareness that these feelings have not altered the reality that exists outside his body. His feelings of anxiety are not necessarily a reflection of anything in reality. He can maintain an awareness of this, and still feel his feelings. He can still be compassionate toward himself and maybe even take the day off to deal with things. We can be aware of our emotions as emotions, without slipping into being John Wayne refusing to get help with a broken leg.

A woman wakes up feeling very down, maybe even somewhat depressed. The world looks dark, and many of the things and people she sees everyday have a sinister undertone to them. Nothing seems safe, nothing seems interesting and nothing really feels like it matters right now. This does not mean that the value of things in her life has actually changed, or that she really doesn’t care about the things she has worked hard to cultivate in her life. She probably needs some kind of help, whether coffee with a friend, some time off, or a trip to the doctor, but she doesn’t have to invest in the idea that everything is bleak and menacing. I see people push through this all the time, and they have a much better chance of pulling up out of the depression than others.

A happier example. Two people meet, and fall in love. They can only think of each other, only want to be with each other, don’t care about anything except the person who they are in love with. This is a cool time in life, and it doesn’t come around very often, but this also means it is probably not the time to make huge decisions. And this is coming from a guy who told a certain someone that he was going to marry her on their second date. I got lucky on that one. However, this is not the time to quit a job, move in together, have a baby or get matching tattoos. It is certainly something to revel in and enjoy because it is temporary, but this temporariness makes it a bad time to make big decisions.

That’s the primary thing about emotions: they are always temporary, and won’t last more than a minute or so if you don’t feed them.

Experience them, enjoy them, let them teach you something, but remember, they come and go. You wouldn’t sell your motorcycle because of one day of rain or get rid of your shorts and skirts because of a cold snap, this isn’t much different.

As always, this is just me writing, Weigh it out and see where you stand. See what works for you. Ask yourself if your current level of emotional engagement or detachment is serving you. Then ask yourself again, is it really serving me, or just protecting me? Is it keeping me from experiencing new things? Is it running me ragged and bringing negative consequences?

Look at all of these things and make a skillful decision. You can do it.

Emotions? Gross.

I’ve touched on this in earlier blogs, so I will try not to run over the same road too much here.

Talking about emotions, and their role in our lives. Yesterday was a look at my life when I let my emotions run amuck.

Honestly, I am not sure I knew I had emotions, only what I was feeling at the moment and that it was the Truth, always and forever.

This did not get me very far.

So, I move across the state, have a baby, get sober, start school, keep a job, start to grow emotionally, start recognizing myself as an active agent in my own life. All the things smart people do way earlier in their lives.

Minus the baby.

I start seeing a difference in my life and I start enjoying my life and this fear of losing any of it emerges. I haven’t spent my life as someone people would describe as acutely aware of much, but I was acutely aware that this was my chance, and that I could lose it on something stupid. I had realized at this point that it was my emotions that had caused me so much trouble, so I think I just decided that they didn’t get to have a say in things anymore.

Logic and rationality and vaguely eastern aphorisms were going to rule my life, and that would fix everything.

Right?

Now, I like to make fun of myself (Barbara gets on to me for how much I do it in this blog), and I like to laugh at all the stupid things I have done, but there is another element here. I was scared, and a lot of this emotional control/disconnection was a place to retreat to. I don’t think I realized it at the time, but it was a defense mechanism to process so much of my life up until that point without vomiting It was a way to keep other people (and myself) from coming in and wrecking the process of getting my feet under me.

It accomplished this pretty well. I had two friends, I am still friends with them. I had one really messed up romantic relationship that, shockingly, ended in flames. I lost a lifelong friend over my hovering perspective of everything being equal and everyone needing to understand that none of this is real and things just unfold as they must.

And I got married.

I was a terrible husband for the first years of my marriage.

I really struggled with connecting with people. Falling in love with someone, oddly enough, did not fix this. I was self-absorbed, because that is what unhealthy detachment ultimately is, and I was emotionally unavailable and very difficult to live with. I was a good employee and a great student and a clear and rational counselor and mentor, but the things that can be so useful in those situations are often detrimental to us personally. I think I starved the people closest to me without knowing I was doing it. I am lucky to have married someone who was willing stick it out through my bullshit as I worked through things the smart people had sorted out much earlier.

So, emotional detachment and complete passionlessness (right click, add to dictionary, take that Microsoft) are, perhaps, not the way to go. Tomorrow the plan is to look at what I think a healthy balance of all this is. I still tend toward the emotionally-restrictive side of the field, but I really love my life and have things I am deeply invested in and passionate about. One of them is the wife who stuck it out with me, as are the sons who will have to walk out the effects of the things I believe in, for good and ill.

I suppose that’s how all this works though.