More Than a Feeling
I started writing with the intention of being honest, but lighthearted in my approach to dissecting addiction and how addicts and their loved ones can better relate to, and understand, one another. I even wanted to be kinda funny. Idk. Humor isn’t really my thing. Once I started putting my fingers to the keyboard (the 2020 equivalent of pen to paper) I realized that there was a lot of raw, deep, severe thoughts and emotions being harbored in my exhausted little mind. And that’s ok. Feeling something is ok, especially if that feeling comes from your core and it is completely honest. It is also ok to feel something that has an origin that is unclear. It is also ok to feel something selfish. It is also ok to feel something that hurts like flesh being pierced by a rusty nail. Feeling all of these feelings is fine because not wanting to feel these things is what drove us to abuse alcohol and heroine and crystal meth and Vicodin and cocaine and Percocet and Fentanyl and Ketamine and Xanax and many other substances that I cannot currently think of and wouldn’t be able to spell if I could remember them. I don’t care what your drug of choice was, they are all muted browns and greens patchworked together to form the camouflage that we were all hiding under.
Terrible feelings are terrible, there is no denying that. I applaud the people that can just push forward through life and let things roll right off their back without a second thought, but I’m not like that. We as addicts are not like that. We are the kind of people who experience heartache so profoundly that we have to take a break from weeping to check our arms, legs, and abdomen to remind ourselves that we aren’t actually bleeding. I want to discourage the idea that people who feel emotions that deeply are weak. We are most certainly not weak. We may take things too personally, but we take the pain of others personally too. We are like a sponge that absorbs the suffering of others dripping all around us, and while we fight to find solutions to their problems, we tend ignore and fester in our own. As much as I hate telling harsh truths (false- I love it), there are two things I want to address upfront. Despite the promises of twelve step programs that nearly guarantee that your life will get better when you quit using, things will usually get worse first. Actually, they won’t get worse, they will simply seem worse for a period of time. This is normal. In fact, its preferable, because it vets you for the rest of your sober life. When you stop drinking or using, you put an end to the ever-spinning wheel of your constant “spinning-out.” However, you’ve also removed the one sure-fire coping mechanism that you’ve been employing for years to avoid all of your emotional and physical pain. You will be coming face-to-face with all of your worst feelings and worst fears while those assholes with the Styrofoam cups of sewer coffee try to convince you that you’ve started some daring new chapter in your life. I guess it is technically “daring” and “new” to get out of bed every morning when you feel like you have nothing to live for, so they aren’t lying.
The underlying problem is that an addict feels like they are running a marathon every day just by not using. Meanwhile, they are also confronting the hurt, trauma, and uselessness they have been shoving down for years. Also meanwhile, they are slowly realizing and accepting the horrific pains they caused others during active addiction. Also, also meanwhile, they are accumulating stiff consequences to their actions that make their life seem less than pointless- rather like a burden. I think it’s important to focus on this phase of early sobriety because this is where we lose a lot of people. An addict in the midst of a few white-knuckle weeks of clean time is beginning to see things clearly, and things ain’t pretty. It’s a wide fork in a long road- one direction leads to continued sobriety and the other returns you to active addiction. To a non-addict, I assume the path leading to sobriety looks like a field of wildflowers under a blue sky, with butterflies dizzying themselves in between, while the path to continued addiction just leads to a pine box. To the addict, the path of continued addiction is a dark, misty trail leading into a dense forest that is sketchy, but perfectly walkable. On the other hand, the path of sobriety stops abruptly at a rockface with a sign that just has a red arrow pointing up. I’m not being dramatic, that’s honestly how it felt for me and I was just giving up alcohol- I can’t imagine what it looks like to someone trying to turn away from heroin. I’m not in the habit of comparing addicts to addicts or addictions to addictions by degrees of “which is worse” because its all a nightmare- but as far as addictive properties of a substance I will compare alcohol to heroin because ITS FUCKING HEROIN!
Addicts look at the mess they will have to clean up in sobriety if they want any assemblance of a life back and its existentially daunting. Not because of laziness or utter disregard for those they have wronged- but for the helplessness and hopelessness they feel under the sheer weight of it all. There are some things that just can’t be fixed. Some bonds will remain forever broken. Some holes remain unfilled, some hearts remain unshattered, some wrongs can’t be made right. Nobody knows that more than us. The longer we stay sober, the more we suffer from the regret of it all. I lose a lot of sleep- A LOT of sleep. I’m never tossing and turning wishing I could have a drink or wishing I could have controlled myself better so I could keep drinking. Nah. No. I lay awake desperate to fix the things that I ruined by drinking. Have you ever bargained with Father Time? I have. “Can I go back three years so I can quit then?” No response. “Two years, please. Just give me two years back…” Nothing. “Fine. March. Please, God, just let me go back to March.” Silence. And let me tell you… it hurts like nothing I have ever felt before.
Doctors say you shouldn’t ignore pain because it’s a sign that something is wrong. If you drink or drug away your emotional pain, you’ll miss the indicators that tell you which part of your life is hurting and you won’t be able to fix it. Unfortunately, the hurt comes back when the bottle is empty and you are going to have to feel that ache until you do the work to fix it. So, if you are new to sobriety, and what you are feeling is an immense amount of pain, I’m sorry. … but isn’t it great to truly feel something again? The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and now you can feel where it hurts so you can treat that part of your mind, body, and soul. If that pain correlates to another person, you follow your instincts to help heal that person. I will say, even if things don’t get better right away in sobriety, you will be surprised at how forgiving people can be- if you are serious. Once your heart and your mind both jump into recovery with both feet, people will see the change and their faith in you will start to return. Believe me, that is a feeling so wonderful that you will no longer care about the pain of your past. It doesn’t fix what is broken, nor does it excuse or heal the destruction caused by your addiction, but it’s a step in the right direction. I’d like to think that if we can cause such mass amounts of suffering in our addiction without even trying, then putting effort into the “greater good” for the ones we love will slowly amount to much, much more. Then maybe, maayyyybbbeeee there will come a time when you and the ones you love will all be together and everyone will have a good feeling about it.
