Recovery 2 0, p.5
RECOVERY 2.0, page 5
When the truly disturbing negative thoughts started to come, they stuck to me like flies on molasses. I could not get away from them. What are you doing here all alone? You can’t even enjoy yourself in this amazing place. Everyone else is having a blast. They’re loving it. Not you. You’re miserable … and so alone.
I had no idea why these horrible thoughts were bombarding me. I was in a beautiful city, but I might as well have been in hell.
Smoke a cigarette, Tommy, I thought. Good, I’ll go outside.
Heading toward an exit, I passed extraordinary works of art, feeling all the more insignificant. An astonishing wave of worthlessness came over me. It was horrible. I didn’t feel as if I belonged anywhere. I started to become inwardly desperate. My breathing became shallow and the chemistry of fear began to flow steadily through me.
I did what I could do to catch anyone’s attention, but it was as if I had a visible plague that everyone knew to avoid. I stared at every attractive girl I saw, trying to get her to look at me. Perhaps we would have a conversation, which would lead to a meal and then sex and then I’d be okay. But I wasn’t okay. I was having a panic attack.
I headed back to my hotel, went upstairs, stripped down, masturbated, showered, and decided to start the day again. Sitting at the edge of my bed, though, I could feel that the thoughts were not subsiding. With each passing moment I felt more and more like a loser stuck in a hotel room in a beautiful city with no ability to simply have an enjoyable day. What was wrong with me? What was I going to do to occupy myself for the next 36 hours before I headed to Greece?
A few blocks away from the hotel, there was a post office with a bank of phones inside. You could pay at the counter to call anywhere in the world. I thought of calling my girlfriend, but what would I tell her? I had no idea what was happening. But I knew I needed to talk to someone to be relieved of this madness. I started to call everyone back in the U.S. whose number I knew by heart. Maybe it was the time change or just bad luck, but no one was picking up.
Suddenly I remembered that a dear friend of mine was traveling in Europe—Germany, I thought. I called her home in New York to see if there was some way I could get her number in Germany. Her mother picked up, but unfortunately, she didn’t have a way to connect with her daughter at that point. I pressed to get any information I could, because by that moment I had made the decision that I would travel to fucking Germany if I had to in order to be with someone I knew.
All in all, I spent about 90 minutes in the post office trying to connect with someone, but I struck out. As I wandered the streets like a schizophrenic, my outward demeanor was relatively calm, but inside I was completely freaking out. I was vibrating with the Frequency of Addiction.
The next thing I thought about was food! Yes, I would go and eat a ridiculously expensive dinner somewhere, and I would drink a lot of wine at that meal and I would feel better. I found just the spot and hunkered down at a table to begin what was probably a two-hour solo feast.
There were multiple courses, all very good, and an amazing bottle of red wine, a 1977 Barolo that they decanted for me at my table using a candle as backlighting. This was culture. I felt special, relieved for a moment.
I got drunk but not drunk enough. I rolled out of the restaurant, smoked a cigarette, felt a bit nauseated, and got a cab back to my hotel. It was only six in the evening, but I was done for the day. I stripped down, got into bed, masturbated again, turned on the TV, and eventually fell asleep. My glorious day in Florence had come to an end.
THE UNDERLYING “ISM”
I would not fully understand what happened to me that day for a long time to come. Now I consider it to be one of the most important days of my life because of what it taught me about the conditions that underlie addiction.
In recovery circles, people often use the suffix of the word alcoholism, the “-ism,” to describe the irritability and discomfort that plague most addicts. “He’s got the -ism,” one might say about a person who is struggling with that underlying condition of restlessness. This feeling compels a person to reach for something to feel better. Even if you know you have a problem and want to stop, this sense of dis-ease is incredibly difficult to sit through. If you do not have help to get out of it, you will reach for whatever is around you to shift this dreadful feeling.
I spent my childhood using kinetic activity, television, movies, sports, sports trading cards, pinball, video games, and sugar-filled food to distract me every possible moment. I was always active and never alone. I only knew myself in relation to other people. What people thought of me was what mattered. I had no idea how to look inside and get to know myself. I had never developed the capacity to be alone. That day in Florence at 21 years of age was the first day I had ever been alone in my life.
Long before drugs and alcohol entered the picture, I already had a sense of insecurity and discontent. These feelings are hard to pin down in the moment. Something feels wrong, but you can’t point to anything in particular that, if it were fixed, would make you feel better. It’s like you have a feeling that you forgot something important and it’s nagging you. A friend might console you and ask, “What’s the matter?” You’ll say, “There’s really no problem. Everything’s okay.” But you know that there is something wrong and it grows in importance with each passing second. It’s a kind of madness. It’s the “-ism.”
By the time I was 21 and had that day in Florence, my sense of discomfort had grown quite a bit. I was fine as long as I had people, girls, drugs, adventures, excitement. I had been successfully avoiding the -ism for so long that I had forgotten I was still vulnerable to it.
Yet the minute I was alone, the -ism came out to mess with me. I could not sit comfortably with myself. Much later on I would realize that the day in Florence was a snapshot of a young man perfectly attuned to the Frequency of Addiction.
THE ADDICTION STORY
There is another extraordinary force that helps perpetuate all addiction. I call it the Addiction Story. This is the story you tell yourself that builds the case for continuing your addictive behavior. Every addict has one, and it must be disproved if one is to move out of addiction. Without knowing it, addicts repeat the Addiction Story to themselves internally, a negative mantra over and over again. Like a twisted shaman, they repeat the words and keep themselves locked into a certain way of being, suspended like a piece of metal equidistant between two identical magnets. This story gains momentum over time; such is the power of storytelling and myth. The Frequency of Addiction supports and is supported by the Addiction Story. One cannot thrive without the other.
The body-mind system’s search for balance and homeostasis is constant. The system seeks the middle way. If we move too far in one direction the system will make choices to move us back. However, when we find ourselves in the Frequency of Addiction, this natural move toward homeostasis is overridden. To be stuck in our Addiction Story is no different from being possessed by a demon who has taken control of the system. System override! The demon does not have your best interests in mind—it just wants to feed itself. It uses all manner of tricks and tools to continue to force the system to support its agenda. It co-opts your mind and puts it to good use by creating the most vivid, splendid, and realistic story, one so intricately woven that you will die to uphold it. Thus the machinery of denial is constructed. Denial—the constant vigilance to not know what you know. It takes an unbelievable amount of energy to keep it up. What an astonishing dis-ease addiction is!
The demon does not take over quickly. It’s not like in The Exorcist, where one day you are a child of light and the next day you are full-blown possessed. Rather, it is gradual. The invitation for the demon to come is made long before it arrives in full force, and once it is there, the addict’s recitation of the Addiction Story grows in volume and power. As Samuel Johnson is said to have written, “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”*
Once I found marijuana, I began to create my Addiction Story, gathering up evidence to convince myself (and everyone else) that my story was true. My story’s basic premise was that marijuana was a necessary ingredient for me to succeed and enjoy my time in this world. With each enjoyable escapade or warm connection I made with a fellow pot smoker, or a girl I hooked up with who smoked pot, I added to the body of evidence. This is cool. This is for me. I choose to live with this substance as a central part of my life. So, if that was the choice I made for years and years, what was going on beneath that choice? What was actually there beneath the illusory tale known as the Addiction Story? At the deepest level, the real story went something like this:
I am not getting what I need in my life and I do not know how to get it. I feel the world has let me down. No one seems to recognize or understand me. I feel confused, insecure, angry, and sad, like a victim of circumstances beyond my control. I do not trust that the earth and its inhabitants are ever going to provide what I need in this life. Therefore, I am going to take what I need by whatever means necessary. I am building a world that makes sense to me. In this world, marijuana (substitute any drug or addictive behavior here) is king. It brings me a sense of ease, joy, and laughter. It makes me feel cool and different, and it gives me a sense of myself that I love. It has given me a community of peers who get me, and the ability to attract girls. I have found something that genuinely makes me feel better and I don’t want it to be taken away ever! I will do whatever I can to maintain my story that this is the correct path for me because if I don’t, the truth is that I have no idea how to get through life without it. I am not enough. I feel powerless in this world. My heart is broken.
Given this story and all the intricacies of its tenets, it is not hard to see why it is so difficult to break through the armor-plated walls of denial. Behind every addiction is a story. And addicts are the best of storytellers. It is damn near impossible to disprove a story to someone who still wants or needs it to be true. That was certainly the case for me.
Without any knowledge of a better way, without the capacity for honest self-reflection to review my actions and their consequences for my life, having shut out all outside information (unless it directly supported my story), I started to get further and further away from myself and the things I cared most about. My Addiction Story became at once more bolstered and more desperate. It was so critically important to my ego not to let go of the story.
If you’ve ever been stuck in a dysfunctional long-term relationship, you can understand the idea of sticking with something despite the fact that it is not working. You focus on the parts of it that still work or, if those are gone, you reminisce about them and hope they will return. You explain away the parts of the relationship that do not work because you remember how things were in the beginning. “Well, things aren’t so bad,” you tell yourself. Perhaps you peer into the future and imagine yourself (a little older) without your “partner” and all you can see is loneliness and sadness. Thus, trapped in fear, you come to the unhealthy conclusion that everything is just fine the way it is, and what could you have been thinking was so bad in the first place? You look away from Truth and stay stuck a little longer.
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* Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer and man of letters, penned something similar to this in 1748.
CHAPTER 4
“FORMATIVE” YEARS
Often when I speak to people about drug addiction, they are expecting a diatribe about the horrors of advanced addiction much like what we see in movies or on TV. So it is surprising for them to hear me share stories about what it was like before it got that bad. I share about the times when it was good, when life was flowing and some of the most memorable times of my teenage years were taking place. These were my formative years, and drugs had a profound and lasting influence on my personal development. It wasn’t all good or all bad. I had great times and I had painful times. The main point is that my relationship with drugs changed over time and ultimately became unsustainable and life-threatening. In looking back, we can see where the momentum got started and learn a lot about the way addiction unfolded in my life.
ALCOHOL
I grew up on East 70th Street in Manhattan in an upscale apartment building. In the living room was a liquor cabinet that was always well stocked. Mom’s drink was Dewar’s Scotch whiskey and water. While Mom drank regularly, she was more of a good-time party girl than what one thinks of as a hard-core, raging alcoholic. She could tie one on and loved it, but it was rare that I remember seeing her truly fucked up.
There was, however, one night where she came home a bit drunker than on other nights. She came into my room to put me to bed. I was about ten years old, and I smelled cigarettes and alcohol on her breath, which was nothing new. But she was slurring her words. I realized she was a bit out of control and trying hard to conceal it.
I said, “Mommy, are you drunk?”
She slurred back, “I’m just a little tipsy. That’s all.”
The most amazing fear came over me. I wasn’t safe. My mom was not really there. If something were to happen, she would not be able to protect us. It unnerved me. She kissed me good night and left the room. As was my habit, I pulled the covers over my head in such a way that they covered my eyes but I could still breathe. For a long while now, I had been having these terrible visions of a black knight coming to cut off my head. I knew it was going to happen. I just didn’t want to see it coming. As long as I kept my head under the covers, I would be able to die without having to see it coming. Occasionally, I would be so frightened that I would bound out of bed, run to Rene’s room, and stay there until the fear passed. Rene, my nanny, was tough, but loving, and very consistent. I could always count on her.
That liquor cabinet stayed full throughout my childhood and it carried no particular weight in my mind. It was a part of my mom’s life. It was synonymous with fun, parties, and being social, but also with weirdness and fear. I didn’t hit it up until I was 13 years old, hanging, as always, with my best friend, Andrew.
Andrew and I had known each other since we were five years old, but our friendship really began in earnest when we started comparing notes about our parents and childhoods. Suddenly, I had someone to talk to who also carried heavy feelings about the way things had been at home. We shared honestly and deeply with each other from the get-go, and what formed between us was a powerful, lifelong bond. Andrew was my running partner through the brightest and darkest moments of my childhood. And naturally, he was there the first time I drank alcohol.
On the evening before Mother’s Day in 1980, Andrew and I grabbed a bottle of Smirnoff vodka and sat in my bedroom opposite each other with a glass between us and a quarter in our hands. The game was simple. You had to bounce the quarter into the glass, and if you made it the other person would drink a shot. The idea was to go quickly, of course. We were 13 but probably looked like we were 10. Light and thin, we raced our way through that bottle and opened another one within about 30 minutes. We got a bit through that bottle when the alcohol hit our bloodstreams with a vengeance. All of a sudden everything was spinning. The nausea was astonishing. Actually, it was something beyond nausea. It was a united effort from the 30 trillion cells in my body to be rid of the poisonous intruder that was now threatening my life. We had poisoned ourselves. Realizing that I was in trouble, I got up and lurched toward the bathroom.
The next thing I remember, it was morning. My pounding head was slung over the edge of my toilet, and there was vomit everywhere. My gut was burning and painfully empty. My mouth was caked and dry. I stood up, looked in the mirror. I was alive, but in rough shape. As I leaned down to drink some water from the faucet, it all came back to me in a flash. “Andrew!” I exited the bathroom and walked into my bedroom. There was Andrew lying on his back in the middle of the floor. The entire room was vomit. It was as if Andrew had actually tried to cover the whole space with it. He was unconscious but breathing. “Andrew, get up. We’re in serious trouble.” Andrew opened his eyes, thank God, and then threw up over his right shoulder.
There were four main directives in my life as a teenager—connect with people, have adventures, feel better, and find freedom. This first dance with alcohol may have qualified as a form of adventure with a friend, but as far as feeling better and finding freedom went, the experience was a failure. I never liked the feeling of being drunk. I drank beer here and there through college. Later, when I was using cocaine, I’d drink alcohol out of necessity to calm my nerves. In 1988, I spent a semester abroad in France and took a shine to drinking red wine. I liked the warm feeling it created over my whole being. That was the only positive feeling I ever got from drinking alcohol, and I imagine it is what other alcoholics are looking for in their bottles.
Reflecting back on that debacle, my first exploration with changing my consciousness, I honestly wasn’t trying to obliterate myself. I just didn’t know better. The point for me was to have an experience. I truly wanted to feel something. Feeling drunk took me out of feeling altogether. That was not interesting to me. Alcohol was not my ticket, but I was not done searching for a better way.
MARIJUANA
On a cool autumn day while hanging out with Andrew, I smoked pot before going into a bodega to play pinball and video games. About a half hour later, as I walked into the street, I felt the feeling of being high for the first time. There was a sense of release in my body and mind. It felt like I was having the first deep breaths I had ever taken in my life. A tension I had always carried was gone. It was like a vacation from it all, time out of time.
