Addiction

Addiction. Don’t let me get started but at this moment I can’t stop myself. I’ve been watching someone loved dearly by parents, sometimes more than life itself, gradually over the years get sucked into the vortex of drugs. If you have an addictive personality, suffer enough unaddressed losses in your life and are depressed, you’re gonna latch onto something with huge distracting and pleasurable properties.

STREET CRED

As a recovering alcoholic myself I know all about the mental con job one gives themselves to rationalize more use on a daily basis to justify the habit. Years ago after I first got sober I used to joke about my own vulnerability commenting “I could be addicted to paper clips if it distracted, soothed and quieted the raging torturous thoughts racing through my brain.” Suffice it to say, I know of which I speak! I have “street cred” you might say.

Anyway, watching a loved one slowly-but-surely get sucked down into the same patterns is unbelievably painful. Of course I know they have to “hit bottom” before they’ll stop. But as someone very close, who is precious beyond imagining, for any parent it’s like watching a child play with matches or a razor that you cannot stop; you’re prevented from rescuing them, held back by the knowledge they can only save themselves by admitting what they’re doing.

DENIAL

Sadly, denial has its own addictive properties. It fuels “powerlessness”, and I swear, the hole often just gets deeper. The first step in addiction recovery principles is “I admitted I was powerless over X (insert drug of choice here) and my life had become unmanageable,” and I submit, it is the very hardest one. But with the first whisper of it, even if you don’t entirely believe it initially, it brings the prospect of hope, a shard of greater oxygen fueling life.

IS IT DEPRESSION?

Much has been written about mental health acknowledgement and treatment options fueled and exposed by the Pandemic, an odd and beneficial outcome in America. That’s the macro perspective. The micro is trickier when it’s a person’s individual life. Shedding light on someone’s problem is touchy at best, alienating at worst. The denial and “digging in” process often intensifies. That’s what I did. That’s what we all do, no matter the drug of choice. Bizarrely, one gets “hooked” on the denial and rationalization itself. Turning to a legal “drug” like alcohol, pot or pills to treat one’s depression, becomes the avoidance of choice to mask the deeper unaddressed grief and sense of alienation.

GRIEF

Tears are streaming down my face as I write this, resurrecting personal sorrow and loss from traumatic events in my personal life. I swear, acknowledgment of “going there” releases residual pain even now. And that is a good thing as purging residuals releases more things stubbornly held. Bizarrely, grief can be a gateway to acknowledgement even though grief at its extremes can be destructive when resisted. But here’s the thing: grief when authentically expressed innervates a gateway to liberation.

Sadly, the most dangerous aspect of the addiction spiral has its own addictive properties as you gradually seek the bottom, accelerating towards it to stop it all. Oddly, you’ll do anything to hit that bottom, like driving hideously fast on a country road knowing the danger to life and limb as you accelerate. You rationalize reasons for the use as well as the escalation. But there is something somewhere inside incredibly deep that slowly suggests you really cannot continue this way. 

LIBERATION

The lying and massive self-deception (not to mention, the pain) suggests a  crash without being entirely conscious of it. For some that results in mortal death. For most, it’s an in-your-face-come-to-Jesus moment that forces self-honesty because you really can’t stand what you’re doing to yourself, let alone the relationships  left damaged on the side of the road of those you love.  

Since no one can stop a particular loved one’s process from playing out, there comes a time when the only course of action is to exit stage left since a parents’ confrontation has little to no positive impact in the initial owning of the addicted’s denial stage. Yet it is not all dire. We must all take responsibility for our life’s choices and actions. Watching a loved one released to the only powers that can save them initially—themselves—God’s speed to anyone marching to their ultimate salvation.

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Learning Is As Learning Does

Good God! What a year, what a lifetime. In so many ways I’ve been incredibly blessed throughout. Trouble in the Middle East and what feels at times like a narrow escape out of it. Surviving my dysfunctional family of origin with reasonable wit, occasional depression, and believe-it-or-not optimism (which at times seems like a friggin curse!) A dozen moves in childhood that left me feeling nestless!

Fast Forward To Now

So here we are, here I am, entering 2023 with a bang or a whimper. I can’t decide what mood to settle on, instead lurching uncontrollably back and forth between the two states.

I won’t lie; I could but what would be the point?! I’ve always been too transparent even to myself. I’ve had a hard road these last few years with health issues, surgeries, occasional “ah ha” moments followed by self-doubt and dare-I-say again, optimism! At heart, I am a forager for the puzzle. And the lesson!

Why won’t it leave me alone; that pesky perverted instinct or drive to unmortify things, look for the lessons regardless of emotional states I inhabit, contained within an insatiable hunger to learn? I insist on looking for what I need to know. If I can’t find it initially, I wait (sometimes patiently, sometimes not.) Occasionally, I make it up, inventing a lesson, however small, until a greater insight arrives. I’m just that restless, driven.

What on earth do other people do with their heads if not trying to figure out what things are for, from personal and world events to good and bad people, triumphs or tragedies alike? What their meaning is to them subjectively or not, that deeper meaning? Growth is everything, why else would we be here?

Everybody Loves Raymond

I’ve been mainlining Everybody Loves Raymond recently for comic relief; you know, that sitcom of years ago that replays on one of the streaming channels. There’s so much wisdom besides insatiable humor, in most of the episodes. One I recently saw had the little girl Ally asking her dad (Raymond) why does God send us to earth? Why do we come here? Let that hang in the air for a second.

Of course Raymond, being the perpetually struggling simpleton that he is, actually has the most amazing and uncanny ways of learning himself, whether it’s through his wife, Deborah, or flat out events that demand he address issues in some way by their very existence, all by himself like a big boy. It seems he’s helpless on his own, but with the help of others (ding, ding, ding) including his family, which is dysfunctional as any in America, serves as the grist for helping him along to new insights, one way or the other.

When he goes to Deborah, the insight seems simple but profound. She tells him God just wants us to be with other people, to not be alone. Implied in that of course is the very earth school that is serving Raymond through Deborah in the whole crazy clan of his family. The metaphor is apt in the comedy and also apt for everyone’s individual life contained therein, subtle and obvious both.

All In This Together

Everything I see in the world around me is about growth, death, regeneration, and furthering more growth (evolution perhaps??) but all from learning some nugget, a component atom in the larger molecular structure of the small and big Self and the community it lives in. From a plant as a simple expression to holocaust survivors or the war in Ukraine; from the bottom of the food chain to the top. But always, always within the context of others.

My Own Classroom

Having been blessed to know a Survivor, and write about his life, Bennet mirrored that from his experience. One of my favorite speakers is Esther Perel. Both of her parents survived the Holocaust, which, of course was only but brilliantly the ginormous earth curriculum that they “grew up out of.” 

Perel describes other survivor friends of her parents, after creating new lives post-liberation, chatting about their concentration camp experience minus the drama of the tragedy but within its milieu. Instead, their intuition was to glean their own sustenance from it to forge new individual selves, transcending it, knowing somehow, some way they are greater than the sum of its parts, as a tribe which by definition includes “together.”

An Uncanny Therapy

In the very act of asking one another things like ‘whatever happened to so-and-so’ from camp ‘such-and-such’, their experiences become unmortified from the larger tragedy itself. While their experiences were gigantically large, I have my own Rosalie lessons as paltry as they seem in comparison, but included in an environment of people parts (as well as body parts.)

Fast Forward the Physical

My body challenges have surely demanded I pay attention to and learn what I need to know to grow emotionally, psychologically, but especially spiritually. It is my curriculum if you will, but too often have resisted. How many times have I spouted this little mantra while actually living from that belief and heavy identification of mySelf as “the body,” and therefore separate from others. My belief in “others as teachers” is heavily challenged.

For whatever reason, I am faced with more bodily breakdown, decay and surgeries, and cannot help but intuit this remains an opportunity for learning something I need to see but have heretofore denied.

The Excitement of the Drama 

It doesn’t need to be so hard, but we—I— insist on having tragedy even in the face of incredible gifts, because we—I—misunderstand the purpose and value of things including tragedy. Tragedy as well as comedy is a learning device. Just ask Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy can surely attest to. It (the war) may be couched in an oversized drama, but his drive to transcend it is clear, palpable. It is preceded by comedy, his earlier life’s work, but for whatever reason, a different “energy field” of tragedy has been required for him.

And so in an odd way, like Ally, Raymond, Zelenskyy, Holocaust survivors—pick a category—my seeming tragedy of yet more body breakdown is no tragedy at all. Nor is it a comedy either. It simply serves as a learning device, a vehicle for communication. Instead, it strikes me as I am greater than the sum of any of my individualized body parts. If I believe I am spirit as the real me—I must view “me” through the whole of those folks I know and love…and sometimes even those I don’t. Whenever I ultimately do leave the planet, I’m not hauling this body thing along with me. Rather, I will be in a field of spirit—not woo woo, mind you—but from that field of love which is the only true “me” there can be.

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All Of A Sudden

How is it that one can feel such gratitude in a moment followed by immense sorrow? The whole slow leak of a body, and dare I say, perceived sense of human spirit, is almost interesting when you just observe it. And yet to be swallowed in a moment’s mood can be equally disorienting, confusing. 

Is the body’s slow disintegration a glorious opportunity to reflect, refine, recover from one’s earthly errors? Can it be that it’s golden in the very fact of mature preparation for one’s earthly departure? I simply cannot know at this juncture.

REFLECTION IS AS REFLECTION DOES

What I do know is that for me at least, reflection is unavoidable when backed into a proverbial corner. How others approach their own valuations of a life, I cannot know. But for me, it nags at times, insisting on some sort of owning and accountability. While I’d really rather not do it, somehow it seems unavoidable.

“Don’t look away” my spirit whispers. How horrible and wonderful I see I’ve behaved at times. How complex the “human” experience is. Or should I say how complex the soul’s expression is in having a human experience!

Are repeated lifetimes a mere opportunity for growth? Can earth school afford such incredible opportunities? A nun once told me the early Church used to “believe” in reincarnation, but then later scrapped it for the concept of Purgatory. 

While nearly disbelieving, I looked it up and low and behold, Platonic Christians early on incorporated a belief that included physical rebirth as part of spiritual rebirth. For me, a continuation of a soul in some “form” is wholly consistent with everlasting life. How could it not be?

AND YET

We humans are such literalists in so many ways, trapped in duality — a this OR a that — is a mental juggernaut. It seems we have been binary thinkers long before computers. And regardless, of what the rightness of one’s chosen belief system is, I’ll leave it to the great beyond to inform me later where the truth actually lies.

In the meantime, an accounting or reflection of a life is what is most valuable to me and dare I say, inescapable. How others live “on the inside” I do not know. What seems important is to take responsibility for and learn from one’s errors in life. But this process does not include condemnation, rather must include reflection, forgiveness and an “aha” opportunity to see more clearly— a pathway out of seeing “at first dimly but then face to face.”

AND SO I SIT

And so I sit in this discomfort, reflecting on a life where I have made errors, accounting for those I’m prepared to see, forgive and forgive again without condemnation but instead, transcend to a greater understanding. In the end of course, the process for me includes sorrow, an “I did not know any better” perception that resulted in pain inflicted on myself and others. As my old friend Bennet used to say, “I did the best I could.” Or put another way, I didn’t know any better at the time!

It seems a mature regret is what is warranted, nothing more. After all, if I “crucify myself,” savage myself for not knowing better, is that not incompatible with compassion and forgiveness so prevalent in the New Testament, Jewish and and other Eastern traditions?

Whether I live 20 more minutes or 20 more years (highly unlikely,) it seems inescapable that sorrow and gratitude can coexist as part of this reflection, this accounting. How else can meaningful recompense occur? Yet the sorrow must be transcended in the end. 

The body, this communication device, this temporary container for the soul, is a miraculous machine when working well, one we take for granted. But I have come to believe in the weirdly divine gift of its slow demise as well, one that facilitates reflection and accounting however messy it may be.

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I CONFESS

I confess to loving nature.

I confess to killing ants!

I confess to walking past dirt in my house, just leaving it. For days!

I confess to letting some spiders hang out in my tiny house and violently stomping on others that look ominous.

I confess to being selective.

I confess to being small minded.

I confess to being small hearted.

I confess to being compassionate, at times to my detriment.

I confess to being irritable.

I confess to being impatient.

I confess to being frustrated with slow thinkers.

I confess frustration with stupid people!

I confess to being egocentric all too often.

I confess to giving up too soon sometimes.

I confess to hanging in there when I shouldn’t.

I confess to being judgemental.

I confess to acting like a five-year-old in thought, word and deed.

I confess to recovering from Childish behavior—mostly!

I confess to cowardly behavior. 

I confess to being occasionally brave. (Sometimes my bravery is accidental.)

I confess to laughing at humanity.

I confess to weeping for humanity.

I confess to being small minded.

I confess to being big hearted on occasion.

I confess to being a sap.

I confess to being greedy at times—I want that last cookie for myself!

I confess to judging myself harshly.

I confess to forgiving myself, selectively.

I confess to being intolerant at times.

I confess to being too attached to the body when I know that’s not what I am.

I confess to being self-indulgent.

I confess to self-deprivation at times.

I confess to being a recovering drunk.

I confess to occasionally bragging about it!

I confess to a wicked sense of humor.

I confess to humility—(she said, bragging again!)

I just like to confess. My spiritual weight loss program.

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Finger Karma

My whole adult life I have given every one of my sisters — three in total—the finger. Sometimes as a group but just as often, individually. (I have never given my brother the finger because he’s older than me and has lethal weapons. Plus, I don’t really think he would find it humorous one bit.) But sisters? It’s one of the fun, cheeky things I shock their straight, proper selves with. They’re almost prim!

Our mother was always quite proper too. Not exactly priggish; just proper. It took a lot to make her laugh and God knows, the finger would definitely not have been the gesture she would have fancied. She never swore, used bad words, or even said anything unkind about anyone. Such was the environment I came from. Hence, my itch to harmlessly violate primness required expression from time to time. A middle child syndrome, to be sure.

OUTSIDE THE TRIBE 

There are many times in my life that I’ve wanted to give other people the finger and had I chosen to do so, maybe all of that use would’ve kept the joints limber and therefore insulated from arthritis. Needless to say, co-workers at some of the jobs I have held throughout my life, let alone drivers in Los Angeles and the San Diego area, would have not appreciated it. LA in particular could’ve been downright dangerous.

But the finger has been a kind of running joke at picture-taking time with my sisters, and occasionally my son. Sort of a lingering adolescent rebellion against all things within the confines of puritanical behavior. (The first time my daughter-in-law saw me give the finger, she was horrified. My son explained to her it was an inside joke but she didn’t sound convinced.)

KARMIC CONSEQUENCE 

In any case, I think karma is having its way with me because in only my middle finger do I have some serious osteoarthritis going on. All of the other fingers and thumbs are untouched but the middle finger on my left hand. It is starting to get gnarled and painful. I’m not sure I would care so much about the gnarled look but does it have to hurt? To add insult to injury, I recently burned that soft fleshy pad on the underside of said finger. Will karmic lessons never cease?

As I’ve aged (hoping to reached greater maturity,) I’ve lost that edginess to even use the finger to communicate with my loved ones. It is one of my few rebellions but after a while, it doesn’t have the same impact it once did. They all just roll their eyes and ignore me – – an insufficient response to say the least, as if I’ve become predictable. It doesn’t have the same impact over Zoom or FaceTime either.

So, I guess I’ll have to live with my karmic consequence of an overused arthritic middle finger. “Such is life,” my mother would say, though I never used it on her as it would’ve been sacrilege, not to mention totally lost in translation. 

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The Ultimate Tension

I don’t even know what day it is sheltering in place. Maybe day 75. Regardless, I have become very bored, increasingly more despairing about a reasonable and sane recovery.

The medical community including nationally renowned experts, has been trashed by the administration and far right troublemakers. The democracy is in shambles, with little to no check and balance on the Administration. 

WARPING THE CONCEPT OF FREEDOM

It’s actually hard to make sense of it all, the decline has become so precipitous. Forget about going back to an old normal. We will be lucky if we can stagger our way to a new normal that’s fair and just and healthy for the economy, the democracy, and the society at large. 

Just like it’s hard to watch a person die, it’s very hard for some of us to watch a democracy die. At best, if it is to survive, it will take years of rehabilitation just like a body would after suffering catastrophic trauma and deterioration.

GRIEVING: THE MACRO

Even though I have some understanding of the pathology of extremism, the resultant degradation of institutions is heartbreaking to witness, a cause for grieving and despair to be sure. 

It is also hard to stay mentally engaged right now since the focus has been so narrowed to stay physically healthy, sheltering in place. We cross fingers and toes in the hopes that we will survive both physically and economically, pinky-promising with eyes shut tight America will be able to claw our way back to reason as well as health.

COPING: THE MICRO

I’ve done some projects around my little apartment. Including some cleaning and culling of sorts. I’ve called and chatted with friends and family, and I continue to read. And write, at least when I’m clear-headed.

My worst activity has been binging on television and food. Oh God, please help me to stop with my incessant palliative mental and physical self-comforting. Remarkably, not only do I know I’m not alone but sometimes I feel happy at the absurdity of it all. I actually laugh. Out loud. 

These are hardly healthy coping mechanisms. Ironically, I seem to lurch uncontrollably between far better palliative care of the spirit. It is this latest impulse that is my salvation, when I can hitch myself to the vapor trail I actually feel hope, joy. It is remarkable, a wonder. And yet…

THE PENDULUM 

It seems I’ve heard it all—from the right, from the left, from the professional uplifters, and the doomsayers. It’s exhausting. Dispiriting. And while occasionally I really do recognize the absurdity of the human condition, generating belly laughs and believe it or not, an uplifted spirit, I cannot seem to stay there long.

The space between despondency and hope is precarious and narrow indeed. Things are so broken, there’s so much ignorance, so many nefarious players, sadly it all seems to overshadow the potential for regaining some sort of equilibrium. It presses in on the heart. Can’t you just feel the tension?

HOPE, ALWAYS

But I trudge on, knowing ultimately in the end, things will right themselves regardless of how long it takes. Just like when a body dies those that are left behind find a way to not just cope but ultimately to survive and create a new life. So too democratic nations that die, staggering into insidious corruption and decay. They will either rise again, be overrun, or discover a new accommodation in the world.

Time will tell what’s in store for our lot in America for tension always stops when it has been spent. I know one thing: the decline phase is not over and I pray on this Memorial Day weekend we can lean into hope both individually and as a nation for better days. And with that, I’ll say a little prayer. Then I’ll go have a cookie (or three) to celebrate.

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Thankful

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Fleeting Forgiveness

You learn a lot about yourself and others when you are in a physically compromised situation like I have been for the last six months. Between a couple surgeries and multiple fractures in my back, I’ve been laid low. Having a history of being fiercely independent previously, I have had the opportunity to learn the fine art of being dependent on others, at times feeling like a burden, a very uncomfortable position to say the least!

The Spiritual Squeeze

I have been forced to learn about patience, humility, and grace, none of which comes naturally to me. Quite the contrary. Being a single person for most of my adult life, I have taken undo pride and no small amount of egotism, feeling quite self-satisfied with my own fortitude and sufficiency.

Asking others for help now, sometimes from the smallest gestures to larger ones that might inconvenience them, has been challenging and sometimes downright painful for me in my current situation. It has come easier though is still uncomfortable and sometimes laced with fear and guilt.

I have found some people are generous and offer willingly while others get downright nervous or withdraw, pulling back with the subtlest of mortification, their pupils contracting inward scanning their own lives and responsibilities. Then there are those who offer but don’t really mean it, mostly unavailable when you get right down to the specific request later on.

It is very easy to be judgemental about this latter group, having operated from this very behavior myself in the past. I want to judge them when they turn me down, usually feeling a bit sorry for myself in the process. It is a lonely road. But the catch is, while I want to condemn them for being selfish, absorbed, uncaring or unsympathetic, the finger has quickly curved in on myself with the whiff of past recognition.

Occasional Salvation

One of the greatest gifts of my life, and I say this with all humility, is the occasional ability to move quickly from judgmentalism to forgiveness to acceptance. This was aided not long ago by flashbacks of moments when I’ve declined to help others during my far more vigorous, busy  and able-bodied history. I remember drawing away, pulling back, thinking I’ve got too much on my plate, sometimes offering help but knowing I don’t really mean it myself.

Tested

Recently I asked a woman in my apartment building if she could put a pain patch on my back and be available if I needed help for a few days, trying to explain that my regular backup people were away. Recognizing her reluctance from the get go, I tried to make clear it was short term. Her response was vigorous and persistent, telling me she was very busy, she wasn’t the best person to ask, she’d do what she could but couldn’t make a commitment.

Invariably she kept steering me away from her, stating she worked 55 hours a week, could I get a nurse, call the ER, whatever.  I like to think my decline of help to others was gentler, more subtle, but guessing I’ve been as transparent at times as she was with me, I doubt it. Becoming more angry than fearful I wouldn’t have help, I pressed her and she ultimately relented.

Remarkably, while I was very upset initially, I moved quickly to taking stock of my own past behaviors in this regard, knowing, knowing not only did I have to forgive her but also forgive myself. This struck swiftly and thoroughly and I felt relief, free of having to project my judgement onto her. This forgiveness and relief lasted about 12 hours!

Evolving

It is a hard thing at times having to take a steely-eyed look at ourselves, yet without examining our own behavior, what good are any lessons that are presented to us. After all, isn’t that what we’re here for? To learn, to grow, to evolve, to transcend? If I cannot forgive her how can I forgive me, and vice versa? We are all on a path at times intersecting with others, teachers of a sort, and presented with these golden opportunities. While this might seem like such a simple example, for me it is no less important than the earth shattering larger spiritual or ethical challenges in life.

At the end of the day, we are all at our own place of consciousness and development. When I forget that, that someone else no matter how obnoxious or irritating they might seem to me, or self absorbed and self centered, I am the one who suffers on the inside both emotionally and spiritually. I suffer in the judgment of that other person, But mostly I suffer in the condemnation and judgment of myself. To love oneself is just as important as to love another, to have compassion for the impairment that may be developmental, less visible than broken bones or surgeries in another, that is no less real but far less obvious.

The seemingly complicated state of fleeting forgiveness towards my reluctant neighbor squeezes me spiritually to step back, to really assess why I’m hurt, frustrated or scared and to at least try to identify with her. And even if I can’t stay in that space, I know I’m able to return to it at some point. Oh, the lessons of an illness, what consciousness-raising grist it provides for growth, acknowledging she too has her own struggle of guarded isolation and remoteness, filled with fear and self protection that felt as threatening to her as mine was for me in that moment.

And So It Goes

At the end of the day it does no good to compare me to her, her to me or even her to the two steadfast friends who have provided support and compassion but just happened to be gone at that time of seeking another’s help only to be thwarted by my neighbors reticence, no good at all. Identification is one thing, comparison quite another for comparison is filled with judgment. Whether I get irritated or not is irrelevant at the end of the day if she’s doing the best she can as I was in earlier situations—and even now—but lose the thread of ongoing understanding and forgiveness as a constant I can return to. Because I will invariably have to repeat the lesson, God willing, and by my own intention, be squeezed into that place of love and forgiveness of self and another we all seek until it all sticks.

 

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The Big Move

“Who would you be without your story?”    Byron Katie

My recent move from Encinitas, CA to Sonoma, north of San Francisco has been challenging, interesting, exhausting, and enlightening, with generous splashes of happy thrown in. After a mere month or two, while physically settled, I’m hardly that emotionally and psychologically. Yes, I have my core, my spiritual inner being, that feels pretty much centered, constant, with periodic inner tremors gradually subsiding. One of the most unsettling elements however is that of identity. Read more

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Trauma Writing

“How to Write About Trauma”. That is the title of the NYT Op-Ed piece dated 08/15/16, penned by Said Sayrafiezadeh, an American-born, Iranian-cultural-inheriting memoirist and fiction writer. I read it with serious curiosity for several reasons. First, I’ve recently begun conducting an Expressive Writing course and specialized coaching practice on the same topic. Read more

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