Most of us are (or have been) addicted to something. I used to be addicted to food. I have long been addicted to coffee. My son was once a heroin addict. Both of my parents were at the mercy of cigarettes. Smoking was the cause of both of their deaths. They tried to stop, to no avail.
Cigarettes killed my beloved father when he was 52 and I was only eighteen. Even after watching his agony from lung cancer, my mother was unable to let the habit go. Twenty years later, she finally quit — cold turkey — but only after she registered that something in her body had gone terribly wrong. Too late.
It’s an old story, isn’t it? Addiction has a person by the throat. Whether it’s you or somebody you love.
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Nobody decides to become an addict. It doesn’t happen because we are flawed or wicked. It happens mostly because we are hurting. We seek relief from pain or stress or some awful thing in our past. Sometimes it’s grief that drives it. We cannot bear fully to feel whatever has got us in its fist. Resorting to a substance or some unhealthy behavior is a way of averting the eyes, defending the heart.
We do not like to feel pain, so we naturally seek escape.
This too is all familiar. You know it well, if you are addicted to something or are close to someone who is. Whatever has us in its grip really has us, and “deciding” to change the dynamic typically accomplishes very little.
Even relatively benign addictions, like food and money, can define our sense of ourselves. For some years my financial situation was dire, leading ultimately to filing for bankruptcy. Through all of this, money became the equivalent of my worthiness as a person. I felt a huge amount of shame because of being perennially broke.
I share this with you only in case it might be a window into something kindred in yourself.
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What a miracle it was when the day ultimately came that money was . . . just money. A means of exchange: that was all. Neither good nor bad, unto itself. Money had no inherent meaning. It was the same with food. For years food had represented comfort, escape, a way of coping with distress. After awakening, at some point I noticed that food was about hunger and nourishment, about something tasting yummy. It didn’t “mean” anything anymore.
In both cases, it was as though I’d had my finger stuck in an electric outlet, and abruptly my finger was out. No charge any longer. Both commodities — money and food — were now simply (benignly) resources! Dollars could be exchanged for things wanted or needed. Food nourished my body and tasted yummy.
What a relief. But here is the deeper point, which you already know, if you have looked at this yourself: we do not like to feel pain, so we naturally seek escape. It is no wonder addiction is rampant in our tormented nowadays world.
I am not here to offer an “answer” to addiction. What I wish for you is that you are able to let the dynamic turn a light on to what underlies it, whether it’s operating inside yourself or in someone you are close to. Not so you can change anything at all necessarily. If you have ever tried to “help” an addict, you have surely discovered how very little a caring observer can accomplish.
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As my son memorably said to me, when he was still using the drug, “I know you’re right, Mom. But until I’m ready to stop, I cannot stop.” I recounted the particulars of this in Love Incarnate, my most recent book.
Oh the agony of a parent watching her child at the mercy of a drug like heroin! My son and I were close even during his years of using. I knew well that he could die any day. He stole from his father and from me. Lies were his modus operandi. It took me a long time to learn that there was nothing I could give him (a car, cash for food) that he wouldn’t parlay into the next fix. Nothing I could do to help him but just love him.
The real miracle was that once he walked away from the drug — now ten years ago — he never went back. How rare that is! But when he was done, he knew he was done.
And had he been using in the nowadays era, with fentanyl so rampant in the drug supply, he surely would not be alive today, considering how many times a day he used. My daughter’s first boyfriend might still be living now.
Some addictions are more lethal than others. Dead is dead.
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It was when I was a teenager that the Surgeon General came out with the news that cigarettes were a killer. My own growing-up house in Miami (all the windows closed to hold in the air conditioning) regularly contained the smoke of five or six packs per day of Salems and Lucky Strikes. I screamed and yelled at my parents to STOP. I tried throwing their cigarettes in the trash.
They tried with all their might to quit. It did not work. Both died anyhow, very young. My kids never had grandparents.
So many years later, I was to have yet another example of what it’s like when a substance grips you, when you are at its ghastly mercy. Only in the case of my son, the day came when he was able to say goodbye to his murderous habit.
Once upon a time, I was addicted to the approval of others. I set aside so much of my deepest heart’s desire in the name of winning that. Nor was I able truly to rest, to stop pushing myself, to grant myself the space to just sit still. Smell the roses, as we say. All of which led ultimately to what we used to call a “nervous breakdown.” Though it was devastating at the time — I was unable to work for months, could not leave my house, for the most part — it was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.
Sometimes that’s what it takes, eh?
May you (or your loved one) not have to go through what I did. But hey: I’m still here! As are you, my love. You are reading this. I wish you and all you love the very best.