Sobriety

I have never considered myself an addict. The times I have found myself binge drinking – motivated by a desperation to feel something less anxious, less frightened, less dull or confined – I have always been able to stop when I realized I was making things worse. But being alone in this redwood retreat for a week, vulnerable to the full brunt of my shame, fear, and grief, and isolated from most of my strategies for soothing and distracting myself, I am beginning to wonder if I may have a legitimate addiction to something else.

In my late 20’s, I dedicated five years of my life to studying with a spiritual school, which required daily meditation, on-going mindfulness and dream yoga practices, and weekly attendance at several courses. My social circle, my career, and even my wedding vows were arranged in support of this work, and the internal obstacles and interpersonal conflicts I faced and overcame defined who I was. My attention was vigilant, my intention was to let my experience move through me, and the majority of the time I felt connected to something that transcended this world and offered eternal compassion and guidance. Those who knew me found me deeply graceful and border-line fanatical. I have never felt so sober in my life.

The head teacher at the first school I attended, Robert, was also a drug and alcohol counselor. One evening he taught a class which applied the 12-step recovery process to what he viewed as our society’s addiction to thinking. Like drug and alcohol use, thoughts can distract us from pain and give us endorphin rushes of possibility, but anyone who tries to stop thinking will quickly find themselves a powerless victim of their shadow side: shame, anger, and anxiety. Robert’s admittedly controversial idea prompted me to consider how many of the things we do naturally can also become addictive due to the release of dopamine, such as addictions to food, sex, and romance. Unlike drugs and alcohol, which we can remove completely from our lives, someone with an addictive relationship to our natural processes must transform their relationship with them while in constant contact.

At a day-long Vipassana retreat last weekend at the Spirit Rock Mediation Center, all of my training came back in full force. I was able to observe my breath, body, and sensations while maintaining awareness of my awareness. But when it came to observing my emotions, it only took a few minutes of sitting with the hard sadness and vibrating fear that has recently lodged itself right under my sternum before I was entirely consumed by a vivid fantasy of cherry pie with streusel topping. I was eating it, with my face, and then off of a particular man I have been preoccupied with recently. After a year of not dating and months of restrictive dieting for my health, this is how all of my emotion is longing to release itself.

Last night, a friend posted on Facebook a link to Jenna Abernathy’s “Divine Hunger” blog on transforming a binge. According to Jenna, you cannot binge in a relaxed state. Slowing down, breathing, and getting in touch with the body and the real pleasure in the moment breaks the fight or flight response to stress that triggers the binge. I have been so busy being a champ in my new life that I had not noticed how stressed I am, but now it’s obvious. I am living alone while wired for bonding. I have no career goals or income while bred to be self-sufficient and of value to the world. My health is an on-going struggle, and I am facing an unprecedented degree of novelty in my life, both on this trip and through the classes and projects I am taking on, while still brandishing a highly sensitive introvert’s deep need for silence and soothing.

While my commitment to sobriety brings a welcome sense of evenness, clarity, and nourishment, I must also face my deep sadness and fear of separateness while bearing the constriction of self-denial as food and romance entice me with comfort and excitement. When I am high on love and feasting and colorful plans, I see myself facing the world with humor, grace, and resourcefulness, but I go to pieces at the idea of embarking on my dream of traveling alone while carrying the burdens I carry now.   I am feeling vulnerable and depleted, and ripe for falling headlong into a vat of cherry-pie covered men. If my ultimate goal in life is not to prove myself, but to thrive, how can I follow my heart to the frightening places it’s been revealing to me while nurturing my legitimately human needs?

What occurs to me is a teaching from the meditation retreat. Life is a stream of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral experiences. The story I tell of my life is one of intermittent bursts of belonging and sensual pleasure amid vast swaths of deprivation, so I disrupt the natural rise and fall of feeling by trying to orchestrate and cling to moments of bliss and avoid the pain of a fundamental sense of disconnection. Fulfilling my craving for food, romance, and elaborate plans keeps me buzzed for the challenges I face, but also disembodied and therefore disconnected from the clarity and support I find in the silence of my core.  As Sandra Maitri proposes in her eloquent description of the spiritual dimension of the enneagram, those with my orientation need to constantly tinker with reality in order to maintain through longing my connection with what they believe they deserved to lose because of their inherently flawed nature. Profound satisfaction will only come through a recognition of the perfection of myself and all things, and a reconnection to the divine.

To accomplish this, I must somehow come to believe that I am not my feelings. I am not fear, loneliness, or longing. They are things that move through me, just like the strategies and day-dreams that I suspect would hold more wisdom and clarity if I were able to also let them rise and fall. I am terrified that if I let go of control, I will face that core sense of emptiness, which literally feels like death. But when I am really present with the thought of dissolving there is a sigh of both grief and relief at the idea of finally resting, fully satiated because I am no longer separate.  And that space is what has motivated my now solid routine of morning meditation.

Sobriety to me would feel like living a life free of greed because I am gently held in endless abundance. I could have one piece of cake, even one bite, and be fully present with the pleasure, and let it fall away, knowing that infinite shades of pleasure will rise again. I could hold and kiss a man, and be fully present to the blissful exchange of energy and consciousness, and let it fall away, knowing that the universe is full of endless love. I could let my heart yield and break like the bottomless ocean knowing there is always enough of me to be whole. Admitting my helplessness and opening to a power greater than myself, as the 12-step groups recommend, is the only thing that will enable me to love – to feel love or to give love. The moment I constrict my body, or my heart, or my mind, it is gone. So perhaps while I undertake the life-long spiritual journey of coming to understand that  a sense of abundance has nothing to do with what I do or don’t have, I can begin to gently release self-denial – to practice opening in the moment to savor the tangy bite of pie, the giddy thrill of a kiss, and the sweet sorrow of their passing.

Nancy

“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.