The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Four]

¡Hola! Everybody...

It’s that time of month once again!

Note: Every month, I dedicate a post to one of the steps of Narcotics Anonymous. These posts are by no means intended as extensive exploration of recovery. They are merely brief expression of my strengths, hopes, and experiences culled from my ongoing journey toward recovery.

* * *

-=[ The Courage to Heal ]=-

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
-- Step Four

Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious.
-- C.G. Jung

So far, we have explored what I call the “Recovery Cha Cha Cha” -- the first three steps that serve as the foundation to recovery and freedom from addiction. Step 1 (click here) confronted me with the major contradiction in my life: how I managed to feel powerful when, no matter how much I denied it, I was in actuality powerless and needed help. Step 2 (click here) challenged my grandiosity. I have heard it said that addicts are egomaniacs with low self-esteem and I couldn’t put it any better than that. My low self-esteem compelled me to inflate my ego, but all I ever felt inside was emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. Finally, Step 3 (click here) helped me see that my efforts at control were in reality ways in which to sabotage myself. Ultimately, I can only take responsibility for myself leaving the rest to my Higher Power, however I chose defined it.

Yesiree, the “Great I Am” is a hard bitch to ride!

Step Four took me a awhile mostly because I didn’t want to do it. I was afraid. I mean I did a lot of fucked up shit in my life -- especially towards the end of my active addiction. I took a lot. I was a taker. I became the kind of person that would steal something from you and then helped you look for it. My thinking was so fucked up that I could rationalize stealing toys from underneath a Christmas tree. I used (and was used) by women. I kid around that I was a former pimp and technically, I was. But I was no pimp, believe me. I used to like to say that I was a “broker for sexual services.” As much as the word is used today, it’s nothing to be proud of. What I was -- I was an addict. Period.

Who the fuck wants to look at that shit?

But by the time I made it back I was determined to see this through. I was tired of suffering needlessly and I wanted to do everything I could to bring some sanity into my life. This step mentions two important principles in recovery. One is “fearless.” But what is fearlessness? Is fearlessness a simple absence of fear? I started to look at the issue of fearlessness and I came upon the concept that courage (perhaps another way of saying “fearlessness”) is not so much the absence of fear, but committing to act in spite of the fear. And that became the first motivator for my doing a thorough Fourth Step: committing to act though I was shitting in my pants. I had had plenty of experience of plowing ahead even though I was scared. I did it all the time.

The next concept was the issue of morality. this one was a little more tricky for me. I was tired of the ‘crime and punishment” approach to morality. Yeah, I was (and still am) a fuckin sinner, but I didn’t need the black/ white sinner/ saint duality bullshit in my life. Beating up on myself wasn’t really working and in fact actually enabled my addiction (why get better if I was worthless?). So, I began to explore the meaning of moral and from a non-religious perspective “moral” could be viewed as a way of thinking, or what some psychologists call moral reasoning. There are developmental stages in moral reasoning, form the lower levels operating from purely selfish, narcissistic, infantile yearnings (the “me” stage) where actions are predicated solely on selfish needs, to higher forms of moral reasoning in which ones sense of self expands to include ones family, community, and eventually extends to all sentient beings.

What I found was that in my addiction I operated mostly from a purely infantile, selfish level of moral reasoning and it was killing me and infecting everyone who ever made contact with me.

I stole, but I stole more than property. I stole affection and trust and used that to feed my addiction. Perhaps my story is extreme, but let me ask: how many of us have stolen affection? How many of us have manipulated and controlled in order to feel better about ourselves?

Luckily, I had some great people around me in my early recovery. They helped me recover in spite of myself, because I was one dense mothefucker. To me the idea of a moral inventory was both scary but also contradictory. However, after having taken those first three steps and applying them to the best of my ability, I also knew I was still feeling a lot of shame and guilt about my past. My actions had clearly not been moral by any measure. It came to me that I needed to look into the shadows and to uncover those deep dark secrets or risk losing my recovery. By the time I had one year clean, I knew I wanted freedom from addiction more than anything in my life.

I took the advice of my sponsor and decided to write out my inventory. I used several different Fourth Step guides and my inventory was extensive (me being the perfectionist I am). What I saw when I did my Fourth Step were behavior patterns.

All around. Everywhere.

For the first time I saw I repeatedly fell into the same patterns and this revelation was largely liberating.

The Fourth Step gave me the gift of self-knowledge. By reviewing in detail my fears, desires, thoughts, motives, and actions, seeing how they created wreckage, I was better able to uncover the secrets. Some of you may have tried this with a therapist. I had also. However, what made this moral inventory different was the foundation of the first three steps paved the way for me to transcend my fear. I was on my way to living life based on love rather than an existence ruled by fear. What I saw underlying my habitual patterns was fear. Without the foundation of the first three steps, my moral inventory would’ve probably become another way to beat on myself, my shadow side eventually engulfing my efforts.

Because I was living the principle of the Third Step, I was able to turn over my fear and tendency to judge. I realized I was powerless to change my past, but that I was able to be accountable for now. Eventually, my Fourth Step gave me courage along with insight. And to a lesser degree, having faced myself with as much honesty as possible, I was able to lessen the fear and the shame. There were no more secrets, and more was being revealed.

The Fourth Step was a draining experience for me. Sometimes, when things seem their darkest, it’s difficult to see the positive in your life. It was difficult for me to acknowledge the positive in me. I lived as a phony, showing only the parts of myself that I thought were good. I lived between the secrets, the shame, exploitation, and abuse of my addiction and the good parts of my public persona. I felt like a phony about my public self because people did not know the real me. When I finally faced the addict in me, my addiction became my teacher and helped me uncover the goodness in me. I had to come to the realization that I was strong, enduring, clever, and willing to risk even in my addiction. All these were qualities the addict in me stole in order to pursue the illusion of being all-powerful

The addict in me was that same aspect of my personality that stole from me and then pretended it was helping me look for these qualities. I learned that all those good or skillful qualities were also a part of who I am and that they were available for me in my recovery.

My name is Eddie and I’m an addict in recovery...

Sunday Sermon [Guilt Trip]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Today is the Gay Pride Parade here in the Center of the Known Universe. Let me reiterate here once again and express my support to my GLBT brothers and sisters. To my inbred, repressed brethren who are against gay marriage? Well… I would submit that if you’re against gay marriage, the simple thing to do is not marry one…

SMDH

* * *

-=[ Guilt ]=-
Love and guilt cannot coexist,
and to accept one is to deny the other.
-- A Course in Miracles

Feeling guilty is just another way to rationalize behavior that defeats your happiness. Feeling guilty is an indulgence – a selfish and twisted way for you to continue beating yourself into the insanity of committing the same actions and expecting different results.

I once offered forgiveness to an individual who had wronged me and her initial response was to tell me how it cut her to the heart. She went on how nice I was (I’m not), blah blah blah. Her eventual response was silence. Years later, I ran into her by chance on the street and she began to cry. She told me that she had just come from her therapist and that she had been talking about me – about how she squandered what could’ve been something special and beautiful. How she always pushed what was good and decent away. She was so beside herself, all I could do was give her a hug and assure her everything would be all right.

I have a funny feeling I’ve become the subject of too many therapeutic sessions. For the record, I don’t want to be anyone’s therapist. All I want is for you to wrap your legs around my waist in lustful entanglement. *grin*

The sacred offering of forgiveness is not about allowing someone to take advantage of you. Few people know that forgiveness -- true forgiveness -- must be first cultivated internally before it could be given away. Once you forgive yourself, you come to the full realization that there is no “other” to forgive. Ironically, forgiveness is probably one of the most selfish of acts.

If you commit a wrong against me, my interest is in helping you grow out of that mode of living. Most people would rather continue to feel guilty than to actually grow. True growth is the process of becoming willing to have defects of character removed. It’s not even about having them removed! It’s about becoming willing to have defects of character removed. When you become willing, you shed the guilt and start doing the work. Lying, cheating, dishonesty, the whole cast of character defects -- become fodder for your growth:

Yes, I lied to you, this was why, and I want to stop. And I because I love you, I want to work with you so that we can become truly intimate and loving.

When you feel guilt, you’re in the grips of your ego. Guilt isn’t about someone else, it is about you because only your ego can experience guilt. Guilt will always disrupt your growth, will always sabotage you, and will always compel you to make the same mistakes.

You will be treated like shit, because guilt demands that you should be treated like shit. You will meet assholes who will defile you because your guilt demands it.

The end of your guilt will never come as long as you buy into the notion that there is a reason for it. For you to be released from guilt you must first learn that guilt is insanity; it always is and always has been and will always be. Guilt has neither reason nor rhyme.

And here’s why:

Guilt asks only for punishment and punish you will be – always. You will be punished and be lost in the world of illusions and shadows. The Ex wants to be punished. She doesn’t understand kindness. She’s not too different from many women and men I know. Be nice to them and they will run away. But if you want them to call you, or to fuck them, treat them like shit and they will be clamoring for more punishment.

I can’t do that – I’ve never been able to do that – to manipulate fear and guilt for sexual gratification. It isn’t worth my peace of mind. Like other women I know, the Ex replays the scene: she disappears for a little while, suffers some more, and then somewhere in her mind, she remembers the light and calls me. She suffers a lot. As do many of us... Maybe one day she will come to the realization that she does not have to suffer needlessly. I do not know. All I can do is keep an open heart.

A mind without guilt cannot suffer. Your freedom -- indeed, your very salvation -- depends on your escape from the self-made prison of guilt.

Love,

Eddie

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Four]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I forgot to include this as part of an April posting...

* * *

-=[ Uncovering the Patterns]=-

Step Four: We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Note: Every month, I dedicate a post to one of the steps of Narcotics Anonymous. These posts are by no means intended as extensive exploration of recovery. They are merely brief expression of my strengths, hopes, and experiences culled from my ongoing journey toward recovery.

* * *

Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious.

-- C.G. Jung

So far, we have explored what I call the “Recovery Cha Cha Cha” -- the first three steps that serve as the foundation to recovery and freedom from addiction. Step 1 (click here) confronted me with the major contradiction in my life: how I managed to feel powerful when, in fact, I was powerless and needed help. Step 2 (click here) challenged my grandiosity. I have heard it said that addicts are egomaniacs with low self-esteem and I couldn’t put it any better than that. My low self-esteem pushed me to inflate my ego, but all I ever felt inside was emptiness and feelings of worthlessness. Finally, Step 3 (click here) helped me see that my efforts at control were in actuality ways in which to sabotage myself. Ultimately, I can only take responsibility for myself leaving the rest to my Higher Power however I defined it.

Yesiree, the “Great I Am” is a hard bitch to ride! LOL

Step Four took me a awhile mostly because I didn’t want to do it. I was afraid. I mean I did a lot of fucked up shit in my life -- especially towards the end of my active addiction. I took a lot. I was a taker. I became the kind of person that would steal something from you and then helped you look for it. My thinking was so fucked up that I could rationalize stealing toys from underneath a Christmas tree. I used (and was used) by women. I kid around that I was a former pimp and technically, I was. But I was no pimp, believe me. I used to like to say that I was a “broker for sexual services.” As much as the word is used today, it’s nothing to be proud of. What I was -- I was an addict. Period.

Who the fuck wants to look at that shit?

I stole, but I stole more than property. I stole affection and trust and used that to feed my addiction. Perhaps my story is extreme, but let me ask: how many of us have stolen affection? How many of us have manipulated and controlled in order to feel better about ourselves?

Luckily, I had some great people around me in my early recovery. Quite a few of them are no longer with us, and my post today is dedicated to them. They helped me recover in spite of myself, because I was (still am? LOL!), one dense ma’fucca. To me the idea of a moral inventory was both scary but also contradictory. However, after having taken those first three steps and applying them to the best of my ability, I also knew I was still feeling a lot of shame and guilt about my past. My actions had clearly not been moral by any measure. It came to me that I needed to look into the shadows and to uncover those deep dark secrets or risk losing my recovery. By the time I had one year clean, I knew I wanted freedom from addiction more than anything in my life.

I took the advice of my sponsor and decided to write out my inventory. I used several different 4th Step guides and my inventory was extensive (me being the perfectionist I am). What I saw when I did my 4th Step were behavior patterns. All around. Everywhere. For the first time I saw that I fell repeatedly into the same patterns and this revelation was largely liberating.

The 4th Step gave me the gift of self-knowledge. By reviewing in detail my fears, desires, thoughts, motives, and actions, seeing how they created wreckage, I was better able to uncover the secrets. Some of you may have tried this with a therapist. I had also. However, what made this moral inventory different was the foundation of the first three steps because those steps became the foundation upon which I was able to vanquish fear. What I saw underlying my habitual patterns was fear. Without the foundation of the first three steps, my moral inventory would’ve been weak and my shadow side would’ve eventually engulfed my efforts.

Because I was living the principle of the Third Step, I was able to turn over my fear and tendency to judge. I realized I was powerless to change my past, but that I was able to be accountable for now. Eventually, my Fourth Step gave me courage along with insight. And to a lesser degree, having faced myself with as much honesty as possible, I was able to lessen the fear and the shame. There were no more secrets, and more was being revealed.

The 4th Step was a draining experience for me. Sometimes, when things seem their darkest, it’s difficult to see the positive in your life. It was difficult for me to acknowledge the positive in me. I lived as a phony, showing only the parts of myself that I thought were good. I lived between the secrets, the shame, exploitation, and abuse of my addiction and the good parts of my public persona. I felt like a phony about my public self because people did not know the real me. When I finally faced the addict in me, my addiction became my teacher and helped me uncover the goodness in me. I had to come to the realization that I was strong, enduring, clever, and willing to risk even in my addiction. All these were qualities the addict in me stole in order to become powerful

The addict in me was that same entity that stole from me and then pretended he was helping me look for these qualities. I learned that all those qualities were mine and that they were available for me in my recovery.

Love,

Eddie

Commitments, pt. I and II

¡Hola! Everybody...
The following is really two posts made into one. It’s part of a series I wrote about commitments. This post will give you a headache if you’re overly attached to your way of thinking. LOL!

* * *

-=[ The Mirror ]=-

Life is change,
growth is optional,
choose wisely.
-- Karen Kaiser Clark

In our lives we make conscious commitments and they exert a tremendous amount of power over our lives. Of equal importance (maybe even more important) is the power of our unconscious commitments.

What is an unconscious commitment? The way I look at it, an unconscious commitment is an interpretation of reality that is created in early childhood. Whatever we experience in our early years has a huge impact on the types of relationships we seek out as adults. This can be problematic if we are seeking from a foundation based on fear, betrayal, and abandonment.

It is easier to blame our relationship problems on factors outside of ourselves: “He doesn’t listen,” “She nags too much,” etc. In addition, when these patterns appear repeatedly, it is even more tempting to place blame. It follows then that the first step in uncovering our unconscious commitments is to begin to become accountable for our unhappy relationships. At first, this may seem counter intuitive, but the first step to untangling our unconscious commitments is to become aware of them. This takes a certain amount of courage and a lot of love. This isn’t about blaming! Nothing good ever comes from blame. Much of the inner work involves developing compassion.

The second part of uncovering your unconscious commitments is by paying close attention to your habitual complaints. Drs. Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks, in their work with over 20,000 clients, have discovered that what people most often complain about in intimate relationships is identical to their unconscious commitments. For example, let’s say that your number one complaint about past relationships is that your partner(s) were always criticizing you. It may be likely that you are unconsciously committed to bringing critical people into your life (again, I must stress this about blaming yourself or anyone else).

Another issue is that unconscious commitments are so powerful that partners can unconsciously notice them and begin to act in ways that will supply what their partner is unconsciously asking for. Have you ever experienced saying to yourself, “Dang, I wasn’t a particularly critical person until I got into this relationship, and yet here I am a full-fledged nag.”

Try this: each time you catch yourself complaining about something, use it as an opportunity to reclaim the power of one of your unconscious commitments. If you can catch yourself in the act of complaining, try to turn it around and ask, “Why would I be unconsciously committed to that?”

It is in the very act of questioning why you might be unconsciously committed to the things you have been complaining about that the real work is done. Katie Byron, creator of “The Work,” has a very powerful technique for uncovering and diffusing our unconscious commitments. The Hendricks also have a guided reflection that helps in this area. I have used a combination of both in my own work with people that I have found very useful. I will share that tomorrow.

For now, try the following:

Your first task: Discover what you complain about.

If you want to stop your unconscious patterns cold, stop complaining. Put yourself on a radical complaint-fast for one day: Don’t allow a single complaint out of your mouth.

Then go a second day, and a third. Many years ago, I went on a complaining-fast, and my old patterns started to drop away effortlessly. I soon found I could go days and weeks without complaining about anything. Eventually my complaint-fast stretched into years, and by then the miracles were unfolding so rapidly I could scarcely believe it. The circumstances of my life improved so radically that there was nothing to complain about.

Love,

Eddie

Love Isn't a Feeling

¡Hola! Everybody...
This blog might give you a headache... The first version of this post was written several years ago and posted to a forum on a singles site. You would not believe the tremendous amount of hate mail I received! LOL

* * *

-=[ Romantic Love and Attraction ]=-

Love isn’t a feeling.

Amor is the Spanish word for love, but it loses so much in the translation. Amor comes from the root word, alma, which means soul. Therefore, to say te amo translates as I love you is terribly inadequate. It loses its essentialness. Te amo is a powerful statement, so much more than a mere, “I love you.”It is to love someone with the core of your soul.

In our culture we tend to use the word “love” in many different ways. If we’re going to attempt to untangle the confusions and miscommunication surrounding our relationships, we need to look at this a little closer. There are three separate elements of “loving” in intimate relationships: love, romance, and chemistry.

Of the three mentioned above -- love, romance, and chemistry -- love is probably the simplest to understand (and the hardest to practice!). Attempts at defining love has gone on since time immemorial, but I will offer today one of the simplest. Love is simply what is when your heart is open. Love is manifested in your body (and mind) as openness. Anger and hate is expressed as a contraction. Love = openness; hate = contraction.

Simple, right?

You could love almost anything or anyone. You could love your lover, your dog, your mother, your car, your sexual organ, painting landscapes, etc. When your heart is open, you love whomever or whatever in your life. Love is the union of you and the one you are with.

To do love is to open your heart. There is no loving with a closed heart. It is true that many of us suffer from closed and broken hearts, but I get ahead of myself. So, love is what is when your heart is open. If you’re waiting to feel love, as in soulmate or a Divine act of randomness (as if “God” didn’t already have enough to do) or the arrival of the prophesy of an idealized “The One,” you will be waiting for a long time. (Oh yeah! And psssst: there’s no Santa Claus.) Love happens when you open up, whether that’s right now, or ten years from now.

Love has nothing to do with sex. You can love someone and not have sexual desire for them. In fact, and contrary to popular myth, you can experience extremely fulfilling and Grand mal seizure-like orgasmic sex with someone you do not love. The fact is that you exist as love when your heart is unguarded and you cut yourself off from love when you guard your heart. In my view, you can actually learn, or increase your capacity, to love. Love is not something that happens out there in some mysterious way. This capacity or potential to open up is the foundation of true intimacy.

Have you ever met someone and immediately felt an attraction for that person? You meet at a party, or some other social function or internet site and you both hit it off from the start. Sparks fly, you feel as if you have known each other for lifetimes. It’s hard to believe you have just met and you both feel as if you’ve known each other for a long time. The conversation is effortless, and you really enjoy being with this person. Maybe, you think to yourself, “Maybe this is ‘The One’ Eddie is always laughing at. Maybe this is my soulmate, the person I’ve been waiting for all my life!” ::wet knickers:: Have you ever experienced that?

You feel all giddy inside and then the two of you begin seeing each other regularly. You feel a certain “specialness” about the relationship, and you begin spending more time together. IMs, text messages, marathon telephone calls, blah, blah, blah…

You feel: This is meant to be!

This is romantic attraction, infatuation, “falling in love.”

Romantic attraction begins with this powerful feeling of oneness and of bonding, a feeling that you have always known each other. You have probably experienced this feeling for a person at some point in your life. If you have, you know that feeling doesn’t last. I know I’m fucked up for saying this, shoot me. But it’s true. After several months, or if you’re lucky (or unlucky), several years, this powerful romantic attraction wears off.

Then the unthinkable inevitably happens. This magical person who was going to be “The One,” who was going to give you everything you ever wanted, who was going to bring endless love into your life, seems to turn into precisely the person who does not give you what you want.

Eventually, relationships based on romantic attraction always crash and burn and result in not getting the love you desire.

Why?

Romantic attraction is based on a script imprinted in your psyche during childhood. There are a great many books, therapists, and workshops, etc. out there clearly explaining that those people to whom we are attracted are exactly those people who embody the qualities, good and bad, of our parents. Whatever our parents didn’t give us enough of (i.e., love, attention, praise, freedom), is exactly what we will not get from our romantically chosen partner.

The reason why you feel as if you “already know” your romantic partner is because you did know him or her: the parental imprint on your childhood psyche. The reason for the “specialness” you feel for this person is that you unconsciously hope to continue the relationship you had with your parents and finally get the love you have always wanted, the acceptance you always desired, the fulfillment your heart has always craved, but have never received.

In addition, because you have unconsciously chosen your parents as your partners, you have chosen someone who will not give you what you always wanted in exactly the way that our parents didn’t. And here’s the kicker (and what always gets me): even if your lover could give you what you wanted you won’t accept it because it’s not part of your script. Your imprinted childhood script will not let you believe it’s real.

What happens is that as the thrill of being “in love” wears off, your love interest seems perfectly adapted to cause you pain. He or she has this amazing ability to push your buttons and hurt you. The person who used to bring out the best in you now seems to bring out the worst, just by being herself or himself. And guess what? You do the same for your partner.

Because romantic attraction is based on qualities in your partner that you unconsciously recognize from your childhood experiences, you’re doomed to be as fulfilled or unfulfilled by your partner’s love as you were by your parent’s.

Love isn’t a feeling people, but so many people have had children as a result of a feeling. LOL!

There is a way out of the merry-go-round folks, but that’s for another day, another post.

Love,

Eddie

Resources

For those looking to explore this subject further from the POV preseneted here, I have included a couple of resource.

General Theory of Love (click here ): Written by three psychiatrists, this book looks into how early childhood experiences mold our later relationships. It's a little bit dense, but it is about recent science written in elegant language. I first read about "neurological imprinting" in this book. This book will challenge all your previously held assumptions about love. LOL

Reinventing Your Life (click here ): I have given this book away as gifts so many times, the authors should cut me a check. I first learned about Schemas (life patterns, life-scripts, or life-traps) here. I was so impressed with the approach, I went a trained in this modality. This is not a self-help book in the common sense. There are actual exercises and homework geared to help you identify and break from habitual patterns of behavior.

Schema Therapy (click here): If you want to look at a quick and simple explanation of Schema Therapy, this site will help. You can also look for therapists trained in schema therapy

Emotional Alchemy (click here): This was the book that led me to Schema therapy. It's schema therapy but from a Buddhist perspective. Another book I've given away as gifts countless times.

Attracting Genuine Love (click here): Sometimes the husband/ wife team of Gay and Katie Hendricks get a bit too commercial for my tastes, but this here is an excellent example of how we often look for love in all the wrong places with all the wrong people.

The Hunger

¡Hola! Everybody...
I’m coming right out and saying it:

I don’t give a flying fuck about your opinion.

I know, I know, it’s a strange way of opening up a blog I obviously hope some people will read. But the fact is I have no interest in opinions. Rather, I’m interested in what happens when you put away your preconceived notions in the service of exploring new worlds and new perspectives. Otherwise, it gets really boring, really quick. I mean: who really gives a fuk about what was very likely instilled in you at a very early age and is totally narcissistic and narrow-minded? Your friends might not tell you, but I will: your opinions suck...

So, along with the word “drama,” opinions are hereby banished from here for all of eternity!

* * *

-=[ The Hunger ]=-

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”

-- C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, chapter 12 (1963)

I like to describe the arc of my life as one of redemption. For today and tomorrow, I will share a part of this journey with you...

The other day I was reading a short story, “The Bound Man,” by the German author Ilse Aichinger. It’s a beautiful piece in the existentialist tradition: A man awakens one morning to find himself inexplicably bound by rope. The story takes a strange turn because instead of removing the rope at his first opportunity, as you would expect him to do, he decides to remain bound and become a circus attraction, turning his strange and accidental bondage into his trademark work.

Strange, huh?

Why would a person happily accept such bondage?!! It’s a question similar to the one posed by Franz Kafka in the “Hunger Artist, in which a man who also chooses to become a circus attraction starves himself to death because he can’t find food that interests him.

[Note: I know you’re forming a bullshit opinion right now --stop it!]

These two authors are asking a variation of the same question: “Why would people carelessly, inexplicably, and even happily do things that bring them so much harm and suffering”?

Addiction is the same kind of bondage. Addicts cling to their addictions, and nothing you do or say will pry them away from their alcohol, cocaine, tobacco, internet surfing, video-game playing, overeating, shopping, or sexual escapades. It doesn’t matter if you tell them they are dying. It doesn’t matter if you tell them that they’re wasting half their life in front of a computer screen or in the aisles of department stores. Point out to them that they can’t have real love or a real life if they use sex as a drug, it doesn’t matter. Show them that their liver is already not functioning, that their nasal lining is already perforated, or that their lungs are black, and still it won’t matter. What you experience when you talk to an addict is that he or she is unable to understand or is completely indifferent to your reasoning.

I know, because I was an active addict for most of my adult life. And it’s not an issue of will power or lack thereof. At the worst part of my addiction, I used to wake up penniless and at the end of the day manage to spend $300 feeding my addiction. I would submit that took a lot of will.

I operate from the assumption that we live in an addictive society -- it’s how we are all conditioned. We live in a consumer-based society in which the wanting and getting is the be-all and end-all of our existence. We are all would-be addicts, given the right circumstances of biology, psychology, and social setting. Some of us, because we are more at risk (such as myself), become full-blown addicts, and cross over into that downward spiral of obsession morphing into compulsion and suffering.

Even if we don’t succumb to addiction, we sometimes feel a significant loss of control in some area of our life and experience difficulty maintaining a healthy weight, avoiding hours of internet surfing, quieting our anxious thoughts, or staying on track with our goals. In order to deal with these challenges, we need to recover: that is, we need to embrace a way of being that recognizes and addresses our addictive nature and our potential problems.

If you don’t, you just might wake up one morning bound head to foot with rope and say to yourself, “How interesting! I think I’ll become a circus attraction!”

Love,

Eddie