highly positive I had ignored the man behind the curtain

The date had finished, I had said we would talk later. This was a lie, but I had no idea how else to end things, and figured the truth was only thinly veiled. I was only a three minute walk from my place, but in that time one thing was becoming clear: I had stopped believing who I had become.

Whoa, it’s time for a most excellent flashback. Of sorts. Errr, so yeah, my first year after drinking was positive and productive. I was battling anxiety and really facing some demons. I was really trying to be ‘myself’. Whoever the fuck that was/is. I was only 18 when I began debauching, so I was really nowhere close to being developed into an adult human. I was more myself when drinking than toking, I think. At least my guard was down, anxiety was gone and I was less restrained. However I was working on all of these things in sessions and readings, so I didn’t feel at the time that there was anything drinking gave me that I couldn’t theoretically gain on my own. So sobriety, at 25…who was I supposed to be then, and now, almost two years later?

That’s kind of a messy way of saying that 7 years go by and then BAM! you’re have a sober mind, and can’t really remember what that used to be like, so you don’t really remember how you used to be. But I thought I wanted to be more positive, active, productive, stuff and such. I tried out stand up, I backpacked, yoga-ed, and did all those little exercises you need to do to train yourself to realize how not shit most things are. Over a year after I quit, and after moving to a big-ish city,  I created an online dating account. I tried to be honest, about who I was and what I was trying to be. Though when I started writing down this positive mantra, something felt off. I kept with it, because this was, after all, what I was aiming for and how I was going to be myself.

I started chatting with a nice and positive person, someone whom I might not have been able to tolerate a few years ago, but I told myself, ‘no, you need to broaden your horizons, give this person a chance, you are, and want to be positive and open.’ We went for a long walk and talked, about ourselves and family and whatnot. I didn’t swear for the first hour. I started thinking, ‘Wow, she really is a nice a positive person, what the hell am I doing’? She was too nice and good and positive. Perhaps in a blindly optimistic way, I can’t remember. I had to put such effort into that date. She was on autopilot, I was the model plane hobbyist who’d enthusiastically volunteered to take the controls after the pilots vanished. I had read a lot about flight…

Immediately afterwards I felt things should not be this hard. How much of a fabrication was that profile? Was it a pure fantasy, a regurgitation of all those niceties I had been consuming the past year? Now, that is not too say all of it was useless. My anxiety is a mere sliver of what it used to be, but how much of this positive shit do I need to buy into? Hah. Some is helpful, too much just feels fake. So I began question this person I was trying to be. Oh, I had some help too, from my ex whom I shouldn’t still be talking to but I can’t help it because hey, quitting is not one of my strength’s ;). Anyways, we were talking (sometime shortly after my date) and I had said something to the effect of “I don’t really believe most people I see in relationships, I think a lot of them are lying about who they or their partners are, or what the world really is about,’ to which they replied “you cynical fuck”.

I laughed, but really, in that moment I realized ‘yeah, I still very much am that’. I had tried really hard to quell those ideas, and I still think I should, but I feel so sterilized afterwards. Bleached. Censored. “And so castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually” as the poet laureate Jimi Hendrix once crooned (and WOW does it ever sound like I smoked a lot of pot and studied philosophy 😉 Sand is really just sand, and tho it has the potential to become a castle, it’s not built to last. Do I need to keep fighting this, for the rest of my life?! Trying to keep this castle dry, but moist enough to keep its composure. Reading self-help books, listening to podcasts and whatnot for the rest of my life, or in other words posting a 24/7 lookout with a bucket around my castle.

Gah. So I snapped back. I slid down. The man behind the curtain was always there while I was busy blinding myself with pomp and circumstance (side note: I hate dislike Sousa). He’s not going away. So what to do with him now? How much meddling is too much meddling, when am I no longer ‘authentic’? Am I Zen-ed out, or depressed? Can I make meaning in myself, or was that an illusion we were all sold? Should I be looking for the career path of least resistance?

Hmmm, I need to work on clarity. Perhaps a different topic next post, who knows. I will miss you John Stewart.

which came first: sobriety, my loss of free will or my loss of identity?

This post could fall into rambling shambles, more so than the others! However I will do my best to keep it on track.

At first I was relieved to hear Dr. Drew, other podcasters and doctors (usually not one in the same) tell me that addiction was a disease. Oh, man. It’s not my fault! One side of my family has a history of drinking, chances were high that I would get the gin soaked genes. Add in some good old social anxiety and it was only a matter of time. I can’t blame myself, all these wheels were turning long before I took my first sip. So, someone philosophically inclined might say I was determined to drink.

Well, I happen to be so inclined, having spent 4 years acquiring a piece of paper that says as much. Free will and determinism had been something always on my mind, in class and in my free time. I had long settled on the Nietzschean perspective of not really putting to much emphasis on the words of “free will” and “determinism”. There’s likely some combination, the truth of which we can never know. Tho most likely there is no absolute free will. Personally I never understand how a freely standing will could operate in an existence governed by cause and effect. Anyhow…

Having doctors tell me that I was inflicted with something that was out of my control, seemingly put an answer to the question of free will. I had none. Addiction cause me to drink or smoke; that in turn altered my diet or spending habits; which in turn altered my health, self-confidence, travels, etc. My interactions with family or friends was illusive or dishonest, honestly. My life priorities in general surrounded getting drunk, high, buzzed, etc. I cannot identify I single thing that could not be traced to my addiction, and what my addiction could be traced to was more basic than myself, in a way. Before I was even born, the odds were high at some point in my life I would suffer the effects of addiction.

So what about sobriety? I haven’t been able to see it in any other way than as a response to addiction. In combination with enough environmental factors (shit in my life) building up over time until it became impossible to ignore (after 7 years) and wanting more out of my life. The only possible haven for free will is in the desire for ‘wanting more’. But that can be traced to an upbringing, an imbued feeling of guilt for wasting life, or just something that is central to me, yet not freely willed into being. The thing is, I CAN LIVE WITH ALL OF THIS!

Well, I think I can. I might be more willing to concede defeat if I don’t think I have control over anything, but I’ve lost a lot of anxiety over things that are simply beyond my influence. Everything just is. “Good” or “Bad” are labels we made (necessarily), but the essential, hippy 1st year philosophy student point-of-view is that everything just is what it is, so stop getting so mad or happy about pointless shit. Tell yourself you have free will, it doesn’t matter what you think. It’ll only be in response to the words you’ve just read, anyhow. But it doesn’t matter. No action or thought you’ve ever taken has been ‘out of thin air’, something or someone triggered it. But it’s cool. It’s easier to accept yourself for who you are. You don’t need to justify yourself to others because you just are who you are, it is what it is. Various laws beyond my comprehension are expressed through an unimaginable range of people, plants and (other) creatures. There could never only be one type of person, a Platonic ideal. There is no ideal person. We’re all just who we are. To paraphrase Nietzsche: embrace your perspective, nobody knows existence like you do, so live through the uniqueness of who you are.

I suppose I’ll keep this one short, I watched Ikiru tonight and my head is trying out a lot of things. The next post will continue this identity thread, and how a simple date started to unravel everything. Listen to some classic jazz piano, sure as shit does the trick for me 🙂

I gave up on the climb and the gravity returned… (me down to earth to write this lengthy post)

So I’m finally continuing on from the last post, that thing I was going to talk about yet took a long detour and never got there. So there I was, SOBRIETY! WooHoo! Now I can move on wi…wait, what? Oh that’s right, now it’s time to face those psychologically issues I was ignoring and/or faux curing. Well this should be fun!

When you’re slightly narcissistic, addiction counselors and psychologists are a blast. Okay, the first time you go to one is pretty harrowing, you’re sweating out over an hour of personal secrets you either never told or never thought you had. It’s also hard to find a captive audience like that, so I would begin to look forward to it. After a few months of free-wheelin my sobriety I realized I didn’t have all the tools and podcasts weren’t the complete saviour. I sought help, from individuals or group sessions (no AA for me, for reasons I may or may not ever get into). For 6 months I was seeing: an addiction counselor, a psychologist for social an anxiety and all the the reading materials and mental exercises that come with both of those, and attended a regional group addiction course. I felt awesome, so awesome that I didn’t feel I needed any of it anymore.

That’s not entirely true. After 6 months I headed off for 3 months of backpacking around South-East Asia, at first alone and then with old but understanding and supportive friends. What I wanted to be the focus of this post, which clearly I’m taking my sweet ass time again to get to, is that over those 6 months I had to build, or rebuild how I perceived the world and myself. Addiction and social anxiety cause you to see things in your own unique way, and in the case of the socially anxious much of that is based on fuck all. Evidence anyone?

The trip starts, I haven’t brought any readings with me but I have a journal and I’m going through all my mental exercises, preparations, etc. to handle all the unknowns (a part of the world I’d never been) and the knows (backpackers, and the things backpackers like to do) and things were good. But slowly I was doing less and less of these things, because I thought I had it figured out. I was making friends and being social and I performed the 2nd of the 3 times I have ever done stand up in my life on a beach. I was flying solo, and I thought it could stay that way. I also wanted it to stay that way.

Though not the only ones to do so, the socially anxious will over think things in every direction of spacetime. So naturally it popped into my head at some point, that I could very well be doing those exercises and readings every day for the rest of my life. Another crutch! Well, I can’t have that. I want to just beeeeee freeeeeeee. I returned home for a month, then hoped in a car for a month-long moving/road-trip. Again, I was freeeeeeeee. Now, during this time I hadn’t given up on all mental exercises. I was defeating preposterous situations by ‘looking for evidence’ and the like, but everything I was doing was now based on memory. Any thought of needing to refresh my memory was defeated with the desire to ‘just live without that shit’ and that wasn’t really me, how are you being yourself if you need to prepare, like mental make-up for 30min a day? Okay, now I’m feeling a little miserable, but that’s the real me. That’s just the real world being real and me being real about it, don’t need so much of the overdone positive bullshit. CAN YOU SENSE THE SLIDE?

All of this kept up after the move. I lived alone because I couldn’t stand the idea of a roommate; I want all of my overpriced space. I played some pick-up sports but only made pick-up friends. I didn’t work for months because I thought I could find that job, the one that I didn’t know what it actually looked like or entailed. You know? That one! I did eventually get a job, for potentially a very silly reason, but that might (never) be a story for another day.

Three months into the move, my libido decided to fuck right off. For the previous two weeks it was firing on all cylinders, like I had only ever known maybe once before. Then it pull a Soze and just disappeared. You would think that would have really sent me down, but I was surprisingly apathetic about it. A failed sexual encounter was brushed off with a chuckle and a care-free attitude. I had recently read Siddhartha, I thought everything was just making sense. Eventually I sought a doctor, and aside from having no lust in my heart, I had no feelings anywhere else, either. “Excellent health and slightly-higher-but-still-normal levels of testosterone” were roughly precisely the words they said. “Oh, you used to drink and intimate sober interactions might terrify you? Why didn’t you anything before!? Sexual health psychologist it is!”. To be fair, I think I suggested that it was the sobriety, and having nothing else to go on the good doc jumped right on that.

Thanks to the wonders of socialized medicine (I’m actually really really thankful, I could not have afforded this otherwise) a quick 6 weeks  months later I was sitting in front of a sexual dysfunction doctor and a sexual psychologist (I know this is not their proper titles). About halfway through the interrogation, the psychologist asked me, “Is this how you are, most of the time?”. “Yeah, I guess, I mean, mostly just…uh…meh,” in my characteristic monotone voice. They had their answer. I wasn’t depressed, but I was damn near close. This was depressing news. My low mood had killed everything.

Three weeks ago this happened, and while I’m slightly better now, as that news did not boost my spirits, I’m still sitting around a 4-5 most of the time. Maybe I couldn’t let myself be happy, and I had to slide back towards something I knew: the comforts of the pit/bed/dock. I knew I was sliding but I didn’t want to do what needed to be done. I bought new books, but they read exactly like the old books, which read exactly like something from the 90s or whatever. They don’t capture me. The Nerdist by Chris Hardwick got me through the early months, but like an old tire it’s been used so much it no longer has any tread. I applied for a PhD, which got my brain going, I still get out and enjoy nature, other shit good and bad is also happening, but I feel I’m already taking up too much of your time. If you’ve even made it this far.

If you have, and you’re sliding, grab onto something. Or someone. It’s quite easy to slide all the way down and lose all that work you put into yourself. One thing that keeps me from drinking is the fear of having to go through all those days again to get to this point. Now that prospect is starring me right in the eyes, impeding my mood recovery. I still want to be real and raw, but how much can I stand to sacrifice? Podcasts are a warm blanket, though on an episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage, a smart person mentioned a study that found that some depressed people were depressed simply because they had a more realistic view of what is often a fucked up world.

ANYHOW, this has been quite long. Tonight, write down 5 things that made you smile today and 5 things you’re grateful for. Do this every day. It might just tap your breaks enough.

I used to run, but now I can’t hide

My favourite analogy for sobriety is learning how to swim. Some people voluntarily take lessons, are eased into the pool and guided the whole way. Others are dragged kicking in screaming because they refuse, but their parents know there are many pools out there so it’s safety first. On the other (third) hand,  some jump off a dock into a lake then frantically try to figure it out on their own. I shook this third hand. The first minutes are frantic flails for survival, eventually managing some sort of a motion that keeps you afloat.

I’d heard about swimming through podcasts, maybe read an article and watched a movie or two, but was still unprepared for the shock of it all. The inefficiency of my cobbled motion eventually caught up, I had to call out for help. Someone showed up, and shouted instructions from the dock. After a few minutes more I had a new lease on life; I knew I wasn’t going to drown. I think as far as describing in very general terms, the initial shock and struggle of sobriety done solo (initially), the lake analogy holds, but there’s another element which I think it captures better: the exposure.

I once had a nice boozy dock to lie on, with my weed-stuffed pillows and blanket of cigarette smoke. It was comfortable and familiar. Days would only differ in weather and the odd bug bite, but otherwise my emotional range was narrow. Anything that would arise, good or bad, was promptly smothered and would never reach its true potential. Though I wouldn’t admit to myself at the time (the odd drunken confession notwithstanding), this was the bottom, and that was good! I had a hard surface to lie on and thus I knew the limits. The sky was too far away anyway, and my bed was cozy.

The rush of cold water when you jump into the lake renders you naked. The sky is still far, but now so too is the bottom. The dock is in reach, but as time goes by you float away. You can swim, but you’re alone. You have nothing to ground yourself. Your emotions are no longer tethered, they float freely, they’re vulnerable. You no longer have a bottom, your mood is now free to rise up, and sink deep. If you work at it, your baseline will hover around the surface. You’ll adjust, but (as far as I have experienced) that comfort level of the dock will allude you.

Next post: I’ll abandon this damn analogy and describe what’s actually happening right now. I’m not exactly drowning!

Time to begin in the middle, or somewhere thereafter

Pretentious title, check. Grandiose ambition, check. Inflated ego and thesaurus, check and aligned. Sense of humour, god I hope so.

Alright, there’s no point in pretending that the first time isn’t going to be awkward. One way or another you just gotta get it out there and get rolling. My ‘hyper’ self-awareness produced the beginning of this post, but I hope it will turn out to be more useful in the coming year.

So what’s the point of this? Well, first and foremost I type much quicker than I write, so this is a far more efficient mental douche than my journal (that will by no means be the last crude joke). Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I have a lot I want to talk about, some of which might be useful to someone, most of which will just be another person complaining about bullshit or providing opinions on topics of which no one asked.

Anyhow, almost two years ago I stopped drinking, smoking, toking, and every other short term answer to, “Where’s the fun at?”. While the first months were difficult, the first year was triumphant. I had goals, ambitions, energy and a surprising lack of hangovers. I traveled, saw old friends in a new light and felt optimistic of the future. That was Year One. Year Two, on the other hand, has been less of a jubilant celebration. I’m still happy I made the change, it was quite necessary, but now the future is uncertain. All those goals and plans amounted to very little. Now I sometimes wonder, “what was the point?”. I, like many of my peers, am over-educated and under-employed. Though my tendency towards apathy is a strong contributor to the later. This will be the only time I use the word ‘disillusioned’. To simplify: I’m trying to figure out what the fuck to do with myself, and I know I’m not the only one.

Sobriety struggles one day, travel and life history anecdotes another, general philosophical (and maybe even political) musings sprinkled generously throughout. I’ll try to keep the bullshit light, and get straight to the point. I need to be more honest, and hopefully this is a means to that end. I also hope I let my writing be sloppy, and I don’t get lost trying to make stuff sound nice.