Category: Addiction

I don’t want to see anything outside of my little boxed-in world. All I can do is sit here on the couch and pray that no one needs anything from me, or that nothing else exists. Being numb to everything = safety. The crying starts and I feel like it is going to break me. And I have nothing to soothe it. No alcohol. No drugs. No eating disorder. No cutting. The intensity of the pain I am feeling is unreal. I have two options. First, I can stay very still and let the internal agitation and anxiety threaten to well up inside me until I pull out every strand of hair or bang my head on a wall so hard that I see stars. Or I can give into that agitation and watch as it turns into tears. And not just any tears – full-out body shaking sobbing that has the potential to rip my heart and my stomach outside of my body.

Neither of those options are acceptable to me. But here we are.

To engage with life again feels like slowly creeping across an old, battered bog bridge that should have been replaced years ago. It is rotting and feels more like a teeter-totter rather than a way across the water or mud. Bog bridges can be a lifeline sometimes. They preserve both the trail as well as dry hiking boots. But to use them appropriately, one must treat them with respect that their long life has earned them. Your first step must be a tentative one. Your second one might be equally as tentative. This is how it is trying to recover from a bout of depression. You try and take a step outside of your comfort zone. And for me, on this journey, it can mean something as simple as getting up off the couch and getting a snack. Or taking the dog for a walk. Or reading a magazine. All of these things feel monumental at the time, and the shitty thing is, they are supposed to make you feel better. And then they don’t. All they end up doing is making me feel like a kindergartener, trying to navigate my life over a set of bog bridges, desperately trying to make it to the other side without being completely swamped by the disgusting mud I am attempting to walk over. To me, life feels like a trail built solely of rotten bog bridges – they do the job, but nothing is ever certain, and every little moment takes real focus so as not to fall off the bog bridge.

The most important thing to do right now is stop being so afraid of falling off the bog bridges. For the most part, they are there to protect the trail, and to prevent us from soggy feet. Fear can be paralyzing. If you see the bog as an adventure, maybe the fear can dissipate a bit. I’m afraid to act outside of the tensed-up ball of anxiety that has such a grasp on my stomach, but this is clearly not working. Life feels mundane right now.  I want action. I want activity. But paradoxically, I also want routine, structure and consistency. But paradoxically again, I want excitement, even a little bit of enjoyment wouldn’t be so bad. Next hike – bog bridges. Bring it on

Addiction is like always reaching for the next thing. The next edge. The next high to get you away from yourself. I’d try to compare it to hiking but today I’m really not feeling it. Addiction is like never getting to the top. It’s like walking on a trail that never goes anywhere. Yet the hope that it will take you to some sort of utopia never subsides. Addiction doesn’t care what your drug of choice is. It only cares that you use something, anything, to try to get that edge you are looking for. The trail of addiction is a never-ending climb on a trail that looks really pretty and seems to promise a good view, except that the view never comes. You get glimpses of the open summits ahead of you, glimpses of the trees getting smaller and the sky getting closer, yet this reaching for something, anything that looks pretty, never amounts to anything. You reach and you reach, and you reach. But there is nothing to grab, nothing to hold onto. So, you reach for the next drug. Because at least this is something real you can hold onto, even if it is temporary. Because when you never get the view you are trying so hard to find, this drug must be the key to exploding you out of the woods and onto the rock ledges that expose you to the expansiveness of all the mountain ranges in the distance that someday you hope to climb. 

I fight off isolation every day. I also fight to keep it close. Addiction is a disease of isolation. Decrease the isolation you feel and decrease the chances of a relapse. Cling to isolation, and the intensity of the cravings feel unbearable. I cannot escape my own mind, no matter how hard I try. The secret to escape is connection. Connection, to me, is incredibly elusive. It’s like someone is blowing bubbles out into the wind and I try so desperately to grab one, make it mine, take it home. And no matter how gentle I am, they keep popping and I wind up with nothing.

Isolation, the mountain, would not be half as scary if it had a different name. It is an understated mountain that, although wild and remote, is a calm and peaceful hike to a wonderful view. Yet the name itself makes the mountain seem desolate and terrifying in my own mind. Isolation and connection are equally as terrifying. In order to connect with others in a way that doesn’t feel pointless and stupid, I would first need to be able to pry all the bricks down that are making up the wall in my mind in order to get to the feelings behind them. But whoever laid those bricks down used a mortar that is way to freaking strong and takes way too much time and effort to break down. People say I need to try harder to get behind that wall. It’s like the river you need to cross if you take the Rocky Branch Trail route up Isolation. If it’s been raining, or if there’s been a lot of snow melt, that damn river is going to stop your efforts every single time. If you do happen to get across that river, you need to make damn sure that the river isn’t going to rise higher before you retrace your steps after reaching the summit. That raging river is like my wall of bricks. It feels unsurpassable and out of control. I’m standing on one side of the river, looking at the trail continuing on the other side, knowing that the summit is so close. But I can’t get to it because my fucking fear of feelings is fighting so hard to keep me safe from things that happened a long time ago. Fear. Fear of looking at things for what they are, sucking up the pain, acknowledging that the pain sucks, and then moving on, realizing that all that pain from the past is not going to kill me. And then watching as the river dissipates and the bricks crumble down. And the summit of Isolation becomes a summit of courage, of power and of connection. 

“If we’re willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation. This is the first step on the path.”

–Pema Chodron

I’ve found myself on a trail where I have absolutely no idea where I am in space. I’m disoriented. I’m panicking. My brain is swirling with chaos. My heart is pounding and the anxiety I am feeling is making me feel lightheaded and lost in the reality of the situation that I think I have found myself in.

The reality of the situation is that I am on the trail between Webster and Jackson, with no idea which way is home. I am anything but alone on this beautiful summer weekend day. It’s a five-mile loop hike, in one of the most popular areas to hike in Crawford Notch. If I could reign in my panic just a bit, and step outside of what I think is the reality of the situation, I would notice all of the people around me who seem to know where they are and where they are going. But I can’t. I am clinging too tightly to my need for security and routine. I am clinging too tightly to my need for solid ground. 

I fight. I resist the feeling of groundlessness I am experiencing. The fear is too big, and the panic is all-consuming. I have met the edge of what I feel I can handle, and my brain is threatening to shut down. Remaining in this one spot of the trail, allowing the chaos to sink into my soul, is unthinkable. I sprint down the trail in one direction, but the panic only increases because I have no idea where I’m headed. I run back to my spot. I still can’t tolerate being in this spot, so I run in the other direction. 

I have no idea whether I am running toward Jackson or Webster. I have a desperate need to understand which mountain I am headed for, despite the fact that regardless of the direction I head, I will still end up trekking back to my car. This is the beauty of a loop hike. The irony is that I feel I have lost my ground completely. Pema Chodron says that my fear is a messenger, telling me that I’m about to go into unknown territory. Currently, fear does not feel like my friend. Fear is pinning me down to the spot that I’m in. Fear is trying to convince me that I’m lost and that I am going to die here on this mountain. Fear is telling me to run in every direction. I run north – I feel fear. I run south; I find dread. I run east; I get angry. I run west; I lose hope. Each time I return to my spot on the trail, I find I cannot tolerate remaining in place while all these emotions threaten to kill me. 

The Buddhist nun tells me to let fear pierce me in the heart. The Buddhist nun is whacked in the head. Allowing myself to be pierced in the heart by fear is ridiculous. But nothing else seems to be working, so I take my backpack off and sit down on a rock. I let the fear wash over me, suffocate me, and pin me down. I cry. I keep crying. I can’t stop crying. There is a Tibetan word, “ye tang che”, that means totally and completely exhausted. It is meant to describe a feeling of complete hopelessness. This hopelessness is not a term we are familiar with. Our experience tells us that hopelessness is typically something we try desperately to avoid. But Buddhism tells us that we must embrace hopelessness. Embracing hopelessness means that we no longer have the energy for holding our trip together. 

            “We long to have some reliable, comfortable ground under our feet, but we’ve tried a thousand ways to hide and a thousand ways to tie up all the loose ends, and the ground just keeps moving under us. At every turn we realize once again that it’s completely hopeless – we can’t get any ground underneath our feet.” 

Addiction is like this. I desperately cling to something to hold onto. I cling to my routine. I cling to the hope that someday everything will finally feel like it is enough. I cling to a longing for satisfaction, for the ability to enjoy my own life as it is. I cling to pretty much anything except for the spot that I’m in. I hate the present moment, and I fear it. Addiction soothes this fear. Addiction acts as my babysitter. I use it as a way to escape my hope and fear. It alleviates the constant craving and clinging. Addiction is my best friend, my protector. Reaching for a drink, instantly grabbing for something to calm my panic, is based on the hope that I can control my suffering. In reality, abandoning this hope is the only path that can ease the suffering that I am trying to avoid through my addiction.

Being willing to give up hope that I can exterminate all feelings of fear, loss, panic, sadness and chaos allows room for courage. It takes courage to relax with the feeling of groundlessness that occurs when we abandon the hope of change. Relaxing into the present moment, despite my fear, is the only way forward. As I sit on my perch, halfway between two mountains and having no idea which mountain is which, I abandon hope. I relax into this moment of groundlessness. Suddenly, the fear isn’t the big monster that I think it is. The trauma is there. The trauma swirls all around me. It threatens to pierce my heart and pin me into the ground where I flounder like a fish out of water. I sit, and let it swirl. It doesn’t kill me. I stop resisting the fact that things end. I stop resisting the fact that everything is constantly changing. I stop resisting the urge to quell my fear of change with anything that might help. As I dissolve into this hopelessness, I feel a sense of calm. Everything changes – this is this only thing in life that is certain. Abandoning the need for everything to stay the same, is to abandon hope. So, I sit in my spot, with the knowledge that this is exactly where I am supposed to be. I am no longer lost – Webster, Jackson…either way, it doesn’t matter. The trail will bring me home.

Someone told me today that the word “addiction” comes from a Latin word that means “to have your voice taken away from you”. And it’s true. With addiction, we lose our words. We lose our voice. We forget that our voice is our calling to this life. Addiction robs us of the ability to speak truly from the heart. It robs us of our true emotions and robs us of our ability to express them. It robs us of our ability to connect…to nature, to activities, to people. 

Trying to think of something in nature, or something related to hiking, that robs you of your voice, is impossible. Nature is pure. Hiking is pure. They do not ask anything of you except that you be present when you are experiencing them. Hiking embraces you with unconditional love. It allows you to enjoy it, cherish it, rage against it, run from it, and return to it. Yet, it asks nothing in return. 

Hiking is nothing like addiction. Hiking gives me a voice. Addiction takes it away. The choice is obvious. 

I will hike.