Addiction

 At the (Zoom) memorial service for D they referred to his addiction a number of times. I had personally known about the addiction for over four years and attempted in any possible way to assist him.

To that end I read a lot about addiction. I must have surely written about addiction here, although I see I have no 'addiction' tag.

In the past year I needed to talk about the situation with someone and my youngest son, living with us and being a particularly emotionally intelligent human being, would talk with me about addiction. This was important for him to do so too because as a young man he had come into contact with some troubled souls himself.

He had also been subject to a vicious verbal attack by a troubled young woman and for some time had a trauma response to those incidents and the false rumors she spread. 

We talked again this morning around the sense that the addiction can't be healed until the person shows some self-compassion. One thing I distinctly recall Tara Brach say about addiction was that she never saw someone heal who wasn't compassionate towards themselves. 

I would say this to D but I am not sure it registered. I think he had given himself some lofty goals to achieve in life and when he fell short of those standards, he blamed himself, along with others who rightfully deserved to take some blame.

From our discussion this morning I recall J saying something like 'it's about achieving balance' and I think balance was a tough thing for D. He went hard at life, at his goals, to the point of exhaustion, never resting on his laurels.

One day, he had achieved something pleasing, probably more funding for his not-for-profit and I remarked that was great news. But, no, it wasn't near enough, he said. I suggested to him, 'celebrate the wins. Celebrate the moments of your life'.

However, as one speaker noted at the memorial service, the song that came to mind was Frank Sinatra singing 'My Way'. D did it his way and although I know, and for sure, that D appreciated my efforts, it didn't make a mark on the fact that he would always do everything his way.

I haven't kept chats or emails, and I did that with purpose. So, I have only my memories of what he said, or shared.

It's such a funny little anecdote but one that endures. He was holed up in a hotel in an extremely bad way after a shock that would destroy most people. He simply wasn't able to function and I got a bit bossy to try to get him to move.

"Where is that paper? You need to find it. You need to read it out to me."

"I am looking for it." 

There was some agitation in the voice but only slightly.

And then, as if an aside in a Shakespearean play, "She is so nosey."

I laughed out loud. In this desperate moment, he had made me laugh. Classic D.

At the memorial service the sentiment and some peoples' words were summed up in the notion that 'the addiction was beyond any of us', which is true. But, it is only true in the sense that it was eventually true.

I agree with Gabor Mate that addiction begins with unmet needs in childhood. We need to feel unconditionally loved. Any hint that we have disappointed our parents is a very heavy load to carry through life. D felt that. I tried to put a different spin on it; that fathers often felt the need to toughen up a son because they needed to prepare them for what can be a very tough world here on Earth.

From both his parents, he needed unconditional love, consistently. That love would have grounded him; given him a faith in his own goodness. He felt he carried darkness and to some extent, he did. 

Along with the darkness he carried great light. As his wife said, he was full of contradictions, a very complex man indeed.

There is something I say to my prisoner correspondent each time he writes of an execution, something that, of course, is deeply troubling to him.

I say, 'Remember, we are all just walking each other home.' (credit to Ram Dass)

When I was in Sydney in September Olivia Newton-John died. I heard of her death via D who sent a very brief email. We had stopped chatting at this point. I was emotionally exhausted by June this year and suggested we just email for a while. He thought of it as a "disposal". I said, no, you dispose of ice-cream wrappers not VIPs on your friendship list.

Anyways, we exchanged emails about Olivia, an icon and secret love for him, and then I asked how he was doing. He was doing well, he said, a dream job, a new girl. (might have said that already in the past week). And, he said to please look after myself; that there would always be a tender place in his heart for me.

I sensed danger, a danger I have only just now tapped into. I sort of challenged him; wanted to know what it had all been about. I basically wanted to keep him talking. He knows me so well, knows that I will keep digging. He replied very briefly.

"I love you. I have loved you for a very long time."

Now the danger was sky high. It was all sounding near the end. But, he said he was great. It was so confusing.

Some stuff after that; my protective nature abounding; his continual message of different kinds that he could look after himself. Such bullshit. He must have been so unwell; maybe sensed he had limited time.

My eldest son went to school with Sam. They met in the fifth grade and he was one of the lads that made up a thick and rich group of friends. Sam wasn't able to wing school like the other boys; to play hard, do a bit of homework and still get good grades. In response to this, he didn't try much at all.

Eventually the school thought it was time to move on and another very good school picked him up for the final year of his schooling. When he overdosed, after being clean for a good period of time and probably not really meaning to die, I secretly felt the Headmaster was responsible for the end of his life. What they had done was to remove his support; remove him from those who loved him; given him confirmation that he had not met expectations.

His memorial service was attended by hundreds of people; desperately sad for he was only in his 20s. I hugged his mother after the service. Sam had spent many a weekend with us. She said this: The boys didn't know how much he looked up to them; wanted to be like them.

In some way, addiction comes down to the relationship with the Self. Does one measure up to the expectations one has created for oneself and that those special people in a person's life has for oneself too? Is one unconditionally loved? Certainly, all the boys adored him. Sam and D had an almost identical cheeky boyhood smile.

Kim Eng said something interesting in the past day. She suggested that there are no relationships but just relating to someone in the present moment. In this way, we could avoid all the pitfalls of relationships; the judgments, the expectations, the comparisons. It definitely sounds more kind.

Mercy

 As Christmas Day fast approaches, I find myself experiencing all sorts of emotions. 

My oldest and much adored son will be moving to another capital city imminently and he will take, naturally enough, his son, due very soon to enter this world.  Covid provided me the luxury of plans being put off for almost a year, so the idea of not seeing him regularly was also put off into the backburner of my mind.

A few days ago I had framed an official photograph of his football team as Premiers of our AFL football league for 2009. (We always come close but haven't achieved glory since then.) It seemed a nice reminder of the city he loves whilst he was living in a warmer clime. I was doing fine until in conversation with the framer and it suddenly hit me why I was doing this task, and I got teary. 

Of course we will travel to them regularly but it's the first time one of my chickens has gone to live somewhere else permanently. It's only an hour's travel in the plane so it's not dire, but just a bit of a shock to the system. The saving grace, let me assure you, is that there is nowhere better to live than right here, so I know he will be back when he can (might have to get super senior in his company and insist because the market there is bigger than here). And, I know he'll want his son to go to his old school. There are forces behind the move back.

All in all, it's a lovely time of the year for me. It's the first time my grandsons will be at the beach, and we will all be there, so that's grand.

And yet, my mind returns, each and every day to a friend suffering with addiction 10,000 miles away. It's been without question the most rugged few months of his life. For a time, I had access to his sister, so while he was too ill to get me a message he was alive, I had her. But, he objected to the email interactions between us. I think, and I can't blame him, he felt we were colluding.

The point being, that having had a one liner email saying that he wasn't doing very well at all, and since then silence, I check my emails each day and due to the silence from him, I wonder if he is alive or dead.

Trust me when I say I have wracked my brain to think of something to do that is useful. Initially, I did all I could to get the people in his life to organize an intervention and get him to a long rehab situation where his body and mind had a chance to re-calibrate. I also aimed for time in a monastery. He needs a lot of silence; rest and peace. There simply wasn't the force behind the intention.

To my knowledge, he is alone at Christmas time in a vast city at a time of year he usually adores. In spite of my best efforts, my mind pulls back to that thought, and to all the people suffering right now.

I am filled with gratitude for what I have in my life but the best Christmas gift of all would be a note to say that he is being taken care of with people who know how to do that, and that in the end he will be all right. I don't think that note will come.

And so, I use this platform to urge you to be not just grateful but merciful this season.

Happy Holidays.

Addiction

 I've been doing some reading and listening around the subject of dopamine and emotional intensity. To put it into simple language, it seems that our brains like to be in a balanced state, in a state of homeostasis. 

In today's culture, there is excess supply of ways to get dopamine in a not particularly healthy way. We can play a video game, watch porn, drink alcohol to excess, take drugs. Over time, and when the activity takes place often enough, when we are not doing those activities, our brains tilt over to the low side, a sort of depression or craving state.

It seems that our brains don't want to be either too low or too high in dopamine, or too low or too high in emotional intensity. How high or low our emotional intensity is appears to be dictated by our genes, but whether it is a high or low emotional tendency, it seems that our brains find it uncomfortable to be too high or too low and so people are motivated to raise or lower their emotional levels to optimal levels.

As I write this I know that I am mixing two areas of research together and seeing what might gel together. Since I can only use myself as an example since I don't know anyone else's internal state, I would say that my whole range of emotions weren't at all welcomed in childhood, and not really in adulthood either. I think that  low outward expression was learned and conditioned, but I think I also was born with a relatively low emotional intensity.

One example an article gave of low emotional intensity was someone seeing a dorm house on fire and walking to the hose and then walking back with it to the dorm. I don't tend to go into high gear when confronted with a dilemma, usually, although I don't back away from a dilemma either.

Inside, there's a lot more emotional intensity going on. I definitely experience the whole spectrum of emotions inside. It wasn't always so but I learned to tune into my emotional state in later life. I can experience intense bliss at the same time as I can feel deeply sad, and all the emotions in between those highs and lows.

I am keenly aware of what the researchers talk about, that either a low mood or a high mood can be uncomfortable for me. When it is uncomfortable enough, I seek to bring my brain back to homeostasis.

In the case of a high emotional state, for example, the sense of deep connection I felt with my husband on a difficult hike we did together, I think the brain just starts to come down quite naturally. I register the bliss as deeply fortunate and know it won't last. I savor the high.

In the case of anxiousness, or depression, I make a mental note that no good with come of this, and I distract myself, quite naturally bringing the emotional state up towards a balanced state.

Dopamine levels are a bit different, I think. When dopamine has been raised in an unhealthy way, not these natural leveling outs of the brain but an induced state of excess such as takes place with too much of any sort of drug (be that a substance, an activity or a person), it appears to be the case that a cleanse is vital: a dopamine fast.

As the medical people like to say, you are going to feel worse before you feel better. Unless it is an extreme situation a 30 day fast will mean that the first two weeks won't be pretty, but by week 3 you will start to feel more balanced and after 30 days, you will be sober, so to speak.

Then, it's about deciding where you want to go from there - abstinence or  a return to your substance of choice but with good solid boundaries in place.

Is it the emotionally intense who are subject to addiction of some sort? It seems so, yes. Emotionally intense people want variety and novelty.

A caveat here. Whilst I don't think I am a particularly emotionally intense person, I can be. I  think you can be enticed to experience emotional intensity; have a proclivity to it in the right (wrong) circumstances. 

This is a more complicated conversation for another day but generally I think that someone like me has a proclivity to be manipulated and that relates to an empathic nature and some appetite for intensity. You only know you are addicted to something or someone after it has happened. In fact, we are all capable of addiction to something.

Meditation is a time when the brain will naturally go to homeostasis, in time. Yoga is an activity that also allows the brain to reach a balanced state. Gardening tends to balance the brain; walking, maybe running (not a runner).

I think there is a very logical explanation for why the practice of meditation and yoga have infiltrated their way into our Western culture. When the seeking of pleasure in our culture can result in excess dopamine highs, we are in great need of tilting that situation back down to a balanced state.

Self love

I am coming to know, albeit slowly, a lovely woman who has known Ram Dass for many years. As a younger woman it was while she was having lunch with him that she shared a regret; that she wasn't going to have a child. He was somewhat dismissive of her concern, saying that there is always something that we want that we can't have. That's life. It's challenging to be told this by someone, anyone, and yet it's the truth; the cold, hard facts.

In fact, it's not a new notion to me; my father said the same thing often. He, for example, could never manage to get himself a race horse that won races, but if this was the something he couldn't have, he was comfortable with that. He said something similar when our house was spared in the 1983 bush fires. At home with the idea of luck, he felt our turn of good luck had occurred at just the right time.

Occasionally, a family member buys a ticket in Tattslotto or at an airport to win a luxury car. I nod and watch as they buy the ticket but I have zero expectation of our luck being demonstrated in a winning ticket. You have to be in it to win it and all that, but I don't expect it to ever happen. I've no faith whatsoever in it happening.

My husband wanted to go to the Oaks this week and I said a similar thing to him. I've got four healthy and happy children, a new perfect grandson. I've had plenty of good luck in life. It would be selfish to ask for more, nice to back the winner, but small potatoes in the scheme of life.

It is the case that we all have needs and desires. There is nothing wrong in that but when our deepest needs and desires are not met we go looking for substitutes. That's what the human mind does to try to settle itself. It might be a new dress or a bowl of ice-cream; a bottle of gin; drugs. It can be so destructive and yet we do it in a bid at self-survival. If I can't have what I really want, then I need something to drape over all this emotional pain, is the way the mind loops and weaves; justifies.

Like any situation it pays to stop and think about what is going on. If there is agitation, and that's how I experience it, then pause long enough to notice the agitation and call it out for what it is. I don't mean to self flagellate here; on the contrary I recommend giving yourself some comfort at this point.

'There, there, dear. This is hard for you. I know this is very hard for you'. Take some deep breaths. Sit with the agitation a little and see if it might shift. In other words; pause; don't go into overdrive with the need for relief before you give yourself a chance to self-soothe.

Another way of thinking about this is, if your tendency is to do something with negative consequences to yourself, your body or a close relationship, what could you do instead that might turn you back towards a feeling of relief, of ease?

Self-discipline isn't a sexy message but in some ways it is necessary for every person to cultivate enough self discipline to not be self destructive.

Meditation is in fact a form of self discipline as well as being a form of self love. My training had an element of the boot camp about it, and I suppose, I survived and thrived to tell the tale. But, I don't recommend this way of going about self learning of the mind. I wouldn't recommend sitting through  very much pain at all; a tiny bit is inevitable.

Most importantly, I'd recommend learning to meditate and keeping up a meditation practice with a group, led by someone quite sweet in disposition who won't scare you or put you off. Meditation can be a heavenly experience when a guide can lead you to a gentle place; a healing place too.

The Buddhists are correct. In life, we all suffer, but then if we suffer enough we demand to know how to stop suffering. This leads to a spiritual life; backbone along with kindness towards self and others.

Oddly, this approach can lead you back to your desires and the attaining of your desires. Perhaps it won't be the version you carried around in your head all those years, but you won't turn on yourself for having those desires.

In time, you'll be quite comfortable in your own skin, taking responsibility for your own sweet self and that which makes you you. You won't be demanding, internally or overtly, that someone else make your life how you want it. You'll figure out how to do this for yourself. Don't expect all the answers today, just start walking down the path of being good to yourself in ways that you, deep down, know to be good for you.

Self-flagellation is not the answer. Leave that to someone more proficient with a whip.

Modification

The record shows that I've been anally 'trained'. It's not just about anal sex being easier. Maybe it is all about that for some people, but it's not so in my case. It's got a great deal to do with how I function best. I sometimes refer to it as an addiction, because I have come to rely on anal plugs as being an important part of my life. They are necessary for my well-being. They cannot be done without. There's no negotiation here. If you have high blood pressure you take some sort of medication for that. I use anal plugs for my own good mental health.

You'd think - my goodness, after all this time it's a reasonable damn assumption - that I wouldn't forget this; that it would not slip my mind. You'd also think, that like someone who takes lithium for a condition, you'd reconcile yourself to the fact that you must take your medication every single day.

In an ideal world, in an ideal mindset, this would be the case. I don't think a Dominant should necessarily be the one to insist that the treatment is taken routinely. But, being dumdum sometimes happens to even the smartest people. It happened to me this morning.

I semi-woke aware of there being something wrong. It can be hard to identify what is wrong in that sleepy state but I recall making the effort to go and retrieve a plug and insert it. In my haze more sleep won over my understanding of what I should do. The day got going. I dressed and did some chores, but this aggitation refused to let go of my psyche. Nothing was going quite like I'd like it to go. In my mind that was a much bigger deal than it ought to have been.

Two hours later the aggitation was still firmly in place and refusing to budge. I worked through it, in the sense that it didn't derail my plans, but the world, even with the winter sun painting a shine over the day, was annoying the hell out of me. I knew enough to know that my company was of no worth to anyone. Oh sure, I listened to the Moroccan boy wax lyrical about his new cheese, and the flower girl and I talked plant species, but inside I just wanted to put my head in my hands and be by myself.

I came home. All I could think to do was to take a 'St. John's Wort' tablet. These nerves were too close to the surface. Something needed to settle them down. And, then, the thought was there. What about plugggi?? PLUGGGI. Of course. It had been days since I had embraced plugggi.

I moved quickly, anxious for that moment when it hits home. And, there it was...

A blank mind.
Aggitation gone.
Peace.

Is it all in my mind? Has the suggestion been put into my head that I must use pluggi every day, forever? Was my mind manipulated to suit his fancy? Or, did it just happen that way - that my body accommodated pluggi and insisted thereafter that an empty hole was an unnatural state? Or, both?

Well, it is done now, written in stone. It doesn't really matter how it happened any more.  Pluggi = peace. That's just the way it is.