Addiction
tldr: Here I share reflections on addiction, including my own. Pathways to recovery. And thoughts on how to recover and on what to do when someone you love is an addict. If you want to skip over to the PS at the very end, I am asking for help finding folks working through their addiction with the use of psychedelics.
I’ve been wanting to share this podcast episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” since I first heard it three years ago. It is about addiction, and it is titled “Day 7.”
Sobriety is an important part of Dax’s personal and public identity. But he relapsed after 16 years of staying sober. This episode is a deeply vulnerable take on how it happened and what it takes to come back.
I’ve been tackling some heavy subjects lately. Depression, childhood sexual abuse, and now addiction. I share these reflections all in a row because they are connected in so many ways.
And because I want to keep talking about the things that we really need to talk about but are not. I am so grateful for your ongoing encouragement. Please know that every note you send me makes a big difference in my willingness to keep going.
Today I am writing about both, struggling with addiction and how to deal with being in relationship with someone who is an addict.
This one is particularly personal for me. I am on my own journey toward sobriety. In this process, I am learning that giving voice to the parts we want to hide, the things that we are ashamed of, is the most important part of getting free of the shame that keeps us in bondage. Speaking openly about what we tend to hide grows our capacity to heal from what is holding us back.
These ailments are part of the human condition. They have been with us forever. But how we deal with them has been different across time, societies, and cultures.
I am not one to over-romanticize the past. I don’t believe we come from some perfect idyll that has now been forgotten. I don’t believe we were once perfect and that our perfection was completely robbed from us by colonialism, enslavement, industrialization and capitalism.
But I do know that the horrors of the Conquista and the birth of materialist modernity robbed us of too much of what we once knew. We have lost ways of wisdom and ways of healing.
I know that we have become too isolated in pursuit of a hyper-individuality that often veers into narcissism. In the process, we have weakened structures of belonging. And we have lost access to the stories of meaning that weave us together in service of something greater than ourselves. Something beyond the myopia of our own time and our own individual lives.
Living in such a society is enough to turn many of us into addicts. It grows our loneliness, anxiety, and depression. It makes it more difficult to heal from the breadth of traumas that we experience as children.
We All Suffer from Addiction
We suffer from all types of addiction. Some types are more harmful than others. But all of them take us away from the present moment. They are ways of avoidance that keep us from contending with life and its terms. The irrefutable facts are that no matter how kind we are, how much we exercise or eat well, no matter how much we heal, we will all deal with loss and grief. We will each meet circumstances that upend our understanding of fairness and justice. Each one of us will have to endure unpleasantness and discomfort.
These are life’s terms. And we want to avoid them. Especially living in a culture that profits from our distraction. And fails to nurture meaning, connection, and belonging.
Some of the things we can be addicted to include sugar, shopping, gaming, streaming, scrolling, porn, work, co-dependence, endless digital input, and of course, substances.
Many of these addictions are fully normalized in our cultural contexts. When everyone around you is similarly addicted, it becomes hard to recognize that your work, drinking, or scrolling have become out of control.
Breathe!
Pause for a second here and notice if there is any tightness in your body. If you have an urge to turn away. If there is any defensiveness or shame. STOP. Breathe. Relax. Accept. This is a good moment to bring love and compassion to yourself. To tune in with curiosity and openness.
It is better to look at it than not to look at it. Self-judgment, guilt, and shame will not serve you well. Stay kind and compassionate with yourself. Bring forth your gentle gaze.
The journey out of any addiction is not an easy one.
I recently went to a meeting where someone had relapsed into drinking after 20 years on the wagon. She had been spinning for weeks. It was devastating for her, and it was devastating to hear.
I have also been to a meeting where someone was fresh out of 20 years in prison, and all he could express was gratitude for finding sobriety while he was locked up. For him, having his body locked away was less painful than being lost in the grips of addiction.
I share Dax Shepard’s story because it gets into some pretty layered nuance. We long for black-and-white answers. “Always do this, never do that.” But life just doesn’t work that way.
Caring for Someone who is Addicted
It takes so much care and discernment to know how to be in relationship with an addict. Sometimes you just need to boundary the person out of your life. They cannot be helped by you. And the relationship may be harmful to you, your mental and emotional health, and even your own growth.
But sometimes what the person needs is your care, your acceptance, your patience, and your love. And these are the things that will carry them through. Compassionate consistency, lack of judgment, calls for self-accountability. These are gifts that can help someone get the help they need. And find the sobriety that will set them free.
But, how do you know? How do you know when to stay or when to go?
I wish I could give you a clear answer. But it really is case by case. What I do know is that you should be in touch with others who can help you to discern. There are support groups for people who are in relationships with addicts, and support groups for people who tend to form unhealthy codependency with people who are lost in addiction.
In this “Day 7” episode, Monica, who is Shepard’s best friend, but also works for him, gets caught in a web of lies that Shepard spins as he hides his addiction.
This is what we do as addicts. We HIDE. I’ve heard it said that “addiction is an illness of the ego, and the ego creates separation.” Hiding is separation itself.
It gets hard. Confusing. And complicated. But Monica chooses to stay in the relationship. Thankfully, Dax had already been sober for 16 years, he has worked the program, he has a foundation, and there is something in him that could be trusted.
The short episode does a beautiful job of walking us through the minefield of friendship and addiction. I am certain some of you will feel challenged and reactive as you consider Monica’s choices. These are not choices you have to make when you find yourself in relationship with an addict. It really is about discernment.
"True friendship offers deep satisfactions, but it also imposes vulnerabilities and obligations, and to pretend it doesn’t is to devalue friendship.”
When do you stay? For how long? How do you stretch? And, how do you make sure to take care of yourself?
Again, I offer no answers. I say pray, discern, and talk to others, especially to those who have had to walk a similar path with someone that they love.
I also want to share this episode of the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things.” Here we hear Elizabeth Gilbert’s devastating account of finding the deepest love with a woman who had been sober for many years. But then, Rayya, her beloved, was terminally diagnosed, and so she chose to return to drug use. This one is an important tale of someone making a different choice: staying and then of having to leave.
We also learn of Gilbert’s own struggle with “love addiction.” And the lengths she has had to go to in order not to fall into the trap again.
Humility as a Gift
In Dax’s case, the title “Day 7” is a most humbling title. It means that after 16 years of sobriety, Dax has started to count his days again.
I know this feeling all too well. I have had to start counting my days so many times. I have gone through extreme measures to overcome my addiction to pot (yes, pot IS addictive!) and alcohol.
My efforts included flying to Mexico to take Ibogaine, an African psychedelic considered, by some, to be the best cure for addiction known to humankind. I went not once, but twice. Ibogaine is a very arduous, extreme, sometimes dangerous, and intense experience. It is not for the faint of heart.
Both times, I returned and was effortlessly sober for about 9 months. And both times I fell off the wagon. Today I have abstained from pot and alcohol for three and a half years. But I have heard enough stories of relapse to know that I must stay attentive every single day. They say you are not getting better at managing your use when you are sober. They say your addiction is doing pushups, getting stronger, waiting to get you the moment you slip.
I also experience the way other addictive behaviors snuck into my life to satisfy that same part of me that seeks to avoid life and its terms. Now, I have structured my own group of support and accountability as I seek to stay away from these other traps. But the journey is endlessly humbling.
Addiction is also a gift. Being humbled is a gift. Needing others is a gift. Learning to ask for help is a big gift. Compassion for those who suffer from the same ailments of addiction is a significant gift.
Human Beings Heal in the Company of Others
I share these thoughts with you for a number of reasons, some of which I’ve already stated:
Addiction, like anxiety and depression, are byproducts of a culture that is not well. They are not personal failings. They are responses to life in times when too many humans and our very culture have lost our way.
I invite you to consider your own addictions, acknowledged or unacknowledged. I invite you to know and trust that you can be free of it. But it is almost impossible for you to find this freedom all by yourself, without help and support. Notice the way you fail again and again. Human beings heal in the company of others.
In my own experience, moderating is much more difficult than quitting. There are substances and behaviors that you just can’t moderate. Dare to imagine a life without a crutch that has defined you. There is power and magic on the other side of it.
It is essential to consider and discern when it makes sense to stay and when it makes sense to leave as someone in your life struggles with addiction. And you don’t have to sort this out alone.
If you were the child of an addict this has impacted your life dramatically. Even if you are not an addict yourself. Find help. Find support groups for people who suffered in the same way.
I will leave you to your own devices to find help for addiction. The internet is rich with resources and perspectives. It has become quite fashionable to critique the rigidity of 12-Step Programs like AA, but they work wonders in people’s lives. Don’t knock something you have never tried. And don’t think that going to just one meeting (or a few) and feeling like you don’t fit in comes anywhere close to “trying.” It does not. “Stay until the miracle happens.”
These groups are not just about not drinking and not using. They offer a beautiful, gritty, spiritual path. I have often wondered whether such a program could exist for people who are not addicted. Something really powerful happens in those halls. I wish it were available to everybody. We all need that sort of daily surrender, self-reflection, and disposition to serve others.
Programs like Alanon or “Adult Children of Alcoholics” can be essential to your healing if you have suffered the addiction of loved ones in your life.
There are many other programs, such as:
Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous
Overeaters Anonymous
Debtors Anonymous
No-FAP 12-step programs for porn addiction
We also have great recent writings such as Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, and the life work of Gabor Maté, whose latest book is The Myth of Normal. This podcast conversation between Tim Ferriss and Gabor is a good dive into his life and work on trauma.
It is also important to make a note about psychedelics. They can be powerful helpers in getting us free from addiction. But they rarely do so all by themselves. You will still need a support structure. You will need to change the company you keep, the environments and conditions under which you spend your time.
Psychedelics also come with the risk of what Jamie Wheal calls “ontological addiction.” A certain compulsion to go back to that visionary state, “returning to the wishing well.” If we get confused and fail to integrate what we learn, we are just pressing the bliss button over and over again. We are escaping. We are not growing. This is also addiction. And I know this one all too well.
Finally, I also want to name that there are very compassionate approaches to harm reduction. These are ways for those who might not find a way to fully abstain from substances that are harming them.
Addiction is an ailment of our age. Coming together to face it, contend with it, and support each other through it is also the best medicine we can come up with.
It seems to me that togetherness is the cure for the worst ailments of our day.
“Together we could do what we could not do alone”
AA Slogan
What does being sober mean to you?
Always grateful for the gift of your attention.
Abrazos,
Gibrán
PS: Do you know someone who is actively working on their sobriety through the use of psychedelics? They may still be in the process of getting sober. Or, ideally, they’ve been sober for a while and they work with psychedelics to stay away from harmful substances. Please, if they are open, you can share this note with them and introduce them to me directly.