Nuggets

Well hello world. This recording is about addiction and specifically maybe it's for somebody who's questioning the way they feel or if maybe they have somewhat of a problem. So maybe you can see some similarities in this. I'm sure lots of you will see differences as well. It's no problem. But it's something I thought about for a long time. There's this video called Nuggett that I have probably watched more times than I care to admit. And it is one of the most accurate descriptions visually of what addiction is like. I will link to it on this recording somehow as I figure it out. It's definitely worth watching and worth sharing as well. I try to share it once or twice a year with people that I email on a regular basis. You know because the story it basically tells is the story that I think a lot of people who get into trouble with anything from an addiction standpoint know where it's in the beginning you know we take things because it feels good. It makes us feel good. But by the end we take it because we don't want to feel bad. And that switch is very subtle and it's often something we don't feel as it happens. You know there's like a whole life in that simple sentence. You know we can rise we fall there's this collapse and then we try to finally make that long walk back. Most of us who have lived through these addictions we can trace our story very similar to that same sentiment. We take it to feel good and then we take it not to feel bad. You know and maybe it starts as this small rebellion or a like a tiny shortcut to feeling good or even we just want to enhance moments that already felt good. But then slowly it's almost imperceptibly they get transformed into something darker. What really was a high this promised lightness became a weight we carry everywhere. You know what once felt like this freedom becomes this cage. There is a picture on the wall of the hall that I go to and it is a bottle that is being poured down and inside the bottle are these hooks and it is a frightening picture because that's kind of what happens. You know there's a saying that you'll hear is that the chains of addiction are too light to be felt and too though until they are too strong to be broken. That feels very true. You know I took them at first because I wanted to feel good. Louis CK regardless of what you think of him does this bit about when you're a young person and someone tells you not to do drugs when getting high often feels like the perfect solution to your problems because you really can't control anything. Circumstances, all that stuff and you get this momentary lightness or reprieve that's difficult to to as a parent or a teacher or a coach or anyone in a position of some influence over a young person with a straight face to tell them that no don't ever do these things when these things absolutely can make you feel better in the short term. You know I took things because it made me feel good that was simple true and for a long time it did feel good. You know it it rounds off the sharp edges of the world it makes things funnier or I thought it did it made me less insecure and it filled in some of those hollow spaces that loneliness that I didn't even have a name for. You know those early moments of drinking usually seemed harmless pretty ordinary it seemed that's what everyone did they blend into our culture it's all around us camaraderie celebrations how you go to the weekend the lake vacations Friday night Saturday night cruising down the road hanging with your buddies I felt more alive I felt more confident and I definitely felt like I was fitting in with the people around me and those early consequences I saw consequences around me a lot of my friends got in trouble but I was fortunate somehow I had good timing so I was it was easy to ignore but the problem was addiction doesn't really announce itself it it kind of arrives in a disguise of almost someone who we feel cares about us and always provides us with what we need you know I somewhere there was this shift from wanting to drink in drug to needing to drink and drug and it happened slowly from 14 to 29 and so slowly that I who was living inside this story often wasn't able to really tell the difference but other people could and somewhere along the way the reasons why I did those things changed you know drinking that once elevated my mood or made me feel better using make me feel better was now the only thing that can restore it it was like this medicine that I never asked for was never prescribed but I now needed it and believed that I really couldn't function without it or it just didn't want to it got to the point where you're not really using it for excitement or celebration or connection I was using it to not feel to not feel anxious to not feel guilty to not be ashamed I was forgetting who I thought I was or who I was I was spending a million plates in wearing a million desert costumes and then it really started to rewrite kind of my emotional my like an emotional ledger and in the end I took it not to feel bad because I really didn't feel good anymore what once started out as a little amount to get to high became a huge amount to get out of a low you know those rituals and there were a lot those obsessions those compulsions those actions I had to take on a regular basis to get what I needed remained but the joy was gone you know what was once a choice or what I thought was my choice became a compulsion and it was no longer allowing me to escape things I felt I was trapped I was imprisoned by these things and my days my thoughts became structured around not so much about living the best life that I could but avoiding that internal collapse that would come when I wasn't high you know I no longer had to reach for the bottle because I thought it would make me whole I reached for it because I was scared of what I'd feel without it in the crazy part is addiction it doesn't always it doesn't always end in some sort of spectacular crash instead it made my life really really narrow kind of a shrinking of possibilities my spirit is absolutely or was absolutely dimming the good days started to feel less frequent and the bad days became more of the standard issue how many nights alone in my garage was my existence all the time and I had told myself a few times I'm going to moderate I'm not going to drink this week I'm not going to drink today and then I would step over every one of them because I needed some sort of relief I didn't know how to get it and I really wanted that silence of not feeling we talk about what is a bottom and in some ways it's when a person becomes a stranger to themselves I really didn't know who I was and I was afraid I was about to lose the most important things in the world and I wasn't willing to lose them. Maybe you found that spot. I think that's what it takes. And for some folks, they're willing to lose everything including their life. And for those people all I can do and all we can do is love them. Thankfully the miracle and I do think it's a miracle of my recovery is that the story didn't stop at the bottom. My mind that grew accustomed to numbing itself learned slowly with the help of a lot of people to be able to feel and deal with life again. And it sucked, it sucked at first. I was bored, I was lonely, then honestly I was, life started to get a little more full again. I started to learn that the feelings that I was trying not to feel or not my enemy, they were trying to tell me something, they're like flashing dashboard lights. These little invitations to do something to make a change, you know, the using to not feel bad is not the same thing as peace. And when I started to build a new internal and external life, I no longer was outsourcing that peace of mind to a substance. It took me a long time, you know, recovery began in that small minute when I realized that feelings and emotions are not fatal. That I'm not alone. There's a community of people who've done the same thing, I am not special. People had survived it, people were willing to help guide me back. There are people who are willing to help you. It's a world that had gotten so narrow for me into this coping mechanism of substances became so much larger and more forgiving than I thought. You know, I learned to try new things and to trust, to believe that it's okay to not always feel good and that you don't have to avoid sometimes when you feel bad. That's life. But what I did learn was to live and align with something deeper inside of me. Principles, ethics, honesty, purpose, connection, service, gratitude, love, integrity, and I learned that my life I can't be known that I need to live in it, experience it, all of it. If you're struggling, it's not the end. There are things you can do because you can become something you would never would have imagined that you could be. You can. So don't give up, don't give up. Peace.