ADDICTION IS AN EXCLUSIVE LOVE-AFFAIR

Addiction is a relational illness.

The best example of this is a young man I knew many years ago. He was an acquaintance of a friend of a friend so I only saw him a few times - but he's left an impression with me that's lasted decades ...

He lived alone in an apartment, and worked every day at an auto body shop.

Not so out of the ordinary - except for one thing. 

When we wasn't working, or sleeping, he spent all his time drinking beer. On work days he'd get up at the very last minute (hungover I presume from the night before), go to work, and right after his work was done for the day would go to the bar across the street and sit there, usually all alone, drinking beer after beer until it was time to go home - when the bar closed? - when we ran out of money? - and pass out on his unmade bed with dirty sheets.

His apartment contained only an old easy chair, maybe a couch, and the bare essentials in the kitchen for making the most unhealthy - but quick - meals imaginable. The walls were bare and the bathroom was kept man-functional - meaning everything worked but was cleaned as infrequently as possible. 

He'd spend his weekends in this bare bones apartment - drinking beer. 

Oh yes, he did like to read Time magazine. So there were old issues of Time scattered about.

What's this have to do with addiction being a relational illness? Well, this young man lived with, and spent all he free time with his best friend - with whom he was actually having a love affair. 

That's one of the most striking things I've learned about addiction over the years - an addiction is an intimate relationship between the addict and their substance - or behaviour: it's a love affair. 

When he was with her his life was complete. And when he wasn't, he thought about her all the time, and could hardly wait for his work to be done so he could rush to her side.

His best friend and lover was his beer. 
   

If you asked him, I'm sure he would've said he was happy ... maybe ... I'll never know of course because I never asked him.

He had family - parents, siblings and all that, but he only saw them at Christmas and on other holidays when he sometimes made the effort to travel to his hometown ... he knew us and sometimes he'd tag along for an evening - if we were going to a bar ... 

Otherwise he was alone with his beer.

For all I know, he is still living that way. It's hard to imagine though , because the truth is, if he'd kept on much longer it's more likely he's dead - from the effects of the steady diet of beer or by his own hand.

The simple point I'm trying to make with this depressing story is that addiction as a relational illness needs someone outside the love affair between the person and their lover-substance to react to it.

it takes a relationship with at least one real person who cares, but at the same time has solid personal boundaries, to upset the the addict's relationship with their substance.

In rare instances the decision to break up comes from within. 

But most often, someone on the outside of this toxic relationship has to say something (even at the risk of a strong, defensive reaction), or set a boundary .... I'm not standing by and watching this anymore - I'm not condoning or enabling it anymore. Do something, choose: a relationship with your beer (or whatever) or me ... 

As far as I could tell, the young man I've told you about allowed no one in his life who had the insight or the courage to to so. He had arranged his life so there would be no interference from anyone outside his most important relationship.

And so he continued. 

Where he ended up, I have no idea. 

Addiction does not lie solely in the substance

Addiction does not lie solely in the person

Addiction lies in the relationship between the person and the substance

And it is an emotionally committed love relationship.

SURRENDER: THE KEY THAT OPENS THE DOOR

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.  (Thich Nhat Hanh)

After writing about the power of vulnerability last week, this subject seems like the obvious next step. I hope it makes sense to you.

I'm coming to the conclusion, after years, decades even, of spiritual questing (bear in mind that I'm a very slow learner) that the key to entering the spiritual path, and finding one's true identity and some sense of peace and serenity in this life, is a genuine, deeply accepted experience of surrender. And that surrender is a decision that must be made many times ... even many times every day.  

How obvious can it be, right? Maybe. 

Surrender

A ubiquitous, misunderstood word the meaning of which is easily twisted and perverted so that anyone with a so-called healthy ego approaches it warily and can easily reject it as a choice for them.

Even one of my heroes, Bruce Springsteen (the Bodhisattva of New Jersey) sings the praises of the refusal to surrender:

Well, we made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Like soldiers in the winter's night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender

We believe surrender is all about white flags, knuckling-under, giving up, humiliation, weakness - ignominious defeat ...

But ...........

Surrender is essentially a decision and experience that is foundational to the spiritual journey, and at the same time it is a word so often used and abused that its meaning has descended to the ordinary, and has become invisible - and missed. Much like what's happened to the word mindfulness...... (but that's a word better left for another day)

Surrender

Watching people struggle against surrender every day brings it into vivid focus for me. I can see what they need to do - better than I can see what I need to do for myself - and I can see it because they will do anything to avoid surrender.

Consider the mother who admits she can't stop controlling and enabling her son active in his addiction. She will also admit that she will not stop doing it if it means letting go and dealing with her own feelings - even if and when he takes charge of his own life in recovery.

What she refuses to see is that as long as she clings to her belief that her son's health and happiness depend on her vigilance and controlling behaviour she remains trapped in the delusion that her concern is for her son - when the reality is, she is primarily concerned with meeting her own needs. 

And what are those needs? Soothing her overwhelming terror at what might happen to him, putting her own mistrust at the centre of their relationship, assuring herself that she can force an outcome that will bring her happiness and peace, and so on ...

Of course what she's unable to see, and is obvious to anyone else, is that if her son is in a solid recovery, she will put her relationship with him at risk with her controlling behaviour. And if his recovery is shaky, she will put both their lives at risk - because they will simply return to their old familiar dance at the service of addiction.

Surrender

A sublime, deeply spiritual decision and attitude
It is letting go
It is detaching with love
It is accepting the evidence of reality
It is living life on life's terms

Surrender is not something we can do with our heads. It is not something we can force or control by willpower. it is something we experience. ... Surrender sets the wheels in motion. Our fear and anxiety about the future are released when we surrender. (Melody Beattie)

Surrender is giving up control.

Surrender is free-falling with no guarantee of a soft landing - except the testimony of those who have fallen before us.

No wonder it's easier to reject than to accept.

A tough decision - to surrender. 

But the consequences of choosing not to are mostly negative, and, when addiction is at the centre of a relationship, all too often tragic.

The right shot, at the right moment, does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You are not waiting for fulfilment, but bracing yourself for failure. So long as this is so, you have no choice but to call forth something from yourself that ought to happen independently of you and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way--like the hand of a child.". ( D.T. Suzuki)

My wish for you is courage and resolve in the challenges of your life that call for surrender - I hope you will offer your support to me in mine. 

VULNERABILITY IS THE ULTIMATE POWER

A good friend of mine, who happens to be a Roman Catholic priest, has been writing a weekly newspaper column for something like 30 years. 

His name is Ronald Rolheiser and his writings appear in newspapers around the world. He's also written several books that are popular among spiritual seekers everywhere. You certainly don't have to be Catholic or even Christian to be moved and inspired by his reflections about the challenges and joys of daily living on a spiritual path.Recently Ron wrote a column that he called The Power of Powerlessness.

But before I turn to Ron's column I need to lead up to it a little:  

if you're at all familiar with the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Twelve Steps of Al-Anon, or any other version of the Twelve Steps for that matter, you'll know how important it is to understand powerlessness as a spiritual reality - and, paradoxically, how accepting our personal powerlessness is the source of our real strength:

Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p.21)

It's also interesting to note that while the Twelve Steps are the product of the genius of the pragmatic American mind, the values they express are at the heart of every great world religion. In other words, at the core of reality there is only one spiritual truth and it is has  been revealed and expressed in many different ways as long as there have been human beings.

Central to this spiritual truth is the ultimate power of powerlessness.

Having said all that, I want to offer you Ron's perspective on this truth through excerpts from the column I mentioned above: The Power of Powerlessness.

There are different kinds of power and different kinds of authority. There is military power, muscle power, political power, economic power, moral power, charismatic power, and psychological power, among other things. There are different kinds of authority too: We can be bitterly forced into acquiescing to certain demands or we can be gently persuaded into accepting them. Power and authority are not all of a kind...

In Greek, the original language of the [Christian] Gospels, we find three words for power or authority. We easily recognise the first two: energy and dynamic. There is a power in energy, in physical health and muscle, just as there is a power in being dynamic, in dynamite, in having the power to generate energy; but when the Gospels speak of Jesus as "having great power" and as having a power beyond that of other religious figures, they do not use the words energetic or dynamic. They use a third word, EXOUSIA, which might be best rendered as VULNERABILITY. Jesus' real power was rooted in a certain vulnerability, like the powerlessness of a child.

This isn't an easy concept to grasp since our idea of power is normally rooted in the opposite, namely, the notion that power lies in the ability to overwhelm, not underwhelm, others. And yet we understand this, at least somewhat, in our experience of babies, who can overpower us precisely by their powerlessness. Around a baby, as most every mother and father has learned, we not only watch our language and try not to have bitter arguments; we also try to be better, more loving persons. Metaphorically, a baby has the power to do an exorcism. It can cast out the demons of self-absorption and selfishness in us. That's why Jesus could cast out certain demons that others could not.

And that's how God's power forever lies within our world and within our lives, asking for our patience. Christ, as Annie Dillard says, is always found in our lives just as he was originally found, a [powerless] baby in the straw who must be picked up and nurtured into maturity ... [but] we are impatient with quiet, moral power that demands infinite patience and a long-term perspective. Like the Israelites facing the Philistines, we are reluctant to send a shepherd boy against an iron-clad giant. We want divine power in iron, muscles, guns, and charisma.

But that's not the way intimacy, peace, and God are found.

When was the last time you experienced God, or heard God talked about as the most vulnerable?   

And what does this mean for us ordinary people in our everyday lives? What does it mean to be vulnerable in our relationships with others?

Spiritual truth also includes striving to take personal responsibility, to be honest - with self and others, and to be forgiving - of self and others. If a person strives to live these values, one must become vulnerable - with self and others. That is, if better relationships and intimacy with those one chooses are one's goals.

Again, we touch the paradox - it is a spiritual reality that must be experienced more than grasped as a concept: real power lies in a person's willingness and ability to be vulnerable with others. To become vulnerable, and so be more powerful, one must develop the skills of self-remembering and sustained attention, so that defences, masks and other fear-based behaviours can be laid aside.

By the way, in case referring to God is putting you off, let me say this: 

even though embarking on a spiritual path is ultimately necessary, mandatory even, an image of God as some-guy-in-the-sky, a judging father or someone equally depressing, is not.  

Ron Rolheiser OMI

You can check out everything you need to know about the thought and the heart of Ron Rolheiser (including the column I've referred to) at www.ronrolheiser.com

WRATH IS ABOUT THE COURAGE TO CHANGE

Tibetan Buddhism is full of wonderful symbols and rituals - many of which seem very strange to westerners.  For instance, there is a pantheon of 100 deities - 42 peaceful deities and 58 wrathful deities.

FORTY-ONE PEACEFUL DEITIES

While the peaceful deities are portrayed as, well, peaceful -  serene and appealing - the wrathful deities are vicious and scary-looking. Pictures of wrathful deities are full of disturbing images of blood and skulls. They have bestial faces and are often shown stomping on corpses ... not our favourite images of the divine.  

It's important to point out that these 100 deities are not seen as beings or gods in a literal sense; they are symbolic representations of different aspects of the divine - in other words - Buddha-mind. Another way of saying it is they represent the different aspects of enlightened activity, or a perfect state of being.

The peaceful deities represent the quiet, natural purity of of our being.

The wrathful deities are something else again. 

Wrath doesn't mean violence or fierceness as we

MAHAKALA: A WRATHFUL DEITY

might understand it. Wrath refers to the transformative, aggressive process that is required to overcome the deep-seated conditioning that keeps us beings deluded - a delusion that has us identifying with what our ego tells us is real. And our delusion creates the primal disease - suffering. 

The wrathful deities represent what is required to change. They represent the difficult process of transformation. 

     


So, you ask, why am I going on about this? What does it have to do with dealing with our lives in relationship - and all the struggles our relationships bring us every day? Fair questions ... let me explain, and I'll use addiction as an example:

As you know very well, addiction is an insidious, powerful, mysterious illness that affects us to the very core of our being. Not only the addict, but everyone who loves them is impacted and eventually mirrors the addictive behaviour. Understood this way, addiction is a relational, spiritual disease - and therefore a relational, spiritual approach is required to overcome it. 

Here's my point - which brings us back to the Buddhist deities: a spiritual approach must, along with the peaceful spiritual aspects - like awe and wonder, gratitude and acceptance, include wrath. 

Wrath is about courage - courage to tell the truth, to be honest with oneself and others, to be responsible for one's own behaviour and not control others. Wrath requires determination and firmness - with oneself and others. Wrath is not about compromise and dialogue, it is about transformation - the courage to change, the determination to do things differently.

Wrath is confronting addictive behaviour
Wrath is setting boundaries.
Wrath is self-remembering
Wrath is tough-love ... 
And so on ... 


Here is how a well-known Buddhist master, who happens to be a Canadian, put it in one of his teaching talks:

You need anger at the situation in which you find yourself if you want to get out of it. Not only discipline - you need that too! - but you need wrath. You must have determination if you are going to get up from where you are wallowing around, so that you can get on with the work of putting down the unwholesome.

Sometimes I suspect that [people] don't have any anger about their suffering, that they are not really tired of being sick. ... you continue the dialogue with the unwholesome states. Having a conversation with your illness won't subdue it. You have to get it under you and stamp on it like Hevajra or Demchog. You know that those deities are portrayed with corpses under their feet, don't you?  ... Subduing, firmness, wrath.

I tell you most truthfully, if there is no wrath, there is no bliss. If there is no fire in your being, there is no bliss. So get out of your lethargy. It takes strength to break the chain

-  from  Body Speech and  Mind,  Namgyal Rinpoche, p. 103

Namgyal Rinpoche is not talking specifically about addiction - he's referring to our human condition. But what demeans our human condition more than when addiction assaults our relationships - our very being?

DEMCHOG: A WRATHFUL DEITY

LEARNING TO DANCE TO YOUR OWN TUNE

We learn behaviours as coping strategies ... in our families, when we are children. 

These behaviours serve us well. They keep us safe and make it possible to get along with the adults in our lives - people who appear all powerful to us in our smallness and vulnerability. 

Helplessness is a learned behaviour (see my blog March 21, 2013). 

Helplessness has us believe we have no choices but submit. Even when there are other possibilities, when we believe we are helpless our only choice is to do the same thing over and over again.

Compliance is another example of a learned behaviour. 

“We see a number of clients who have learned to be compliant because of how unpredictable the adults were in their life, says  Robert Neri, Senior Vice President/Chief Clinical Officer of the WestCare Foundation in St. Petersburg, Florida - they realized the best strategy was to blend into the woodwork, and not to make waves or test anyone,” he says. 

“Most kids test the adults around them, to stretch and make their world bigger, but in children living in families with substance abuse, compliance is a survival tool.
  

Survival tools serve people well, they help them survive. 

But sooner or later we come to realize that simple survival isn't enough. We want some enjoyment, some sense of well-being, some peace and even joy in our lives. 

The good news is, learned behaviours can be unlearned. No, on second thought, nothing can be unlearned. But change in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours is possible.

The only way to unlearn a behaviour is to learn a new skill - and that skill is a new behaviour which hopefully will bring deeper sense of relational well-being.  

Learning a new skill means that first we must become aware of what we are doing that is damaging to us and our relationships. Only then can we make every effort, one day at a time, to do something different. 

Simple, but not easy.

Robert Neri again: "Children raised in a household with one or more parents struggling with a substance use disorder often use compliance as a coping mechanism—a skill that often no longer serves them well in adulthood..."

So, what new skills will help an adult transcend the learned behaviour of compliance?
Neri suggests four:

1. Learn how to make mistakes

We have to realize that mistakes are a wonderful opportunity to learn. Making mistakes allows us to learn how to tolerate frustration.

2. Learn how to play

Children who grow up in a family with substance abuse become pseudo-adults, learning how to take care of their parents. They’ve missed their childhood.

3. Learn who to trust

First, we have to acknowledge that not trusting people has, in many cases, probably kept [us] alive, but now [we] need to expand [our] interpersonal tools to learn how to trust...

4. Learn we are free to make choices ....

[People] who have spent years viewing themselves as victims can break the cycle of substance abuse by learning [we] are free to make choices. This gives [us] a model of empowerment, so [we] can take control and change the script.

Just as we are not determined by the genes we inherit, we are not determined by behaviours we have learned in order to adapt and survive in our addicted families. As long as we are alive we have the ability to learn new things - and new ways of behaving.

We don't have to dance to the tune of addiction, the past, or other people.