Addiction is the Ultimate Time-Out Session from Growth
Pause from growing long enough and all you’ll get is in an early grave.
Admittedly, I’m a little out of my realm here. I’m not an addiction expert, I’m just a human who has overcome some pretty tricky addictions. Nonetheless, I’d like to take a stab at communicating some things that have started taking shape in my life over the last few months regarding addiction that I think might help you, as they have helped me a great deal.
Let’s shake some stuff loose.
I grew up in a household where the concept of addiction was not at all foreign to me. Before I was even conceived and shortly after I was born my mother fell prey to a pretty substantial alcohol and semi-substantial cocaine addiction.
As legend has it, when I was a wee tike, just freshly capable of walking, my mother came home to visit my sister and I after being gone for some period of time on a bender. She said that normally this would warrant thrills and gasps of excitement, but on this unique day I saw her come through the door and walked away without giving so much as a smile.
The shameful cold shoulder from a toddler has to sting. She went to rehab right after this encounter and hasn’t looked back at the bottle since.
A little while down the line she met my stepdad in an Alcoholics Anonymous group. He was a great stepdad. I loved him like a father. He made us all laugh till we cried, or, in my case, peed our pants. He pulled my first tooth and taught me how to ride a bike.
But, as these things go, his shadows would come out of the woodwork every now and again and I saw just how dark and deep pain can go through first hand accounts of witnessing him wasted. My mom shielded us as much as she could I’m sure, but kids see everything, no getting around it.
It’s uniquely odd how alcohol puts your pain out of your periphery and yet it just stares everyone around you directly in the face, sometimes threateningly so.
This habit of shirking from the pain led my stepdad into a lifelong battle with deeper and deeper addiction. He became violently abusive toward my mother and they divorced when I was about fifteen. Kudos to my mother and all women who are strong and courageous enough to walk away.
One day in high school, I led a small volunteer group of my fellow student council members to a local homeless shelter and drug rehabilitation center to serve food. Inconveniently unbeknownst to me, my stepdad was sitting in the cafeteria and was a resident of the program. This is how I found out he switched to crack-cocaine as his pain evasion of choice.
A few years after this I got a letter from his mother saying he had died of a drug overdose.
All that work put into pain evasion and the only thing he got out of it was an early grave. This is the great trick of addiction though isn’t it? It’s a mirage, really. You get a shield from your pain while you’re high but the other side of it is nothing but death, like the grey backdrop in this article’s photo. It’s just, void.
I was talking with a dear friend of mine the other day and she said so pointedly and passionately that if something isn’t growing, it’s dying. At a certain level, that’s what addiction is too. It’s a stunt of growth. Addiction is a pain evasion mirage because it puts a pin in everything; it’s an extreme timeout session.
And honestly, I get it, because cultivation takes a lot of work.
This “planet of the humans” we live on is extremely out of balance. Because of this fundamental reality, we enter the earth, from day one, with a heavy load of work to accomplish if we are to avoid the 6th mass extinction. For my stepdad, his heavy load got even heavier through the loss of his father to an early heart attack and then to a violently abusive stepfather. Indeed, his was a rough hand dealt. The telling of my stepdad’s story leads one to see, through an empathetic eye, why he came to choose pain evasion over the cultivation of healing.
But don’t forget to look at the possibility of what this man’s life could have been had he chosen another path, had he chosen to look at the pain instead of putting it in the periphery. When you take a minute to imagine, the possibilities suddenly become limitless for stepdad, whom is someone you don’t even know, but more importantly, for yourself.
Some context for my story is handy but what I really came here to talk about is my own history of addiction and, more importantly, my choice to un-pause the timeout session.
Back in 2006, or 2007 I can’t exactly remember, I spent roughly fourteen hours in the emergency room with my sister who was having her first onset of psychosis.
At the end of this 14 hour saga, I remember not knowing how to even begin picking up the pieces. As a studious college student and devout Christian, it took a little work for me to remember what other people do when they’re in a great deal of pain but I remembered enough to pick up my first pack of cigarettes at the gas station and to purchase my first alcoholic beverage at a bar. Thankfully alcohol never really took the edge off for me but cigarettes became my timeout of choice.
Since that day, my life went through a lot of bobbing and weaving and I did a pretty good job at evading my own pain. Steadily through all the bobbing and weaving, though, a constant whisper in the back of my mind told me this pain evasion was going to lead to death. This turned into a little game with myself and I got really into the idea of taking my own life so that I would become “victorious” over the inevitable.
That game lasted quite a while considering how impatient I tend to be. Thankfully, in the summer of 2020, shortly after getting fired from a job I was trying to get out of, I got really bored with this internal game and decided that the time was coming for a sink or swim moment. I was finally ready to either face my pain square in the face and, if it didn’t pan out I had the Grand Canyon sitting ready for me to dive into (literally though).
I sit here writing this letter to you, my dear reader, because I chose to swim. I chose, with every fiber of my being, that I was going to stop bobbing and weaving from my pain and was going to look it square in the face and I was going to take the sinking option as well as all this bobbing and weaving bullshit completely off the table.
I count myself so incredibly fortunate because my loving and supportive father could see this moment coming and went halfway in with me on buying a two month nature-integrated trauma coaching package. These coaching sessions were once per week with an amazing woman who brought me lightyears beyond where I could get to on my own within that short span of time.
I’m fortunate that on the day when sinking or swimming were the only two options on the table, she was right there celebrating my choice to swim. In her subtle, incredible way it was like she said,
Okay, awesome! Let’s get started with the breath stroke. You’re going to be such an incredible swimmer soon Lydia.
Now listen, I don’t know where you’re at in this story within the context your own life. I don’t know if you’re at the point where you still want to bob and weave from the pain, or maybe you’re starting to play similar games as I did with using suicide as some “victory” over the inevitability of death, or maybe you’re ready to sink or swim. I hope, for all our sakes, that you’ve either chosen to swim or are getting really close.
I don’t know where you’re at in this process but here’s what I do know:
Addiction, fundamentally, is the mind’s great time-out from growth, but if you’re timed out from growing long enough, this will inevitably lead to death.
You’ve got to decide that you are willing to do WHATEVER it takes to get back in the growth game. I have no idea what that looks like for you. I don’t know if it means you need a therapist or if it means you need to take a big long road trip or you need to start a new hobby. The beauty about life is you get to design it. No one is going to design your solutions for you. No one person or substance is going to fix this pain for you. You have to decide that you’re going to hit the un-pause button and look at the pain.
The process of looking your pain square in the face is brave work but I can promise you, it will not kill you. As it turns out, choosing not to, most certainly will.
Thank you so much for reading this whole article. Thank you for choosing to pursue feeling good inside of your own skin today and everyday. If you’d like help in this work, please reach out to my dear friend and amazing coach, Mandy Bishop. She is a nature-integrated trauma coach and has truly helped change my life.
Please also consider trying meditation. I believe the most powerful action you can take for yourself is to wake up and meditate before you do anything else in your day. I currently use the Headspace app but another amazing choice is the Waking Up app by Sam Harris.
Love yourself first.
In love, light, and gratitude,
Lydia Catherine
