What has changed is that I have developed an ability to generate positive, qualitatively interesting states without alcohol.
And I would submit that the failure to be able to do this is at the root of all addictions. Addicts are not just people who crave highs, but who crave “averages”, being unable to do so consistently on their own.
In my own case, I have suffered from low grade depression my whole life. I was literally trained using Operant Conditioning not to feel, not to relax, and not to do anything out of the ordinary. I was rewarded for essentially being not there, and punished often and early for everything else. When the actual hitting stopped, the narcissism of both my parents made it difficult to develop a sense of self.
At an early age, I found I could retreat into books and fantasy worlds without getting hit, and without having to deal with the emotional confusion inherent in dealing with people who conflate the people around them with their own sense of self, and that path has determined my life.
But it hasn’t been a happy life. As I said, I wake up feeling hated most mornings.
Lately, though, I have been able to get some emotional distance from that sense of hate, some space. That is what I have always been lacking is space. Narcissists take it from you. If you have not experienced it, this feeling is hard to describe, but it embeds in everything you do, and your very sense of self and ability to feel a sovereign consciousness within the world.
But as I said, I have been able to generate MY OWN positive feelings lately, and that has made a huge difference.
Looking at this, though, I truly think that all the people who wrestle with addiction are really seeking a way out of the sense of non-specialness, of boredom, of an inability to create positive states. They are seeking movement, when they feel like a sailing ship lost at sea without wind. They seek liberation from a sense of psychological claustrophobia, from an oppressive sense of themselves as unchanging, stuck, stiff, dead.
I am probably saying too much, and some of this may not make sense. There are many forms of addiction, many ways to screw up, many ways to fail.
But this feels right. Perhaps it may be useful to someone. I will likely never know.
I will say that as my depression lifts, and as I stop drinking, my Lumosity score shot up 200 points after being stuck in the same place for many months. It’s not the fuzziness that’s gone, but the constant self-checking, the stopping of consciousness to see if anything I’m thinking or feeling will get me hit or hurt. I always, always, always had to be on the defensive, and it made it hard to be spontaneous, to just let things go, and certainly to have any connection to–and certainly faith in–the future. I have been stuck in an oppressive Present for all my life, a room without a door. Perhaps Sartre had this emotional background in his own mind when he wrote “No Exit”.
And I see how the path to meaningful compassion and love is through hell. I am not quite there yet, but I get glimpses of just SEEING other people, seeing their histories, seeing their weaknesses, and their strengths.
And I can see one day being able to say to people “I will go into Hell with you. We will go where it hurts, and I will not be afraid and I will not run. We will touch that place, then I will lead you out, help you out, help you learn to walk out on your own. And we will do it as often as needed.”
I would call this being a spiritual soldier. I like this idea. No fear, endless persistence, creative engagement, constant skill development.