From Wikipedia: “Addiction is the continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors.” Alcohol is a fairly simple addiction to understand: I couldn’t stop drinking alcohol. This is a collection of experiences which shows the internal manifestations of alcohol addiction in the mind, and the intervention of supernatural forces.
I was quite surprised when I first tried to stop drinking
alcohol. I could go a week, two weeks, but I would be under the control of
alcohol the whole time I was abstaining, for alcohol was always on my mind. It
was such a struggle, but who or what was I struggling with? Now that is a scary
question! Addiction is evidence that the mind is not a unified whole. So what
is that other? Even the most favourable answers involve something like multiple
personalities, and if I had multiple personalities, how did I create those
personalities? But what if there were outside entities that were controlling my
mind?! Tesla said the brain was actually a receiver, but if so, how could I
prevent outside entities from taking control of my actions (and to prematurely
answer that question, I cannot stop the transmissions, but I do have a superpower,
my conscience, which can give me my life back). In any case, this is another area
of human life where I had been woefully unprepared, and had been misled and
mystified.
Alcohol addiction is an irrational craving for alcohol. What
are cravings? I notice, now, that the only things I craved for was some sort of
TOXIN. I can want a steak or a piece of fish, but I only get obsessed about chocolate/ice
cream/fast food/carbohydrates/sugar/cigarettes etc.
I also noticed that when I quit cigarettes for some days, my
body would re-experience the immediate feelings of smoking a cigarette – bad feeling,
perhaps a rash, itchy skin and eyeballs, sweating – and these symptoms were a
powerful trigger for I thought that a real cigarette would take away these
phantom symptoms.
But cigarettes were nothing compared to the gorilla in the
room of alcohol, although smoking would always ride in with the alcohol binge. It is
wrong to place expectations on meditation, but I did notice that meditation had
given me an awareness of the situation. I noticed that if I waited out the
bombardment of cravings that they would temporarily refrain.
For example, soon after beginning meditation, I noticed that
I would get completely irrational fears about public speaking, like imagining
that I would fall over, or would blank out, or some other completely ridiculous
scenario. These little “fear pits” were happening every 10-15 minutes. Once I
started challenging these fears with logic and evidence from my past, I was
able to see that these were untrue allegations and just watching them made them
subside and eventually go away.
But the alcohol was a raging beast, and it was exceptionally
powerful on Friday afternoons and evenings after a week’s work. On my way home,
I would turn off onto my street just before a row of shops that included a
liquor store. I had to work out a strategy for turning down my street rather
than continuing 50 yards onto the liquor store.
I decided to take the scenic route home passing through a long
set of parks before I got to the key intersection. I was strongly feeling the
temptation to drink; it seemed much more powerful than me. I started observing
the struggle in my head. So who were these that I was struggling with? There
were voices in my head, and some even sounded like people who I had meet
before.
Now society deems voices in the head as a sign of insanity.
I guess that is true, given that they “made” me drink. But what about the
people who aren’t aware of the voices in the head, like I had been unaware up
to this time. Isn’t being oblivious to and denying the existence of voices in
the head much more likely to be associated with insanity? Who is in control,
when someone flies into a rage or undertakes strong emotional actions? Is this
the same person who later apologizes and feels terrible about their past
actions?
I began to be able to discern the difference between
the voices. I got the idea to run a committee meeting of these voices. After
all, the whole situation was completely dysfunctional; it reminded me of a committee
meeting from work. And I decided the voices where actually representatives of
their own committee.
There was the representative from the Committee for Self-preservation.
I would thank this member for his contribution, “Thank you for the extremely graphic
images of me being run-over up by a car just before I crossed this road”.
There was the representative from the committee for the Appeasement of
Mother. This representative would always tell me what my mother thought of the
current decision, running me down with snarly comments.
There was the representative from the committee for Feeling Godlike
Power. It went along the lines of “they can’t tell me what to do,” and “just &*^%
all these other bastards”.
There was the representative from the committee for Self-Destruction. “Come
on, you know you want to feel the thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow.”
If there was one common theme, it's that the personalities
seemed to be of people that I had resented in the past, and the representative
from the committee for Self-Destruction seemed to be a particularly influential
committee member.
In hindsight, the most important factor in this committee
meeting arrangement was that I had made “myself” head of the committee. I
listened to all the voices and thanked them for their contributions. One of the
voices would trigger me and I would descend into an emotional pit while waves
of lust for alcohol would wash over me, but the tide would also go out at times
and I was alternating between calm and lust. At other times I felt completely
and utterly powerless, overwhelmed by desires, and face it, I had tried
hundreds of times to quit before, and I never had succeeded. I began to suspect that there was also a
representative from the committee for Complete and Utter Self-Annihilation who
was also contributing to the meeting.
This alternative route home added about 45 minutes to the
walk, and I was approaching the moment of truth. The committee meeting had
solved nothing. I rounded that last corner, and I was lightheaded and there was
a strong feeling of excitement in the pit of my stomach. I threw in with the
voices that wanted me to drink, and resolved to buy the $20 of liquor that
would make me suffer for the weekend.
So I began to approach the key intersection where I had
decided to not turn left to home, but to continue on to the liquor store. Wait
a minute! There is a sign on a power pole right at the intersection in big bold
capitalized letters. It said “RAGE ALE ↑”
and the arrow pointed exactly to the liquor store. I couldn’t believe it. Was
the sign put there just for me?
With my mouth hanging open, I started crossing the street
towards home, blown away by the message. I looked again: yes, the sign was
still there and it still said Rage Ale.
Later, at home, I entertained myself by running some statistical
work and watching the horse races. It is difficult to describe, but the sign
had really shaken me up, and I was not going to put in the effort to go back to
the liquor store.
That is all very well, but there is much more to the story.
Something had big plans for me that evening. I had been having a minor dispute
with my neighbor over a broken window, which she had broken and wouldn’t pay
for. That night a new boyfriend, who was very drunk, began to shout obscenities
towards my house, and threw clumps of dirt and even uprooted plants onto my
house and balcony. He was threatening to smash all my windows and then smash
me.
For the first time in my life, I called the Police. I know
that the Police do a good job, although they have to enforce some very evil
laws, but their typical assessment of who is guilty goes: 1) who is male?; 2) who
is drunk? The first point was a wash, but I won on the second point. If I had
been drunk at that time, I hate to guess at where I would have spent that
night. It seemed that a juicy piece of trouble had been arranged for me, but
the rage ale sign had saved me.
But wait, there's more. A few weeks later
on another Friday afternoon, I was walking home and the representative from the committee for Complete and Utter Self-Annihilation was bothering me. I’m not a religious person at all, having
resented the Catholic Church, but I said under my breath “Lord Jesus Christ
cast out this demon.” Wow! Where did that come from? But it worked! I felt
something leave me. It was no big deal at all. Actually, there was an absence
of emotion or special feelings. It was like the feeling of normalness, the
subtraction of emotions, which was coming from meditation practice (I’ve never had
any ecstatic non-normal woo-hoo experiences from meditation, either).
There was no end result. There never is a discrete success
or end to the torment, and a declaration of "victory" always results in a relapse. I would drink for years to come, but I lost my desire to
get out of control drunk that day. A degree of moderation had been introduced. There would be other less harmful demons,
little blobby guys like you see in movies, whom I would drink with. Gout would
finish the process, and let me feel the “anti-vibration” of alcohol.
Unfortunately, I think I recognize the representative from
the committee for Complete Self Annihilation in the eyes of my brothers (and my
father before he died) when they are smashed drunk and speak in obscenities and
violence that they don’t remember saying afterwards. They won’t touch meditation
with a 10 foot pole, and nothing I can do to influence them at all. The
Catholic Church’s programming has made sure of that.
And I did go back to the sign the next day. It still said “Rage
Ale”. I saw the cardboard had been folded back on itself. The other side said “ga,
s”.
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