Down in a Hole - Feeling So Low

Hole:  A hollow place or cavity; a pit; an opening in or through a solid body; a rent; a fissure.

I'm on Day 4 with no coffee.

I suspect that very few people know exactly what this means.  The importance of this would be hard for a non-hole person to grasp.  I could say, as a fairly accurate approximation, to any queries: "Hey, I'm on Day 4 of not breathing.  How do you think I'm feeling?"  Seriously, if you gave me the option of quitting coffee or quitting the intake of oxygen into my body I would have to find a quiet place so that I could think about it for a while.  Death from asphyxiation or no coffee?  Hmmmm.  Let me get back to you on that.

(I apologize for a brief digression . . . As a baseball guy I have to point out that "hole" can also mean "the rear portion of the defensive team between the third baseman and the shortstop."  I wonder why that came to be known as a hole.)

So the whole point of the hole is that I am full of them, and they are bottomless.  I cannot throw in enough stuff to fill them up.  Trust me - I've tried.  I am trying.  I have a history of throwing in things that are clearly bad for me, like alcohol and drugs and cigarettes.  I try to fill them with things that are not, in their essence, bad for me, like exercise and sex and coffee and work.  I have no Halfway setting.  I'm all in or I abstain.  I'm stopped or I have the accelerator mashed to the floor, and I'm holding on for dear life as the car careens just on the brink of disaster.  This would be alarming for most people - it's a comfortable state of equilibrium for me.

If you could manage to only smoke a couple of cigarettes a day your body would be fine.  How wild is that?  I haven't puffed on a butt for 33 years but if I had one this morning I'd smoke a pack by the time I crawled into bed.  How wild is that?

My friend who committed suicide has been on my mind.  He had some big holes, too.  One day the size of his holes overwhelmed him.  I don't know if he finally decided it was too big or if he got tired of shoveling shit into it.

The thing with me and caffeine is that it doesn't even make me feel good - it makes me feel worse.  But the thing with filling holes is that it's not about feeling good or feeling better - it's about feeling different.  I don't want to feel the way I feel.  I want to feel something else.  Something is missing so I chuck shit at it, willy-nilly.

I'm having a cup of off-brand Orange Pekoe Black Tea right now.  I can't definitively say where it came from - we have a box of all kinds of teas snagged from hotels all over the world - but I bet it came from my mother's kitchen.  This tea is probably 47 years old if that's the case.

Yummm.   Delicious.

Da Buddha

"Suffering I teach, and the way out of suffering," proclaimed the Buddha.  Here suffering doesn't mean pain but the profound discomfiture which I experience when all of my attempts to remedy or evade pain prove futile.  It's not the pain that's important - it's how I experience it.  My sense of the pain.

It's all going to go, says the Buddha, all of it.

"When afflicted with a feeling of pain those who lack inner awareness sorrow, grieve, and lament, beating their breasts and becoming distraught.  So they feel two pains: physical and mental.  It is just like being shot with an arrow, and right afterwards being shot with a second one."  Da Buddha

"The more you think about it, the more you talk about it, the further from it you go.  Put an end to wordiness and intellection and there is nothing you will not understand.  Stop talking and stop thinking and there is nothing that you will not understand."  from the ancient Ch'an scripture On Trust in the Heart.

I have spoken, but in vain; for what can words tell
Of things that have no yesterday, tomorrow or today?

Noble Truths

It could be said that the central teaching of Buddhism is all about the overcoming of addiction. The Four Noble Truths are presented as a diagnosis and suggested treatment plan for this type of suffering:

• First Noble Truth – there is suffering
• Second Noble Truth – suffering is caused by attachment and cravings (to things that are impermanent and don’t exist in the way we think they do)
• Third Noble Truth – there is a way to overcome attachment
• Forth Noble Truth – the path to overcoming cravings is made up of eight parts – right view, right action, right intention, right understanding, right concentration, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness

Buddhists believe that addiction is a particularly extreme form of attachment. The person turns to alcohol or drugs in the belief that this can ease their suffering, but it only makes things much worse because it increases the feeling of craving.

Wants and Needs, Oh My

From the book "Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked" by Adam Alter.

"The part of our brain that deals with our needs is fragile—it’s easily disrupted and it occupies only a very small part of the brain.  In contrast, it’s not easy to disrupt the activation of an intense want.  Once people want a drug, it’s nearly permanent—it lasts at least a year in most people, and may last almost a whole lifetime.”  Berridge’s ideas explain why relapse is so common.  Even after you come to hate a drug for ruining your life, your brain continues to want the drug.  It remembers that the drug soothed a psychological need in the past, and so the craving remains."

Need:  To have an absolute requirement for.
Want:  To wish for or desire.

There's also a lot of research that indicates that addiction is very much dependant on environment and circumstances.  This is why we suggest that people may need to change their habits, their friends, their neighborhoods, maybe even their families.  When you associate drug or alcohol use or behavioral addictions to an environment a powerful trigger exists.  I remember attending a jail meeting for years.  It was very common for guys who were doing well in their recovery program while they were locked up to relapse very quickly.  In almost every case they had plans to eat their favorite foods, do their favorite things, see all the people they didn't see the very night they got out.  I noted the irony that these were not the people who . . . you know . . . visited them in jail.  They left that up to a few guys from the suburbs that they didn't even know.  But they put themselves right back into an environment that they associated with drug and alcohol use, so . . . surprise! . . . they used drugs and alcohol.

A great example of this concerns soldiers in Vietnam who got addicted to heroin - a drug that was cheap and in ready supply - to counteract the boredom and fear of war.  But when they returned to society and were removed from the environment that triggered the drug use almost 85% of them managed to quit using and stay clean, a percentage that treatment centers would kill to achieve.  The point being that if you return to your old life once you kick heroin it will be difficult to avoid the desire, the want to use.

Negative Consequences

Addiction:  A state that is characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding behavior, despite negative consequences.

I was teasing a friend yesterday about his decision to brew up a cup of herbal tea prior to the meeting, suggesting that he slam a couple cups of coffee instead.

"Coffee makes me anxious," he said.
"Yeah, it makes me anxious, too," I quipped.  "What does that have to do with it?"

Compulsion:  An irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.

I note with some chagrined amusement that the phrase "despite negative consequences" appears in both definitions.   It suggests . . . no, it states . . . that the behavior leads to a poor outcome.

The Conscienc of a Saint

Conscience:  The moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects one's own behavior.

"For our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority - a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience.  Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern."

Servant:  One who serves another, providing help in some manner.
Govern:  To control the actions or behavior of; to keep under control; to restrain.

I felt some tension in the air at the meeting this morning.  After all, there were Winners and there were Losers, and where there are Losers exists the breeding ground for resentments.

Resentment:  A feeling of anger or displeasure stemming from belief that one has been wronged by others or betrayed.

I can speak great wisdom with my tongue.  I exhibit . . . all kinds of things with my behavior.  Wisdom from time to time, sure, but also all kinds of lesser, meaner emotions.  I don't like to lose as a general rule, being as I'm so right all of the time.  The question then is how do I behave when I'm the Loser?  I don't believe I'm nursing a resentment here - the people that I don't like after losing the group conscience vote are the people I didn't like before the vote was held.  Nothing has changed except that my irritation has now been publicly noted.

Ah, so be it.

Cha-Cha-Changes . . . .

Change:  To become something different; to make something into something else.

I attend a meeting that's pretty large.  As is the way with larger meetings there are a few people who feel compelled to share every day.  Important people.  Important, special people.  And if this wasn't irritating enough they feel compelled to share for a long time, often bumping up against the timer that is in place to remind them that they've shared just goddam long enough, which often doesn't even stop them from continuing to share as if the goddam timer only applies to other people.

I don't get this, personally.  To me it suggests that someone is so clueless that they don't realize this kind of behavior defines selfishness.  Rude selfishness.  You know the type - talks loudly at lunch about their own self to the exclusion of everyone else.   I can't imagine being under the impression that I'm so interesting that everyone one wants to hear the pointless, excruciating minutia of my fairly mundane life.  One guy even took the time to explain to the group that - even though many people have told him that he shares too much - he thinks his message is so valuable to newcomers that he's going to . . .  well . . .  keep sharing as much as he goddam wants.

What do you say to someone like that?  Someone like that isn't going to stop doing what he's doing.

A few of us suggested a format change so that on three days during the week the group leader calls on people at random before opening up the meeting at the end so that anyone with a pressing need to talk has the opportunity to do so.  At our business meeting this weekend we voted on this and I was pleased to see that my long losing streak in group conscience votes was extended.  I wasn't surprised - being a muckraker I'm often supporting change and people in general don't like change, let along rut-bound alcoholics.

I was pretty annoyed yesterday.  Today I'm mildly annoyed.  Tomorrow I'll probably be OK.  I talk a lot about acceptance to other people who are struggling with something so I better be sure that I'm practicing it in my own life.  

I've talked a lot and for a while now about some changes I need to make in my life - my diet and coffee consumption, the over-exercising that I do, my regular attendance at a meeting that has been frustrating to me for a while now.  Talk, talk, talk.  Sometimes I need a stressor to make me go through with the change which I have recently pointed out is hard.  Even when something is making me uncomfortable I have trouble changing.

A resentment and a coffee pot.