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Recovery, auto-pilot, and Jesus

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I keep trying to worm out of being a servant of Jesus.

So, should I visit my mother-in-law, who is in the hospital? Jesus says yes, that is on the list of things I should do. No question about it.

But what if I really don’t like her very much? Jesus says to love your enemies.

What if I just intend to visit? Nope, doesn’t count. He’s pretty firm about this.

And I say that isn’t fair. It doesn’t take my feelings and needs into account. She’s really not that easy for me to be around. It isn’t her physical sickness that is the problem. It is her life-sickness, and I don’t mean the fact that she is dying. I mean the fact that she never lived.

I’m not very good around people with problems. Sadly, that is a lot of people. I can barely put up with my own problems, much less carry someone else’s. I have taken classes on how to be around sick people in a healthy way – a way that is safe for them and for me. I still don’t know what I’m doing.

Sometimes sickness isn’t just germs. Sometimes it still spreads anyway. Sometimes a person’s mental sickness can drag you down just as surely as a drowning person is a danger to a lifeguard.

I “hide” people from my newsfeed on Facebook who are very needy and broken. I can’t read about their constant boyfriend troubles, or addictive behavior, or sinus headaches. I think, save the whining for something real, like a broken leg or a divorce. Constant complaining isn’t something I can handle.

If a friend is constantly saying how drunk they are or how they couldn’t stop themselves from eating a whole bag of Lay’s sour cream and onion potato chips and two Oreo Blizzards from Dairy Queen, they get hidden. I don’t want to read this. Because the next posts are always about how sad they are that they have gained weight, and they don’t have a boyfriend, and they feel miserable.

I can’t watch people drown.

It reminds me too much of myself.

I remember those days. I remember feeling lost and stuck in that cycle. I remember feeling like life just happened to me, that I was a passive agent. I remember not liking myself very much.

I’m grateful that I started to wake up and take care of myself. I’m grateful that I learned what it took to build up my flame.

I’m far enough into my recovery that there isn’t a great risk (there is always a risk, don’t fool yourself) of a relapse. Recovery isn’t just about getting over abusing drugs. It is about getting over abusing the gift that is life. Not exercising, eating poorly, feeling like life just happens to you – these are all addictive, mal-adaptive behaviors. These are all ways of not dealing with the situation at hand, and the situation is life.

Someone who is new into recovery can’t really go into a bar safely. Someone who is long in their recovery could go in for a bit, but there is still a risk of taking a drink.

Being around needy, broken people is my bar.

I want to fix them. I feel helpless watching them fail and fall. I offer advice, and they don’t want it, they ignore it, they get angry at me. I want them to be free of their pain. I want them to live.

My addiction is sometimes named codependency. It manifested as not taking care of myself. I smoked pot so I wouldn’t feel other people’s pain. I had started to take it into myself, to name their pain as my own.

Some people would say that my problem is that I’m empathetic. How is that different from codependency? If I feel that your feelings are my feelings – that isn’t just empathy. That is a lack of boundaries. That is codependency. Even if the other person isn’t “dependent” on a drug, you can still be codependent with them. If you feel like you are responsible for their feelings, happy or sad or in between, then you have a codependency problem, not an empathy problem.

Mislabeling someone as an “empath” just delays the healing, because the disease is misdiagnosed.

So back to whether I should visit my mother-in-law.

I want to rescue her, to give her healthy attitudes towards death. She’s dying, really. She may or may not have come to terms with this. I doubt it, having noticed her prescription for an anti-anxiety drug recently. Sadly, that is the Western medical way of dealing with anything – there’s a pill for it.

I was the one who counseled my Mom on death, who talked her through it. I was her midwife for death. Thankfully, God had lead me to read certain books the year before I needed them, before we even knew she was going to get sick. Thankfully, I had the balance in my head and in my life that I could talk her through how to land this plane that is life – how to land it safely on the ground and not crash.

Because that is what this is.

So many people fly through their lives on autopilot. They get in, and they go where everybody else is going because they haven’t thought about it. They do what everybody else is doing because they haven’t thought about it. Then, when things get so real that they can’t ignore them anymore, they go up to the cockpit and learn the pilot is gone.

They have to fly the plane themselves. And they don’t know how. They’ve spent their whole lives letting someone else fly their plane. Now it has gotten real, and now they are on their own.

They often freak out. Sometimes they manage to figure out how to work the radio and call for help. Nobody can fly their plane for them, but they can talk them through how to do it, as long as they are calm and focused.

Sometimes they have enough energy to fly on their own, to fly to safety. Sometimes they have enough energy, enough power, to fly anywhere they want.

But sometimes, the plane is almost out of fuel, and they have to land.

Death is landing. You can either do it easy or hard. You can coast in gently, or you can crash and burn.

I had to do this for my Mom. I had to talk her through this. I had to be the person in the radio tower. I had to because I lived with her. It affected me. Her freaking out spread a foul odor throughout the house, colored the air, set off air-raid sirens.

But this lady? I don’t see her. She isn’t here. I’d have to go into that battle-zone. I’d have to voluntarily enter into that lion’s den.

And she hasn’t called for me.

She cries that I don’t visit, but not to me. Other relatives think I should visit, should “make peace”, but she hasn’t asked me to visit. They don’t say anything to me, but to my husband. Nobody is talking to me. But that makes sense, because nobody has been listening to me all along anyway.

There isn’t a war. I just can’t be around this madness.

Over a year ago, when she was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, with a year at most left, I asked her what she wanted to do.

Her answer? “Live”.

I said “Of course, but that isn’t an option. Say you were going to go on a vacation for a week, and there were all sorts of things you wanted to do, but only time to do ten of them. You have to pick what you want to do. Your time is limited. Think about what are the most important things you want to do, and do them.”

There is a difference between being alive and living.

Her answer? She wanted to decorate the house. She’d spent her whole life decorating her house. There were over forty cans of paint left over – gallon cans – when she and her husband moved from Georgia to here.

I gave up.

Over seventy years old, and she has nothing to show for it.

What else does Jesus say? “Let the dead bury the dead.”

Food abuse

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I see obesity as a symptom of food abuse. It is the same as alcoholism and drug abuse. It is a sign of an abuse or mis-use of food.

I used to be obese. I’ve had to work hard on relearning what (and how much) is healthy to eat and how to incorporate more movement and exercise into my life. But I’ve also had to work hard on addressing the root cause of why I wasn’t taking care of my body and my soul.

The problem is, we have to eat. We can’t just stop eating food. We can’t drop it like we can alcohol or cigarettes or any other addictive substance.

So we all need to develop a healthy relationship with food – and to address the issues that are causing us to use food to (not) solve our problems. Food can heal us, but it can also harm us if we use it improperly. It can be too much of a good thing, but it can also be the wrong thing.

Food wasn’t the only substance I had a wrong relationship with. Back when I smoked pot, I would smoke it to feel better. I’d have a bad day at work, or my family was hassling me, or there was some other stress to deal with. I’d smoke pot to numb the pain. It would ease the pain long enough that I’d forget about it, until I’d sober up again and the problems would come back. The thing is, the problems never went away in the first place. I just anesthetized myself to them. Instead of dealing with them, I ran away from them in my head. When I got sober, I’d still have those problems, and I’d still reach for pot to “fix” them.

It was a terrible cycle of stupid.

Plenty of people do the same thing with food. Because food isn’t seen as a drug, and because it is not only socially acceptable but normal to eat, food abuse is an easy addiction to pick up. And it isn’t like our society in general has a healthy relationship with food. Everything is super sized and fried. It is too much of a bad thing.

Is this fat shaming? No. Not any more than pointing out that someone who drinks to solve their problems is an alcoholic. This isn’t “blaming the victim” either. It is pointing out that when we use food to solve our problems, we are creating our own problems.

Victims are people who have things done to them. They are passive agents in the story. A person who gets hit by a car, or lightning, or something falling out of the sky is a victim.

If you hurt yourself, you aren’t a victim. You have done it to yourself. Thinking about why you do it is the wrong direction of thought. Blaming your parents or society or your friends for your action is self-defeating. You choose your life and your actions. You have control of what you do. You can also make a choice to change.

We need to start naming our demons so we can slay them. If we pretend like everything is fine then we will continue to kill ourselves bit by bit and bite by bite.

Food won’t fix our problems. Facing them will. No, it isn’t easy.

We have gotten into the habit of shoving our feelings and anxieties down, ramming them into our mouths with food. We have to learn how to let them out rather than shove them down. We have to learn that it is OK to speak up and be heard.

Addiction and creativity

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Back when I smoked pot, I was very creative. I actually got to the point that I was afraid to quit smoking for fear I wouldn’t be creative anymore. That, of course, is silly. Pot doesn’t make you creative. I was already creative. Pot just gave me an excuse to be creative.
I knew someone who smoked pot and thought that music sounded better when he was high. He listened to an album that he’d listened to many times and heard parts of it he’d never heard before. That music was always there. Pot didn’t bring it out. He just expected that things would be different, so he was paying more attention. The music was his focus, instead of in the background.
I knew a guy who had learned how to play the drums while he was stoned. He said he couldn’t play when he was sober. This, too, isn’t true. It is something that he had taught himself to believe. Pot just made him relax and not think about things too much. Or rather, he thought that it would do that. It is all a mind game. It isn’t the thing you use, it is what you think it will do that does the trick.

Fat shaming

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There’s been a lot recently about how people who are overweight are tired of being picked on. They want to be left alone. I get that. I used to be obese. I wasn’t hot on the fact that I couldn’t easily find clothing that fit me. My first clue that I was larger than the average was when I realized I couldn’t buy underwear at Target. I didn’t think I was that big at a size 22. I thought I was fine.

There is a stigma to being overweight, certainly. There is such a stigma that we use euphemisms. Someone is heavy. Or portly. Or large. They aren’t ever fat or obese or even morbidly obese. We use euphemisms about everything we don’t want to deal with. Someone didn’t die. They passed on. They transitioned. They have left us.

Fat is the new normal. We Americans are so overweight that we don’t even recognize when we are fat. We think obese is 500 pounds. Yet there is still a stigma. There is still social pressure against fat people.

Don’t take it personally. People pick on anyone who is seen as different. Any deviation from the arbitrarily determined norm is seen as weak, and weakness is picked on. If you drink too much or smoke at all you’ll be picked on. If you don’t watch TV you’ll be picked on. If you vote the wrong way, dress the wrong way, talk the wrong way you’ll be picked on.

It isn’t personal. In fact, it is as impersonal as possible.

Society picks on people it deems as different because they see them as weak. It is the same as in the animal world. Baby birds that are seen as less than perfect are kicked out of the nest. Male lions eat their young for the same reason. It is to thin the herd to make it stronger. Weakness isn’t tolerated.

We’d like to think we aren’t animals, but we are. We are animals first and humans second. What makes us human is when we embrace differences and are welcoming to strangers. What makes us human is when we act with kindness and compassion. What makes us human is when we overcome our animal nature and work with each other instead of against each other.

Obesity is attacked because it is seen as a sign of weakness, specifically a lack of self control. It is seen as a sign of gluttony. At its heart it is seen as an addiction, even though few people would be aware enough to name it as such.

While it would be lovely if we could all be what we want to be and nobody got bullied for any reason, there is some good to fat shaming. If it encourages a person to get healthy, then it is great. If their response is to learn healthy coping methods, then it is awesome.

Sadly, this isn’t usually the case. Sadly, most people who use food to deal with their problems don’t suddenly learn new ways to be healthy in mind or spirit. Our society doesn’t teach that. It doesn’t teach self-care.

It teaches blame everybody else and don’t take responsibility for your actions. It teaches people to be a victim. It teaches instant everything. Don’t wait, don’t work for it. It teaches people to get lucky from playing the lottery rather than hard work.

People don’t need to lose weight for losing weight’s sake. They need to get healthy. People need to move more, eat better, and develop healthy ways of dealing with stress and anger. I’ve done it. It can be done. It isn’t easy. Anything worth having isn’t easy. Health is worth having. Learning to deal with problems other than stuffing them down is a valuable thing to know.

I remember where I was in my head four years ago before I started to get well. I remember thinking “how dare they tell me I’m fat” when I’d have to go to the “large” section of the store to buy clothes. I remember. And then I remember I went to the hospital with a racing heart, feeling sick. I remember always feeling out of sorts and out of shape. I remember just not feeling like I liked my body very much because it didn’t fit me very well.

I started moving. I found exercises I liked to do. I started eating better. I started loving myself enough to take care of myself.

I’m glad that society didn’t tell me that everything was fine for being so overweight. I’m glad, because if I’d kept going that way I’d be immobilized. My knees were giving out. My heart was weakening. I didn’t feel comfortable with the idea of even walking up and down my street. Crime wasn’t keeping me from leaving my house; fear of my body giving out was. Being fat was crippling me. Eating instead of facing my problems was crippling me too.

Irish day

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I don’t understand how St. Patrick’s Day has gotten equated with getting drunk. But then again, to be fair, every holiday in America is equated with that.

Cinco de Mayo and St. Patrick ’s Day are both ethnic holidays where people who aren’t even of that ethnicity get roaringly drunk. People who don’t even know anything about the culture before they start to drink get so bombed that they don’t even know anything about their own culture by the time they are done. But it isn’t just these holidays. New Year’s, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Memorial Day – you name it, if there is a holiday, Americans are drinking to it.

Perhaps we collectively have a holiday problem. Perhaps we are just so wound up from our jobs and our families and our lives that we have to escape, at least mentally, every time there is a holiday. Perhaps we need to create lives that don’t need to be escaped from. This doesn’t mean we need to get a better paying job or a bigger house or more friends. This means we need to start appreciating what we have now.

I’m reminded of the story in Exodus, of the Israelites escaping from Egypt. They were slaves in Egypt, but now they are free. They are grumbling to Moses about how they don’t have any food in the desert. They say they were better off in Egypt, that at least they had meat. Right now they have almost nothing, just this crazy manna that shows up every morning. It isn’t what they want. It is filling, and it provides energy, but it is boring. They complain, and Moses complains to God. God thinks they are ungrateful and sends enough quail that they are up to their knees in the birds. They gorge on the quail and get very sick. They never ask for meat again. It doesn’t mean that they don’t ask for anything else – but on that, they’ve learned their lesson.

To me, St. Patrick’s Day is about celebrating the persistence of the heart of Celtic life amidst adversity. The Irish suffered greatly at home and in America a century ago. They were the “immigrant problem” of the time. To be Irish is to endure despite hardship, and to keep your Self intact amidst a culture that wants you to assimilate.

This is something that transcends culture and ethnicity. For all of us who are staying true to your inner Being and not yielding to a culture that tells you to buy more, be mindless, to not care – you are Irish, regardless of your ethnicity.

St. Patrick’s Day isn’t a drinking holiday. It is a holiday about persistence and endurance. It is an Exodus story. It is about finding a safe place to be. Let us remember everything we have gone through to get where we are. Let us not make “here” another “there” that has to be escaped from.

The smell of compassion.

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You see all sorts of things when you work with the public. You smell all sorts too.

I dread warmer days for this reason. Sometimes the counter is just not deep enough to suit. There is always the dilemma – body odor, or perfume? Both are bad for different reasons.

Strong perfume or cologne affects my asthma. I start having a hard time breathing, so I start to breathe very shallowly and sparingly. I’ll make the transaction go as fast as possible just to get them away from me. I think it would be rude for me to just walk away and take a deep breath and come back, but then it is rude to wear so much cologne or perfume that it makes breathing difficult. If you bathe daily and wear deodorant, you don’t need perfume.

But then, sometimes people use artificial scents to cover up the natural ones. That is much harder.

Sometimes the bad odor is a mix of smoking, not bathing, and drinking. If you drink alcohol often enough it comes out in your sweat. Sometimes it is the smell of poverty and desperation. Everything the person puts into their body is cheap. Sometimes the smell is so strong that even if the person isn’t standing there anymore, the smell is. It is like a bad ghost, haunting where they were.

It has to be hard to be in the skin of someone who smells this badly. Some seem to be totally unaware of it. They have gotten used to it. One patron seemed to be aware that he had terrible breath from smoking cheap cigarettes so he’d talk out of the side of his mouth. He’d sort of clench his teeth to talk. He’d then go outside to smoke yet another cigarette. His partner had an entirely different aroma. He smelled of some mixture of cheap cigarettes, gas-station food, and ferret. He seemed totally unaware of the funk that surrounded him. He checks out only DVDs and the smell permeates the plastic on the cases. There is nothing for that aroma except time. I wonder what the next patrons think when they get these titles.

I feel bad for all the people who smell really badly. I want to say something. I want to tell them that they don’t have to poison themselves with cheap food and cheap cigarettes and cheap alcohol. I want to tell them to not treat themselves so cheaply. I want to tell them that everything they are doing to fix their problems is actually causing more problems. I want to save them.

And I can’t. And I shouldn’t.

I’m sure that people wanted to save me when they saw me out doing my errands when I was stoned for ten years. I’m sure that when people saw me glassy eyed and mindlessly smiling they thought that something was wrong but it wasn’t kind to tell me. As long as I wasn’t hurting anybody, let it be. And so they did. I’m sure that I wouldn’t have listened to them anyway. I wasn’t in a place in my head where I could or would listen to anybody.

I am trying to be loving and compassionate, and serve people where they are and as they are, instead of where and as I want them to be. I’m trying to love them on their journey. I’m trying to understand that who they are now is the result of where they have been and I don’t know that story. I’m trying to understand that they are doing the best they can right now, and that even though it isn’t what I think is best, it is what it is.

It is hard. I want them to all slow down and love themselves enough to get off the Ferris wheel, the treadmill, the hamster wheel that our society gives us when it tells us we have to be more than we are. I want to tell them that they don’t have to keep doing it the way they are doing it, because my way is better.

And then I remember that I’m not being loving when I think this. I remember that to not let them make their own choices is to not let them be who they are. Who am I to tell them how to live? Each person has to grow their own way. Each “wrong” choice leads to openings and opportunities. I would not have learned to appreciate working out at the Y if I hadn’t been obese. I would not have learned the secret peace of being sober if I hadn’t been an abuser.

But here’s the trick. Even if they never stop smoking, or drinking, or eating unhealthy food, or doing any number of things I think are “bad”, I have to understand that is OK too. That is the hardest part. I have to know that they may stay just like they are, and that this may not be a stepping stone to health. They may not be a diamond in the rough. They may not ever be a flower in the making.

The ones who smell bad are just the ones whose choices result in that. There are plenty of people who make choices that don’t call attention to themselves, but I might disagree with if I knew.

I remember reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” many years ago. Well, I didn’t really read it. I read about a quarter of it. I couldn’t finish it because the narrator kept talking about how sad he was for the people he was with, that they weren’t as enlightened as he was. I knew then that such an attitude was, in itself, not enlightened, and I quit reading.

So now I’m trying to learn this lesson all over again. The minute I try to make someone else into my own image, I’m not respecting them. I can’t fix them. But more importantly, I have to learn that just because they are different from me doesn’t mean that they are broken.

The end of suffering.

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1) Acknowledge the pain.

2) If you can do something about it, do it.

3) If you can’t, then accept it by giving thanks for it.

Further on this –
1) Acknowledge the pain.
It does us no good to ignore pain. Pain is a sign that something is wrong. Ignoring pain doesn’t fix it. It prolongs it. Pain, when ignored, will often come out in very unhelpful ways. This is the source of self-abuse and addictions. Drinking, drug use, overeating, and other addictive behaviors are maladaptive techniques to deal with pain. They are a response to pain. They are a symptom. Any addiction is a repetitive, albeit misdirected, attempt to cure a problem. If you address the root cause of the problem, then the addiction will go away. Addictions just delay the cure.

Pain can be in many forms. Pain doesn’t have to be physical. Pain can result any time your needs are not being met. Grief is a form of pain. Any loss can cause pain. Not being respected, heard, or understood can cause pain.

2) If you can do something about it, do it.
Address the pain head on and see what the source of it is. Dig down to the root of it. Then dig down further. Often our first answer to “what is wrong” is just a surface answer. Keep going deeper. How do you feel? Who made you feel that way the first time? Is it the situation, or your reaction to it that is the cause of the pain?

Is there something you can add or subtract from your life to change the situation? Even if it will take a long time to get there, just getting started is good. Every step towards your goal is one step further away from your problem. Are you frustrated with your job? Look at transferring. Start taking classes. Do you feel that your needs aren’t being met? Is part of the problem that you aren’t telling people what your needs are? Is part of the problem that you don’t know yourself?

A lot of pain comes from settling for it. We are trained to be quiet with our suffering. This isn’t healthy. We are taught to say “I can’t do that” or “Nobody will listen to me”. Ignore those voices. They aren’t yours. They are the voices of a sick society that wants people to stay miserable. Get started, one foot in front of the other. Every step towards your goal is a step away from the problem. It is hard at first. It gets easier, but you have to keep doing it. Nobody is going to do this work for you.

3) If you can’t, then accept it by giving thanks for it.
Just like Jonah in the whale, giving thanks to God for your problems can be very healing. He gave thanks for God while in the middle of his problem. He didn’t say that he’d give thanks once he was released. He gave thanks right there and then. He was released just after that.

Sometimes the painful situation is temporary, but we just can’t see the end. Sometimes it is meant to slow us down long enough to see things from a different perspective. Giving thanks is what makes us human.

Recovering, not recovered. On addiction.

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So what is the deal about the term “recovering” addict? You are never described as a “recovered” addict. It is as if you never get there. You are never home safe.

And really, you aren’t.

Even if you have been sober for twenty years, the fever is still there. Even if your last hit was so terrible that you ended up in jail and then the hospital, and you lost your wife and house over it, that fever is still there.

Because you forget. You forget how bad it can be. You forget how bad it was. All you remember is the high and the good times. All you remember is how it took away the pain.

You forget about all the pain it can bring, and did bring, to you and to everyone you love.

You say you are “recovering” as a sign to you and to others that there is no escape from addiction. You never ever are the same after you’ve been an addict.

You know what it tastes like, and you want it again. You forget the bitter and only remember the sweet. And you think that just because you were able to escape it then you can do it again. You think lightning can’t strike twice. You think you can just do a little bit of it and be fine. You think you are smarter than it.

It is the same as playing with fire. While fire can help, it can harm. It can light up the room and keep you warm, or it can burn down your house. It can be the difference between cooked food and raw food – it can also be burnt to a crisp and made worthless.

Drugs burn us up and make us worthless.

The trouble with drugs is the same as the trouble with fire – it can’t be contained very well. You think you’ve gotten it under control but really it controls you instead. You don’t do drugs. They do you.

When you forget, you’ll start doing drugs again. Just a little. Just to “take the edge off.” Soon you’ll be sneaking out to buy drugs. You’ll make up excuses. You’ll lie to your loved ones. You’ll call in sick to work. You’ll miss out on all the activities that you used to do for fun – because you are using drugs.

You think – that can’t happen to me. That is for suckers. That happens to losers. And I say to you – what makes you so special?

You aren’t special to drugs. You are another conquest. They are like a virus, eating away at all that is you. Slowly, slowly, you lose your fight. Slowly, slowly, it wins.

Quitting doing drugs doesn’t mean you are cured. You can’t get immunized against drug addiction. No matter how much you’ve done and how long it has been since you stopped doing it, you aren’t safe. You haven’t built up a resistance.

The only hope is to never let them back into your life again. The only way to do that is to continue to say you are “recovering” and not “recovered” as a reminder to keep that door closed and bolted shut.

Money, cash, and addiction

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I’m really getting into this idea of saving money by using cash. It has only been two weeks into this experiment and the results are pretty amazing.

Before, I’d really get a rise out of spending money. Now I’m getting excited about not spending it.

When I first started I felt like I should carry my whole week’s allowance with me. I thought I might need money on hand, more than I normally did. You know, just in case I had to buy something. Like there would be a random need to buy, like an itch that needed to be scratched.

It is weird. I realize now that money was like a drug for me. I got a high out of using it. I started to get nervous if I didn’t have enough on me.

Now, I hadn’t gone totally cash free in all these years. I normally carried some cash on me even when I used credit cards all the time. It made me feel better to have it. Every now and then the credit card machine wasn’t working. Some places don’t take cards at all. Sometimes it was faster to pay in cash. Sometimes there would be a collection being taken up at work for a gift for a coworker who was leaving or having a baby or both. It is better to tip in cash.

I was always grateful to have it when I needed it. I just didn’t get that I’d be better off using it.

Now I carry a credit card as the backup instead of the default. I’m not quite comfortable going without it yet. Last week I needed it because I went to the dentist for a filling. I’d forgotten that dental insurance isn’t like medical insurance. The bill I got upon leaving was a lot bigger than my usual twenty dollar co-pay. Even with that, I still spent less than I had been spending when I used the credit card all the time.

I don’t know how I’ve been doing it. For the past few years I was spending $300 to $500 a week on my credit card. I paid it off every week. This is a lot of money, especially for a government employee. We get paid in benefits, not in actual money. I didn’t get toys. I bought things that were needed, or so I thought.

The first week I pulled out $300 in cash. I overspent by $40 because of the dentist. So still, pretty good. Far better than $500. This week I pulled out $200 and I’ve only spent half of that. This includes buying groceries. A lot of my money was going to eating out. Now that I’m cooking fresh food I’m not only eating better I’m saving money.

I’d not planned on this additional part to my New Year’s resolution, but I’ll take it.

Addiction – on the death of yet another celebrity.

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You just can’t understand addiction unless you’ve lived through it.

Yet another famous person has died of a drug overdose. It was an illegal drug but plenty have died of drug overdoses of legal drugs. This just highlights the tragedy that is drug abuse and addiction. Hundreds of people die all the time from drug addiction, legal and otherwise. They aren’t famous, but their deaths are just as tragic.

Even if you don’t die, addictions steal your life. You aren’t quite fully human when you are in the pit of addiction.

Just before you start in with the “But for the grace of God, there go I” line, think about it. Many people have addictions. They are just socially acceptable ones. You probably have an addiction and don’t even realize it. The best addictions just masquerade as habits. It is just something you do. You don’t know why you do it, you just do.

Gambling. drinking. Smoking cigarettes. Eating too much. Eating unhealthy food. Even being angry all the time can be an addiction.

Anything you do unthinkingly that is harmful to you is an addiction. It doesn’t matter if you think it is a problem yet or not. If you let an addiction have its way, it will slowly take over until the addiction is driving you. It will take over and use you like a puppet.

I remember what it was like to smoke pot. I smoked for ten years. When I started it was once a month. Then over time it was once a week. At the worst it was all day long.

I’d wake up and get stoned. When the buzz would wear off I’d smoke some more.

Meanwhile I was in college. I had a job. I was fully functional as an adult. All my bills got paid.

Nobody knew I was a pothead unless I let them know. The only people I let know were other people who smoked. We had a code between us. We kind of felt each other out, like Masons. There wasn’t a secret handshake, but there were still tells.

I remember one time I wanted to quit but I just wasn’t ready to go cold turkey. I told myself I could slow down. I didn’t want to smoke every day. I took my supply of pot and my pipe and I wrapped them up in plastic and sealed it with rubber bands. I then put it up on a shelf in my closet so I’d have to get a chair to get it. I figured this would make me think several times, way more than twice, about what I was about to do. I figured it would slow me down.

I remember time and time again going for that bundle, opening it up, and smoking, and the whole time wondering why I was doing it. It was as if I was possessed. I didn’t want to smoke, and here I was smoking. It was insane. Nobody was forcing me to do it, but I couldn’t stop.

I felt helpless.

And this is just pot. It wasn’t heroin, or oxycontin.

People say pot isn’t addictive. They say it is a gateway drug, that it leads you to other, harder drugs. I say otherwise. I know. There’s about ten years of my life that pot has, that I missed. This is why I’m opposed to the legalization of pot. Look how well we are doing (not) with alcohol. Look how many people’s lives are ruined by it.

A lot of people think they can’t become addicts. They can drink or smoke or snort or swallow whatever they want. They think “That can’t happen to me.” I say, why not? What makes you so special?

The only way to be special is to not do it at all. You can’t tame an addiction. You can’t do it half way. You can, at the beginning. Then it gets bigger and bigger and it will win, every time. There’s a honeymoon period at the beginning. It is all sweet and wonderful. It is your best friend, your lover. It fills in all the gaps. It makes the bumps in your life not so bumpy. It makes things warm and mellow. It makes life not hurt so much.

Then it gets harder, and it wants more. It takes more to make the warm feeling come. Then it costs more, and that has you bothered, so you do more to not worry about it. It spirals. It is a snake eating its own tail, but you are the one being eaten.

Every time you get near the edge of the abyss and you survive, you think you’re lucky, and you can do it again. There is always another sign telling you that you’ve gone too far, you should turn back. That car crash. The arrest. Your spouse left you. You got fired. There’s always something after the last road sign on the way to your demise. You think you can stop before you get to the end of the road. You’re enjoying the ride, you think. You can stop any time. But you don’t. You want to see how hard and how fast you can drive this thing. You don’t realize that the whole time you are the one who is being driven, and you’re being driven to the very edge of madness – and sometimes beyond.

Sometimes you stop. Sometimes you get off. But then there is still danger. The lure is always there.

The bad part is that even when you get clean and sober, the addiction is still there. You’re two years sober and the moment you forget how hard it was to get clean, you’ll try it again, and fall for it again even harder. There won’t be that honeymoon time like at the beginning, where you’ve got it under control. It remembers, and you’ll reset to how things were at the worst.

You can’t control it.

You aren’t special.

I could say “Just say no” but that’s naïve. The moment you tell some people to not do something, they are going to do it.

There is no simple answer to addiction. And there is no way of understanding it unless you’ve been there. If it was as simple as just quitting, nobody would be an addict. And there wouldn’t be any more overdoses.

Pray for peace for the addicts. Pray for strength to resist the pull. Pray for all those who haven’t heard that siren call to turn away from it when they do.