Why I Ask Why

In horrible experiments with dogs, a floor was electrified to shock. Having learned in a previous experiment that nothing it did could stop the shock, when the dog was put on the floor, it just laid down and took it. They call that learned helplessness.

I’m feeling like a dog on a bad floor at 17 months sober.

When animals perceive threat, they fight, flee or freeze. Believing one is worth saving is an instinct. Sh*t can happen that interferes with instinct. A moment’s doubt is wedged between seeing the saber tooth and picking up the spear. Am I worth saving anymore?

When I think of fighting or fleeing the threat that addiction posed to my very self, I feel exhausted helplessness. I am frozen. I wasn’t a drinker, then I was, now I’m not a drinker again, but to quote Neil Young, “Gone, gone, the damage done.”

Hurricane after hurricane when I lived in Florida, I would pick up and examine sodden stuff to see if it were worth keeping. After the hurricane of addiction in my life, like a wet cardboard box, my self seems to resemble what it was, but it’s faded, washed away at the elemental level. No amount of drying out will restore its original form or strength. Keep or toss?

In our recovery community and in my work in the addictions field, I interact with addicts and alcoholics* daily. Keep or toss? Keep! I see their beautiful selves. I feel compassion for their suffering and see strengths shining sharp and bright out of the dark past. They say they see and feel the same for me. They are challenged to see what I see – their value – and I am challenged to see mine.

Self-loathing is the common experience of addicts.

For me, it is imperative to deal with self-loathing. When I drink, I do not feel self-loathing. When I don’t drink, when I am abstinent, I feel self-loathing. It’s unbearable. If I don’t get to the bottom of this self-loathing thing, I will drink again. It’s that simple. And if the addicts I know and love don’t get to the bottom of their particular brands of self-loathing, they are likely to drink or drug again, too.

“Don’t drink [or use] and go to meetings,” we hear in the recovery community. My good friend, Dan Smith, who openly shares that he is in recovery, urges me in this comment to ease off on “why” things have gone down as they have and just focus on not taking that first drink. I hear him. I accept that recovery is a process, that the longer I am in recovery, the more likely I am to feel better. I have not taken the first drink for 17 months. And I am increasingly miserable. For some addicts, not drinking and not using is not enough to stay in recovery. I include myself in that category and will share the why of that as I continue to write.

Misery is dangerous for me. And I see misery’s threat to other people in recovery. According to NIDA, 40-60% of addicts and, according to this report, 80-90% of alcoholics, will flee misery through relapse to the perceived safety of their substance of choice.

Why did I end up feeling like a defeated research dog lying down on a shocking floor?

For me, the only way to answer that question is to go in. Inward to the deepest depths I can reach of my personal awareness of my feelings and thoughts and experiences to try to untangle this snarl of where I’ve ended up at 55. And out. Out to the research. Out to others who have been there and done this, or observed this and studied it. And to synthesize it all in such a way that I not only know with my deepest depths, “Keep you,” but also “Keep me.”

. . . . .

*While I’m relentlessly fascinated with the “why” question, I find the debate over terminology tedious. For the purposes of today’s post, I consider myself an addict whose substance of choice was alcohol, but “alcoholic” works, as does diagnosee with substance use disorder. Whatever.

Photo of a kept toaster oven by Nancy Brauer

When You’re the One is a follow-up to this post written 25 days later.