Recovering alcoholics use the phrase “one day at a time” because, even after years and decades, contemplating 25 hours without the sauce is too ambitious.
I’m sitting back focusing on my breathing after reading this blog from a recovering alcoholic. Hard lessons, hard truths herein.
Link
I’ve never been a substance abuser but what gets me is that everything Emerson says he misses about alcohol I miss too: having a social life, a hobby, becoming a different person, the lack of struggle to achieve goals, the drama. My drugs have been intellectual debate and psychotherapy. Yours might be physical exercise, work, religion or rescuing people. It doesn’t matter what the escape mechanism is. I’m guessing that the key to addiction is not the drug itself but the underlying dissatisfaction some of us feel when we’re “straight” — the need to escape ourselves. What challenges and unites us is the drab, empty terror that takes over when we remove our drug of choice.
The line between healthy motivation and addiction can be a thin one. If you can pursue what brings you bliss without ruining your health or abandoning your niche in society you will be considered a hero, a credit to your parents, a leader or a valued contributor. We make celebrities of the dedicated nurse, the successful entrepreneur, the devoted mother, the political crusader, the athletic champion. We often assume that our heroes don’t suffer from the internal insecurity that plagues those of us who describe ourselves as “depressed”; that they can keep themselves under control without an external crutch, that they are “happy” when we are not. Emerson has captured my reality:
I thought sobriety would be a fresh, clear-eyed start, but sometimes it feels more like an endless homework assignment. Link
Buddhists, practitioners of positive psychology, religious leaders and 12-step program members offer many mental and physical anodynes to those of us whose un-drugged life feels like continuously falling down a bottomless well. 
Image source
Yup, this homework assignment is endless. It isn’t easy. If only I could learn to love it. I’m told it gets easier with practice.
My therapist, who uses “attachment therapy” techniques, joins me in weekly journeys into the swamp of my emotions, a place filled with primitive, wordless fear. Other attachment therapists have made the connection between subtle childhood abuse and addiction:
I have yet to meet someone who struggles with addiction who doesn’t also have some kind of attachment trauma.
ONDINA N. HATVANY, MFT
When I exit my therapist’s office I have to button up my cloak of normal, non-addicted, social behavior but I often wish I could just pop a pill that would erase the hidden terrors. Yes, I, like millions of other Americans, have tried Prozac and other anti-depressants. Maybe they give the well a bottom so you can stop falling. Maybe they just take the fear out of the falling sensation. Maybe they curtail all emotions but this removes the highs as well as the lows. After twenty years they stopped working for me. To me this felt like a slippery slope to addiction not better than alcohol, weed, or other mind-altering substances.
The problem is, I want my mind altered — but not too much. I have an expectation that happiness lies beyond vigilance, self-control and constant psychological work. I long to be able to relax into a flow that buoys me up and carries me to some satisfying destination I can imagine but rarely experience. So far (and, by the way, I’m 71) this isn’t happening. My life is like that of the recovering alcoholic who misses the remembered ease of being “under the influence”. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
Nicely stated. We each have our retreats when our issues get to be too much. Some are labeled “healthy” some are labeled – otherwise. They are, in any case, labels. Life isn’t easy. It is amazing how much we’ve accomplished through the actions of individuals, each with their individual struggles. Imagine how difficult it would be to do this alone.
Thanks for sharing.
One of the most important ways happiness is acquired is by moving one’s perceived path closer to one’s ideal path.