{"id":499,"date":"2016-12-10T15:16:57","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T23:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/loopcntr.net\/wordpress\/?p=499"},"modified":"2019-02-02T12:03:08","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T20:03:08","slug":"life-worth-living-isnt-necessarily-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/life-worth-living-isnt-necessarily-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Life worth living isn’t necessarily easy…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recovering alcoholics use the phrase \u201cone day at a time\u201d because, even after years and decades, contemplating 25 hours without the sauce is too ambitious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sitting back focusing on my breathing after reading this blog <\/a>from a recovering alcoholic. Hard lessons, hard truths herein.<\/p>\n

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Link<\/a><\/h6>\n

I’ve never been a substance abuser\u00a0but 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.\u00a0Yours 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\u00a0itself 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\u00a0remove our drug of choice.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0who 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:<\/p>\n

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I thought sobriety would be a fresh, clear-eyed start, but sometimes it feels more like an endless homework assignment. \u00a0Link<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Buddhists, practitioners of positive psychology<\/a>, 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.\u00a0\"Smith2008Map\"Image source<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have yet to meet someone who struggles with addiction who doesn<\/em><\/strong>\u2019<\/em><\/strong>t also have some kind of attachment trauma.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

ONDINA N. HATVANY, MFT<\/a><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When\u00a0I exit my therapist’s\u00a0office 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0satisfying destination I can imagine but rarely experience. So far (and, by the way, I’m 71) this isn’t happening. My life\u00a0is 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.<\/p>\n

\"393355-R3L8T8D-650-happinesssite2222\"<\/p>\n

photo credit<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recovering alcoholics use the phrase \u201cone day at a time\u201d 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. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6grl3-83","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":119,"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopcntr.net\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}