Addiction! Stop Killing My Friends.

Tonight I used a mirror to dissolve my loneliness and interrupt my patterns of addiction and I want you to know about it because another friend of mine just died from an overdose, and if he had these skills, maybe he wouldn’t have.

Just a few moments ago I was struggling with some pretty intense urges to give in to addiction. The urges have been building over the last few days and tonight they became much more intense and threatened to take over my experience, so I had to face them. And I learned something that I already knew, but needed to learn again.

When I examined where the urge to feed addiction was coming from, I saw that it was coming from a place of disconnection and loneliness. Some part of me was feeling alone and disconnected and needy. This part of me was needing some other part of me to step in and be the mom/dad figure, to soothe and to reassure and to say all the things that he needed to hear:

"I'm here"... "you're not alone" ... "I love you" .. "I know it's scary" .. "I'll protect you"... "You're safe"..

etc.

Because I have practiced these skills over many years, when I deliver these messages to myself, my whole body relaxes, and my connection with myself is restored immediately. The urge to feed addiction disappears.

This was a pretty simple little intervention I did with myself but it's actually pretty advanced stuff. It's taken years for me to develop the capacity to be my own parents, to be my own lover, my own best friend, my own secret admirer, my own teacher, my own role model, so that drugs and sex don't have to be. And I have to work that muscle just about every day or addiction comes knocking on the door.

I did that “intervention” with myself by using a mirror. Because some part of me needs that. Some part of me didn't get enough face-to-face soothing growing up, for whatever reason (just like everyone else in the world, probably?), and so he still needs to be able to gaze into the eyes of a calm, regulated, loving adult from time to time, and absorb that adult's peaceful, protective energy. And as he absorbs it, his neediness and his impulsive desire to escape in addiction-land completely disappears. His heart opens, he exhales deeply, and remembers how loved he is, how at home he is in the world, how cared for he is, how he never really was alone. All of a sudden addictive behavior seems silly.

For anyone reading this who is capable of appreciating the fucking work it takes to get to a place like this with yourself, this one's for you. For those who don't get it, this one's for you too.

May we all become more capable of being all that we need for ourselves so we can stop chasing ghosts. May we all become more and more accustomed to finding relief from our loneliness inside ourselves, rather than in the dopamine-rush of taking that hit of weed or going to that porn website or texting that tinder match or eating that candy bar or shooting up and dying or whatever other thing we compulsively do to try to fill the hole in our hearts that comes from that child inside of us feeling chronically neglected and alone.

All it takes is looking yourself in the mirror and not looking away until the shame and self hatred dissolves, until the empty hole in your heart starts to fill with your own love and a smile starts to form, and a twinkle in your eye. That smile and that twinkle will be the medicine that you share with everyone you meet. And that's how we make a better world.

And if that's out of reach for you, if you don't know how to do that, then reach out and say so. I'll stand next to you and I won't leave until you see in yourself what everyone who loves you sees in you.

The inner peace that comes from that kind of work is nothing short of divine and we all fucking deserve it, and a lot of us aren't getting it.

Addiction, you can eat shit.

Stop killing my friends.

——

This article was also published by the Good Men Project here.