Addictions

I’m reading Stephen King’s book On Writing. It’s part memoir, part instruction manual and great writing. King is a true craftsman at his art. I have a love/hate relationship with his books. His writing is so good, and his topics scare the crap out of me. I’ve read some of them, and I read him only in the summer time – I have to keep his books outside at night because I am too frightened to keep them in the house.

Since I’m not one to read or dig for gossip, I didn’t know much about his personal life, aside from the accident a few years back when he was hit by a car. I didn’t know that he spent many years with serious drug and alcohol addictions.

His manner of writing about this was powerful because he laid it out so simply. Short, clear, concise sentences that said: here’s what I did, here’s what happened, and here’s what they did, and here’s what I chose to do. There was nothing that asked for pity, or even understanding. And that made it even more powerful to me.

I’ve had a number of conversations over the past few months about the uses and abuses of alcohol and drugs. About the choices that are made, and the choices that seem to be taken away. You’ll see a link to Mariah’s Challenge on my blogroll. That’s a situation where choices were made – and taken away – and where courage followed tragedy. I’ve written about Leo McCarthy and Mariah’s Challenge in the BSB Arts Newsletter, if you’re interested.

I sometimes find myself moving into judgment of others on their choices to drink or drug excessively. I guess that as a teen and young adult, my choice was to sow my wild oats and then leave them behind. I’m not a teetotaler by any means – I enjoy relaxing in the evening with whatever I might have on hand with friends or by myself, or sometimes just getting blown out. But – its not a daily lifestyle choice. And, that’s because I simply don’t like the way I feel when I engage too often.

And, I know that I am seriously blessed by not having whatever combination of genetics and life experience that might drive me toward addiction. I have family and friends who have struggled with this – and I deeply admire their courage in the choices that they’ve made to leave the addictions behind – or to find a way to integrate it into their lives in a way that works.

In a recent conversation, a friend mentioned that their substance use was the way that they could find their way into the “field”, which scientists claim as their territory, artists claim as the source of their inspiration, spiritual practitioners claim as their access to the divine. Substances are surely one way to access this field – and have been for millenia. And they were used in a sacred manner.

We talked about how those sacred substances, those sacred interactions with the field … the muse … the divine have become profane. These words barely have meaning in the lives of most of us. Sacred are those activities that are consecrated to the divine (or by the divine) and profane means “outside the temple”.

In talking with Leo McCarthy about Mariah’s Challenge, my mind returned again and again to a conversation I had with a friend while Rose was in college. Many of her friends were serious users of drugs and alcohol. What I noticed was that the kids who abused were the kids who bumped up against that empty space within them and could not find any other way to deal with it. The drugs, the alcohol, the self-mutilation, the excessive or indiscriminate sex, the bulimia/anorexia were all different ways to back away from that abyss that lives within each of us.

I don’t think that empty space within can ever be filled – I’m sure that if I looked through Jung’s material I would find an archetype for it. I think its a necessary place to to come to as one matures, I think its a necessary experience to come to terms with. I remember when I was in Ireland and visited Newgrange which is as old as the pyramids. The sense that I had there was one of a powerful and intense emptiness. It felt sacred.

For me – the empiness its a place I return to again and again. I believe it can be a place of infinite possibility and deep nourishment when you resist the urge to run from it, gibbering, as one would in entering the worlds of Stephen King.