Losing yourself in alcohol or drugs
I recently posted about the concept of “differentiation,” which is being fully present in a relationship, or an unpleasant work situation, or really anywhere in your life, without losing yourself in anxiety, or daydreaming, or other kinds of resistance. I didn’t mention one easy (and very common) way people lose themselves: substance use.
The “disease model” of alcoholism and drug addiction has helped many people get clean and sober, and stay clean and sober, by giving them a way to name their problem: I have a disease, they say to themselves and to others, and it’s called alcoholism, or drug addiction. But another way to look at substance use—another way that can be helpful for a lot of people—is to see it simply as an escape mechanism, a way to check out of your own life. Some people want to overcome substance abuse not by seeing it as a disease and quitting altogether, but by seeing it as a coping strategy, an escape hatch.
Right now I’m reading and beginning to use a book on creativity by writer Julia Cameron. In the book, Cameron talks about how she used alcohol in this way. She would work all day and try to cram as much creativity into her day as she could, because her routine each night was to escape in what she called a “cloud” of alcohol.
If you think this is true about yourself—that you use substances to escape your life, and need help building a new lifestyle that keeps you out of that “cloud,” I can help you do it. We can talk about your “poison”—which could be food, or “workaholicism,” or porn…it doesn’t have to be alcohol or drugs!—and how you can be more fully alive, more focused, and more free.
