Addiction Valley

Some years ago, in a move strangely prophetic, since I was not yet an addict then, I found myself at Rehab for a month (a story for another time). Today, a friend and counsellor from that month, Colin, sent me a link to his video about "Addiction Valley". When I thanked him by email (the video was very well timed indeed and hit home) he kindly gave me his phone numbers and said he was available to talk any time. This was my response...

Dear Colin

I'd like to take you up on that, by making a time to talk to you, not a late night or early morning pity party call [note to reader - yup, I have done that a couple of times over the years]. I don’t want to take up your family time - I don’t say that looking for assurance or attention, but because I feel very strongly about people hogging that time from us on a weekend! My addictions aren’t going anywhere - they’ll still be here on Monday.

And funnily enough, the thought in my head is not “I don’t deserve this kind of caring and input.” What God has done in my heart and my life this year is glorious and mystifying, and I can see how He wouldn’t want to lose his investment... He goes to such extraordinary lengths to lavish good things on me - and for every paltry, wavering step I make vaguely in His direction, it seems, while I’m still hesitating at the first slightly confusing kink in the path - well, He throws a press conference and comes running down the mountain with armloads of presents.

God doesn’t care about the substance I use, I know. He cares about this because He misses me, because for some wonderful, infinitely unfathomable reason, He likes my company. As do my children and my parents and so many others, because I am a woman very well-loved indeed. So, to answer the excellent question in your lecture, what WAS it about this drug, CAT? Why this stuff, which I was obviously searching for through all the other experiments and dalliances that played out and were left behind? What did it give me then, and what do I imagine it will give me now?

It gave me power, the power to succeed, to actually do instead of dream, to finish the things that I started. Concentration. Motivation. How fabulously ironic that what I obviously desperately longed for was to work, and work really hard. Of course, that eventually became the opposite - but oh, it was magnificent while it lasted. It was very, very difficult to learn to work without it this year, and intensely satisfying to find out that I have it in me to work 12 hours a day without stimulants, when necessary, because I actually do love what I do.

It gave me rest for the first time in my life, from the nightly hallucinations and terrifying waking dreams that were my narcoleptic norm - because not sleeping for a couple of days made it possible to get a few hours of ‘normal’ sleep, and that’s more than I’d ever had on a regular basis. It also gave me the perfect excuse to remove myself from people. So busy, so much to do. It separated me more from my family than any amount of partying did in years gone by, and allowed me to feel self-righteous and justified about that. Look at me, providing for my family. Look at me, ‘succeeding’… So much to prove to no-one but myself.

But in truth, I gave CAT more than it gave me. I gave it a wide-open, well-trodden road into my life, one I had made myself, with my own feet, in countless ways... retreating into books as a way to shut all human input out, that’s what got that path stamped down in the beginning. Longer and longer walks, further and further away from home, that turned into directionless travelling, country to country with no purpose but solitude, and little enjoyment. A litany of ‘yes’s’ to men I did not love, a simple, relentless, cruel pattern of choosing always to be as far away from anyone who loved me as possible. My children’s adoration of me made me uncomfortable, even angry. I tried to teach them not to love me that much. I tried to protect them from loving me... oh man, the unutterable, terrible heartache when I saw what that had done to them... Thank God, thank God that He broke through to me before they were grown up. These last few years have been sweet beyond measure, for the healing of our family.

And this, finally, is what it comes down to for me. It is not a question of life or death, though I have no doubt the stuff could kill me if I head into this valley again. It is about love. On the one side of this road is love, and on the other, there is nothing. I have learnt to care whether I live or die, because I have been learning to love. It isn’t life or death - being afraid of death is not enough to make me choose life. It’s love or death.

Sometimes, and I just have to know this about myself for now, love of any kind makes me nervous. Even, sometimes especially, God’s love. And yes, I am beginning to grasp that this intermittent aversion is probably because - contrary to the story I told myself so very well for so long - I love extravagantly and deeply and will do almost anything to prevent myself feeling such depths, such terrible potential for loss. Instead of having a good cry (or twenty) over the fact that my youngest child has spread her wings, or that my pride and love and joy in all three of them is so enormous that it breaks my heart, instead of stopping to really think about the private repercussions of 'going public' with my story of being raped twice (which I really am fine about, but perhaps that was a bigger thing than I thought it was)... Instead of any of those thoughtful and accepting reactions, I frogmarched myself over to Valley Road.

But it’s okay. This time, I am not putting up a house here. I can still see the ruins of the last one, and frankly, the view is just way, way better up on the mountain, even if it does cost some effort to get back up there. And it may not be a wide road, but this little pathway is starting to look nicely worn - which is no doubt because of that extravagant running God keeps doing up and down it, bless Him. It is a simple matter of turning around, if you know you’re going the wrong way. Of course I knew that, but the journey (always easier and faster downhill) could have been a much longer one, if not for the bloody great signpost firmly planted in my way today.

So again - thank you. Thank you for planting that signpost. I see that I need to mark this path with plenty of those, and that I have neglected to do that lately. I’ll be looking out for module 2, and I’d like to sign up for the e-hab course, because I think I am ready to start doing the work.