Stay in school,
Eat your greens,
And say no to drugs.
Yup, this is the letter where I talk about drugs and alcohol, my path to total abstention from both, and why I recommend a zero percent participation rate for everyone.
Before I go on to outline exactly what it is I’m going to talk about, permit me to clarify in advance what I’m not going to do, and where it is that my statements are not coming from.
I’m not here to give some kind of “tell-all” story about my past, and everything I share about myself will be for the sake of making a larger point.
There are people who reach a place in their lives when they can no longer hold back some kind of terrible secret and have to bear their soul to the world to overcome their shame. That is not me, and this is no such performance.
I’m also not here to hound people who are simply living their lives and aren’t looking for a change. I’m going to be quite blunt, mercilessly at times, about my assessment of the effects of drugs and alcohol on people’s conduct, conscience, and maturity – if you were to feel personally attacked, you would be mistaken.
Alcohol has been part of civilization for millennia: the phrase “write drunk, edit sober” was not coined by Bukowski but by the Egyptians, according to the Histories of Herodotus. Similarly, there are all manner of psychoactive herbs that people have discovered deep in the forests and jungles, chewing on them and making teas, since as long as we have existed as a species.
It is an arrogant blowhard who judges the world and judges humanity. What I’m interested in is clarity of understanding, and I try to convey what it is that I understand in the clearest language possible.
With that said, here’s what you can expect in the paragraphs that follow.
A summary of my own history with D&A
The sorts of character flaws that made me vulnerable to an unhealthy relationship with D&A,
All the ways D&A made me a worse person living a worse life,
Everything that changed for the better as a direct result of completely quitting D&A.
Some general observations about the nature of substance abuse, and a guardedly optimistic finale.
So, consider this week’s letter as you and me having some “real talk” about life’s ups and downs, and what setting the world aright has looked like in my own life.
I leave it to you to reflect on my experiences and observations, assessing where you do and don’t find parallels in your own life or the lives of those close to you. This is, as the kids say, “my truth.” We may have much in common, or be worlds apart. That’s your own private assessment to make, and I assume nothing.
Part One: Why did it become a problem for me?
I’ve talked about this in earlier newsletters, but I used to be deeply uncomfortable in my own skin, and didn’t make friends very easily.
Plenty of people go through that at some point in their life, but they soon outgrow it. I didn’t. The root of it apparently went much deeper, or, perhaps, the mechanisms that usually kick in to move someone beyond it were short circuited in my case.
It’s hard to say for sure, but the result is that I adapted to, rather than outgrew the discomfort. I put very high walls around myself, neither letting anything in fully, nor fully issuing forth anything of my true self either.
A lot of my “intellectualizing,” while it later bore real fruit, was initially wrapped up in the search for tools with which to distance myself from other people, to feel superior, and in which I might bury myself so that I could avoid those uncomfortable feelings.
What I want to get across is the extent to which I was holding up a compensatory edifice. If it was born of anxiousness and self loathing, it only made for more of the same.
This would be an example of the ideal conditions for someone to respond abnormally well to alcohol and drugs (cocaine in my case). By abnormally well, I mean liking it a bit too much.
A normal person takes pain killers and just gets an upset stomach. A person in tremendous pain, on the other hand, feels euphoria. I felt euphoria.
It’s hard to say no to euphoria. It’s hard to push it away in favor of being left to grapple with an agonizing existential void, without any tools, understanding, or people around you who speak the language of self development.
Conversely, it’s easy to find people who want to get inebriated.
During a particularly bad chapter in my life, drugs and alcohol took hold to a greater degree than they ever had before. I had gone through a divorce, having been on the receiving end of verbal, psychological, and physical abuse for the better part of six years, only to jump into a new relationship way too quickly.
All that unprocessed baggage on my end culminated in acts of infidelity that ended the relationship and left me without a place to stay. As this coincided with me failing out of a Multilevel Marketing Company, I found myself out of a job as well.
It was as though my whole life had “bottomed out.”
My ex wife and daughter had moved in with her parents in San Francisco, but there I was, in Southern California, looking around at nothing but the wreckage of what had been my life.
So, I threw all my stuff in the car, abandoned the rest, and drove to San Francisco to co parent my kid. I lived in my car, and drove lyft 10 plus hours a day, six or seven days a week. I had 7000 passengers in 18 months, if that puts in perspective.
I say all this to say that I felt, and, in many ways, was completely outside society at that point. It felt like my life had split off into some parallel, alternate universe. I knew that, somehow, I would get out of this situation, but I had no idea how, and I didn’t make any plans.
Looking back on it now, of course it could have been solved relatively easily. I had tunnel vision, and lacked the courage to truly face the reality of my situation. I buried myself in the daily grind, avoiding larger questions and problems.
It was under these circumstances that drugs and alcohol gradually crept back into my life. I say “crept back,” and that’s probably confusing. They had been in the picture before, and I’d kicked them to the curb and kept them out for years, but the underlying issues were never truly resolved. Now, I was in the most vulnerable place I’ve ever been in, feeling like I wasn’t living a real life, and that I didn’t quite matter to the world in the way that others did. I felt like a complete failure, although I wouldn’t have had the courage to articulate that at the time.
So, they crept back in, and gradually took over. When I got rid of them this last time, I knew this had to be about more than just not using them. I had to remove the cause. The cause of my twisted love affair with them.
Here is something that I wrote, years ago, reflecting on that “love affair”
It feels like I’ve known you all my life
I met them at a party years ago
And they were so interesting
Interesting like when you hear
John’s solo on Giant Steps
For the first time.
Interesting like the first time
A girl puts your hand somewhere
And you don’t know what to do,
Yet surprised at your unhesitation.
We were fast friends,
Me and these interesting strangers.
They took me everywhere –
Introduced me to ex black ops
Operatives who showed me
Their black handguns,
Introduced me to ex pro athletes
With black curls tight as a drum
And speech as chiseled as their bodies once were.
Introduced me to women I’d always looked at
And could never talk to,
Sometimes three or four at a time,
Took me to house parties full of mid-six lawyers,
Rooftop bars, artists’ lofts,
Black cars idling in parking lots.
My friends were interesting –
Like an electric shock
Like an epiphany,
Like a conversation that
Blows your fucking mind out
Like jumping into bed with a girl
When the other two friends
She came over with
Are sitting and drinking at your kitchen table
And nobody cares.
We’d stay up all night, and when the sun rose
They were gone without goodbyes
But they always called again.
They were there
When she stopped texting back
When I had a bad day at work
When I had a good day at work
When a date ended early,
When a date went unexpectedly well.
I stopped being surprised when my new friends
Already knew them, and brought them along
When they I couldn’t find them on my own.
They stopped leaving at dawn,
Had nowhere else to go,
And maybe it’s because I too was interesting now.
But time went by, and I never saw them eating.
I asked them about it one day,
And they lifted up the hood,
Lifted up the rug,
Opened up the walls,
The bank accounts,
And my ribs,
And showed me
Everything they’d chewed through.
I said this wouldn’t be some gut wrenching tell all tall tale. I’m dangerously close to breaking that promise, so let’s step away from the precipice. I hope I’ve conveyed the tone and tenor of the whole thing, the causes of my particular vulnerability I had to it, the sorts of pain it was medicating, and feeling of being robbed of one’s dignity that comes from being eventually ruled by an addictive substance.
Part Two: Life After Drugs
I don’t touch anything anymore. I put my foot down and got through it. More importantly, I got to the root issues. I’ve discussed all this in previous newsletters, but I’ll summarize here by saying that I gradually acquired tools with which I could face my own demons. It wasn’t with sheer courage, but frameworks.
Initially, I just needed regular doses, if you’ll pardon the word, of positivity. After years of running away, I was left in an empty windowless room with my own feelings of worthlessness. The advantage, however, of arriving at that confrontation later in life, after having lost so much in a vain attempt to cover it up, is that there was no longer any fooling myself: the resolution to this could be nothing less than total. The enemy had to be utterly annihilated, the reversal of course comprehensive, and the reforms unequivocal. There was no going back, no half measures, and no second thoughts. I had to become, as I have now said a handful of times, totally solid all the way to the core.
I started listening to positive affirmations, and guided meditations. For people who are interested in and receptive to this kind of thing, here are the links to the morning and evening meditations I listened to religiously.
I started exercising regularly as well, first at home, and eventually at the gym. I’ve only gotten more serious about the gym as time’s gone by. It’s fun, even if it does not look or sound like I am having fun. It looks and sounds like a horror movie, but now I look great naked, which is its own reward.
I discovered the joy of honoring myself, treating myself like someone who matters, and backing that up by keeping promises to myself. Doing what I set out to do, not doing what I said I wouldn’t do.
What I discovered for myself is the power of self credibility. I discovered the joy of earning my own respect and approval. Because I know what it means to live without both, I have a special appreciation for it now.
At first, I would defend it militantly. Now I’m a bit more relaxed and dare I say charming about the whole thing now. But, at first, I still had little bits of the gravel of the underworld in my teeth, still not totally sure if the nightmare was over.
I can now say that it’s over. The first time I quit, I was taken in by “the spiritual community.” The Kundalini Yoga people (did you think I just happened to be a non practicing Jew from Berkeley with no Indian ancestry and coincidentally named Jaswinder Singh? Guess again).
It’s not a bad way of life, but I traded in my hot mess of a life for dogmatic rigidity with the support of a religious separatist community. I was not holding this up on my own, and far from it. This is why the underlying issues never went away, even if they were dormant for many years.
The second time I quit, I did it all myself. I made use of resources, but not one human being lifted a finger or offered a word of support. I made sure nobody had the chance, or even knew of the undertaking. This had to be my own doing, every step of the way. I had to know every step of the road leading from insanity to sanity, ruin to accomplishment, failure to success, misery to happiness, unhealthiness to radiant vitality. I had to acquire an absolute command over myself, and my life depended on it.
So far, so good.
Progress begets progress. What began as just trying to get through a day without consuming soon led to more positive endeavors. I missed being serious about things, so I started reading books again, practicing guitar to a metronome, and taking every opportunity to clean up the messes I had made in the past.
Eventually, I stumbled onto the methodology that would change my life forever: spending the entire month of December to plan the entire following year. I’m on year 3 of using this system, modifying and refining as I go.
It was all driven by an insatiable urge to take my life back. And, once I had regained control of it, to fashion it into something that I could proudly call my life’s work.
That’s the project. That’s what we’re doing here: trying to win the game fair and square, but at any cost. The right thing, done the right way, for the right reasons, at any cost.
Part Three: impolite observations
This is where I rattle off some general observations about what drugs and alcohol seem to do to people.
This is also the part where I speak with judicious pitilessness when I deem necessary. You’ve been warned.
They destroy your credibility with yourself.
Cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and a bad diet are all examples of things we know we shouldn’t do. If you wouldn’t want your own child consuming them, then you know damn well that you shouldn’t be either.
The result of this is moral compromise: on the most basic level, which is your relationship with yourself, you put things into your body that you know perfectly well do not belong there because they are poisonous.
I am telling you now, it is really quite simple: when you do things every day that you know you should not do, you do not respect yourself: “ignoring knowledge is sickness.”
It is probably also the case that you’ve walled off the acute awareness of that fact, because it hurts, behind a bunch of what we colloquially refer to as bullshit: rationalizing, excuse making, empty promises about someday, hand waving (“yeah, I know”), and willful blindness.
Again, not behavior anyone can respect, least of all you. Imagine having to live with someone who constantly lies, ignores problems, actively contributes to his or her own deterioration, and acts like none of it is a big deal.
They make you
selfish,
isolated,
impulsive,
arrogant,
and delusional.
They don’t call it “self medicating” for nothing. Drugs and alcohol turn you into a very self involved person, your energy and attention always directed toward yourself, your high, your buzz, your hangover, your comedown, your cravings.
Self serving behavior is isolating behavior. Whether or not you’re around other people, you’re not truly with them as much as you are using them. Using them to facilitate the experience, as an outlet for your disinhibited loquacity, and, most of all, as an excuse to engage in the behavior: you’re having a good time. Cut drugs and alcohol out of your life, and see how much fun those same people are to hang out with.
Just as selfishness and isolationism are linked, impulsivity and arrogance are also linked. Drugs and alcohol create the illusion of power: I can make these bad feelings go away with my magic potion, so why should I deal in a serious way with the root causes of bad feelings?
The root causes of social awkwardness, the surprisingly frightening nature of being presented with real love and intimacy, the discomfort of not knowing what to say or do, and the sundry causes of feelings of inadequacy, which are quite often valid (meaning, yes it is quite often the case that you are inadequate, because life is not easy and cannot be managed successfully without real depth and maturity, all of which must be obtained in the face of discomfort) – why grapple with any of that when I can numb myself to it all by simply consuming drugs and alcohol?
Here’s where the arrogance comes in: it isn’t that you merely aren’t aware of the consequences of the fact that you’re being avoidant: you know, and you don’t care.
And that means that you never truly deal with people as humans, but always as a kind of threat: are you going to stay within the bounds of what I can tolerate? Of what I find pleasant and agreeable? Or is our interaction going to bring something to the surface that will trigger a craving?
The mind of an addict says: I don’t have to listen to you, because I have ways of burying your signal beneath a mountain of noise. A high, a buzz – it is 100% noise.
The noise gives rise to delusion. Delusions, because you’re getting less and less signal from your environment, and you’re living more and more within a totally private experience of your own making, but over which you do not have any real control.
Your own little world of pseudo intellectual “insights,” wild experiences, and the sense of being cut off from and in some way superior to others.
All fucking rubbish.
Let’s end on a positive note, shall we?
The main reason substance abuse is bad, axiomatically, is because it cheats everyone of the person you might have been, had you chosen the path of courage, contribution, and creativity. It cheats your parents of a son or daughter they can be proud of, or at least stop worrying about. It cheats your teachers of the feeling of having actually elevated someone into a self reliant adult who loves to learn, grow, and achieve. It cheats you of the possibility of fulfilling your ambitions, your dreams, your yearnings for a life of deep connection and meaning.
It’s that potential that I want you to focus on. That’s what matters. That, if I may, is the purpose of life: to grow to full maturity. To find out what you’re capable of. To draw out the insights buried in the recesses of your mind. To see how you might build upon the achievements of your forebears if only you had read a little more about them and understood where their work has run aground.
Like it or not, someone is looking to you as an example of what is possible. Will you be a role model, a cautionary tale, or a corrupting influence? You have to decide. I had to decide.
You’re not a victim. Nobody did this or anything to you: your life is a series of events, none of which could possibly constitute an excuse for being a selfish piece of shit. I wasted far too much of my life being like that, despite having every opportunity laid at my feet, and being surrounded by loving and supportive parents and mentors since as long as I could remember.
What sobriety represents to me is the choice of life over death. The choice of what is real and shared over what is imaginary and private. The choice of being good over being clever, and the choice of seeing it through over quitting.
In closing, I want to say that if you stop treating yourself like someone who can’t handle life, you might be amazed by what your life can now become. I already am, and I’m just getting started. Give it a try.
Thanks for reading, talk to you soon.
-Jas
Make Beautiful Choices 