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Dalton
Roberts |
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Finding a song I wrote long ago reminded me that addiction hides in a lonely dark hole in our soul. When we are addicted to anything, we are hiding in that hole, holding onto our addiction like it is our best friend when the raw truth is that it is our most dangerous enemy. The addiction that motivated me to write the song was the alcoholism of a dear friend. I sat one night and watched him perform. He was one of the best. During his performance he consumed the better part of a fifth of vodka. The song was Temporary Solution and it went like this: It ain’t no way to live I really couldn’t recommend it And to tell you the truth I don’t know how I got in it I was strictly looking for A temporary way to ease the pain But my temporary trip To a peaceful destination Didn’t end ‘cause the train I don’t know where it’s headed I’m just hanging on the side in the rain
My temporary solution My attempt at restitution Has got the hand of retribution Laying heavy on me My temporary solution Has turned into an execution My temporary solution Lord, it’s slowly killing me
I wake up reaching for it On the bedside table Through the day I keep reaching Until I’m not able To recall the reason that I Started reaching for it in the first place My mind is like a hobo On a fast freight train As the years run together In a cold winter rain Now and then I hear a voice I recognize Or see an old friendly face
Ida Smith, retired Marion County teacher, once emailed me, “I think we sort of like our addictions. What would we do without them? We might have to become productive people. We’d have to find some other way to use the time we spend thinking about diets and stopping smoking or drinking.” Novelist Erica Jong said something similar when she wrote in her Fear of Fifty, A Midlife Memoir, “Addiction is the disease of our age. It is cunning and powerful…It grows fat from our chronic quashing of the inner life. We believe the spiritual does not exist because we have made insufficient space for it to manifest in our lives.” Don’t let her use of the terms “inner life” and “spiritual” turn you off in case you see those words in a strictly religious way. Even atheists have that spiritual dimension of their being or they could not feel awe when they see a sunset or sunrise or behold their favorite pieces of the beauty that surrounds us. What I am saying is that you do not have to be religious to access that spiritual part of yourself and overcome addictions. I learned that when I started meditating to control my blood pressure and journaling to clarify my values and goals. At the time I began those two practices I was certainly not religious but they definitely helped me to stop a lifelong addiction to tobacco. I am not certain what I was hiding from in my addiction to smoking. To answer that one must go back to the perceived needs that impelled taking up the habit in the first place. It was probably my way of gaining teen acceptance from those teens I liked most and to rebel against adults. The way of my youth was smoking and drinking beer. Today’s generation is walking a much more dangerous ledge with meth and crack. Synanon founder Charles Dederich may shock you but he speaks truthfully, “The use of narcotics is stupid. What we are dealing with is addiction to stupidity.” If anything can help coax us and our addiction out of that little hole in our soul where we are hiding, it is the realization that our real addiction is stupidity.
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