Sitting With the Kind of Feelings That’ll Make You Want to Get That One Last Fix In
Allowing every feeling I’ve ever run from to have its time to speak while I nonjudgmentally listen. Constantly crying so hard over things I thought I’d never have the courage to look directly into. Honestly? Blowing a lot of snot into tissue. Building a relationship with my neglected inner kid. Facing all the ways in which I’ve been the villain. It isn’t like I’m enacting an emotional masterplan, I’m just sitting here and it’s happening. That’s what I would answer if anyone had asked me what I’d been up to since I quit admining my Instagram account @thisisafleshprison. But they hadn’t, which in a weird way made me feel better about going along with the decision.
I actually stopped posting on every form of social media, knowing it would flatline all my social interactions. If I can be candid, none of them were all that great. A handful of the people were, but even the most rewarding online connection did little for my cravings to be touched and laughed with. The most loving and genuine parasocial exchange ultimately left me alone in my apartment again at the end of it. For the longest, I just thought I ought to take what I can get from the internet because on the topic of putting myself in a position to be harmed again, the trauma in my psyche maintained the firm position of "no fucking way." At least on the internet, I could complain about how I couldn’t stop isolating myself from people in real life knowing hundreds of thousands of people would see it and have an emotional reaction. That’s what I told myself, anyway. Nevertheless, I started to develop a profound dissatisfaction. Within each compliment was a deep need for another one to follow it; within each insult was a confrontation with my main imperative to protect myself against interpersonal pain. Within each viral post was the craving for another one to happen the next day. Eventually, a thousand showers of praise still left me feeling dirty, and a single unkind word would send me into a blind rage. That’s no way to live. It took me over a year to truly break away. I partially blame the fact that I’m a drug addict who got clean and immediately transitioned into a wannabe influencer that eventually developed into an internet microcelebrity, which is basically the social media equivalent of what a long-time smoker is to a cigarette addiction.
I lose myself when I become obsessed with something because, at my core, I'm a heroin junkie. It’s nothing for me to become hooked on something. I’m five years clean, but that doesn't mean shit in 2023 when I'm so addicted to fast food that I can’t stop eating Chic-fil-A even though I’m gender nonconforming. Or I watch the umpteenth HBO Original Series episode I don’t even enjoy only because I don’t want to be with my own thoughts or feelings. The real ones, like the ones that well up in your heart after you finish the series. That should lend me some credence when I say that what led me to all this is beyond me.
My modus operandi has always been taking off from an uncomfortable feeling, so it’s really uncharacteristic of me to trade an externalization of my feelings of fear and unworthiness like social media for running headfirst into the trauma that’s been buried so deeply. Since I sobered up from the Big Three—alcohol, opioids, and benzodiazepines—I’ve been trading in terrible habits for lesser ones from the beginning. Cigarettes begat vaping begat nicotine patches begat nothing. A fucking caffeine-free-for-all begat sugar-free Red Bull begat green tea begat nothing. Other addictive habits have followed a similar trajectory. Even my initial impetus for meditating was controlling the way I felt. I was trying to force myself into serenity, which is nothing short of adorable in retrospect. What I’m getting at is I don’t just let go of things. I almost always have to compromise with my ego and keep it occupied with a little chew toy of some sort. Now I just don’t see the point anymore. Every external attempt I’ve made to get my needs met has ultimately resulted in me hurting myself and others. Every craving always makes the fantasy of gratification seem so much better than the actual result. Every small respite has some unseen cost that catches up with me somewhere down the road. When the exorbitant bill comes and I recall what I got for it, it’s so paltry I feel like such an idiot chode. It’s like that gut-wrenching moment you realize you gave up an irreplaceable friendship because you wanted to fuck them or their partner. Or both.
I opened the portal to my lifelong volcanic pit of unresolved trauma innocently enough by trying to visualize sending myself unconditional love to all the parts of my body. I don’t believe I’m a star seed or anything—I didn’t whimsically dream this procedure up on my own. I was just trying out a heart chakra meditation from YouTube and those were the instructions. In under a minute, I was sobbing uncontrollably. I thought that was pretty odd, but not so out of the ordinary that it would completely upend my sense of stability and turn my inner world all emotional-rollercoastery. I was just curious if I did the same thing if it would get the same results. And it did. I tried it again every day for a week. Then another. I don't like crying any more than the next person, but I spent years not being able to and even more not being willing. That made it seem novel, and also like something that should be happening. I started setting aside time in my day to weep. I couldn’t tell you why, but I had this sensation of draining an emotional abscess every time I cleaned up my face afterward. The pain rarely had any coherent narrative and would only contain little fragments of events, if anything. Often it was just a feeling of tightness and anguish that came rising from a pit in my stomach and into all the areas an ear, nose, and throat doctor is responsible for. This is hard to explain, but the pit somehow felt much deeper than my body.
After about a month of this, I suffered a personal loss that kicked everything up about 20 notches. The specifics aren't relevant, but I will say it was devastating because I’d lost the last of the close friendships that had been around since I committed to sobriety. Setting aside time in my day became setting aside time in my hour. I cried so hard that drops of tears regularly fell off my face and onto the floor. I got to a point where I just let the tears dry on my face because I knew more would be coming as soon as I wiped. After a crying session started, it could potentially last several hours until I’d feel the raw suffering pulsing through my bloodstream with every beat of my heart. I told myself I could see why someone might run from this for their entire life. The catch was I’d somehow lost my core belief that doing so could even make it temporarily better anymore.
I wasn’t trying to be an ascetic—everything I did eventually led back to this. If it were up to what I wanted, I'd already be in a state of bliss. I wasn't even positive this wasn't psychosis. I'd go on a walk to clear my head and have to practically crawl back into the apartment to close the bathroom door and sob over a random traumatic memory or some shit. I'm paraphrasing, but all of my astrology apps confirmed my experience and prophesied that I was being sent to the darkest parts of my subconscious to emerge transformed. They also said I didn't have a choice, which made sense because all of my decisions have historically led to me being back on my bullshit again.
I binge-watched Season 2 of Euphoria because I needed an escape from the snot fest, and I like to enjoy things alone when everyone is done with them. Cut to a montage of me making that ugly crying face while I'm curled up in a ball every time Rue's plotline touched on the trauma I both endured and inflicted as an opioid addict. It's something I'd somehow normalized, even in recovery a little bit. For whatever reason, this energy I'd been engulfed in gave me the power to genuinely honor it.
I shed a river of tears for every time I went through drug withdrawal, stole money from a family member, or destroyed a relationship. For every time I gave up some of my soul or someone that actually mattered for temporary comfort. For every time I wished I was just gone. For every time I thought if I killed myself everyone would be better off. People understandably hate the individual in this extreme state of addiction, because the nature of this mental illness turns everyone into a target. Especially the ones that love you more than anybody if they have resources or money also. Although I will say that needing a fix is so much worse than hunger or thirst it makes me wonder how virtuous they would remain under the same conditions, honestly. It makes the alienation all the more tragic because pushing your loved ones away is practically involuntary and motivated by a physiological response to annihilate any threat to the addiction; namely, their love—what the addict needs to feel most of all. Don't believe me? Flush their drugs down the toilet and see if you still have a head on your body.
People wonder why just sending us to rehab doesn't solve the problem, and we often come back worse than before. Are we just rotten? More often than not, the answer is no. The problem is, people with post-traumatic stress can't fully feel the love of others because our bodies are too busy keeping the goddamn score. Trauma robs you of the ability to truly see the world. Instead it’s filtered through a lens that turns everyone you don’t know into a potential threat and all of your loved ones—if you have any left—into a lament over an eventual loss. Burnt bridges can make it seem even more hopeless, because how the hell are you going to believe in yourself when everyone else has already written you off?
As much as we need food and air, we need feelings of love and safety. Imagine what it felt like if you couldn't breathe, and heroin was your only asthma inhaler. Every time you started choking and reaching for it the people around you told you were a bad person, and if you loved them you would stop. Every time you gasped they told you, “You would sit there and bear it until your face turned blue if you really cared. If you loved me enough, you'd stop needing air.” That's what you're actually saying when you tell a heavy drug addict with severe trauma that they're selfish for slowly killing themselves. Suicide only occurs as an option when life seems worse than death. These are complex issues, but understanding and forgiveness on either side of the aisle starts with asking yourself some hard questions. If you're an addict with unresolved trauma, maybe ask yourself if you truly think it's impossible to stay clean, or if you're just too afraid to actually try it. If your loved one is an addict, maybe ask yourself if you'd be fine if they were withering away inside for the rest of their life as long as they just quit acting like it.