Healing is its own addiction
I used to be so hard on myself at the beginning of sobriety. I felt like I had so many apologies to hand out. So much to make up for. I went from the extreme of hiding my mistakes behind anger, blame and denial to judging myself relentlessly in shame, guilt and remorse. I’m sure both were exhausting for people around me.
I went from looking for the next fix to constantly trying to fix myself.
What I’ve learned is there isn’t a need to label these behaviours as good or bad. Simply that they are unnecessary.
We weren’t born to heal. We were born to live. Pain, pleasure, all of it. To experience both without taking either too personally. That’s generally the hard part.
If the focus is on “healing”, the problem is that the search for healing itself can become a source of fake reward. The high starts the moment the hunt begins.
Anyone who’s ever called their dealer at 2am knows this feeling. Anyone who’s ever pulled into the drive-thru when they weren’t actually hungry knows this feeling. Anyone who’s ever typed in the website they said they’d stop visiting also knows this feeling.
It’s not so much the thing itself that’s rewarding - it’s the pursuit of it. The fix might change, but the underlying craving is the same.
The expectation that there will be no more suffering when we are “100%” healed is harmful. It keeps us stuck in waiting mode.
Healing isn’t something we can shop for. Neither is peace. If all we look for is relief from suffering, then the whole point of it is lost.
I “healed” from my addiction not because I set out to heal. All I set out to do at the beginning was to stay clean. At the time I thought it just meant abstinence. And because life had felt so difficult to manage without using, I felt sure there was something wrong under the hood. I knew there was a problem, but I also didn’t want to find out what it was.
This created a trap. If I didn’t look, all I knew was there was pain and to dump whatever I could find to relieve it. It was symptom management. If I couldn’t control my temper it was cuz I had anger issues. If I said things or kept doing things I regret it was cuz I was stupid.
I saw my identity as fixed - “I’m an addict, I’m an angry person, I’m anxious around people,” and so on - rather than just a person who was unskilled in social interactions, communication, and taking care of myself.
Healing my relationships, including the one with myself, was a byproduct of realizing how much of my suffering was tied to how I chose to see things, and what I chose to learn. It meant finding the parts I found repulsive and uncontrollable and being honest with all the reasons why I wanted to look away.
It meant realizing that I wasn’t taught to do this - in fact, like many of us, I had picked up the opposite message. To assume that I was an inconvenience, that I was lacking, that I was a burden, just by existing.
And if this all came down to story, and skill, then I did have control. I could rewrite. I could relearn. I could stop the “inevitable” cycle of relapse - not just into old habits, but every old pattern of thinking and relating and feeling that had caused the habits in the first place.
And if we can see that this is a skill issue, then maybe we can stop being so hard on ourselves. Because holding ourselves accountable doesn’t require brute force. That seems to be a common misconception. It just requires a willingness.
It doesn’t have to be painful all the fucking time.
These days when I see myself start to engage with anxious thoughts, I laugh at myself a lot quicker than I used to. It’s just not that serious anymore. Nor do I really buy that I need to be a participant in them.
The addictive thoughts that used to feel like life and death sound more like a desperate echo of the past, trying to reach across the canyon of space I’ve put between us. Like Vera, vera, vera….Do drugs, do drugs, do drugs...
And then I do the opposite of what the thoughts say not to: I tell someone. “Hey, I was thinking about having a drink. I won’t. Was just feeling sad/lonely/anxious.” It sucks the energy right out of the feeling that I thought I needed to avoid. I can almost see it deflating in front of me like a wilty balloon. Bye balloon.
It was never about finding the perfect thing to heal me, or to heal til I was perfect. Acceptance is a decision we can make now.
Your ability to move forward will never be about fixing everything first. It’s about deciding to move anyway, despite not being perfect, despite not knowing.
How can any of us live fully if every day feels like we’re waiting for something to happen? Choose a life that doesn’t make you feel like you’re still waiting. You’re allowed to feel like you’ve already arrived.
