The first Thanksgiving of my recovery, I was only one month out of treatment and living in a half-way house in East Nashville, back when that side of town was more avoided than desired. The house charged $85 per week for rent, an amount I struggled to come up with earning minimum wage flipping burgers at The Nashville Zoo. My mother and father would have given me money had I asked, and often they did. But I knew that I had burdened them financially by asking them to pay for my treatment twice in two years, so I learned how to make do with the bare minimum, realizing that things I viewed as necessities were actually luxuries. For the first time in my life, when I laid my head down on a pillow in a soft, warm bed, I felt a true sense of gratitude for what so many people on this planet dream of having. When they allowed me to make myself a cheeseburger at work, I received the food as a gift and understood for the first time why my mother always insisted we pray before we ate our dinner each night. And when I attended my recovery meetings, I understood what they meant when they said things like, “Show me a grateful alcoholic and I’ll show you a sober alcoholic.”

So on Thanksgiving of the year 2000, I woke up in the half-way house with no food, no money, and less than a quarter tank of gas in my car. My parents had invited me to drive up to Kentucky to spend the holiday with them, but with no money for gas, I thought the trip would be impossible. I remember I kept going out to my car trying determine how many gallons of fuel I likely had left, and whether or not it was enough to make it the 120 miles to my parents house. The best I could figure, I might be able to make it to the Kentucky border, but not much further. As I decided on whether or not to make the trip, I pondered how many stupid risks I’d taken in my addiction without any concern for myself or others. And I thought about this new-found faith I had been cultivating in recovery, how I was promised that if I tried to do the next right thing, a Power greater than myself would take care of me. Not that this Power was a superhero that would protect me from the world, but that I would be able to deal with reality without living in fear, and without resorting to alcohol and drugs to calm my volatile emotions.

So I made the decision that spending Thanksgiving with my parents was worth the risk of being stranded on the side of the road. The worst thing that might happen would be that I’d have to call my dad to come get me once the car finally ran out of gas, or I’d have to hitchhike the rest of the way. In true Homer Simpson fashion, I took a piece of paper and taped it to the dashboard over the fuel gauge so I wouldn’t obsess about the needle dropping lower and lower as I drove. I told my parents I was on my way and began the drive, trying to guess just where in Kentucky the car would likely stall. I don’t remember much of the drive, but I do remember that the closer I got to my parents house, the more shocked I was that I hadn’t yet run out of gas. And when I coasted into my parents driveway two hours later, the car literally running on fumes, I had the deepest sense of gratitude I had ever experienced, especially when I removed the piece of paper from the dashboard and found the needle buried deeper on ‘E’ than I thought was even possible.

To this day I have no idea how I made that trip without running out of gas. I know that it shouldn’t have been possible. Sometimes it seems ridiculous to think that a supreme being could be concerned with a First World Problem like running out of gas on the way to overeat and watch football. But I believe what the mystics say, that God is in all things, even in the minutia of day to day living, even in a son’s desire to spend Thanksgiving with his mother and father.

There is a great documentary on Netflix that I believe every person in America should watch. The movie, called the “Mask You Live In,” addresses the concept of hyper-masculinity in our culture and sheds light on the challenges that boys go through on their way to becoming men. The first time I watched the video I found myself choked up with emotion as they interviewed boys and young men, asking them to talk about some of their struggles in regard to trying to live up to the standard of masculinity that they found impossible.

These boys expressed a deep feeling of loneliness that began to affect them as they entered middle school, around the age of puberty, when the expectations begin to change in regard to what is acceptable male behavior. The boys talked about craving both male and female friendships, but feeling like they would be bullied or made fun of if they showed this vulnerable side of themselves. They also spoke about the expectations that begin to be placed on them, especially in the realm of athletics and sexuality.

I do not believe that men are inherently given to atrocious behavior when it comes to their treatment of women in the workplace, at home, or among other men. Men quickly learn from our culture that the way you get respect from other men is to become an alpha male who takes no shit, parties like a rock star, dominates other men athletically, solves problems with violence, and views women as sexual objects. Think about the archetypal heroes from modern movies, television, and video games. The primary message is that men reject in themselves that which is viewed as feminine, especially emotions such as fear, sadness, pain, compassion and empathy.

Usually, when a male client comes to my office for counseling the first time, they are so out of touch with their emotions that even asking them to identify a feeling leaves them speechless, as if you’d just asked them to interpret Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. As it states in the documentary, men are taught to “lock down their feelings” at all cost, to never let anyone see a weakness or it will be used against them. When people are cut off from their own internal lives, they cannot put themselves in the shoes of another, which results in viewing others as lacking their own vital emotions. Thus, some men believe they can treat others anyway they wish, because the victims of abuse don’t feel anything just like them.

When I was twenty-seven, I took stock of the person I was and decided that I didn’t like anything about myself. One of the things I had to address was the way that I viewed and treated women. At that time I made a conscious decision to never refer to a woman in any type of derogatory term or slur, and seventeen years later I’ve kept that promise to myself. I also decided that I needed to become more aware of how the objectification of women (especially pornography) creates a mindset that can dehumanize the vulnerable and turn some men into predators. About the same time I made this decision, I met my wife who I have been with for seventeen years. It is no coincidence that when I decided to overhaul my attitude toward women, I became capable of having a deep and meaningful relationship with the woman of my dreams, one that gives me the intimacy and closeness that I always craved.

It is my view that underneath all the bravado and persona that most men project to the world, there is a little boy who once had an open heart, a sense of innocence and wonder. The hardest part of being a man in our society, is that most of us don’t only wear a mask at Halloween, we wear one everyday. We think it keeps us safe, but it really makes us deeply unhappy, and unfortunately, sometimes dangerous.  I’m an advocate for the men that I counsel, because I see the goodness and the pain that they feel like they have to hide from a society they are afraid will reject them.

I challenge all men who read this to watch the documentary on Netflix and ask yourself if there are aspects of the deadly and abusive culture of hyper-masculinity that are familiar to you. As with most problems in our society, the solution begins with awareness, introspection, and honesty.

After my last post about the struggles that families deal with when facing addiction, I received a message on Facebook from a woman admonishing me for calling addiction a disease, insisting that people “make their choices and should live with them.” As she pleaded with me to stop calling addiction a disease, I felt a flush of anger redden my face, wanting to retaliate with a message of my own, something that would cut her to the quick and cause her to think twice before writing anything on my page again. Anyone who knows me is aware that I’m not really the type of person to cower in the corner when challenged, nor do I have a problem defending my position on an issue. Once, I took great pride in these characteristics, but lately, watching our country descend into violence and hatred over conflicting opinions, I’m not quite so proud of the argumentative part of myself.

As a result, instead of quickly unleashing a few mean-spirited words back at this person, I decided to simply block her from my Facebook page and try to realize that she has her reasons for needing to believe that addiction is a choice, the same way I have my reasons for believing it’s a disease. And no matter how much I am sure that I am right about the disease of addiction, she is just as sure about her own beliefs. After a couple of days, it occurred to me that the reason I am invested in the idea of addiction as a disease is for one reason and one reason only: I want our society to have compassion for people with substance abuse instead of scorn. The reason I want compassion for alcoholics and addicts is because I have worked with thousands of them, and know for certain that most would do anything to not be the way they are, hating themselves for how they have treated the people they love. When you have looked in the eyes of a man or woman who loathes themselves because they can’t stop going to the liquor store night after night, you understand that what you are seeing is not as simple as an act of willpower. I’ll never forget early in my career when I came upon a woman curled up in a corner with her face in her hands, crying like a child because of abandoning her daughter for more cocaine. When I bent down to ask her if she was alright, she flinched at the sound of my voice, afraid I was another person about to tell her what a horrible mother she was.

In one of my favorite books of Buddhism, a monk is teaching about cultivating compassion for all living creatures. To illustrate the point he tells his student to consider the tick. (Yes, the blood-sucking tick) “A tick” he says, “when it bites its victim, is only seeking its own happiness.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still put bug repellent on my exposed skin to protect myself from the tick, but do I have to hate the tick in order to keep myself safe?  Maybe it is ridiculous to consider feeling compassionate toward a tick, a snake, or an enemy, but can I at least consider that most people who differ from my political views want happiness and security for their children and families just as I do? Or, If I think addiction is a choice, can I at least be honest about how many mistakes I’ve made in my life, considering that wanting justice for others and mercy for myself is the root of all human conflict.

All those who are in the healing arts know that what makes a good counselor or therapist is not the technique, it is the ability of the technician to look deeper at the person in front of them, to not become fixated on the symptoms, but instead look at the person beneath the anger, fear, and shame. When we are able to do this, we create an environment for healing that is not concerned with who is right or who is wrong. So, for those of you who believe addiction is a choice, I will respect that you have your reasons for believing the way you do and that you don’t want your mind changed anymore than I do. But I will say this: If addiction is a choice, then so is compassion. If I refuse to recognize the basic goodness of human beings, I am likely as misguided as those I view as flawed, defective, unenlightened, unpatriotic, sinful or just plain wrong.

 

This week, I wanted to take some time to talk about the struggles that family members endure when dealing with a loved who is suffering from addiction. In situations when there is substance abuse, those closest to the one struggling are the ones who shoulder the financial and emotional burdens. Mothers, fathers, children and spouses are most often the ones who deal directly with the chaos produced by the disease, but it can also be grandparents, employers, and friends. Whoever takes on the role of caretaker for the addict, they are sure to experience feelings of confusion, hopelessness, anger, and guilt. Unfortunately, these emotions are often the very things that the loved one in active addiction uses to manipulate the family member in order to continue their alcohol and drug use. Without help, family members may end up making the situation worse by enabling them to continue their substance use without consequences.

So what are we talking about when we in the recovery community talk about enabling? Enabling I’ve witnessed over the years can run the gamut from allowing an adult child to use drugs and remain in the home, to actually buying heroin for the user, fearing that this is the only way to keep them safe. The tricky part of enabling is that sometimes enabling and love look very similar. Most parents would be willing to do anything to keep their child from having to go to jail or deal with the devastation of  bankruptcy, but every consequence that an addict receives can bring them closer to finding recovery. When an addict is continually rescued, their sense of reality becomes even more warped than it already is, allowing them to believe that they are exceptions to the rules that everyone else in society has to follow. It also allows the person addicted to continue to live in delusion. They can make themselves believe that a drug addict is only someone who lives in a cardboard box and sells themselves for their drug, not a clean-cut guy with a polo shirt and a new IPhone bought by their parents.

In my years working with family members whose loved one is  suffering with addiction, two things seem to offer the most relief: The first is learning that they are powerless over their loved one’s addiction. This means understanding that they did not cause the addiction, they can’t control the addiction, and they cannot cure the addiction. The relief comes in realizing that they no longer need to walk on eggshells around their loved one because there is nothing they can say that is going to make them start using, and there is nothing they can do that will make them stop. This doesn’t mean that there is no effort to help their loved one, it means they realize that without professional help, the addiction will continue to worsen on its own. I know for sure that the best thing family members can do for their loved one is to get them high-quality treatment and counseling.

The second crucial step for family members to take is to get support and counseling for themselves. Often times family members become so focused on the person in addiction that they neglect their own internal lives. They become isolated and alone, feeling that if they seek support they will be judged, blamed, or rebuffed. Whether support is found in Al-anon, Nar-anon, or their local church community, it is imperative that family members find a group that can help them navigate the uncertainty and confusion that accompany the disease of addiction. When parents ask me what to do to help their son or daughter who is in treatment, my answer is always the same: The best thing you can do for them is to work on yourself. Addiction does not exist in a vacuum, there are always environmental factors at play, often unacknowledged addiction and co-dependency in the family of origin.

There are so many of us who have watched loved ones battle the disease of addiction. Sometimes the feeling of powerlessness and grief is so intense, you wonder if there really is a light at the end of the tunnel. At the same time, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands of families healed and reassembled through the process of recovery, all of whom felt at one time as if the end was near. With each client that I counsel and work with, I always try to remember that there is part of them that wants recovery, though it may be hard to see underneath all the lies, anger, shame, and despair. My job as a counselor is to fan the flames of change, and to see the person before me as who they truly are, not who they have become in their disease. I have never met a hopeless case, and I hope I never do.

Lastly, I want to say happy  birthday to the best mother in the world, Linda Browning. Mom sacrificed time and money in order to help save my life, and without her and my father, I would not be here today. Mom instilled in me a love of reading, compassion for others, and most importantly, faith that there is more to this world than what can be experienced with the five senses. She is a wonderful example of someone who practices spiritual principles as a way of life and continues to be an example that I look to for how to live my life. Happy Birthday, mom. Love you.

This evening I invite you to take a look at the video below and read about the monkey’s St. Kitts Island. I present this as an invitation to consider that addiction and alcoholism are less about choice and more about a set of combined conditions that come together in those suffering from addiction, making it almost impossible to stop using without help in the form of treatment.

The conditions that create addiction are genetics, environment, trauma, and co-occurring mental disorders. In my experience, the best possible treatments for those suffering from addiction include medical interventions, trauma informed counseling from therapists trained to recognize addiction as the primary disorder, and recognition for the need of ongoing support from groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery, and Refuge Recovery.

 

*The green vervets were introduced to St. Kitt Island as pets in the 17th century when they were brought over with slaves from Africa. The wild vervets had developed a liking for alcohol in the form of fermenting sugar cane in the fields of the rum-producing island.When they spotted a drink that had been left unguarded or unfinished, the monkeys would sneak down from the trees, jump on the tables and start drinking. They were tasting the drinks to see which ones they liked.The drunk monkeys phenomenon has become so common place that there is now research being done on the monkeys to test the effects of alcohol on primates with interesting findings related to human alcoholism:

A controversial research project that involves giving alcohol to 1,000 green vervet monkeys has found that the animals divide into four main categories: binge drinker, steady drinker, social drinker and teetotaller.The vast majority are social drinkers who indulge in moderation and only when they are with other monkeys – but never before lunch – and prefer their alcohol to be diluted with fruit juice.Fifteen per cent drink regularly and heavily and prefer their alcohol neat or diluted with water. The same proportion drink little or no alcohol. Five per cent are classed as “seriously abusive binge drinkers”. They get drunk, start fights and consume as much as they can until passing out.

*all-that-is-interesting.com

 

In light of headlines both national and local regarding the Opioid Crisis, I wanted to take some time to discuss my thoughts on the matter as an addiction professional. I believe that it is important that those of us who work in the field share our experience, as well as possible solutions. From my perspective, these discussions should be free of partisan politics, and undertaken with the utmost humility, realizing that viewing a problem from multiple perspectives is surest way to find solution. Also, I believe that it needs to said that anyone who says they have a 100%, surefire-solution in regard to treating any addiction is probably selling snake-oil. Addiction is multi-layered, complicated, complex, and unpredictable. But we do know that there are treatments that work well, though not necessarily for everyone. My belief is that we need to figure out a way for people to have access to the most successful methods of treating addiction, and that means we as a society are going to have to find ways to make treatment affordable to all who suffer from addiction, not just the ones who can afford expensive treatment.

According to a U.S. News and World Report article, dated April 19, 2017, the government approved spending of $485 million dollars to combat the opioid epidemic.

“The grants are targeted at training for health professionals, technology and support for prescription drug monitoring programs that aim to prevent abuse and identify patients who may need help. Price said the grants also can be used to promote the use of overdose-reducing drugs such as naloxone.”

All of these measures, while positive, will barely put a dent in the problem. What concerns me is that there is no mention of how to help pay for expensive drug and alcohol treatment and therapy, both of which are proven effective in the fight against addiction. The article states that a large portion of the money will be used to help train professionals. Again, this is a positive step, but there are thousands of trained professionals ready to help those with addictions, and the problem is we are not connecting people with these addiction professionals. Right now, in middle Tennessee, there are probably hundreds of empty beds and chairs at many quality treatment centers. And there are thousands of suffering addicts who would love to be receiving treatment, but cannot afford the high cost of these treatment centers. The sad part of this scenario is that there are people today who will die from addiction, who would take the help if it was offered. In Tennessee, we have Hope Scholarships funded from the lottery to help people go to college. Why can’t we provide grants for those who are seeking treatment? Why can’t the alcohol industry pay into a system that it consistently drains of resources by contributing to DUI’s, accidental deaths, spousal abuse, health problems, and the prison system? Instead of the tobacco companies paying for ineffective public service announcements that shock people with graphic depictions of former smokers, how about they contribute to a scholarship fund to help people have access to good addiction treatment? Jack Daniels spends millions to run commercials depicting their quaint, folksy approach to making whisky. Unfortunately, whisky doesn’t make most people more friendly and down to earth, so they can pay into the fund as well. It is estimated that 1.6 billion dollars in drug money is seized each year. Forget the War on Drugs, put this money into drug and alcohol treatment and you could greatly reduce demand for the drug cartel’s products, decreasing criminality and creating a movement that would produce a more stable, safe and productive society.

With the $500 million dollars earmarked by the government to address opioid addiction, you could pay for drug and alcohol treatment for roughly 50,000 individuals in an outpatient setting.  This is nearly the same number of people who died from opioid overdoses last year. And I know this truth from working in addiction treatment for fifteen years: The effect of quality addiction treatment and therapy is cumulative. The old aphorism is true, a rising tide does lift all boats.

Lastly, a key in reducing the opioid crisis is early intervention. This comes from educating people about what addiction looks like in its early stages. Rarely does someone begin with heroin or opiates, there is a trail of evidence that the disease of addiction leaves long before the person is using so called ‘hard drugs.’  Early consequences from any drug and alcohol use, including marijuana, must be recognized. Parents, educators, judges, and politicians cannot dismiss heavy drug and alcohol use as part of adolescence, and we as a society cannot sweep addiction under the rug, afraid of the stigma that comes with it.

Last year I spent six months trying to provide quality alcohol and drug treatment to prisoners in a medium security prison outside of Nashville. I knew that inmates had access to drugs in prison, but I had no idea how rampant drugs were in the prison, in particular Suboxone, which according to inmates, is the most prevalent drug inside. The most disturbing aspect of working in the prison was the apathy and complicity I saw from prison officials and government employees. It was known by everyone that drugs were rampant in the prison, but the solution was to  post flyers that warned about the dangers of drugs. Repeatedly, I tried to get treatment for those that needed it, and repeatedly I was denied. It seemed that what was most important to the officials at the prison system was that they could say that they were providing addiction treatment, even though they did almost nothing to support me in my efforts. I say this, because from what I have witnessed, the best thing the government can do is provide the needed money for accessing treatment, and leave the facilitation of drug treatment to counselors, social workers, therapists, and medical doctors trained in addiction.

In no way do I think I have all the answers to the opioid crisis, nor am I under the false belief that we can ever totally eradicate addiction. But I have lost dozens of friends and clients to the disease of addiction, so much of my passion is fueled by the lives that might have been lived were it not for the disease. I believe that it will take a movement to address the opioid and drug crisis in this country, and the movement has to begin with those of us who have lost loved ones to the disease.

Continuing with my thoughts on those writers and books that have deeply influenced the way I relate to the world and those I counsel, I’ll be writing about the most famous Russian novelists from the 19th century, Count Leo Tolstoy. Though I am a great fan of Tolstoy’s most famous works, his later writings on spiritual conversion are some of the greatest contributions to the idea that man must live a life of purpose, in accord with spiritual principles, independent of the prevailing culture of narcissism and materialism.

In his book, A Confession, written when Tolstoy was in his 50’s, he talks about how by the time he’d reached middle-age, wealthy and famous, he suffered from severe depression and unhappiness which caused him to contemplate suicide on a regular basis. “My life came to a standstill. I could eat, breathe, and sleep, but there was no life. I had come to a precipice and could see clearly that there was nothing ahead of me but destruction.” Tolstoy talks about the internal struggle, as he tries to make sense of how he can be so unhappy when he has all the material wealth and recognition that a man of his era could acquire. This state of mind is one that I am all too familiar with, spending the majority of my career serving middle and upper-middle class families who are not struggling financially, but none the less find themselves in the storm of addiction and dysfunction. These families often come to treatment more confused than any other population.

As Tolstoy tries to heal himself, he begins searching for something he might have missed in his education. Inevitably, this leads him to a reexamination of different religions, especially the prevailing beliefs in his culture. Tolstoy eventually came to the conclusion that spirituality was more about the way a person lives his life, rather than what a person believes. This idea, that spirituality is about action and not belief, is the core message of recovery. Early along the spiritual path, a person is invited to “bring the body and the mind will follow.” An old-timer, one of my teachers in recovery, used to repeat  a section from a poem by William Blake that points to this idea:

I sought my soul, my soul I could not see.

I sought my God, but it eluded me.

I sought my fellow-man found all three.

In time, Tolstoy realizes that while God cannot be proven through the intellect, God can be felt in the heart, in the eyes of the people that he encounters on a daily basis. Tolstoy states that what he found was not something new, but something that was lost, the joyous part of himself that existed in childhood. This is what good therapy and recovery are about, uncovering the original or authentic self that has been lost in the darkness of addiction. In the end, Tolstoy found his later years to be his most satisfying. “Thus, I was saved from suicide. When and how this changed occurred, I could not say, but gradually the passion for life returned to me. And strange to say, the love of life that returned to me was not new, but quite old. It was the same love that had sustained me in my earliest days.”

After his awakening, Tolstoy continued to write such seminal works as The Death of Ivan Ilych and Resurrection. Tolstoy used the royalties of his later works to pay for a communal farm and transport a persecuted religious sect to Canada where they could worship in freedom. Tolstoy also wrote one of the best daily meditation books ever written, A Calendar or Wisdom, which compiles the sacred knowledge of all major religions and great philosophical thought. My mother gave me this book early in my own recovery, and I still cherish the spiritual insights compiled by Tolstoy.

When I first encountered Tolstoy’s Confession, I was violently anti-religious, blinded by my own prejudices and locked in an existential loop that caused me to see life as pointless and absurd. Reading a brilliant man like Tolstoy talk about his spirituality and conversion gave me the first glimmer of hope that I could believe in Divinity without descending into fundamentalism, extremism, bigotry, and ignorance. Leo Tolstoy was not only a visionary novelist, but also a visionary spiritual seeker, one whose wisdom shifted the trajectory of my life, insisting that I confront my own spiritual poverty.

 

 

I’m continuing with my tribute to the written word, those books and authors which have deeply influenced and taught me over the years. This week, I wanted to write about the novelist who carried me through my teens and early twenties, Kurt Vonnegut. Most people can remember their first kiss or the first time they saw the ocean. These moments are seared into our memory because they shift something in us emotionally, creating a sense of true wonder. I remember with absolute clarity the first time I picked up Siren’s Of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut. I was a sophomore in high school, sitting in a classroom with a teacher who seemed to have lost interest in teaching about ten years prior. He must have been especially tired that day, because instead of instruction, he told us to pick a book off the bookshelf and read it for the next forty-five minutes. I grabbed a beat-up paperback copy of Siren’s of Titan, finishing the book before the school day ended, feeling like I had discovered a great secret about the world which was hidden behind the existing status quo of small-town Western Kentucky, a place where I’d felt different and unusual ever since my family moved there.

If Siren’s Of Titan gently nudged my conscience toward the numinous, reading Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut’s masterpiece, resulted in a genuine spiritual experience. As many know, the book focuses on Billy Pilgrim, a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany during World War II. The character was based on Vonnegut’s own experiences, when he watched in horror as the entire city burned to the ground following its bombing by allied forces. In the book, when Billy Pilgrim’s character is witness to the death and destruction rained down on Dresden, he dissociates himself from the graphic scene, separating from the trauma by imagining he is on another planet where he shares a room with a beautiful woman who provides nurturing love to his wounded psyche. Not that I had ever experienced anything on par with war-induced PTSD, but I had been using my imagination to escape reality since I was a young child. Whether I was dreaming of what it would be like to be a Jedi from Star Wars, or imagining how it would feel to talk to the prettiest girl in school, I understood what it felt like to wish that you could escape from a reality that didn’t live up to the promise. In short, when I read Kurt Vonnegut, I didn’t feel alone. I knew that my people were out there somewhere.

When I was twenty years old, still trying to figure out who I was, I saw Kurt Vonnegut speak at a small college in Lexington, Kentucky. This was around 1993, not long after the Iraq War, a skirmish that I remember produced a lot of patriotic fervor. (Picture Whitney Huston singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl) I remember Vonnegut up at the podium, speaking to a crowd that looked especially conservative and buttoned-up. He told the audience that rather than feeling a kinship with the American soldiers, those he considered his brothers were the Iraqi prisoner’s of war, men obliged to die in a war commissioned by an egomaniacal dictator. There was an uncomfortable silence in the room after his statement, but Vonnegut was uncompromising in his belief that war, and the killing of human beings, should not be glorified under any conditions. I sat there smiling in stunned silence, knowing that I wanted to be the kind of man who spoke his mind regardless of public opinion, even if it meant alienating yourself from the crowd.

Surprisingly, Vonnegut was also a big fan of the Recovery Movement, a fact that I found helpful when I had to face the facts of my own addiction. I’m not sure if Vonnegut was an alcoholic or not, but it seems he may have checked out a few meetings along the way. “Alcoholics Anonymous gives people an extended family that’s very close to a blood-brotherhood. They talk about real troubles that aren’t spoken of in church. They hang around (AA) because they’re looking for companionship, for brotherhood and sisterhood, for an extended family.”

For a self-avowed atheist, Vonnegut talked about God a lot. After reading a biography about him few years ago, I came away with the impression that the things he saw in war prevented him from being able to resolve the problem of a loving God in a world of tremendous suffering. But whether or not he believed in a deity, he did believe in saints: “A saint is a person who behaves decently in shockingly indecent society.”

Vonnegut knew the truth: we’d all be better off if we focused on being decent, rather than perfect.

Because the written word has been so important to me, and since people often ask me about book recommendations, I thought I’d take a few weeks to write about some of the most influential books I’ve read, especially those that opened me up to the inner journey. I can remember times in my late teens when I would put books I loved underneath my pillow so I could have them near me while I slept. If that sounds a little weird, it probably was, but that’s how lonely I was and how much I longed for connection. Another gift of great books is that they taught me to view the world from multiple perspectives, helping me understand that others human beings and creatures had an interior life as well, making them worthy of compassion and respect.

One of the first books to have a profound impact on my life was Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” As I’m sure many people are aware, the book chronicles Frankl’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp at the end of World War II. Frankl developed a new school of psychological thought based on what he learned from the horrific struggle, then went on to influence many thinkers of the last half of the twentieth century. One of many observations that Frankl made about human behavior was that when the prisoners of the camp lost their purpose they began to lose hope. Those who believed they had a reason to live, whether it be family, religion, or love, could somehow endure the unendurable.  So many times working with people in their addiction, it becomes apparent that they have lost purpose and passion, leaving them to cling to intermittent periods of sensual pleasure to make life bearable. When the drug finally loses its ability to deliver on its promise, the addict is nearing the last stage of the disease.

Another powerful lesson from the book comes from the perspective it gave me in regard to suffering. Even now, as I reflect on the words of Frankl, I’m struck by how petty most of my problems really are, as well as how little time I devote to the practice of gratitude. There are times when it seems like the human brain creates problems out of boredom, that there is almost an addiction to worry. It is easy for me to sit on my couch and talk about the greed of corporate billionaires or politicians, but what about my own greed? What about my greed for comfort, for attention, even for spiritual insights? Frankl talks about how grateful he was if he could find a piece of meat in the watery soup they served in the concentration camp.  This is what he says about gratitude, a version of which can be heard around 12 Step Meetings: “Pain from problems and disappointments is inevitable in life, but suffering is a choice determined by whether you choose to compare your experience and pain to something better, and therefore feel unlucky and bitter, or to something worse and therefore feel lucky and grateful!”

For me, the most impactful part of “Man’s Search for Meaning” came from what he saw happening after the camp was liberated. It speaks to the destructive nature of both unresolved trauma and smoldering resentments. This paragraph has stayed with me for twenty years: “A friend was walking across a field with me toward the camp when suddenly we came to a field of green crops. Automatically, I avoided it, but he drew his arm through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave me an angry look and shouted, “You don’t say! And hasn’t enough been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed—not to mention everything else—and you would forbid me to tread on a few stalks of oats!” Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.”

I experienced significant trauma in my late teens, obviously nothing like Frankl, but it affected me deeply. Unfortunately, for many years afterwards, I projected that pain externally, which impacted those around me in ways I probably don’t even realize. But when I read “Man’s Search for Meaning,” my thinking began to shift. I could no longer claim ignorance, and had to admit that if a man who was a tortured by Nazi’s didn’t justify resentments, neither could I. Frankl stated that the greatest of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in any set of circumstances. Though he sets the bar very high, I am grateful for teachers who expect greater things of me than I sometimes expect of myself.

 

 

 

Source: Nothing New Under The Sun