In a lot of recovery circles and treatment modalities, there is a strong emphasis on brokenness. We often hear that “alcoholics” are somehow inherently different than other people, or “normies” as is frequently said. There is a strong focus on character defects, and on making amends for past mistakes. Many people in recovery are told they have a life-long, terminal illness that is incurable, and the best hope they have is a daily reprieve. Most addiction counselors and therapists are trained to diagnose and treat, rather than being curious about the deeper root causes that actually drive these addictive tendencies. Because of this, people who are experiencing addiction are often seen as being their diagnosis, as being their addiction, rather than having a diagnosis and having an addiction. Of course, none of this is fundamentally “wrong” or “bad,” and it is important to recognize what we want to change about ourselves and our lives. But in my experience, focusing only on what seems broken is a limited way of viewing addiction, and even more importantly, a limiting way of viewing the person who is struggling.
This brings up a few questions for me.
What happens when we view ourselves as broken or damaged? What does that create? How does it contribute to our addiction? What else is possible?
I’d like to offer a fresh perspective on viewing addiction, starting with a fundamental question: what if, under all addictive behavior there is an essential self that is whole and perfect?
I want to start by sharing my personal journey with you, because it informs how I discovered the powerful habit of “remembering my wholeness.” I feel so blessed to share my personal story with you, which took me from a life of struggle and addiction into a joy-filled, meaningful existence. A movement from loss to recovery, from darkness into light, from a sense of brokenness to reconnecting with my wholeness—from an outer-directed life to an inner-focused way of being and seeing. I share my story not because it’s unique, or even unusual, but because it is not unique. It’s possibly a lot like your story. So, I’m telling my story in the hope that you will find in it things you can relate to and connect with.
“I’ve never met a happier child. You laughed all the time.” That’s what my mother remembers about me. What I remember is lying on the ground in the back yard, looking, for what felt like an eternity, at a butterfly, in awe at its magic. How is all this life possible? What beautiful wings. How much detail must be here for it to fly? How did this come to be? I felt like the luckiest person alive.
I was probably also wondering why the grownups weren’t noticing life like I was, why they seemed to be so busy and so angry. But mostly I was filled with curiosity, presence, and awe. Looking back, I believe I was perfectly connected with truth of who and what I was. I was instinctively experiencing my wholeness.
Then I started to lose that truth, to begin believing that I wasn’t enough, that I was broken in some way.
I remember a poignant experience that happened when I was seven years old. I sat one evening with my mother and my sisters at the dining room table. As I sat there, I began to shut down. I don’t remember what was said or what happened in that moment, but I do remember distinctly the sensation of being overwhelmed with fear, a sense of terrible wrongness, and then a closing down. Two distinct thoughts came to me: “Life is not safe” and “I have given too much.” Looking back, I can surmise that the circumstances of my life had finally overwhelmed my natural joy and resilience. I began to develop beliefs that I was broken or damaged in some way and that the world was not safe. These limiting beliefs were quietly erasing my deeper, instinctual truths. Maybe I was also starting to notice that I wasn’t like a lot of the other boys—I was more like many of the girls, and of course I didn’t know what to do with that.
At that moment I decided—to close down, to put a barrier around my heart, to disconnect in some way. Of course, this was not a conscious choice, but it happened, nonetheless. In an instant, I entered a world of toxic shame, in which I believed myself to be flawed and broken. In the process, I lost my curiosity and my joy—I lost sight of my genuine self.
We come into this world as whole beings who know and live in acceptance, openness, connection, presence. We are those joyful little children who know in their hearts that they are whole and perfect, and that life is wonder-full and wonder-filled. But life has a way of teaching us the opposite; traumatic experiences teach us that we are broken, and this pushes us further from our oneness with source. Think about what little children are taught about the world, especially children who experience cruelty or who live in a threatening environment. They are taught to be mistrustful, to devalue themselves. They are taught that “might makes right”, that strength lies in conquering, in overpowering people and situations. They learn that life is a struggle, it’s something to be resisted, and at best it’s a challenge—a problem to be figured out and solved. They are taught that there is not enough, and that people need to fight and compete to get what they think they need. We often unconsciously teach our children to judge, and to separate from their inherent joy and their wholeness.
If we absorb these concepts and live by them as if they are true we can get stuck in a very painful cycle. What’s worse, many of us are taught that not only have we done wrong but that we are wrong. We are taught that we are not worthy, and are undeserving. When we believe that there is something essentially wrong with us, something that will never be fixed because it’s a part of who we are—that’s an incredibly heavy and painful burden to carry. If we hold “I am wrong” as our central self-definition, how can we thrive? How can we nurture healthy relationships? How can we experience the joy that is our birthright?
The tendency is to numb the very real pain that comes from this self-identity. And, using drugs, alcohol or other addictive behaviors is an effective way to do this, at least initially. Another tendency is to search for external validation, to strive to show the world a different face than the one we believe we have. “If only I can act good enough or be successful enough, then maybe people won’t notice how awful I really am.” We try to hide the central “truth” about our brokenness; we live a lie. And that too, is a terrible burden to live with. It’s no wonder we find ourselves trapped in addictive behaviors. Addiction has been called “the great ache” that we are trying to soothe and fix from the outside in.
I discovered alcohol when I was fourteen. And, at the time, it felt like a great and awesome discovery! When I took that first drink, I relaxed for the first time in seven years. I often hear people say that when they started drinking they felt better-looking, smarter, or more on top of things. I don’t know if I felt any of that, but I do remember feeling immense relief—a relaxing—like all the things that made me feel “wrong” just didn’t matter anymore. I felt relief from the disconnection that I was experiencing, and some relief from that excruciating pain that was at the core of my life’s perspective.
Alcohol was more than a relief for me; it saved my life, and I suppose if it had continued to work for me, I might have never gotten sober. In truth, if alcohol continued to work the way it did in the beginning, I would possibly still be drinking. We all look for ways to manage difficult circumstances, and for many people, alcohol is one such coping mechanism. I think it helps to look at these coping mechanisms not so much as bad or wrong choices but as brilliant strategies. Even though drinking didn’t give me the lasting healing I was longing for, it was actually a brilliant strategy, because it literally saved my life. Without it I think I could have shattered in some way; the core false beliefs I had picked up, such as “I’m worthless” and “The world is a dangerous place”—were too overwhelming otherwise.
I believe, in retrospect, that this period in my life was a low-level search for spiritual connection. In other words, I was seeking to fill the inner emptiness by grabbing something outside of myself to gain relief. It was as though I had my umbilical cord in my hand and was trying to find a place to “plug in.” I felt there was something wrong with me, and I was looking outside myself for a fix, a cure, a source of relief from the sense of spiritual bankruptcy that I was experiencing. You see, I have come to understand that alcohol was never the problem. It was a solution to something that felt broken within.
Drinking worked for me for a while, and I drank from the age of 14 until I was 20. But what started out as a brilliant strategy eventually stopped working. What once helped me to feel a sense of connection eventually led to me feeling more and more disconnected. And so, in June of 1986, when I was just fifty-two days away from my twenty-first birthday, I got clean and sober.
Of course, that isn’t the end of the story, it is just the beginning. It was the beginning of an incredible spiritual journey of remembering myself to be essentially whole and perfect. I’ve been blessed with continuous sobriety ever since, and now have well over thirty years clean and sober. I’m eternally grateful for that because it has been the foundation of a new life and a new way of being.
It is my sincere hope that my story will help you in some way.
Remembering your wholeness can take a lifetime, and it can happen in an instant. It may seem like a process, and not a one-time event, but what if you can remember your wholeness right here and right now? What would that create in your life? Is it possible? And, if it is possible, how to you do this? One of the most powerful ways you can experience your true nature is by releasing everything you have been taught that is counter to the fundamental truth that you already are whole and perfect. In other words, you don’t need to grow spiritually, you can simply return to the spiritual wholeness that you already are. And, in order to do this, you need to live beyond the limiting programs you have absorbed from the world.
