T.M. Shannon

Hi everyone,

Well, it’s been an interesting (okay, very quiet) week. Being Bisexual’s boost was denied for political content that might sway an election, but I’d tried to run the ad again as I was getting nothing comments on FB, but no views.

I have some suspicions about this move, but rather than get revenge, I made the choice to stop boosting and pick up followers and views on God’s timing and not my own – so no more 3000 views, but I’m not devo about it.

“Devo” is Australian for devastated btw. Join me for more intricacies and oddities when I get to releasing Three Ways – otherwise you won’t know what a bin chicken is.

So, to my few blog viewers this week, I hope you enjoy, and please check out the other posts, prompts, and the August short story (see below).

Behaviour Unbecoming

I’ve posted already that I have an addiction, and it took quite a lot of time to realise it (not to mention a warning I had a problem that I blew off).

I won’t say what it is as it’d break anonymity, so I’m sorry for being vague, but it works just the same as alcoholism, drug addiction, over-eating – an overload of problematic behaviour that sends you spiralling out of control.

It’s not always easy to see why, though.

Like a lot of things psychological, it can go back to childhood, and not necessarily acute trauma or abuse.

From what I’ve heard in the rooms, and what I got down to components with in Heal for Life, is that poor parenting like shutting down emotional displays, ignorance of or an inability to meet needs, even parents with their own addictions, can be all the trauma an addiction needs to flourish.

Then there was the story I related to in an open AA meeting, my formal introduction to 12-sStep, a heavy drinker of good spirits whose rock bottom came from failing a breath test.

And there are the pre-disposed, too.

Whatever the underlying causes, or the addiction, it all comes down to behaviour. The alcohol, for example, isn’t the evil, but rather the drinking behaviour and what you’re doing it for, a lot of it numbing personal pain.

Total abstinence from the behaviour is the 12-Step goal, but even with no alcohol in your life anymore, you’re still an alcoholic. You might think that comes with shame, dismay, disappointment, and you’d be right.

But through the process, this acknowledgement is the same acknowledgement of Church-taught sin – and the goal is accepting guilt and moving on in grace and a sense of joy in love from the Higher Power.

And the people in that AA meeting were all glad to say they were an alcoholic.

That Dose of Dopamine

From the US National Institute on Drug Abuse Drugs and the Brain article, swapping the word “drug” for whatever your addiction is:

The feeling of pleasure is how a healthy brain identifies and reinforces beneficial behaviors, such as eating, socializing, and sex. Our brains are wired to increase the odds that we will repeat pleasurable activities. The neurotransmitter dopamine is central to this.

Whenever the reward circuit is activated by a healthy, pleasurable experience, a burst of dopamine signals that something important is happening that needs to be remembered. This dopamine signal causes changes in neural connectivity that make it easier to repeat the activity again and again without thinking about it, leading to the formation of habits.

Just as drugs produce intense euphoria, they also produce much larger surges of dopamine, powerfully reinforcing the connection between consumption of the drug, the resulting pleasure, and all the external cues linked to the experience. Large surges of dopamine “teach” the brain to seek drugs at the expense of other, healthier goals and activities.

This is the hit that an addict is either going for, or careens towards. And it gets problematic as you get more tolerant – more of the behaviour might be needed to fill the void, making it quite the progressive disease.

And the dopamine can numb out the bad, hide the feelings, give euphoria in a life that might be devoid of it, the friend you always wanted, needed.

But as much as I know this “friend,” it’s really a wounded, mischievous inner child doing a fair whack of rebelling. I even had problematic drinking that came to a horrible head in a relationship.

Don’t ask me how I managed to pull it back in then, or my next struggle working in hospitality and its inherent drinking culture, but I saw the problem and really cut down that I barely drink anymore.

But that wasn’t my addiction. Regardless, the behaviour that is works just the same as the dopamine hit caused by alcohol.

And that dopamine is very powerful, though the behaviour brings with it increasing shame and sorrow as you fall down the rabbit hole towards destruction, and in some cases, death.

Thank goodness there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

A Moment of Clarity

Hitting rock bottom, when the addiction is no longer a pleasure but a sad indictment on yourself, can come with a moment of clarity where you see yourself sinking towards death, or floundering towards safety.

Granted, I’ve hit two since my rather simple understanding, having the epiphany in post-behaviour mindfulness being on the verge of therapy for my parental toxicity, that there had to be a 12-Step program for me.

Lo, there was, and I turned up the next Thursday because even Catholicism wasn’t helping (but it did send one behaviour packing, so I’ll take that win).

It wound up not being for me, too far to get to, too late to return from, and I just got distracted on Zoom. But there was a similar fellowship, and far from turning up as an old hand, I was a rabbit in the headlights.

But it turned out that meeting had what I sought – a bucketload of sponsors, fellow addicts to help you through the steps, while the meeting touched on the 12 Traditions that cement the fellowship’s non-professionalism, and the simplicity that makes it work so well.

I’m grateful for that clarity, and when it hit me harder in two major withdrawals.

Addictive thoughts still come, and they’re a given even further on in the journey; so too the slips and withdrawals, each with a post-clarity that annoys the pants off of me.

But it’s been the most worthwhile investment in my life, just a couple of dollars a meeting to help with expenses, and a couple of minutes on an outreach call or in prayer – even if it’s just the shortened Serenity Prayer.

As You Understand God

As many know the program relies on an out-there force commonly called the Higher Power, if not “God as you understand God.”

And I’ve heard many shares by atheists baulking at this, and they’ve stuck around. Plus, the Big Book of AA has a chapter to the agnostic, with some examples of people nonplussed, confounded, or hit by religious trauma.

For me, I might’ve found the Yahweh, (that’s God’s actual name in the OT, hidden in the pun that gave us Jehovah), and the behaviours stopped for a time, but the easiest returned. Coming to the first fellowship, and working so unable to go to Church during the week, I felt rather disconnected.

In the new fellowship, though, I found earnestness after a while, but needed to see 12-Step as an idea from God to work, gaining the notion the Higher Power – idea, group, whatever works piecemeal for now – is Yahweh.

But it isn’t a religious movement, though you could say the Steps are the Commandments, and the Traditions are the Catechism. It isn’t affiliated with religion, business, or politics, just its members and intergroups.

And it’s not just the spirituality to guide and sustain addicts. There’s the deep, honed step work, questions to help you see the program working, revealing a bit more each day and doing a bit more each step.

It’s also being of service to others, letting go the bondage of self. Sure, there’s a secretary, treasurer, literature person, the tea and coffee person, but just listening to and applauding an addict’s courage is often enough.

Me, I’m stuck on Step 4, and a lot is going to come out of the Resentments. After that comes the Fears and Shames, and I don’t like being out of step work when the blast through steps 1 to 3 was so glorious (I got to 68 days).

Versus the Alternative

I was put in perspective one night, sharing how troubled I was about slips before a meeting. My recovery friend posed, “How do you see your behaviour now next to how bad it was in active addiction.”

The answer was simple. There’s a world of difference. Maybe 2 or 3.

Hope, love, redemption, grace – and most pertinently, sanity – is the gift of that Higher Power 12-Step relies upon and surrenders to.

It is a faith, and it has its sin and reconciliation – slips mean you go back to day 1, admitting it to the group, doing a few days of slip questions, then returning to where you were (I hope to get back there soon).

But your sponsor isn’t a confessor, just a guide, an imperfect person working the program as best they can. My sponsor doesn’t steer, and one day I’ll have to not steer a sponsee – it’s their recovery, and mine is mine.

The greatest thing out of all this is that the time, money, rest wasted consumed by the worst of addiction lets me save, work on the blog, or my writing, or playing Starfield.

And honesty, the passage from shame to recognising guilt and growing from it lets my marriage flourish. That I share my journey with my partner, and I’m safe to share with her, is also an incredible boon.

There might be another world to come into, but I’ve made incredible progress from when I was wallowing in my despair.

Hope

Addictions can cost you relationships, your savings, your self-worth, or your life.

As the sticker on my laptop says, “Addiction is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything.”

Recovery might not be what you suspect or envision, and may be frightening. But to have a life again, living in serenity aware of faults, experiencing feelings, healing and adopting honesty, is a precious gift.

So, I’ll build up some sobriety, get back to my Step 4 questions. In the meantime, I’ll be at meetings, offering time for outreach calls, and keeping in touch with Yahweh.

Oh, and finishing that book of mine (well, sort of).

Whoever and wherever you are, if you have an addiction, look for recovery. Go to meetings for six weeks to see if 12-Step is for you, and if not, there are other recovery groups out there.

Come to life and be an authentic person.

Love and care everyone,

T. M.