My old friend “Funny Story Mike” used to say that as addicts, we all have this dark place in our minds, this cold, damp, scary placed filled with cobwebs and monsters, and we just love to hang out in there. In fact, when we are in there and people call us to come out, or try to come in and get us out, we fight them off. “No,” we scream, “I like it in here!” He reckoned it was comfortable, and we know what it’s like, so as unpleasant as it is, at least we know how it works, and it doesn’t challenge our beliefs or ask anything of us. We just wallow in the cold and dark.
One version of that is something else I heard early in recovery: that we live in the wreckage of our future. We literally sit around thinking about all the terrible things that are going to happen and how unhappy we will be when they do.
I also remember someone once said, “Imagine if you wrote down everything you ever thought was going to happen – good, bad or indifferent. Just a massive list of all the stuff we told ourselves was coming down the line. And then imagine if we kept track of all of those things that actually happened.” Is it 5%? Does any of it actually happen? Even if we expect good or bad things to happen, and something good or bad happens, is it the exact thing we expected? Probably never.
So why sit around imagining bad things that aren’t even going to happen – for us addicts and alcoholics, the imagined future is very often “bad” – so that we can be miserable and fearful? What’s the point?
I think it’s because we seek stability and something we think is real. We seek comfort. And whether it’s the cause or an effect, we addicts tend to have a negative view of ourselves, the world, and our place in it, so we think our fate and our default condition is anxious, sad, disconnected, scary, whatever. We don’t think we are worthy of love or peace, so imagining that we have those things seems delusional or egotistic, so we revert to what we “know”: fear, anxiety, and worry. That, at least, is comfortable and confirms our basic story about ourselves, that we are somehow destined for darkness. It kind of lets us off the hook, because in the present reality, with the future completely undetermined, there might be some action for us to take.
But what if this story about our default condition wasn’t true? What if we weren’t destined for anything at all? What if there’s just the here and now, and the “next right thing” to do? How can we get out of this imagined future and into the present?
Another question worth asking is, “What if this imagined future actually comes to pass? Would it kill me? Would I have to drink? Is there any way through that future with peace of mind and freedom?”
And meanwhile, we can ask ourselves, without judgement, Why am I choosing to sit in this dark place? Am I open to the possibility of stepping into the light, doing the next right thing, and living in reality?
Leave a Reply