Long before I ever picked up a drink or a drug, I developed two strategies for dealing with the difficult parts of life: retreat into imagination and go someplace else.
The classic image of retreating into imagination is me in my room at night, rocking out to air guitar or being a basketball hero with balled up socks and the garbage can, or typing out stories in which the hero was an awful lot like me, or reading adventure or travel stories about people doing cool things in exotic places, all the while imagining it was me.
I was lucky enough to go on a lot of trips in my youth, but travel became a real solution for me when I was 12 and went to a summer camp. I had an epiphany when I got there: Nobody here knows who I am, which means however I act right now is who they will think I am, and they will treat me accordingly. I knew how to be cool and funny, from watching people doing it and imagining myself doing it, so I just started doing it. Sure enough, I became an instant “hit” and was always one of the “cool kids” at camp. I was the one who cried when camp was over and I had to go home … to reality. At home, I was nobody.
So when life was hard or I was uncomfortable, it was off into imagination or on the road to someplace else so I could be somebody else. In fact, when alcohol came along, I had a real sense that it was just like going on a trip and becoming someone else, without having to actually go anywhere. It seemed like magic.
Problems with alcohol and drugs came along pretty quickly, but I just thought I had to manage those problems and keep using. That dance of “managing the umnageable” lasted about 15 years and put me into such misery, depression, terrible behavior, isolation and ultimately terror that I landed in 12-step world. There, I found the support and understanding I needed to get sober, and then a plan for life that let me lessen the original pain and suffering so I didn’t have to drink or get high again. That has worked for 26 years now.
Any real story of addiction, though, has to include a story of “hitting bottom.” Mine actually came in Amsterdam, where I arranged about a one-week layover on the way home from a business trip, and where I convinced myself that there – away from home and work and family and whatever – I would find the perfect combination of booze, legal drugs and legal sex. I really believed it would be a paradise. But it literally took about three hours for me to be so stoned I could barely speak, completely locked inside my head, and then I realized two terrible things: 1, it’s just the same old miserable shit and 2, I am here, alone, for a week.
What followed was a classic case of being down in a hole, furiously digging deeper. I drank, I smoked, I fucked, I smoked and drank more. And it got worse and worse, darker and darker. I was paranoid, full of self-loathing, depressed, isolated, guilty, and terrified. The pain was so great I was honestly afraid I would kill myself, and to this day I am not completely convinced that, had my parents not still been alive, I would have made out of Amsterdam at all. If nothing else, I certainly understood the logic of ending it all. But I did survive, and not long after I got back, I was in my first 12-step meeting.
At that point, drinking and using had not only stopped working, they were creating their own problems – in my thinking, my emotional state, my behavior, everything. But I kept doing it. I was a complete train wreck. I knew the drinking and using were a problem, and I thought they were the cause of my misery. In fact, as I was to learn working the Steps, the misery itself was the problem, and the drinking and using were my terrible attempt at a solution. But I had to hit bottom in Amsterdam to understand that I was not going to survive much more using, and that I was not going to get sober without help. I was an addict.
I’ve made a lot of progress in the program, but the original stuff that I was trying to avoid with imagination, running away and drugs is still there – less, perhaps, and more manageable in that I have better ways to think about it, and I don’t pour fuel on the fire by using. But it’s still in there. The voice that tells me I’m stupid and ugly and nobidy cares about me. That I’m screwing up whatever I’m doing, no matter how large or small. That I’ll never add up to anything and my life wil be unhappy.
And in many ways, I’ve been running from that voice my whole life, trying to make it shut up. I have been relived of the obsession to use, but the fact is, I still behave in old ways designed to avoid the misery. And I travel alcoholically: I do it compulsively despite negative consequences, financial and physical and mental and emotional.
Lately, in almost slow motion, I have been experiencing a kind of Amsterdam with travel. So many times I find myself in a hotel room, or on a train, or sitting alone in a restaurant, thinking to myself, “I don’t even enjoy this anymore. What am I doing here?” I tell myself I just want to go home and live a more stable, productive, healthy and connected life, rather than running around looking for … Whatever it is I’m looking for. And those thoughts start to sound an awful lot like me being hungover, or high, or about to get high, and thinking, “I need to quit this. This isn’t working. It’s making things worse.”
My health is not great, stress is up, work and finances are struggling, and I’m having a really hard time making connections with people. There could be many reasons for this, but being out of town all the time, spending too much money, not being around any community, and exhuasting myself doesn’t help. In fact, it is making things worse. The old story comes up, just like with using: “This is my last trip. I am going home after this to get into a routine, get healthy, make friends, do better at work.” And then, the next time I’m anxious or frustrated or just boared, there I am planning a trip.
Travel used to give me joy; now it exhausts me. It used to inspire me; now it reminds me how alone I am. I used to write about it; now I just brood. I used to look forward to it; now I mostly look forward to it being over. It used to feel like the focus of my life; now I feel like I’m doing it just because it’s what I do. I used to connect with people when I travelled; now it keeps me away from them.
Of course, a “travel addiction” isn’t like a drug addiction. You don’t just quit. Or at least, I am not going to. It’s more like a food addiction, where you have to keep doing the thing but you need a new relationship with it. I need a new relationship with travel. If I am not enjoying it and can clearly see where it has stopped working and is actually making things worse, then it’s time to get off the road for a while. Whatever I am looking for is not out here. Whatever I am trying to escape is the exact thing I need to face and deal with.
I did not get sober right after Amsterdam, but I turned a corner there. I didn’t even fully realize it at the time, I just knew I had barely survived the worst week of my life, and something needed to change. I was like a house after a huge storm – still standing but with a new perspective, needing not just repair but rebulding.
Today I am coming to terms with the fact that one of my original answers to the question of life has almost completely stopped working. Travel – the way I do it right now – may not be killing me like drugs and alcohol were, but it is keeping me from the life I now dream of. I used to dream of all the places I would see, but today I long for health, stability, peace of mind and connection. I am, more than I have ever been since I got sober, sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I just need to go home, rest up, and then get to work.
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