Episode #3: On Addiction, Existential Boredom, and Loss of Faith

Sobriety.

We often think of it in relationship to alcohol, but true sobriety is really the ability to hold our emotions without getting rocked by them, without dumping them, spilling them, or collapsing under them.

From this spot, a natural byproduct is sobriety with alcohol. First in the energetic, and then in the physical.

And it doesn't fall off until it's ready to go. In fact, the charge of the thing can't be neutralized until it's approved of. It's pure energetics.

Instead, it like works it's way out. I began my non-drinking journey twelve years ago (and I certainly haven't been classically sober that entire time).

A little thread unraveled. Held. Sat with. Opened to. Worked out. And then another. And another. Landing deeper in my energy body with each excavation. And still needing to play out its patterns, though in less and less intense amounts over time as I stay with it. Stay home with it.

Cultivating a deep witnessing of my patterns that are still running. A compassion instead of a resistance. A faith. A knowing that it will be lifted when it's ready. Acknowledging the places where I don't have the capacity or availability yet to be done and just watching it all run in the light of my awareness.

Restriction doesn't work in my system. I have a rebel who is stronger than my control freak (and my control freak is a force :).

As of today, I will still not say 'I will never drink again.' I might. I might not. I have no attachment either way. This is what gives me freedom. I trust myself. I'm certainly not a poster-child for sobriety. I am a disciple of Truth.

Ultimately, drinking is a way to offgas energy, a leak; rather than focusing it with precision on the true desire. Which, for me, is connection.

Drinking is a way I synthesize connection when I don't want to have to be responsible for creating it, for receiving it.

And, I feel sober.

But for me 'sobriety' is not a label. It is a practice. A devotion.

***

This episode walks you through the next two month period of my dismantling, where my professional identity and my relationship with God in its outdated form had to die, I lost my faith, I dropped fully into the core wound of eternal emptiness underneath, and I let my addict all the way out of her control cage. And then I touched the opening.