It’s fitting that twenty five years ago around this date on Thanksgiving I was in Ireland away from my family. If someone told me twenty five years ago I would one day have a family of my own I wouldn’t have been surprised. If that same person told me I was going to be battling substance abuse and mental illness for a quarter century I would have asked how am I able to care for a family. The answer is I had lots of love through all my inertia towards sobriety and solid support around me when making the choice over and over to get better. By taking medicine I was able to appear stable. I used to think I could drink occasionally, but drinking for me leads to drugs which leads to sporadically taking medication. Missed doses affects my mood, days, weeks, even months down the road. I try to elevate my mood by self medicating because I prefer mania over trying to just live normally, like a dry drunk. The days I spend dry, produce agitation which leads to anxiety then manifests into fear of losing control – then on to anger for not changing my destructive behaviors – finally culminating in depression over guilt and remorse for having drank again. It’s a vicious cycle with a lot of time and effort put into staying sober, sometimes for months, over a year at one point, but always back to square one. For years I longed for that time in my life when I just had enough of this cycle and would stop. I had for a long time been caught up in self exploration but the addictive behaviors would result in fiendish activity. Some of the self induced experiences were incredible, ineffable as I liked to say, while others are only for me to know to protect my dignity and because I need to forgive myself.
Thanksgiving day in Clifden, Ireland was one of the most memorable days of the trip. Four friends and I rented bikes and rode hard through the countryside and National Forest. Rivers flowed through green pasture, conifer trees stood relatively young within ancient rock fissures, smart sheepdogs corralled sheep by their own command for happy herders. Hardwoods shaped like neural images of the brain reminded me that my ego had dissolved into perfect symbiosis with nature, turning the hardscape into energy and my psyche into landscape. It was the perfect setting for a bike ride through new space. We found ourselves climbing on chiseled rock that had once formed a structure but now was crumbled. We slipped on moss and logs to show our prowess and clubbed the ground with branches to show our strength. We brushed leaves from our path only to find they were electric and repelling from one another but dead as the hairs on our head. We rode our bikes so fast downhill that reality had left us through our hearts, along with our concern for safety. We left everything on those trails because it took everything we had to leave. The only image outside of my mind is a photo of me squatting on a mossy boulder wearing a familiar face. A face formed by a wide precarious smile beyond comfort, with a slight bite on the bottom lip and eyes looking beyond as if gravity had a hold on them and was an obstacle to my happiness. Only a mask could be changed in that instant. My head was permanently juxtaposed against the scenery my body had so graciously absorbed.
To say that my mental explorations were the reason for my breaks from reality is like saying war is the sole cause of human suffering. The reason why some will find suffering is by no cause of their own while others will volunteer with the potential that they may suffer. In today’s world some people are worse off than others and a very small amount of us cause suffering. I believe I started my journey not having reckless intentions but was just so intrigued that I was destined to fight. I believe I had generations of family fighting wars on both sides of the battlefield, alcoholism or mental illness, before I ever had the choice. In other words I really didn’t stand a fighting chance. There were many factors involved in why I would volunteer in later years for suffering. One idea is that I may have needed to seek out self destruction to eventually find inner peace.
So we get back to the youth hostel after our cosmic detour to find a few rowdy travelers. After having such an enlightening experience I could still feel the vibrations from belonging to something greater than myself. I needed to isolate myself from the group. The cabin-like hostel had an active fireplace where I again found nature. I perched beside the fire with a blanket around me. My long hair was tamed, still soft and fine but no longer charged with static electricity. I began staring into the fire, long enough to see plaid patterns begin to form within the flames, the same patterns I always see. I started yawning heavily over and over, always followed by a grin and the thought of accomplishment. Suddenly I stood up with a sense of urgency and looked up over my shoulder to see a tree, moon, and sky. This was a fireplace not a fire pit. Turning back and taking a step away from that portal to new space – as if I just made a mistake in seeing it – there pauses the hostel kitty cat nearly under my feet, frozen with fright, mouth open looking at me as if I was going to step on him. I’m not sure what this early hallucination signified except for the phrase “curiosity killed the cat.” It was quick and painless. In later years, altercations with cats seeing through me takes on complex and delusional proportions I am not ready to describe here, perhaps I will another day.
For several years I wanted to just feel normal and happy without substances, knowing one day I would get there. I know now is the time in my life that I’ve been longing for because I still have all the same fears, symptoms, and triggers that make for a good reason to escape but I’m still sober. Also I have clever, humorous, and productive moments that make for a good reason to think I’m fine and it’s okay to drink but still I’m sober. Now that I’m relatively normal and happy without substances I have been instead longing for productivity to improve upon myself. Like I’ll be happier when I get up earlier as an older man or I will choose to start exercising as I become healthier. I don’t need to hurry up productivity to be happy because it will occur naturally – and if it doesn’t I’ll still be better off than I was before because now I’m stable and sober.
Staying sober this time around has been easier because I have no desire to drink and I fear the path it leads me down. In later years I had overcome fear by simply putting myself in places where I was destined to fail but came out of it alive and sane. While I was traveling Europe I overcame fears by taking the leap into new and interesting, unfamiliar territory that I would learn from at once – it was self discovery and knowledge. I couldn’t fail because anything we learn for the sake of knowledge can’t hurt us. I believe that I learn things best by repeating the same routine over and over again – it becomes a learned behavior and the only way to fail in that is to stop the routine. It is up to me to choose between which behaviors are beneficial for my intellectual and spiritual growth and those that deter growth. As I go forward in recovery it will get easier to choose good. Any fears I have of failure will start to dissolve and be replaced with confidence to live in a new and interesting way.
Francis Erich McElroy 