What Are We Looking For?
What is addiction? Addiction is an attempt to escape from the suffering an individual is going through. It is one’s own effort to escape their current reality. We are looking for peace within the drug. A drive for peace that kills many of us. Much of addiction is searching for that “destination” that will make us ok. “Once I move here then things will be different.” “Once she’s out of my life then it’ll be ok.” We’ve heard them all.
As I took my last breath, my soul left my body and it was the first resemblance of peace since I began shooting dope back in my late teens and early 20’s. I continued to chase that feeling for the next 5 years. Hell, heroin was so good that it almost worked. It was one of the few things to cross my path that really came close to doing the job, to numb it all out.
That experience with death, not my first one neither will it be the last, proved to me what our true nature is. What we are underneath it all; peace and love.
In recovery, life was miserable for a long time. I thought about not wanting to be around any longer on a daily basis. Addiction had numbed out the current pain. It offered a temporary Band-Aid. Recovery opened up all that good stuff hidden deep down. It was quite the journey early on. Pain pushed me onward. What I didn’t realize was that in order to heal, it was necessary to feel the pain in order to get to the other side; peace.
In addition, what we are doing is running from the pain. Running from the darkness.
“Even the darkest of nights turns to light” is a motto that eloquently resembles our paths in recovery. Much of me didn’t believe any peace was possible on this side of things. The experience with the after-life reminded me that wasn’t true.
After years of healing, I still seek the exact same thing as we do in our addictions; peace. We all have our different ways of finding it. It wasn’t until I uncovered, discovered, and discarded the obstacles that were blocking from that true nature, did the essence present itself. I found the thing I was looking for in the last place one might think to look. Within our very own beings.
Peace and love.
