Day 5

October 24, 2007

I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.
Chuck Palahniuk

I include this quote because it describes perfectly how I feel today. With my evenings now not occupied by drinking, I have had time to revisit some of my favorite authors, and I really found myself thinking about why it might be that so many truly creative minds turn to alcohol.

Role call, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Crane, Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke, Eugene O'Neil, Herman Melville, Hart Crane, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner,Truman Capote, Jack London, not to mention Hemmingway and Steinbeck, and more recently William Styron and Hunter S. Thompson.

This list is the tip of the iceberg. I want to think about this list without rationalizing my own drinking, which is something I've done in the past and something nearly every alcoholic does at one point in their drinking career. Upward social comparison. Acknowledging that yes, I do drink a lot, but so does ( insert famous person) so really things are tough all over. Interestingly we also use the reverse point of logic and often think of some poor sap whose station in life is worse than ours. Such as, sure I drink a lot, but nowhere near what that pathetic, (insert worst drunk we know) does who lost his job, family, etc. etc. This kind of thinking is quicksand for the alcoholic and something I desperately want to confront and avoid.

All the same, I do want to understand why all these writers needed the bottle for inspiration. My guess is that creativity is the rope that helps us pull ourselves up from our own self-loathing. This is the case with me. I summon all of my creative powers in these moments because its the only way I escape the bondage of thinking about my own self-destructive behavior.

Anyway it helps to write some of these thoughts down. Four days with my own uninterrupted thoughts has left me feeling pensive, and I find that I am on the verge of discovering something. It is hopeful to think there might be something new on the horizon. Some new thoughts to replace the ones that have defeated me for so long. I am reminded of Camus' words "In the midst of winter, I finally found there was within me an invisible summer."

Still, even now, I know a part of me is lying. I want a drink and I want to go back to what is familiar. I fear change, while also desperately wanting something different. I am stuck. I believe in one day, and even one minute at a time as a concept but in the end these are cheap platitudes I can't quite get behind. Being like other alcoholics would make me ordinary, and that is the thing I fear the most. Joining a 12-step group would make me a loser, right? I of course know the absurdity of this statement, while also firmly believing it.

In psychology when a person comes to us for help, we are trained to ask ourselves, how is this person like all other people, how is the person like some other people, and how is this person like no other people. Why can't I apply this same idea to myself. Why can't I admit that I am like a great many other people, while also maintaining my own identity and creativity? Is this possible? The answer to this question may hold one of the keys to my sobriety. I have no answer yet, and so my struggle continues. John Donne tells us that "no man is an island" while Jean-Paul Sartre reminds us that "Hell is other people." In many ways they're both right. My journey continues.