The Seduction of Addiction Can Take Anyone Out
The line between addiction and recovery can be tenuous and fragile.
Though I have years of hard-fought sobriety, I walked right up to the edge of substance use the other week. I stood at the edge of that yawning abyss of nothingness and reveled in a moment of thrill-seeking defiance.
My addiction seduced me with a nostalgic promise of escape. It told me it would be okay to just check out for a bit. It served up a spoonful of dopamine and promised to tuck me in a soft, warm blanket of dissociating bliss.
Alcohol is my preferred brand of poison, but I’ve dabbled in many pharmacological wonders. For many years, I dosed myself with THC. I rolled into serotonin depletion with ecstasy. I snorted my way to the moon with coke, Adderall and crystal. I disconnected from my ego with mushrooms and LSD.
As they say “in the rooms,” I’m an alcoholic and an addict.
But many substances exist in the magical netherworld of gray.
The What
There is a special danger lurking in smoke shops everywhere. It called my name and whispered euphoria into my ear.
“Hello, my name is Kratom. I’ll grant you plausible deniability. I’m not technically a ‘drug.’ Buy me over the counter, and you can blend up some tea. Take just enough, and I’ll stimulate your body and mind. Take a little more and you can bliss out like you downed a bottle of codeine.”
One of the challenges of working in the recovery field is that you learn things that can test your sobriety. As clients and recovering addicts share their stories in the rooms, you hear about ways to get high you never would have known.
Kratom is one of those. It’s a dangerous substance that’s taken many of us out. It gifted my rehab roommate another tour of detox and residential treatment. It’s left clients in my recovery center dope sick. It’s taken a sledgehammer to the sobriety and emotional stability of addicts everywhere.
And I, knowing all of this, walked into a smoke shop and bought a three-ounce bag.
The side of the bag read: “Only for use as a botanical specimen…By opening this package, you accept full responsibility for the use of this product, including but not limited to any adverse events or health complications.”
When a product explicitly absolves itself of any accountability, it’s a pretty clear signal that you’re about to flirt with disaster.
The Why
I could give you a million different reasons for my decision.
I have a mental rolodex of excuses, rationalizations and justifications. Robust is the only word to describe my accumulated arsenal. It’s how I protected, safeguarded and sustained my addiction for decades.
I cycled through that rolodex and tried a few on for size.
“You deserve it.”
Work has been tough. Since I work with people in early recovery, every single day I try to gently, compassionately help clients identify risky decisions that will lead them down the path to relapse. Sometimes they need to do their own “research.” Several clients have relapsed hard lately, and it’s been heartbreaking to watch.
The job is high on stress, low on compensation and comes gift wrapped in an unbearable administrative burden of insurance/liability related paperwork. But I show up each and every day, and I bust my ass for my clients.
I also bust my ass in the gym daily, in my own therapy, to work on myself, to provide emotional support for a family shattered by addiction and mental health challenges, to build my second career as an addiction therapist up brick by brick. The last few years have been hard, very hard.
After all that work, you’ve earned the right to check out for a bit.
“It’s not a drug or your substance of choice.”
Your day count from alcohol doesn’t disappear. I’ve never done Kratom, and it’s not technically classified as a drug. It’s just an herbal dietary supplement. You have wiggle room to wriggle your way out of accountability.
“No one would ever know.”
It’ll just be our little secret. Since it’s not your “problem” substance, you never have to tell anyone. Plenty of others in recovery have their own sinful workarounds. What’s the big deal?
“You’ve built up years of recovery; you can control it this time.”
You’ll just indulge every now and then. Just to help relax when you’re getting a massage and de-stressing after a hard week. You’ve got your addiction licked; if anyone can control their use, it would be an addiction counselor who knows all the tricks addiction can play.
The Universe Sent Me Signals
When I stepped into the smoke shop one late weekend night, I was on edge, full of nervous energy and anticipatory excitement — the sudden rush you get when you know you’re doing something risky, sneaky or just plain wrong.
It’s where I usually buy my Juul pods. As the store owner dropped the menthol pods on the counter, I anxiously blurted: “And I want to buy some Kratom.”
He looked at me sideways. “Why do you want that?”
“I’m curious,” I said.
“Curious huh?” he skeptically said. “You should read up on it first.”
We walked over to the glass display of different varieties, and he talked about all the different options — powder, pills, different kinds…white, green, red…which ones to stay away from.
At that moment, a beautiful woman walked into the shop, and my already barely containable self-consciousness shot through the roof.
I sped back to the register, bought the pods and made a quick escape. My guilt rode me hard on the walk home. Well, I can’t go back there, I thought.
Curious indeed. Curious that the shop owner questioned my intent and put the brakes on a purchase. Curious that the universe interrupted me with a customer walking into the store.
When I went home, I did do research and decided to find a different place to buy the substance. On my way home from the gym the next day, I found another smoke shop and asked the guy behind the register.
He gave me a serious look, and then directed me to a cardboard box with powder pouches tucked away inside. I’m guessing it wasn’t on display for a reason.
Immediately after, I had my regular weekend phone call with my dad. During the conversation, I got another sign. He was questioning whether someone can have an addiction if they’re not exhibiting physiological dependence. Answer: absolutely.
With signals from the universe piling up, I decided not to touch it and squirreled the pouch away in a cabinet. I resolved to think about it some more and maybe, just maybe, try it out the next weekend.
I Listened to the Universe
On morning after my purchase, I decided to sleep in and take an atypical break from the gym. Instead I walked over to Central Park to finish off a book.
I found a bench and read the final chapter of Jungian psychoanalyst James Hollis’s “Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives.” The last chapter explores the internal conflict created by the unlived life. Hollis challenges us all to show up and courageously face down our inner demons.
And then I read Hollis quoting Nietzsche:
“The world about us is full of ghostly doings. Every moment of our lives is trying to tell us something, but we do not care to listen to this spirit voice. When we are alone and still, we are afraid that something will be whispered in our ears, and so we hate the stillness and anaesthetize ourselves.”
Eerie. Bone chilling. That quote was like a bucket of cold water violently thrown in my face.
What clearer message could the universe possibly send?
I put the book down and stared up into the trees, settling on the leaves fluttering in the breeze. I drank deep from that moment, expanding beyond myself and connecting to the greater world around me.
Here I am sitting in full consciousness — I thought — pondering the beauty of the world and my purpose in life. This calm, present and authentic state of mind was impossible during the years I spent drowning my sorrows in alcohol.
Aren’t I grateful for this consciousness, this awakening, this new purposeful life brimming with opportunity to help others climb from the depths of their addictions? What would I feel if I went into work (at a recovery center) carrying the guilt and shame that would surely result? Wouldn’t this escape hatch from sobriety just lead to progressively larger allowances — until I’m drinking around the clock again?
Yes, I might be able to control my use — temporarily. Yes, other people might not know — at first. But I would. The internal guilt I felt as I tried to buy this substance was a clear red flag. The frustration I felt at my father attempting to rationalize away addiction was an added exclamation point.
Recovery isn’t about days sober or just avoiding a single substance; It’s about brutal self-honesty and living an authentic life.
It was decided. I promptly returned home and threw the Kratom in the garbage downstairs — never to be retrieved. I felt great relief from the anxiety that had been pooling inside.
Beware the Siren Song of Substances
The episode revealed in many ways just how flimsy my recovery can get. As you hear in the rooms of recovery — once you’ve stopped using, sobriety is never a given, and overconfidence is a sniper hiding in tall grass.
It’s very easy to equate sober time with freedom from urges and thoughts of use. The logic goes like this: The farther away I get from my last drink or drug, the safer I am.
That assumption is patently false and has been proven many times over by the unfortunate souls lured into complacency by addiction’s seductive siren song.
Addiction is the only disease that convinces us that we don’t have a disease.
People with decades of abstinence and full lives built on a foundation of sobriety can faceplant into the pavement just as easily as the rest of us.
There are myriad substances that can take us out. It’s not just Kratom. It’s K2. CBD. Xylazine. Nonalcoholic beer. Sleep meds. Post-op opioids. Mystery punch at the party. Spending too much time in bars.
Our addiction only needs a tiny crack in the door to force its way back into our lives.
If you are thinking about dabbling in a “gray” substance, ask yourself why and open up your ears. The universe will always speak to us if we’re willing to listen.
My near miss was a gift. It sent me a wakeup call that this baffling, cunning monster nearly took me out. It enabled me to realize I need to prioritize my own recovery with as much commitment as I give my clients.
I plan to renew my commitment to recovery — tap back into my meeting circuit, talk to sober peers, continue my step work and more generally keep my radar up for any addictive thinking that starts to creep my way.
We’re all only one drink or drug away from shooting off to the races. And some of us never get another chance at recovery.
Stay vigilant, my friends.
