Seoul Bath...

I went to a Korean Spa for the first time this weekend.

My friend had invited everyone to spend the day at the spa with him for his birthday, before the party he was throwing that night.  A few of my friends showed up, but most people were waiting for the party.  I'd been wanting to check out this spa for awhile, so I jumped at the chance.

Now, when I say "spa," think more, "communal bathhouse" rather than "salon/day spa."  You pay $20 to get in, and stay as long as you want.  (They're open 24 hours-a-day on the weekends, and they even have a "Nap Room" to sleep in when you want.)  There's a restaurant (awesome Korean food); a PC room with computers, video games, and internet; and a gym.  But the real attraction is the bathhouse.

As soon as you walk into the place, before you even get to the front desk, you encounter signs indicating "No Shoes Allowed Beyond This Point."  So, you have to carry your shoes up to the front desk, where they give you a key to fit a locker there by the entrance, just big enough to hold a pair of shoes.  Once you get your shoes off, you can feel that the dark wood floor is actually heated; feels so lovely.  Once you pay your entrance fee, they give you another key to a bathhouse locker, and a uniform of simple cotton t-shirt and shorts; men get robin's egg blue, and women get prison orange.

Inside the locker room (men and women each have their own locker rooms, and their own bathhouses, naturally), you can change into your uniform and head out into the communal area if you want.  But inside the locker room is the entrance to the bathhouse, and I headed straight for it.  Inside were showers (regular and Asian style - a little stool on the ground in front of a mirror, with a handheld showerhead and a large bowl); two large, tiled, bubbling hot "tubs" (they were more like small pools), one of them herbal; two saunas (one wet and one dry); and a cold water pool (only about knee deep and three feet wide, but running the length of the room; obviously meant for bathing, not swimming).  In one corner was a massage table, with a naked man getting scrubbed down by an attendant.

In fact, except for the attendant, everybody in the place was completely naked, and making no attempt to cover themselves up, which I found very comforting.  I'm used to puritanical American gym locker-rooms, where everyone gets dressed and undressed either with a towel wrapped around them, or in a shower or toilet stall, out of some ridiculous sense of homophobia or something.  That environment always leaves me feeling very uncomfortable.  It freaks me out to be surrounded by people who are clearly all very afraid of something, and not really have any understanding of what it is that they are so clearly afraid of, exactly.  Are they afraid that some "faggot" will see their penis and somehow become aroused?  (And if so, why does that frighten them?  What does it matter to them at all?  And how would they even know that it had happened?)  Are they worried that if they get naked the other men will think they, themselves, are a "faggot," trying to show off their penis?  (That seems more likely.)  Or are American men just incredibly modest and shy?  (Haha!  Yeah, right!)  So I found it incredibly refreshing to be in an environment where nobody had these ridiculous hang-ups that I couldn't understand, and everybody could just relax and enjoy themselves, without getting all squirrely and nervous about something so completely innocuous as being naked in the same room with other men.  I think it helped that all the men there were either Asian or Russian.  (Apparently, this spa gets a lot of Russians, because it is the closest thing to the traditional Russian bathhouse in the area.  They even had one set of their pamplets listing their services up at the front desk printed all in Russian.)

The larger, regular hot bath was empty (presumably out-of-order), so I headed to the herbal hot bath, which probably would've been my first choice, anyways, now that I think about it.  This bath has a large cloth sack filled with various herbs hanging off of the faucet so that the water is running down through the bag and into the bath; the bag is also hanging about half into the water, steeping like a tea bag.  (They had a sign listing all of the herbs they used, but I don't remember them all at this point; several of them I had never heard of before.)  In fact, it felt very much like taking a bath in tea - the water was brown, had little bits of plant matter swirling around in it, and was incredibly aromatic.  After about ten minutes in this tub, my skin felt softer and smoother than it has since I was a teenager.  In fact, even now, it still feels much softer than usual.

After the herbal bath, I took a quick rinse-off dip in the cold pool (and when they say "cold" they are not lying - it was like ice water!) and then tried out the dry sauna.  It was just over 200 degrees in there, and so it wasn't long before I couldn't take it anymore, and headed back out to cool off in the cold pool.  Going from the hot to the cold like that is the Russian style, and I find it unbelievably refreshing and invigorating and sensually satisfying.  (Maybe it's genetic.)  The hot opens up my pores and loosens my skin, and then the cold tightens it all back up again.  The heat brings all my blood out to my extremities and into my skin, and then the cold sends it all flying away from the surface and down into my core.  And the simple juxtaposition between the two sensations is very-nearly overwhelming.  It leaves me light-headed, but pleasantly so.

After that I tried out the wet sauna, but I couldn't take it for more than a minute.  The air is so thick with moisture that you can barely see your hand in front of your face.  Whenever I would breathe in, I would feel like there was more water in the inhalation than oxygen, and since I was already a little light-headed, it wasn't long before I felt like I couldn't breathe and had to get out before I passed out.  It's a shame, because, other than that, I liked the room.  It wasn't as hot as the dry sauna (only about 150 degrees), and the wet air made it feel more like a bath or shower than the dry sauna, which felt more like an oven.  And the water that they used to produce the steam was apparently infused with some herb, as well, because it was, like the herbal bath, incredibly and pleasantly aromatic.  (The dry sauna actually had a small wicker basket full of cinnamon sticks in the corner, as well, producing a pleasant aroma as they baked in the heat.)  I think next time I'll have to try this steam room first, before I do anything else, and see if that works out better for me.

I spent the next hour just going around between the dry sauna, the herbal bath, and the cold bath.  It felt amazing.  We had agreed to meet in the communal room at that point, so I dried off, dressed in my powder-blue uniform, and headed out into the communal room, which is between, and connected to, the two locker rooms/bathhouses.  The communal room is a large, central room, lined with thick tatami mats on the floor, and little tables to go with them.  (At least, they're called "tatami" in Japanese; I have no idea what they are called in Korean, but they are the same object.)  There were also large piles of these small, traditional head-cushions used for lying down on the mats.  There was a TV on one wall, playing Korean television.  There were Korean newspapers and magazines lying around the room.  There were boards for playing Go, Chess/Checkers, Backgammon, etc. scattered all around.  At one end was a line of massaging recliners, and beyond that was the "Napping Room" - a small, dark room lined with more tatami mats for sleeping.  I tried out one of the massaging recliner chairs, expecting a vibrating massage chair.  What I got instead was ten minutes of, essentially, being pummeled in the back by a robot at high speed.  It was more percussion than vibration.  It hurt like hell at first, but by the end it felt fantastic.

Along the walls of the communal room are smaller rooms of varying temperatures, all dry rooms.  The hot rooms were each lined with different materials all over the floor, walls, and ceiling.  The Himalayan Salt room was lined with pink rock salt, presumably Himalayan judging by the name, and kept at 130 degrees.  The Jewel Room was 150 degrees, and lined with smooth cut slabs of green amethyst.  And the Charcoal Room was lined with small cylinders of charcoal, and heated to 170 degrees.  (I didn't go into the last, hottest room, and don't remember what it was lined with.)  There are also two cold rooms.  The Cold Room is about 40 degrees, and then inside the Cold Room is the Ice Room, which is well below freezing, and lined with, predictably, ice.  (The sign said it was -21 degrees Fahrenheit, but it had to be Celsius; -21 degrees Fahrenheit would be dangerous in just a t-shirt and shorts, and while this room was definitely cold, it wasn't painful or distressing.  It felt more like about 25-30 degrees Fahrenheit.)  Again, I spent a bunch of time going back and forth from the hot rooms to the cold rooms and back again.

We ate lunch in the restaurant, sitting cross-legged on pillows at low Asian-style tables, eating delicious, cheap Korean food.  I reflected on the fact that the place was full of families.  I could tell that this was a regular family event; you bring the wife and kids and spend the day.  It was a like the Korean version of a community center or a YMCA.  There was a father and son in the bathhouse while I was in there, the son maybe six years-old.  They sat together, naked, at one of the little Asian-style showerheads, the son laying over the father's knee, as he washed and scrubbed his son's whole body over and over for what seemed like at least half an hour.  To my Western eyes, this looked decidedly creepy, and I couldn't imagine an American father and son doing this.  But at one point I happened to notice the father try to put the son down on the floor next to him and attend to his own washing, but the boy began to pout and plead until the father agreed to pick him back up and wash him again, which made the boy incredibly happy.  I tried to look at it through their eyes.  This was a bonding moment between a boy and his father.  In our culture, we're taught to sexualize nudity in any form regardless of context, and so something like this instinctively seems gross to us.  But this wasn't sexual at all.  It was loving.  And when I stopped myself from seeing it as sexual, and started trying to see it for what it actually was to them (non-sexual, familial nudity) it became a touching display of affection between a father and son.

I lost track of the hours I spent there, and didn't want to leave.  I could easily see how someone could spend all day there.  I can't wait to go back.  They offer massage services as well (foot massage, body massage, Thai massage, body scrub, etc.) for very reasonable prices, and next time I'm going to book one of those and make a day of it.

I'll Stand Before The Lord Of Song...

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not someone who has seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a lonely Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
Remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

          -"Hallelujah"
            Leonard Cohen, Various Positions

Discipline?...

My friend commended me on my self-discipline last night.

And I told her, "I don't feel like I have any discipline.  I just have a really deep bag of tricks."

To my mind, "self-discipline" implies some sort of forceful inner strength, which I don't feel I have.  (Though, a lot of what I'm working on with my Self right now is related to trying to learn it.)  And, regardless, even if I do have it, it's not what I generally use to change or better myself.

I'm not strong that way.  I'm slippery.

I don't just force myself to move forward with the things I know I should do instead of the things I want to do.  Instead, I figure out how to perceive the situation so that I end up wanting to do the thing I know I should do.

I don't make myself do things I don't like; I figure out how to perceive them so that I do like them.

I think an ounce of cunning is worth a metric ton of force.

Friendships In Chaos, pt. 2...

We also did a ritual last weekend, my friends and I.

I haven't done that in a very long time.  Not even by myself, let alone with my old Temple-mates.

It wasn't even a proper ritual, really.  Just a little, nothing, throw-away rite.  But I was amazed at how it made me feel.  To be in that place.  To be with those people.

To be doing magick.

I had completely forgotten just how much I love doing that.  How much I love even just the sensation of doing it!  The feeling of energy flowing through me, like a conduit.  Finding the sense of the "flow" of the ritual, and then letting it pull me along.  The pleasure of power coming into me, and erupting out of me.  The drama, the spectacle, the art, the dance and the poetry of The Ritual.

It felt like making love with a best friend I hadn't seen in years.

When it was over, I found myself swallowing back tears.  And once again, I was struck by the sudden and almost overwhelming realization of just how desperately I missed this thing that I had willingly let go, honestly believing that I no longer had any use for it.

And maybe I didn't have any use for it back then.  And maybe I still don't.  But it's clear to me now, that I need to find a reason to do it.  Because it is obviously a lot more important to me than I had allowed myself to believe.  It is clearly filling a hole in my life that I didn't know was there; that I thought I had already filled long ago.

I know now that I need to do this.  I don't know why I need to do it yet, but I know I need to do it.

And I can't help but notice that this all happened only two weeks before I get the opportunity to spend an entire week doing nothing but playing with magick, with a group of the best magickians from all over the world.  Isn't that strange?

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Good SMART...

Another part of getting back into my routine, was getting back to a SMART meeting last night, after missing the previous two weeks.  Rather surprisingly, this one actually made me feel a little better.

Talked about my recent relapse and depression, and my struggle to learn endurance, and to allow myself to simply accept unhappiness in those situations where I can't find any relief, rather than falling back into the habit of using drugs to create a synthetic happiness to relieve those feelings.  (I feel like I've made progress, because drugs used to be my first response to those feelings, and now they are only a last-resort when all else has failed.  But, still, it's unhealthy, and more to the point, it doesn't work - it doesn't actually relieve the feeling or make me feel better - and I'm tired of it, and I want to break this habit and learn to accept pain and unhappiness when I have to.)  I tried to keep it brief, because one of the last times I talked, the Facilitator actually cut me off after fifteen minutes for taking up too much time.  But despite my efforts, my check-in seemed to spark a rather intense and lengthy discussion that involved almost the entire group, and ended up lasting for a full half-hour.

And in that thirty minutes, I actually got some good advice.  For instance, not to even bother to give people a reason that I'm not drinking, etc.  And if they press me for a reason, to just say that I don't feel like it right now.  There's no need to say any more than that; and, in fact, often times giving people a reason will only invite them to debate said reason in an effort to try to convince you to join them.  So, don't give them a chance.

Someone described my condition as a "relief-seeking missile," which I thought was rather amusing.

Also, someone suggested that these past two weeks of depression are actually an example of the endurance I'm struggling to learn.  I hadn't thought of it that way.  In thinking about it, it occurred to me that I'd been able to endure these past two weeks because I felt like I had no other choice.  I wanted it to end, and the only way to do that was to let it run its course, and then jump up at the very first sign of emotional elevation.  And at the cabin, I hadn't been able to endure, and (probably not coincidentally) I believed then that I did have a choice; that I could choose to get high and that would make me feel better.  And, of course, that's not really true.  It made me feel a little better, sort of, for a very short time, and then made me feel much, much worse for a good, long while after that.  So, I think part of the key to getting through those triggering situations like the cabin, is to tell myself that I don't really have a choice.  I want to be happy and healthy right now, and the only way to do that is to endure those periods of suffering when they arise.  Just like I did for the past two weeks.

I was also reminded of the simple truth that the good times only exist because of the bad times; they only exist in relation to one another, so one can't exist without the other.  And therefore, the bad times only serve to make the good times that much better.  And that if I ever want to be happy, I have to allow myself to be unhappy once in a while, too.

And there was also a lot of general encouragement and congratulations and I'm-proud-of-you's just for being honest and telling my story.  (I guess this is difficult for a lot of people?  Because everyone seemed to be particularly amazed by it and proud of me for doing it.  But it's just really easy to be honest when you're shameless and generally don't care what people think of you.  Besides, if I'm not honest during these check-ins, then I'm just shooting myself in the foot and wasting my time, so what's the point of even being there?  If I'm not going to be honest, then I've got much better things that I could be doing with my Tuesday nights.)

After it was all over, I found that I felt a lot better about the past few weeks, and a lot better about myself.  Enough that I was actually surprised by the feeling.  I realized I'd actually made some progress with this experience, and that it wasn't just a setback.  And I felt a lot better about this process going forward.  I realized I was more hopeful about my chances of success now.

And all that made me realize that, for once, I was actually glad to be there.

Disappointments & Failures...

How's that for a title, huh?

I was in a pretty good place the last time I wrote here, almost a week ago.  But the past week hasn't gone well for me, and I've swung myself over to the opposite end of the scale since then.

It started when my weekend vacation in the woods didn't work out as anticipated.  I got some writing done (expect to be reading my crappy work off and on for the next week or so), but nowhere near as much as I had wanted.  The mosquitoes and other bugs were simply relentless, so I couldn't do any meditating out in the peaceful forest setting, either, which I'd been looking forward to a great deal.  (We are both covered in itchy, red bites from head to toe now.)  And the hot tub out on the back deck, which is one of my favorite features of this cabin-in-the-woods, and which might've provided some needed respite from the bugs, was broken.  So, while the weather was beautiful, and the setting serene, I couldn't really spend any time outside to enjoy it.  Oh, and somehow, we only managed to have sex once all weekend.  So pathetic.  What a waste.

And to top it all off, after all of these disappointments, combined with all of the stress of getting everything ready for the vacation, and then not being able to find any way to relax once we got there, I ended up succumbing to my addictive desires, and relapsed again.  So much for "looking forward to spending this weekend sober."  I somehow managed to justify it with the fact that I was using a drug I'd never used before, and not one of the ones that I'm currently trying to resist because I've had problems with them in the past.  (Basically, I told myself it was okay to use this drug, because it wasn't alcohol or pot or painkillers, and because I'd never used it before.  Which is such complete bullshit.  Same old pattern I'm trying to break:  avoid using one drug by using another instead.)  I'm not going to name the drug here, but it's legal (or maybe it'd be better to say that it's not yet illegal), and while not actually a painkiller, one of the active chemicals in the plant bonds to the opiod-receptors in the brain, producing the same physical sensation, without most (if not all) of the harmful side-effects of true opiates (liver damage, chemical dependency, respiratory failure, withdrawl, etc.)

So, basically, it's a safe, cheap, legal way to get an opiate-like high.  How the fuck am I supposed to say no to that?!  The horrible, deadly, sickness-inducing side-effects of opiates are what I use to convince myself not to do them in the first place!  Without them, I'm reduced to telling myself, "Well, you shouldn't use it because... well, because you've committed to a year sober and you don't want to feel like a failure.  Oh, and don't forget that if you get high, on anything, at all, you'll end up feeling depressed and lazy and unmotivated and emotionally unbalanced for a week, remember?"

All of which is true, but I couldn't bring myself to give a shit at the time.  And now I'm paying the price.  I just wanted to enjoy my vacation, and I had run out of other options that I could find.  Somehow, sitting around the cabin watching DVDs (two of the three movies we watched ended up being really awful) and snacking (which just made me feel fat - I could feel all of my workouts being undone with every bite) just weren't going to do it for me.   And that's my problem in a nutshell.  I couldn't bring myself to stay sober, knowing that it meant not enjoying myself on my vacation.  Because when I get in a situation where I feel like I need to have a good time, and I try and fail to find any other way to do it, I always know that I've got this sure-fire method right in my back pocket.  And, sure, that shortcut comes with a heavy price to pay, but I can never seem to bring myself to care about that in the moment.  I'm always willing to pay almost any price later to enjoy myself now.

Like I said last week, a lot of what I'm trying to work on right now is learning how to suffer; how to allow myself to be okay with something like having a shitty, sober vacation, rather than feeling like I have to get high in order to avoid it (which only ends up making for a shittier vacation anyways).  And this was put to the test this weekend, hard.  And I failed that test, completely and utterly.

Anyways, then I got home and found out that my wireless had broken, again.  So I had to take the laptop back to the shop and have them fix it, again, less than a week after I got it back from them and spent two days frantically trying to restore all my files and programs.  But before I took it back to the shop I wanted to make another back up, since my previous one is corrupted.  I decided to back-up to disk this time, since every other method I've tried has failed.  After three hours, and three failed attempts, I had to give up on that method, as well.  (I have never, not once in my entire life, successfully backed-up a computer.  Every single attempt I have ever made using any method has failed.  Either it crashes while creating the back-up, or it doesn't restore from the back-up properly.  Why the fuck do I even bother?)

Then the depression from a weekend spent getting high kicked in full-force, and (combined with all of the other things I was already legitimately depressed about) totally knocked me on my ass, and I ended up calling out sick and spending two days on my couch playing video games.  (I am such a fucking child!)  I'm chemically exhausted from the coming-down, and so it takes me hours to get up and out the door in the morning.  As such, I haven't worked out in almost a week, and I know I've managed to completely undo most of the gains I've made with all that hard work in the last month.  I finally managed to make it into work today, but an hour late, only to find out that I missed an important assignment while I was out, and my boss had to take care of it for me.  (I didn't know about it, because I couldn't check my work email, because my computer is still fucking broken!)  Then my boss had a "talk" with me about the fact that I never seem to have any internet at home.  (For years, this was because our building's internet sucked.  And now that we have finally managed to fix that, my computer has been broken for a month!)  And my story of why I never seem to have internet at home sounds ridiculous (even to me, and I know it's true!) so she didn't believe me, and I can hardly blame her.

I skipped SMART last night, because I'm too depressed, and too much of a coward to face all those assholes and admit what a stupid fucking failure I am.  And I skipped my therapist appointment today (which I should be at right now, actually) because I couldn't bring myself to leave work early to go to my appointment, after missing two days and then coming in late today.

So, basically, my vacation sucked, I relapsed, I'm chemically depressed and exhausted, my computer is still broken and back in the shop again, I haven't worked out in a week, I'm way behind and in trouble at work, and I feel like a miserable, worthless, piece-of-shit excuse for a person right now.

And it is ALL.  My.  Fault.

Keep Ridin' 'Til The Cycle Is Broke...

Heard this today, and it touched me; deep.  Again.  Had to share.  Hope it touches you, too.
(Suggestion:  read it aloud.)


                                 Million dollar baby girl in the lower middle class
                                 With a maglight right beneath her pillow
                                 And though she's never been a boxer by choice
                                 She's known to act oak [OK], you'll never catch her a willow
                                 Nuh-uh
                                 She's the calm type
                                 You see the small scars
                                 Creepin' down her arms
                                 peeking from them long sleeves, right?
                                 She keeps him weak in the knees
                                 but she stay out of sight
                                 And when that school bell rings
                                 it's goodnight
                                 Or might as well be
                                 He never sees her around
                                 But he looks
                                 For weeks now he's been "Maybe tomorrow"
                                 But he's shook
                                 He sees those bruises and he needs to please her
                                 Plus he don't wanna go home either

                                 Gives her a look as they pass
                                 Copies down a poem from a schoolbook
                                 Gives it to her after hesitation whoops his ass
                                 She took it fast
                                 Lost, like, all sensation in her hands
                                 then braces herself gracefully
                                 sturdy where she stands
                                 humble mumbling
                                 past the words, fumbling
                                 Nothing discouraging
                                 just nerves
                                 just drumming up the courage
                                 Something 'bout skylines
                                 or bike rides
                                 or riverbeds
                                 Somethin'
                                 Somethin' that he read
                                 it caught her right beneath the armor
                                 cauterized thought of any blunt force trauma
                                 Ain't no way that he could harm her
                                 Nuh-uh
                                 No way

                                 When that curse leaves a shell like a snake with fresh scales
                                 Some people seem to call that home
                                 But some souls roam
                                 Keep riding 'til the cycle is broke
                                 We don't gotta go through nothin' alone

                                 She's in the weather
                                 the whole storm
                                 Huggin' on her prince
                                 his hands to skin warm
                                 Quick out the door
                                 no note
                                 no forlorn
                                 'Cause all they heard was "Papa
                                 don't hit me no more"
                                 But they couldn't seem to keep the swelling down
                                 How they regretted ever lettin' out this 3rd child born
                                 But things are getting better now
                                 Yeah, cozy sweater now
                                 with her thumbs through the holes
                                 in her sleeves worn down
                                 And a boy similar
                                 Noise minimal
                                 toy criminal
                                 Joy's simple when someone's found it in you
                                 Somehow it boosts the individual
                                 That bluish hue is mutual
                                 They make love gently
                                 so aware of each others' bruises
                                 And sorta scared they could lose this
                                 trust
                                 Bury the blues
                                 somewhere it won't bear roots
                                 But is this boy where the truth is?
                                 She's spooked, see
                                 Fruit never seems to fall far
                                 from the useless branch that it's attached to
                                 And quacks say if he's beat up he's bound to smack you
                                 She's down to step back now
                                 If he ever gets loud
                                 She couldn't be proud
                                 of whatever she might do
                                 But this is the first time
                                 she ever felt touched
                                 that didn't bring her to hush
                                 like something was being done to her
                                 That unscrews her
                                 She loosens with the booze
                                 Her hinge can stay bent
                                 addressing her dude's wounds
                                 Regressing to bedrooms
                                 where fools ignored "don't"
                                 He's not one of them tools
                                 that screws, nuts and bolts
                                 And she know that
                                 And she know that but she holds back
                                 And she hope that
                                 he see the way she flinch
                                 'cuz it's kneejerk to brace for the attack
                                 Even if he's only rubbing her back
                                 I mean
                                 And even if it's like the deck has been stacked
                                 It's not an act
                                 He's really loving her back

                                 Hold your heart up

                                 "Never raise your hand"
                                 She says that with her grown-up voice
                                 "I'm your's now" just like a child
                                 "Please don't be scared now"
                                 It clicks
                                 a piece finally fits
                                 "I love you"
                                 They say that with their lips

                                 "Never raise your hand"
                                 He says that with a grown-up voice
                                 "I'm your's now" just like a child
                                 "Please don't be scared now"
                                 It clicks
                                 a piece finally fits
                                 "I love you"

                                 When that curse leaves a shell like a snake with fresh scales
                                 Some people seem to call that home
                                 But some souls roam
                                 Keep riding 'til the cycle is broke
                                 We don't gotta go through nothin' alone

                                                                  -"Been Afraid"
                                                                    P.O.S.

The Mighty Endorphin...

Day 3 of my new-and-improved workout routine.  Running harder and faster, really getting my heart rate up there.

Around about the 15-minute mark, I started to notice some changes.  It was starting to hurt less.  In fact, more than that - I was starting to feel pretty good!  The music I was listening to was just suddenly so awesome!  And my eyelids were getting sooo heavy.  I was getting really drowsy, but not sleepy, and I wasn't slowing down at all.  I was still pumping away at a furious pace, to match the beating of my heart - left, right, left, right, left right left right left right bang bang bang bang.  It felt more like nodding, that state where the opiate is so overwhelmingly pleasurable that the user repeatedly passes in and out of consciousness, or "nods off."

And that's when I realized it:  I was really high!

And while I enjoyed it, and while I knew I was doing something good for myself - and so I should just let myself enjoy this, could even consider it my reward for putting in the effort - there was a part of me that still felt bad about it and felt like I was doing something wrong.  And then I was right back to trying to answer that same question I keep coming back to:  if I'm still getting high, but just in different and less destructive ways, then am I really getting better?

If my goal here was to stop getting high in destructive and/or dangerous ways, then I could easily answer that question, "Yes, I am getting better."  But that isn't my goal.  My goal is to try and stop needing to get high all the time, period, regardless of method.  Because if I can't rid myself of the need to get high all the time, then when the healthy methods stop working as well for me, or when I get into a dark place again for one reason or another (we all have them, life is full of dark places we must traverse once in a while), then I'm going to turn to unhealthy methods again to satisfy that desire.

I'm not going to stop meditating, and I'm not going to stop studying Mathematics and other Sciences, and I'm not going to stop playing video games, and I'm not going to stop having awesome sex with Her, and I'm not going to stop writing, and I'm not going to stop working out.  So, if I am getting high off of these things, then I guess that means I have to learn how to live with that.

So, then, can I adjust my goal of trying to not get high at all, regardless of method?  Is that even a reasonable goal to have set myself?  Can I reasonably expect to be able to achieve that without moving to a cave somewhere and spending the rest of my life meditating like an itinerant sage?  Is getting high just something that I need in order to make my life feel worth living?  And if so, is that true for everyone, or just me?  What if the only real choice I have is the method I use?  And is that something I can live with?  No, I can live with it.  But is it something I can learn to be okay with?

I don't know the answers.  But I know I'm not done asking the questions.

Working Out The Kinks...

Yesterday morning, I discovered that I haven't been doing my workout correctly for the past several years.

I'd been using the wrong target heart rate, a rate lower than what my actual target should be.  So, I've been getting some benefit from my workout (anything is always better than nothing), but not as much as I could've been, and not as much as I thought I was.  I could've been losing more weight, building more muscle, and doing it faster.

I also discovered that I need to adjust the methods I'm using to work out.  I've been working out solely on the elliptical, with the goal of losing a certain amount of weight that way before going back to trying to incorporate weights into my routine.  But I found out that the anaerobic activity of lifting weights actually helps to increase metabolism more effectively than aerobic activity alone, and so along with building muscle mass, it can also help you lose weight faster.  So, sometime in the next couple of weeks, I think I'm going to start trying to incorporate weights back into my routine.

But this morning I just tried out my new target heart rate on the elliptical, and wow!  Instant improvement of about 75%.  I burned a ton more calories than I normally do, and I ran almost twice as far as I used to (virtually, of course), managing 3.5 miles in forty-five minutes.

And now I feel awesome.  I have that delicious, relaxed, rubbery exhaustion in my limbs, and I feel ready to do anything, like I could take on the whole world.

Goes a long way towards making up for the seemingly endless series of humiliations I suffered in the game last night.  More on that tomorrow...

Hunger Pains...

I'm still hungry all the time.  And it's really starting to get on my nerves.

I don't know what's causing this, but it started just after I stopped drinking, so I would imagine it must have something to do with that.  But is it a biochemical reaction?  Meaning, is it my body's autonomic response to being suddenly deprived of the ethyl alcohol it had grown accustomed to?  Or is it a behavioral response?  Is it just my head trying to fill the "Pleasure Yourself" gap left behind when I stopped drinking, with some new, more readily accessible form of pleasure?  I have no idea.

I've heard that a lot of people develop an insatiable sweet-tooth when they quit drinking, because their body is craving the sugar that they used to get from the alcohol.  (Our bodies metabolize alcohol into sugar.)  But that's not what I'm experiencing.  My problem is that I simply never stop feeling like I want to eat.  Normally, I would only get that feeling when I needed to eat.  And then, once I'd eaten, that feeling would go away, until the next time I needed to eat again.  But now, I can eat until I am bloated and feeling sick from the amount of food in my stomach, and I still have that feeling of "I want to eat."  It just never turns off!  And it's so fucking annoying!  It's like when you feel like you have to pee, even though your bladder is empty.  It's just this really unpleasant, uncomfortable feeling that will not go away, and that you cannot do anything about.

And I really, really just want it to stop.

I'm so tired of constantly fighting with myself to keep from over-eating.  I'm so tired of constantly wrestling with this phantom craving.  Every night it's the same thing.  As soon as I finish dinner, I want something sweet.  So, I eat a little dessert, and then as soon as I finish that, I want something salty-crunchy.  If I give in to that craving and eat something salty-crunchy (whole-wheat tortilla chips and 100-calorie packs of cheez-its are my current drugs of choice), then as soon as I finish that, I want something sweet again.  And if I give in to that, then I want something salty-crunchy/savory again.  And that just keeps going on and on forever until I end up passing out face-first into a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels.

I'm currently working out and doing my best to eat as healthy as possible, in an attempt to lose some weight.  And I am losing weight, but much more slowly than I'd like.  And this shit is not making it any easier.

I've been trying to come up with ways to either satisfy and/or curb this craving that do not involve adding a bunch more calories to my daily intake.  Number one on the list is drinking lots and lots of water.  And I mean, to the point where I start to feel full.  That helps some, but not much, because the whole point of that trick is to curb your appetite by making your body feel full; and, of course, my whole problem is that my body is not currently responding correctly to that feeling.  And then there's the further drawback of having my day constantly and repeatedly interrupted by the painfully urgent need to piss violently.  I've thought about lo-to-no-cal snacks like rice cakes, but in the midst of these cravings, I can't bring myself to eat something completely tasteless that I am already well-aware I will not enjoy.  Still, I've found a couple of brands that are mildly tolerable, and I'm planning to try really hard to make them work.  I bought some lo-cal, high-protein jerky, as well, to try and help with the savory cravings.  The trick there is to just chew and chew and chew and chew and chew and chew until either it eventually turns to liquid in your mouth, or you feel like your jaw is going to fall off.  That way you get to spend a lot of time eating and enjoying the pleasure of tasting the salty/savory thing you're craving, but overall you don't actually eat that much food, or take in a lot of calories.  The sore jaw helps to put a damper on the desire to eat more, as well.  And at work, I've been having mid-afternoon Chai Lattes to try and help with my after-lunch cravings.  That seems to be working out ok.  It's not helping my need-to-pee-every-fifteen-minutes problem very much, though.

And there's one solution I've been trying out this week that is a little naughty.

I stopped smoking cigarettes over ten years ago.  And I cannot stand cigars.  But every Fall and Winter for the past six or seven years, pretty much as soon as the weather starts to turn cold, I smoke a pipe.  I really enjoy a good pipe during the cold half of the year.  I love the sweet, rich flavor of the tobacco.  I love its aromatic smell.  I love the ritual of loading, packing, tamping, lighting - everything has to be just right in order for it to work proper, but when it is, and when it does, oh, sweet ambrosia!  I even love the anachronism of it.  My grandfather smoked a pipe.  It just has this old, retro, even ancient feel to it, and I enjoy feeling like a part of that tradition.  And since I don't inhale pipe smoke, I don't have to worry as much about bronchial damage, emphysema, lung cancer, or even nicotine addiction, the way I did with cigarettes.  And since I indulge in it so rarely (even at the height of my smoking during that half of the year, I will smoke, at most, two pipes a day), I don't really have to worry about it much, at all.  It is a rather safe, and pleasurable, indulgence I can allow myself.  Especially compared to all of my other indulgences, which are so many times more harmful and dangerous.

So, it occurred to me, perhaps an after-dinner smoke would fill the void left behind by the absence of my customary after-dinner drink.  And, perhaps also help curb my appetite for my after-dinner snack - and my after-after-dinner snack, and my after-after-after-dinner snack - that is currently replacing my after-dinner drink.  I know, it's still not the healthiest solution in the world, but tasting (not inhaling) a little tobacco smoke is a lot less unhealthy than drinking, or over-eating.  So, I'll take what I can get.  (And everyone needs some sort of vice, don't they?  What's life without at least a little indulgence?)  But the problem is, as soon as the weather starts to warm up, I immediately lose all interest in smoking a pipe.  I don't know what it is, but it has been that way every single year since the very first.  It's not something I'm trying to do, intentionally.  That's just the way it works for me, for some reason.  I always want to smoke a pipe during the cold half of the year, and I only want to smoke a pipe during the cold half of the year.

But on Sunday, I found a solution to this problem.  There's a brand of small "cigars" (or "cigarillos," which is a rather annoying word) that are filled with pipe tobacco.  It's not the greatest pipe tobacco I've ever had, but it still tastes sweet, and smells nice, and it's infinitely better than cigar tobacco.  (I would rather eat old sushi than smoke a cigar.  Ugh!)  So every night so far this week I've smoked at least part of one of these "cigars" after dinner.  And I've enjoyed them alright, but not as much as my pipes.  And they've seemed to help with the cravings a little, but not as much as I'd hoped.  I'd hoped that they would come close to putting an end to the cravings, but I've found that just a little while after putting out the "cigar," I'm hungry again.  Still, the whole time I'm smoking, I don't want to eat.  And the cravings are a lot easier to resist for a while after the smoke.  So, all-in-all, one "cigar" seems to equal about an hour or so of not snacking.  So, it's not as much as I wanted, but it's not nothing, either.  We'll see how it goes.  I'm glad to have something enjoyable to do for now that seems to help at least a little, but I could also see myself getting bored with this very soon.

Alright, that's enough for now.  I'm starting to get hungry.

Time for my Chai Latte.

Hope and Regret, part 3...

On the heels of all of these thoughts on my addiction and recovery and sobriety, I started thinking about how I feel about my history of using.  And I feel a need to state here, strongly and clearly, and in no uncertain terms, that I have no regrets about my past behavior.  None.  If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't do it any differently.  Even the very worst moments, where I hurt myself badly or scared myself half-to-death or nearly died, I'm still grateful for.  Because each and every one of them taught me valuable lessons that I wouldn't have learned any other way, and I have in each instance become a better person for having learned them.

And those scary moments were few and far between.  The vast majority of the years I spent drunk and high, I laughed my ass off and just had a wonderful time.  I learned a lot about myself through those experiences, and I feel lucky and privileged to have had the chance to spend so much of my life feeling happy and stimulated and satisfied.  I've had a great run of it up to this point.  But it's just becoming a little old, a little stale, a little tired.  And so am I.  After all these years, it's taking more and more of a toll on me than it ever has before, right as I'm getting less and less out of it than I used to.  And as I get older, and my priorities for what I want out of life shift from more immediate pleasures to bigger-and-better things, it's just becoming less and less worth it for me to keep going like this.

And I always knew that it would have to end one day.  And I always knew there would be a price to pay for all those years of self-indulgence.  And I always knew that this was that price.  And I always knew that one day I would pay it.  And now that this day seems to finally be coming around, I am paying it.  Gladly.

But I'm still glad I did it, too.

And I wouldn't change a thing.

Hope and Regret, part 2...

And speaking of breaking the cycle, the 2nd, and possibly most, important thing I learned in my session this week, was the existence of an organization called SMART Recovery.

I've considered going to AA or NA meetings before, but having some past experience with them and knowing the gist of what they're like and how they work, I've never really felt like they would be a good fit for me.  The central core of the X-Anonymous twelve-step programs starts with two things:  1) submit your will to a Higher Power, and 2) admit that you are powerless over your addiction.  The rest of the program builds off of those two ideas, so if you can't do those, then the rest of the program isn't going to be much help for you, either.  And neither of those ideas really work for me.  More to the point, they're basically the exact opposite of what I feel I need in order to get and stay sober.

I don't believe in a sentient being that controls the Universe, so the entire concept of "Higher Power" would be difficult for me right from the start.  I could use Tao, but that wouldn't really work, either.  Because Tao is not a sentient force, it's just a pattern.  It's the pattern of Nature seen throughout the Universe.  It is the Set of All Things.  It is the Universe, and everything it in, and everything outside of it (if there is anything outside of it) and the motion of all things that repeats in the same way from the spinning of galaxies down to the spinning of electrons.  It is the cyclical pattern of motion that is all creations, that spurs all nothings to become some-things.  So, it's not really a Power, and it's not really Higher, either, since there is nothing that is not Tao.  And how would I "submit my will" to it, exactly?  How can I submit to something that I'm already a part of, merely by virtue of my existence?  And then there's just the whole idea of submitting my Will, at all, which I'm not real keen on.

Which actually ties in with the 2nd step, admitting that you're powerless over your addiction.  Submitting my Will, admitting I am powerless... these are not things that I've ever been good at.  In fact, I have spent the majority of my adult life strengthening my Will, to the point that I was able to convince myself that I can actually bend Reality to it.  "Powerless" is not something I ever want to feel, or believe I should ever have to feel.  And more to the point, it's not something I believe I am.

I'm not powerless over my addiction.  That fact is self-evident.  If I were powerless, then I would've ended up deranged and out-of-control, like my mother, or her mother before her.  Or like one of those poor, pathetic people on Intervention, who are incapable of caring about anything beyond their drug use.  I have never been like that.  Throughout my entire history of using, I have always carefully monitored myself, my cravings, the amount of my intake; constantly limiting the amount I use to "just enough;" never letting myself use as much as I really want; dialing back my use whenever the cravings started to become more intense; etc.  I used always knowing that I was an addict, and that I was walking a fine line between having fun and losing it all, and always on the lookout for signs that it was getting out-of-hand.  (That's one of the reasons I'm actually feeling kind of done with all of it at this point.  That kind of constant self-intervention takes a lot out of you, and it's getting to the point that getting high is no longer worth the effort it takes to maintain anymore.)  In my entire history, I've only ever let myself use with abandon, to my heart's content, a couple of times.  And every one of those times, things quickly got out of hand, and I scared the shit out myself, and ended up getting my shit together in a new and better way as a result.  And even at my worst, even when I've hurt myself badly with liver damage and ulcers and near-overdoses, I've still never been even half as bad as my mother, or my grandmother, or the sick souls on TV, or any of the people whose stories I heard in those church basements as a child.  So, if I have to start that program by admitting that I am powerless over my addiction, then I have to base that entire program on a lie.  And what is the point in that?

And, honestly, if we're really "powerless," then what are we even doing in recovery?  If we were truly powerless over our addictions, then wouldn't we be out getting drunk and high right now?  For me, my sense of my own power, my sense of my internal strength, my strength of Will, is exactly what I've used to keep from going off the deep end my whole life, and exactly what I've relied on to get sober.  So why on Earth would I want to just abandon that??  The whole idea just seems completely counter-productive to me.

And adding to all that the fact that my mother used to take me with her to AA and NA meetings when I was a kid, and that she left one of those meetings and went straight to the hotel room where she took her life, it would be a significant understatement to say that I have some emotional baggage associated with those programs.  And if I went, the only reason I'd be going would be to try to get and stay sober.  I really wouldn't want to also have to work through a bunch of my childhood mommy-issues at the same time.   So, for all of these reasons, I've never really considered the X-Anonymous twelve-step groups to be a valid option for me in my recovery.

So I always assumed I would just have to do this on my own.  I thought that the X-A groups were the only ones out there, and since those wouldn't work for me, then it must be up to just me doing the work, and the best help I could hope for would be the occasional 1-on-1 counseling session.  And I was ok with that, honestly.  But then my counselor tells me about this other recovery group called SMART Recovery.

They're basically an alternative to the twelve-steppers, that emphasizes scientific methods of recovery (constantly evolving as the science of recovery evolves; none of that watered-down, psuedo-JudeoChristian psychology "Higher Power" bullshit), self-empowerment as the main recovery tool (as opposed to submitting your Will and pretending to be powerless - more pseudo-JudeoChristian nonsense; and none of this Will-undermining "my addiction is a disease and I am sick and I will always be sick" crap, either), and recognizing that there is no one right way to become sober that will work for everyone - that everyone is unique and different and that each individual has their own best method of recovery - and so the key to recovery is finding your personal method and working it (which is completely in-line with the way I have lived the entire rest of my life; SMART Recovery is to traditional recovery what Chaos Magick is to traditional Western occultism - find what works best for you, and use it).  They try to get at the root of addictive behavior itself and deal with that, using modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy methods, rather than focusing on the particular substance or thing one is addicted to.  (SMART stands for "Self-Management And Recovery Training".)  As such, they aren't just for alcoholics or drug-users, but accept any kind of addict at all.  A meeting could include people ranging from alcoholics, to drug-users, to sex addicts, or gambling addicts, or hoarders, or anyone else who would fall under the category of "I'm exhibiting compulsive behavior that I would like to stop."

I was astounded that I'd never heard of this before.  They sound perfectly tailored for me.  I found out there's a meeting in my area, and I'm going to attend my first one next week.  I'm going to try to reserve judgement, though.  In my experience, things that sound too-good-to-be-true usually are.  And while the base description sounds fantastic, some of the material I've found on their website absolutely screams "MOTIVATIONAL SEMINAR," and that could be a big turn-off for me.  So, I'm going to keep my expectations low, attend a few of the meetings, and get a sense of what they're really like.  It'd be nice if they turned out to be even half as great as they sound, and it'd be nice if I could actually get some extra help from them.  But it would be just that - extra.  So if they turn out to be not-quite-right for me, then oh, well.  I still have no problem doing all of this on my own.

And no reason to believe that I can't.


concluded in part three tomorrow...

Hope and Regret, part 1...

(When I originally wrote this piece, it turned out to be a lot longer than I'd anticipated, and it just seemed like way too much to include in one posting.  So, I've decided to break it up into three parts.)


I learned at least two really important things at my counseling session this week.

First of all, I was reminded of something that I had previously known, but apparently forgotten.  That this thing I'm going through right now, this period of depression and low-energy/motivation, is a really common psycho-emotional/bio-chemical reaction in addicts, in response to a relapse.  It's almost textbook.  Basically, once you've sobered up a bit, then the crash from even just a little bit of use is much more pronounced, and much more noticeable.  (It's always there, really - it's just that when you're getting high all the time, it's a lot harder to notice it.)  And so that's what's happening with me right now.

I've learned that lesson before.  I used to know this.  So I kind of felt like an idiot for somehow managing to forget it.  But I was also very glad to be made aware of it again.  Oddly, it made me feel better somehow to know that this was a common phenomena, that many other people have gone, and are going, through it, that it's been studied and cataloged.  Made me less sad about giving up what I'd lost.

Speaking of which, I was reminded of something about that, as well.  That period of time in early sobriety, where life is beautiful and being clean just feels so good and everything comes so easily and naturally - that period that just ended for me after Walpurgisnacht, what I've been calling my "state of grace" - in recovery-speak, that period is called "the pink cloud."  Also common, also well-studied and cataloged by men in white coats.

And also another trap.  At least for me, anyways.  Because, when I think about it, I realize that the pink cloud is just another high.  I can see the pattern in my behavior so clearly now.  I use until I get bored with it, or until it becomes so much less fun than it once was that it's no longer worth the price I'm paying for it in terms of health, energy, etc.  Then I sober up and ride the pink cloud for all it's worth for as long as I can.  And then as soon as that wears off, as soon as that becomes so much less fun than it once was that it's no longer worth the price I'm paying for it in terms of effort and sacrifice, then I start using again.  And round and round we go on the merry-go-round of rotating knives.  Basically, I've been cycling back and forth between being high on drugs, and being high on life.  But no matter what, I've always been high.

So, that's what I'm trying to work on now.  Breaking that cycle.  And not just learning how to live a life without using, but learning how to live my life, truly sober - meaning not high on anything at all, completely regardless of whether that thing is seen as a positive or negative influence.  Figuring out how to live my life completely down to earth.  (And figuring out what "down to earth" even means for me.)

Takin' it back to formula.


continued in part two tomorrow...