Martini Spoken Here

Part III...The Breakdown that will lead to the breakthrough

I once heard Mike Rowe (the actor and activist) say, “I try to look at everything in ‘Mike Rowe’ and then in Macro.” His clever use of the word “micro” made me smile. It also inspired me. “They are looking at the macro perspective,” I argued with myself. “And that is the problem. Addiction counselors, law makers, doctors...they consider everyone to fit into one category...human, and they believe every micro in the macro should come in and out of addiction the same. No one is seeing us as ‘Mike Rowes’ with our own micro/macro!” And that is when it hit me...a new way to describe what I was seeing all along. The understanding that each of us has our own cosmos that we are dealing with. Our (micro) brain with its own thoughts and interpretations of our education and life events. But that is only a one-third portion of the whole that makes us. We are also a body that is housing the brain and the soul that is trying to influence it. We are not what we “think.” We are what we “are,” meaning what state of being we are in at any given moment is dictating what we think. That is what we need to be working on.

Up until this point, experts have been primarily appealing to the mind. We use “talk” education to try and prevent substance use and then we use “talk” therapy to try and get people out. But it has been my experience that trying to talk people out of physical addiction is like pulling the shade down in a sunny room and expecting the sun to go down with it. It ain’t gonna happen!

Is it true that the mind/ego/human brain’s perspective can control the macro system? Yes, the mind (and when we are willing, the soul) can overrule the body. But so can the body overrule the mind and the soul. There is a three way communication mechanism we are all equipped with, but in my experience, when it comes to addiction, if we don’t address the body first and foremost, we won’t be able to keep the mind and the soul in control of anything, let alone a commitment to sobriety. And so the whole point of my series of blogs is to break down for everyone the actual breakdown of the human body, mind and spirit that needs to occur in order to create addiction or any disease or illness for that matter. I (and others) call it, “the perfect storm,” because the way in which it is created is very similar. If you know anything about tropical storms, you would know that they happen all the time. Very few, though, actually become hurricanes that we need to be concerned about, because there needs to be a very unique set of circumstances in order for the storm to hit land so hard. The temperature difference (warm to cold) between land, air (wind) and water (the ocean) has to be the perfect ratio in order for the hurricane to gain momentum and not fizzle out before it hits the shore. Hence the term, “the perfect storm,” because it wouldn’t be anything without the perfect tri-factor.

To keep up the weather analogy, we can try to predict and prepare for a major storm, but we don’t have much control over it. Instead we ride it out and hope for the best. I truly believe we are treating addiction the same way...waiting to see what the storm is doing...where it will hit next so we can help those who have been hit hard and then try to get others to evacuate before more casualties occur. We are treating addiction as an entity we have no control over, because it has become an entity that is out of control. We have to understand that it is not a phenomena without a source. It has an origin that is man-made and since we made it, we can sequester it, even work towards reversing it. What is more important is that we can change the elements, because we are the elements.