Facing Addiction

Let's look at addiction as a stand-in for every compulsion, weakness, or personal limitation keeping you from living the life you want. How can you overcome all that holds you back? It's tempting to seek out the easy predictability of some precise plan to follow—a perfect "how to" for you to tape to the fridge or front of a binder. The problem with plans like that is you quickly teach yourself to forget the logic behind the steps, ignoring how those steps are meant to tie to your experience. "Oh well," you say, "at least I tried. I guess that wasn't quite the right plan for me after all. I'll go find a better one tomorrow, or maybe the next day." Unlike plans, stories have real power to change you. You never forget the stories you relate to. When you can come to see your own story objectively enough over time, you find your perspective starts to both deepen and widen on its own. It's called maturity. And maturity shows up as choices made in real time that align with your values. So Facing Addiction is a story about the power of your story. It's a story about discovering who you are, even in the midst of constant change—about gaining a lasting sense of self that defies external pressures feeding into shameful prescriptions framing self-deceptive tendencies. It's a story about watching the values you hold dear work themselves out through your life, transcending to transform you into a strong, stable, self-controlled version of you somewhere real in a you-sized world. It's a story about purpose, passion, fulfillment, and fun . . . a story about uncovering and honing in on the basis of everything you want most and could be best at. And as you grow beyond all that's held you back, the focus of your story naturally shifts outward. It then becomes a story about connecting with those like you who speak your language—those you can truly be yourself with and inspire, and those who inspire you. That could also make it a story about punk individualism in the face of conformity, public stigma, and a fading mainstream culture. Oh yeah, and since the addiction my story happens to center around was to marijuana, Facing Addiction might also be a story about ghosts, inner voices, and all sorts of mystical illustrations of whatever happens when your mind gets slowed down just enough to see in-between your thoughts. But that's not the point. That's just one of the values that was worth facing my addiction for. : ) Let's hear your story.