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Members Article
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The Suffering Factor
by Mark
Thompson
Here is an
unpopular truth for you: suffering is a necessary,
beautiful part of life. In a sense, suffering is no
different from joy; in all actuality, suffering is inseparable
from joy. Those who spend life running and hiding
from all pain, never letting themselves fully
experience it, those who never let themselves be
taken over from time to time by life's suffering,
those who never let go and allow pain to come in and
run its course, they are the ones who in turn are
equally unable to fully realize and experience joy
and serenity. Energy comes from both the positive
and the negative; it takes all of it to produce a
truly rich, fully human
experience. This is a fact, and here's why:
If we look
back through the ages, we'll find that all of the
great thinkers, artist, philosophers, etc., have all
seemed to agree on one common theme: that to truly
live, one must suffer. One must accept the bad with
the good - one must be willing to not run from pain,
but, rather, to open up and allow themselves to feel
all of their human experience, all of it - suffering
included. Those who keep their guard up their whole
lives, afraid to hurt, refusing to hurt, those
people unwittingly block out also the illuminating
beauty of life that makes it all worthwhile. It is
an irrefutable axiom of life: without one, the other
doesn't exist.
And this is something in which all humans are
subject to err.
We all,
addicts and non-addicts alike, we all have that one
place where we can go to hide from reality. We all
have our own little personal shell, that cave in
which we can retreat when the going gets tough. To
each his own, but everyone has something. But what
many people never realize is that their retreat into
this cave is, in effect, a sort of spiritual
suicide, because that very pain that they are
refusing could and should, if they let it, elevate
them to a new level of experience, a new level
of clarity and receptiveness - but only if they
allow themselves the experience of letting go and
just feeling the pain. The suffering that we choose
not to deny acts as a sort of spiritual elevator, if
you will - it is the gateway to a heightened
experience. This fact may not be the easiest, most
pleasant notion for one to accept; but there is no
denying that it is, according to the wisdom of the
ages, an indisputable fact of human life. Pick up
any time-tested piece of spiritual literature or
work by an established philosopher. It all
points to the same thing: suffering is necessary.
Now, here's
the important thing for alcoholics and
addicts. Remember that everyone has their own
little shell - their own little cave in which to
hide from life when it gets a little too real.
Well, here's the thing about being a sober addict:
our cave is gone. An alcoholic's cave is alcohol.
A drug addict's
cave is drugs. As true addicts, nothing else has
ever worked for us - hence our addiction. Our
chemical was the one thing that we always had, the
one thing that could always protect us from having
to really live. So, now that we have chosen a life
of sobriety, now that we have made sobriety the very
foundation of who we are, we are left without a
cave. And this is a beautiful thing! On the
surface it can seem very scary - but that fear is an
absolute lie. The reality of it is that we are
fortunate beyond words for being left wide open to
life, with no insulation, no thick skin to shield us
from being able to feel in the richest and fullest
degrees. The alcoholic who lives life in continuous
sobriety will inevitably live the richest, fullest,
most profound life he or she could live.
And when the
pain of life begins to pour, it is a cleansing river
that rushes over us, stripping away those things
that keep us from being able to sound the very
depths of our being. And the one thing that keeps
us anchored in this cleansing, the one thing that
keeps us from being swept away by the powerful
current of our suffering, is the anchor of our
sobriety. As we endure the rushing rapids of the
river of our suffering, sobriety is the sturdy
branch that reaches out from a tree rooted firmly in
the bank, to which we cling for dear life as the
rapids rush over us, cleansing us, strengthening
us...yet unable to wash us away. Our unwavering,
"no-matter-what" sobriety is what keeps us anchored
in that river of suffering - sustaining us, allowing
us to bear up under, withstand, and finally emerge
refined and victorious from the pain which we are so
fortunate to experience.
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Members Comments and Thoughts on this article
Hello All,
In regard to the article on suffering:
>> The Suffering Factor
>
> by Mark Thompson
>
>
> Here is an unpopular truth for you: suffering is a
necessary,
> beautiful part of life. In a sense, suffering is no
different
from
> joy; in all actuality, suffering is inseparable from
joy. Those
who
> spend life running and hiding from all pain, never
letting
themselves
> fully experience it, those who never let themselves be
taken over
> from time to time by life's suffering, those who never
let go and
> allow pain to come in and run its course, they are the
ones who in
> turn are equally unable to fully realize and
experience joy and
> serenity. Energy comes from both the positive and the
negative;
it
> takes all of it to produce a truly rich, fully human
experience.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Until I got sober, I
was running as far away
from pain as I could get, through using alcohol. From
the time I was thirteen
until I quit when I was forty.
I have learned to experience joy in a new way, with a
new perspective, now that
I'm able to balance it against real, sharp emotional
pain. My father's death
back in April was the first death that I experienced
sober -- I didn't dull all
of that incredible emotional pain through drinking, and
I have been hurting and
grieving and feeling since he died nine weeks ago. I
know that this is
necessary, I know that the pain will subside, in time,
and I know that I would
be left with a multitude of unresolved feelings if I was
still drinking my
emotional devastation away.
However. There's a huge difference between the pain that
one experiences from
every day life -- from disappointments, and losses, and
bad things happening --
than the pain from a severe case of depression. Whether
that depression comes
from a chemical imbalance, or whether it comes from some
sort of genetic factor,
I don't pretend to know. All I know is that severe,
immobilizing depression is
very different from the day to day reality of normal
pain experienced by human
beings in the course of life events. And, if I've said
this once, I've said it a
hundred times, medications that are used to treat that
kind of depression, if
they are prescribed and taken correctly, don't numb one
from feeling anything.
They simply lift the weight of the paralyzing numbness
and despair that comes
from severe clinical depression. If someone is getting
"high" from an
antidepressant, then that antidepressant isn't doing
what it's supposed to be
doing at all.
I've been taking paxil for a long time. I have tried to
go off of it, and found
myself back in a state where I couldn't move. It's like
being in a cave,
alright, with no light anywhere. I've continued to take
this medication through
all of the experience with my father's death. It's been
horrendous to feel what
I've been feeling. But, believe me, I haven't been
numbed to any of it at all.
I've been grieving both silently and loudly, shedding
rivers of tears when I
think about him, and even now, sitting here writing
this, I'm starting to miss
him -- his death left a big, gaping hole in me. Nothing
about the antidpressant
drug I'm taking has numbed me to any of it. If anything,
it's made me level
enough to be able to experience real feeling, rather
than being buried deeper in
a hole of depression and despair, unable to process
anything.
I don't expect people to understand this if they've not
had the experience, or
even if their experience was different than mine. All I
ask is that everyone be
tolerant of everyone else's reality.
Thanks for listening.
Sue
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