3 SOBRIETY PATHS WORTHY OF MINDFULNESS

AVOIDING ENGINEERED CONSENT

Just how gullible are the masses of society and how does it impact sobriety? As Holly Whitaker describes the Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol mass marketing strategies in her brilliant book ‘Quit like a Woman’ we see the remarkable efficacy of advertising shaping social values to the point that we willingly harm ourselves. We seek acceptance by following social norms, whether in fashion, politics or health and our belief systems can be manipulated by large marketing budgets. In a related supporting narrative, Gabor Mate points out humans’ need for connectedness and how approval shapes our value systems. If you tell people something enough, in a convincing way, they will start to believe it and perpetuate that belief amongst the society they are part of. This pattern has seen tragic results in social manipulation through history on epic scale.

Its amazing to think about ones personal life from childhood to their years of wisdom and reflect on how whole heartedly we have accepted and even perpetuated certain value systems that we then change later in life completely. This is an illustration of how shapeable we are; how vulnerable we are to potential lies spread by those who have more power of status or more power of media. William Gibson’s futuristic book, set in the stage of 2021 wrote of how one day those who controlled all of the media, would control all of the world. There are parallels to this evident today that raise some real concern in terms of questioning the information you are fed.

With regards to alcohol, we cannot and should not accept the messages of the masses. Its wonderful to see those messages changing, with a non alcohol beer commercial in the Super Bowl even and a rise of a new generation that is not fooled into the acceptability of the damage of consuming ethanol. Right living is often so self evident, as when you hear in yoga that your body will tell you if you are taking a damaging shape, your body sends obvious messages of damage when you drink and it is totally not acceptable, regardless of what anybody tells you, especially the media controlled by the mega companies driven for profit, without any care for responsibility for your health and well being. Don’t let others engineer your consent for harm.

HUMILITY THROUGH SELF PACING

One of the agreed cornerstones of a life of effective recovery is having humility to accept that the challenge cannot be taken for granted. While AA has advocated that in fact you must resign your own capacity for self change to another entity which is debatable, it is true that few are able to simply self impose an easy act of choice to overcome addiction. Like David and Goliath, it takes recognition of the size of the monster we are in battle with and somber preparation of an intelligent plan to do battle in order to ensure victory. This echoes the Stages of Change cycles of human change which show the need to go from Precontemplative, Contemplative, Planning, Action and Maintenance to enact change.

There is a type of fluid slowness to start with humility. It’s a slowing down of decisions to start with careful consideration. It is patience in your actions, which is exactly the opposite of what addictive urges drive our bodies thought patterns and chemistry to do. It is following your breath and meditation which is critical in helping us slow down and just ‘be’ with ourselves. Through pace, we embrace humility, which in turn leads to making conscious (aka mindful) decisions that are based on the rational long term ramifications of choices versus the short term addictive drives we once had.

LEARNING TO LIVE WITH EXISTENTIAL ANGST

As an ardent life long student and graduate of philosophy, it’s always been a personal quest to study and examine the reasons for human existence. Its not necessarily unique to me to undertake this examination of life as its a common predisposition of all human life to ponder our reason for living in some way. The difference lies in the depth of consideration you give to this task. Famous philosophers like Hobbes, Aquinas, Plato and many others have devoted their lives to trying to provide some rational for that endless searching in the human psyche for our the reason behind our sense of being.

The noise of existential angst isn’t at the same volume for all people. For some its barely perceptible and they may perhaps live in harmonious happiness or as sordid, sad individuals ignorant of their own demise. Hopefully for them, the environment is kind and the silence of their own minds is matched by a world which supports their choices to live a good life. The rest of us have a varying degree of unease that is always on the quest for a better life. Duhka, or Adam’s apple in creation is that striving for something better to satisfy ones sense of being. Here perhaps lies the very root cause of addiction! Whether it is brought on by environment, trauma, cultural influence, stress or otherwise, substance abuse is often ‘a way to just escape’.

It is this pattern of escape from ones own sense of being that is often the most lethal ‘trigger’ towards addictive patterns that becomes exponentially amplified by the use of substances via their own negative qualities. Thus, to be direct to the problem and solution, we must learn to be with ourselves in our most difficult moments of unease, without substance abuse which is a temporary distraction that only makes our long term being harder to handle. Its a factual perspective that breath work, meditation, patience, habit substitution, nature bathing, surfing the urge, even religion and every other mental or physical exercise towards sobriety strives towards making us effective at until such time that we actually have unease less often

Next time the urge strikes and you feel the pain and existential angst of being, reflect on that this is a natural part of human existence. This is your healing, like the itch of a wound as it heals over. It is a good pain, worth savouring in the knowledge that you are fully alive, mindful and ok to be with yourself as your natural true self.