Beast, Angel, Madman

It’s about time I ripped off the band aid:

My name is Alex, and I’m a recovering drug addict and alcoholic.

I’ve spent many moons contemplating whether or not to write this. In early recovery, I could not fathom outing myself in such a way.

I am exhilarated; I am terrified.

I thought about waiting until January to publish it—when I’ll be celebrating my five years of freedom from the grimness of alcohol, the belying loveliness of cannabis, and the unfailing sadness of my drugs of choice.

It would be nice to write myself a short saccharine self-congratulatory post then and procrastinate further on this, wouldn’t it?

But every single day is a victory. One of COVID-19’s silver linings is how it has laid bare the far-reaching, even brave, vulnerability of the human condition.

So it’s all happening now. Over the coming months, I’ll share an ongoing series on addiction. Welcome to the first part. It feels like my most important writing yet. It is also my most personal.

Let us enter…

Part I:

Beast, Angel, Madman

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that addiction is the outgrowth of pain buried deep within the soul.

The process of unearthing that pain is lifelong, and it requires excavating shovels to uncover the traumas, fracking drills to pierce the depths of the psyche, and an everyday toolkit for actionable transformation.

Like so many others, the heart of my story is the pain—the fear—of rejection. Of being rejected because I am me.

It’s hard to know exactly where My Story begins. But as a child, I had oodles of wild energy—and no idea where to put it. I acted out at home and in the classroom. I lived as an insurgent against any authority that dared to face me.

Naturally, this behavior got me in all sorts of fun trouble—from time-out to detention. I was a handful, as I dashed and darted about, wreaking havoc in the name of wildness. Maybe I thought I was the little boy in Where the Wild Things Are. But I wasn’t. And like it did to little Max, it hurt to be punished—in my case, for being an overly energetic kid.

I learned at a young age that how I behaved was not O.K. for the society I was born into. Being authentically me was unacceptable, and often resulted in literal banishment and scolding.

Looking back, all my restless and rebellious childhood antics were a loud, clear scream for belonging. I felt I did not fit into the world, yet I still desperately craved to belong to it. My solution? Attention-seeking behavior, no matter how destructive.

I write this now with the benefit of hindsight, but don’t let me get it twisted—back then I enjoyed the veil of youthful ignorance: rebellion was indeed good fun.

When I was about fifteen, my rebellion naturally evolved to include cannabis use. Once I started, I did not stop—literally. I smoked or ingested cannabis every day until I was 29.

My entire high school experience was defined by drinking, smoking, and arrogance. Cannabis became part of my identity, and my gateway to social belonging. I experimented with other drugs, including my first exposure to psychedelics.

I look back at these days with a bittersweet grin. Partying and smoking had filled the void in my selfhood, and these were still part of the Good Times.

My partying leveled-up in college: I became a professional. There were early signs of trouble, doing hard drugs, alone in the late hours of the evening. But it never felt particularly bad, or unique—I wasn’t the only one in college drinking and smoking every day, snorting Adderall for all-night study binges, and taking Xanax and Percocet to come down.

Still, I did not think I had a problem—I thought I was just a rebel. I romanticized my drug use, likening myself to Hemingway, Camus, and Ginsberg. I enjoyed the quiet of the late-night hours, reading poetry and philosophy while smoking hash joint after hash joint, sipping on Sailor Jerry.

These many late nights with existentialists and post-modernists built my worldview at the time: Life is meaningless, so fuck the system.

In my mind, I was an existentialist searching for life’s meaning, a writer chasing a story, a revolutionary fighting for the counter culture—and an insignificant speck of dust drifting in the cosmic wind, all at the same time. In truth…

I somehow found myself in an Ivy League school, surrounded by insane levels of wealth, intelligence, and status, on a path I was not sure I even wanted. I felt inadequate, and attempted to create belonging by separating myself from the “herd.”

And I was just a restless kid who did not know who he was. Drugs became the social lubricant to soothe my unknowing, and I created a party boy identity—a seemingly formidable fortress built on a shaky foundation—that served to shield my wounded inner child.

Things did not start “getting out of hand” until I made my way out to California. This is when I started to realize that late nights spent doing drugs, alone, while chasing rabbit holes into the intellectual dark web was not “normal” twenty-three-year-old behavior.

But! Addiction is a mind virus. I continued to “successfully” rationalize my drug use as all-in-all beneficial. I had zero awareness of the hidden insecurities driving this behavior. By this point, my self-identified persona had shifted from drunk poet to mastermind biohacking space-chemist. I pursued altered consciousnesses in a way I thought brave, in a way lesser mortals wouldn’t dare:

Do you know how good the perfectly executed cocktail of speed, Diazapam, cocaine, and Oxycotin feels?

Lace the day with cannabis. Tequila to welcome the early evening. A muscle relaxant for digestif. And a veritable horse tranquilizer for a nightcap... Voila, the perfect day.

I was wrapped up in a materialist mindset—I thought my addiction was strictly a physical problem. It was the damn drugs—not me! And, I mean, I was a highly functioning addict. So, it was all good, no?

Believe, there were many times along the way that I knew I’d lost control. I would wake drenched in cold sweat, my muscles aching, chills traversing my limbs, the agitation only relieved by my next fix.

I knew I needed help, but what does help look like? And where does it live?

More than anything, I was too scared to seek it out. Especially too scared to ask for it, terrified of what people might think, how I would be judged for my “moral failings.”

And the prospect of weaning myself off did pose a real physical problem: I lived deep, deep inside my chemical dependency on opiates, benzodiazepines, and amphetamines. Going cold turkey would not only have driven me into unconscionable pain—it would have been dangerous. Potentially lethal.

But that didn’t stop me from trying several times. Such was my desperation, my despair. I’d make it a couple days—sometimes a couple weeks—into a black hole of debilitating withdrawal. Then, relapse.

This predicament drove my life for five years.

Now is where my story gets (really) dark.

Many nights I would go to bed on a cocktail of drugs so powerful, I did not know if I would wake up the next morning. In these nights, my heart cried for love and acceptance, but the cries were washed out by the sound of my shame, and hushed into sobs by the power of pharmaceuticals.

Eventually, the drugs “stopped working,” so I made half-assed attempts at getting treatment. I half-heartedly tried therapy. I started recovery outpatient programs, and quit them in a rage, offended to be labeled and treated like a drug addict.

My health deteriorated. I was malnourished, dehydrated, and energetically dead. Emotionally, I was hotheaded and agitated. My relationships crumbled. I was no longer on my game at work—far from it. Not to mention, all this drug “mastermind” usage is not free. My finances were a wreck.

I was brought to my knees when—in the same week—I was laid off from work and my wife (now ex) had walked out on me. My life was in shambles. I had finally had enough.

Every addict and alcoholic who recovers has a rock-bottom. These bottoms exist on a spectrum, and they are horrible, precious, and sacred times. Times when we can lie to ourselves no longer, and when we are compelled to honesty with self:

I don’t know what I’m doing. My life is out of control. I am desperate. I’ll try anything.

They say an addict needs to cling to their recovery program like drowning person clutches a life raft. That’s what I did—recovery became my life, and I pursued it relentlessly.

I dove headfirst into outpatient treatment. I started weekly therapy, during which I spoke and listened with an open heart and a steely resolve. I opened up to my family and closest friends—whom I had been lying to. For the first time in my life, I spoke with other addicts and alcoholics in group meetings and therapy. I went to AA, found a sponsor, started doing service work, and worked the steps.

I went to a meeting every day for a year.

My path with recovery did not end with AA. My journey of healing led me to the jungles of the Amazon rainforest to work with plant medicines, workshops to study Buddhism, different trainers to master calisthenics and healthy eating, the classroom to learn the ancient wisdom of yoga, and the list goes continues to grow.

Addiction is my Greatest Teacher, and the learning is ongoing. In my “sobriety,” I’ve struggled and dealt with addictions to caffeine, tobacco, and screens. I had to navigate a challenging divorce. I continue to catch my addiction reaping its grim head today.

In the coming months, I’ll be sharing more about what I’ve learned about addiction, the healing potential of psychedelics, and how to ignite second-stage recovery. I believe addiction needs to be re-understood, and re-branded: the goal should not be “sobriety.” The goal is awakening.

May it be so.

“I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”
—Dylan Thomas

Thanks for reading.

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Alex OlshonskyAugust 7, 2020