Addicted to Cleverness

“You’re probably too clever to ‘repose in God’, or to pick up some dusty book where the poetry creaks with loathing for women, or gays or someone. Maybe if quantum physics could come up with some force, or web, or string or something that tethers the mystery to something solid, something measurable, you’d think again but until then there’s nothing but an empty grave and a blank tombstone, chisel poised. So no one’s going to blame you if you perch on a carousel of destructive relationships and unfulfilling work, whirling round, never still, never truly looking within, never really going home…

The 12 Step program, which has saved my life, will change the life of anyone who embraces it. I have seen it work many times with people with addiction issues of every hue: drugs, sex, relationships, food, work, smoking, alcohol, technology, pornography, hoarding, gambling, everything. Because the instinct that drives the compulsion is universal. It is an attempt to solve the problem of disconnection, alienation and tepid despair, because the problem is ultimately ‘being human’ in an environment that is curiously ill-equipped to deal with the challenges that entails. We are all on the addiction scale.

Those of us born with clear-cut and blatant substance addiction are in many ways the lucky ones. We alcoholics and junkies have minimized our mystery to tiny cycles of craving and fulfilment. Our pattern is easier to observe and therefore, with commitment and help, easier to resolve. If your personal pattern happens to be the addiction equivalent of the ‘long form con-trick’, as opposed to a ‘short grift’, it can take ages to know just what your problem is. If you’re addicted to bad relationships, bad food, abusive bosses, conflict or pornography, it can take a lifetime to spot the problem, and apparently a lifetime is all we have…

What makes me qualified for such a task? A task which, in a different lexicon, might be called achieving peace, mindfulness, personal fulfilment, or yet more grandly ‘enlightenment’, ‘nirvana’ or ‘Christ-consciousness’? Certainly not some personal, ethical high ground. My authority comes not from a steep and certain mountain top of po-faced righteousness. This manual for Self-Realization comes not from the mountain but from the mud. Being human is a ‘me too’ business. We are all in the mud together. My qualification is that I am more addicted, more narcissistic, more driven by lust and the need for power and recognition. Every single pleasure-giving thing that’s come my way from the cradle in Grays to the Hollywood chaise longue has been grabbed and guzzled and fondled and f**ked and smoked and sucked and for what? Ashes…

I now believe addiction to be a calling. A blessing. I now hear a rhythm behind the beat, behind the scratching discordant sound of my constant thinking. A true pulse behind the bombastic thud of the ego drum. There, in the silence, the offbeat presence of another thing. What could it be, this other consciousness? Just the sublime accompaniment to my growing nails, pumping heart and rushing blood? These physical and discernible bodily phenomena, do they have a counterpart in a world less obvious? Are we addicts like the animals that evidently pre-emptively fled the oncoming tsunami, sensing some foreboding? Are we attuned to prickling signals that demand anaesthesia? What is the pain? What is it? What does it want?...

Well actually you already are a religious nut, if you take ‘religious nut’ to mean that you live your life adhering to a set of beliefs and principles and observances concerning conduct. Most people in the West belong to a popular cult of individualism and materialism where the pursuit of our trivial, petty desires is a daily ritual. If you’re reading this specifically because you have addiction issues, whether to substances or behaviors, you are in an advanced sect with highly particular and devotional practices, sometimes so ingrained they don’t even have to be explicitly ‘thought’, they are intensely and unthinkingly believed. ‘If I find Miss Right, all will be well.’ ‘If I can get my rocks off, or yawn down a pint of ice cream, I’ll be okay.’ What this program asks us to consider is the possibility of hope. Hope that a different perspective is possible. Hope that there is a different way.

To undertake this process, the pursuit of happiness, or contentment or presence or freedom, we have to believe that such a thing is obtainable. Through this, the rather grim and at times, let’s face it, bloody glamorous research of my life I’ve inadvertently happened upon some incredible people and ideas that, one day at a time, sometimes one moment at a time, lift me out of the glistening filth and into the presence of something ancient and timeless which I believe, no matter what your problem, will give you access to The Solution…

12 Steps says the word God as freely and as frequently as an ecclesiastical Tourette’s sufferer. I sat in chilly rooms in the British countryside all chastened and desperate, looking at these bleak edicts on the wall, thinking, ‘maybe for you, but not for me’. Curiously, later examination of these principles revealed that self-centred, egotistical thinking is the defining attribute of the addictive condition. Self-centredness is a tricky thing; it encompasses more than just vanity. It’s not just Fonzie, looking at himself in self-satisfied wonder and flexing his little tush, no.

Here is a more opaque example of self-centredness. If your partner is a bit wayward, you know selfish or difficult and you cast yourself as the downtrodden carer, pacing behind them going, ‘I don’t know what they’d do without me’, that is another form of self-centredness. You are making yourself and your feelings about the situation the ontological (steady!) centre of the world. Is there a different way that you could be you? Especially as we all know, don’t we, the you being you and me being me is the absolute alpha and omega of the world today, flick on a TV, glance at your feed, it’s all about me, me, me, the perfect product, holiday, hair tonic, telephone provider for my unique self. Well that’s just fine and dandy, but I don’t really know what ‘me’ is or what ‘me’ wants and now I’m beginning to question if thinking about ‘me’ all day is doing ‘me’ any good.

The first time I saw the Steps, I thought, ‘Hmm, a bit religious, a bit pious, a bit ambitious’. There was the ‘Christiany’ feel. Look at the third step, ‘turn our will and our lives over to the care of God’ – steady on old boy, that just sounds like a cosy version of ISIS. But now I know that you could be a devout Muslim with a sugar problem, an atheist Jew who watches too much porn, a Hindu who can’t stay faithful, or a humanist who shops more than they can afford to and this program will effortlessly form around your flaws and attributes, placing you on the path you were always intended to walk, making you, quite simply, the best version of yourself it is possible to be. In my case, as you will see, this includes a good many flaws, some odd thoughts and occasional behavioral outbursts…”

~ "Russell Brand has been a junkie, an alcoholic, a bulimic and an attention addict (admittedly, that one hasn’t exactly been stamped out) — it’s quite the feat that he’s still here. Right now Mr. Brand is promoting his latest book, “Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions,” a thought-provoking explication of the 12-step program run through the Mixmaster of Mr. Brand’s verbal pyrotechnics. He believes the 12 steps have saved him. He wants them to save you too.

Mr. Brand’s thinking about addiction goes something like this: At the root of all addiction is narcissism, a constant thrumming attention to self. If you are self-absorbed you are suffering, and if you suffer you seek ways to stop it — through drugs, alcohol, sex, maybe Facebook “likes.”

“We are trying to solve inner problems externally — whatever it is in our lives that is missing,” he said. “Eckhart Tolle said it perfectly: ‘Addiction starts with pain and ends with pain.’ Here’s the point. Drugs, booze, sex … It’s not the particular addiction that matters as much as the fact that your life is out of control because of it." ~ NY Times