Yoga and the Twelve-Step Path. Kyczy Hawk

       Chapter Three

      What Is Addiction?

      There are two questions here: what is addiction, and why do we become addicted? I would like to address the second question before I delve into the first. There are genetic tendencies, rearing conditions, and the emotional/spiritual makeup of each individual. One can have had a perfect childhood with healthy parents, with no history of addiction in close family members, or one can have had an upbringing in a toxically dysfunctional home. There is not one certain path to addiction, but there are commonalities among addicts in how they perceive and process the world.

      I believe that I moved down the path to addiction as an aversion to inner turmoil and psychic pain. Why did I allow myself to break the rules (of which I had been inordinately fond as a youth) to hang out with the forbidden people and do forbidden things? Why was I so attracted to risk and danger? My early family life left me with no trust in people, places, and things; trust in these could let you down. Chaos was a constant. I knew from the news, television, and my distressed junior high teachers that drinking and drugs were illegal and dangerous. I had attended Alateen (a twelve-step program for the children of alcoholics) when my mother first attempted to get sober. I was aware of the dangers of addiction, yet the release provided by drugs and alcohol—the complete distraction from daily life—was too alluring to avoid.

      My descent into full-on addiction was swift, but it took many years before I finally hit bottom. At first I gave little thought to my feelings of misery, loneliness, and despair. I never questioned these feelings. I considered them to be an uncomfortable part of life that deserved no more or less attention than anything else. When I started getting loaded on a regular basis, I found relief from these painful and terrifying emotions. This was a double bonus! Simultaneously I had found freedom from the pain of life along with the exciting social aspects of drug use and drinking—the music and sex.

      I was still very young when I determined that I could not live without these crutches—the booze, the drugs, and the partners. It kept me totally diverted from my pain until I couldn’t keep that lifestyle up any more. I was “sick and tired of being sick and tired”; I was unable to keep a semblance of a regular life, and no matter how much I used, I was still in agony. I found that point of no return long before I was actually able to quit drinking, using, and carousing. I came to that moment over and over—still unable to stop—adding self-loathing and a sense of entrapment to my other disowned feelings. My entire consciousness had moved away from searching for my true self, but this true self was pining for life. This cycle lasted until the day I sat on my bed, feeling that the essence of my inner self was slipping away. Not until then had I realized the true nature of this crisis. That was the moment in which I felt I had to make a choice—to walk out of the house and down the street into complete oblivion, or to change, to put down the booze, the drugs, and even “the guy,” and to start down the road to recovery. I chose to change. I had had my spiritual awakening.

      Addiction Stems from a “Spiritual Malady”

      The terms spiritual awakening and spiritual experience are used in the Basic Texts of twelve-step recovery to describe a psychic change in an addicted person that is strong enough to bring about a change in behavior over time; in other words, a change in thinking sufficient to effect recovery (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 128).

      The success of the twelve-step program of recovery in treating addiction is due to the fact that all three aspects of the person—body, mind, and spirit—are addressed. However, the Twelve Steps, in my opinion, don’t go far enough in addressing the physical recovery needed. There are also more tools available to investigate the mind, and to nurture the spiritual self. These parts of the journey can be addressed individually in many ways, but I believe, and have proven to my own satisfaction, that yoga addresses all three with precision, compassion, unity, and ease. Of course, millions of people around the world have found recovery in the Twelve Steps without the addition of yoga; however, for me, integrating yoga practice into my twelve-step “design for living” is just a natural and very welcome enhancement of my recovery.