When I set out on my sobriety journey, I had one thing in mind: get a handle on my binge drinking. Little did it occur to me then that I’d end up getting a handle on a whole hell of a lot more than that!
While I didn’t grasp it at the time, it turned out that bingeing had infiltrated nearly every aspect of my life. I had become downright gluttonous in most things – eating, drinking, streaming shows, you name it. Of course, I didn’t see it that way. You see, I was under the illusion that I was in control and exercising my own free will as I needlessly frittered my life away.
What a joke!
Though I was unwilling to recognize it, I was being raked over the coals by a set of deeply entrenched habits, many of which were decades in the making.
The First Thing to Go
Looking back from the vantage point of nearly ten months of daily meditation and the tremendous mental, physical, and spiritual growth resulting from it, I still have to say that the single most impactful day so far was Day 35.
It’s still hard for me to completely grasp the events of this particular day. What transpired deeply changed the trajectory of my sobriety and my life.
After more than two decades of daily marijuana smoking, I stopped cold turkey. My long-time pot toking buddies marveled at my ability to quit so easily. Especially since I was suffering from zero cravings of any kind.
They’d ask me, “How did you do it? Were you looking to quit?”
My response was equally perplexing to both them and me, “I didn’t quit pot, it quit me.”
This answer is often met with a quizzical expression of disbelief, as if I’m making it up. Truth is, I’m not. This is what really happened, and you can read about it here.
So What Happened?
The most logical explanation is that mindfulness meditation replaced whatever it was marijuana was giving me in terms of relaxation, sensory experience, and the ability to disconnect from the hecticness of life.
In fact, in the nine months following this life changing/affirming event, I can say unequivocally that mindfulness meditation has taken me far beyond the false enlightenment marijuana once dangled before me.
For decades, marijuana was my go-to crutch to disconnect from the suffering of daily existence. Today, meditation is my most important tool for connecting with and rising above the suffering of my daily existence. And my life has improved in every conceivable way.
Meditation gave me (and continues to give me) the meta perspective to understand how bingeing on marijuana led to the bingeing that eventually infiltrated every aspect of my life.
Binge Drinking
Binge drinking alcohol was the vice I had in my sights when I embarked on my daily meditation practice. I now joke that marijuana addiction was collateral damage – killed by friendly fire.
Not long after pot quit me, I began to appreciate the role it had played in driving my binge drinking and eating and binge-watching tv.
In the early days of smoking pot, the euphoric rush and saccharine insights it provided were enough to satisfy me. But as time went on and my endocannabinoid system became increasingly dulled by daily use, I needed something else to help out with my buzz. Enter alcohol.
Over time, Drinkie and Smokie (as I’ve affectionate named them) became the best of friends. A few bongs hits were often followed by a few India Pale Ales (IPAs). And those IPAs were then followed by a few more bong hits, and then a few more IPAs. Mix and repeat. I later named this pattern Buzz Chasing.
Smoking all this pot also gave me the ‘munchies’. Armed with the munchies, I’d often binge of sugar and junk food.
Until pot exited my life, I was fairly convinced that AA was going to be my inevitable road out of this mess. But without pot in the mix, getting drunk wasn’t as fun or interesting. Drinkie wasn’t complete without his old friend Smokie.
Fast forward to today, and I feel I’ve managed to rewire my brain to want less alcohol. And while this may not be possible for many suffering from alcohol use disorder, it seems to be working for my once extreme gray area drinking problem.
And So…
This means I can enjoy a couple of beers, or even one with dinner, and call it a night. I don’t want anymore. Most nights I don’t drink at all or even think about it. This is a huge departure from drinking upwards of a 12 pack five nights a week. The same is true for sweets and junk food. A little dab will do and I’m satiated.
Again, this will not work for everyone. Maybe I’m one of the lucky few, or maybe I’m onto something. You can explore several viable options to stop or reduce drinking on my There’s A Recipe For Sobriety? page.
Bye Bye Sugar Bingeing
In the early days, cutting down on alcohol resulted in the ramping up of sugar consumption. I came to discover later addiction swapping is quite common in recovery. And I found myself confronting yet another binging problem.
To tackle sugar binging, I followed up my Dry January with a Sugar Free February. A month without alcohol immediately proceeded by a month without sugar was quite an interesting experiment. During Dry January, I turned to sugar and in the midst of Sugar Free February I used alcohol as a crutch.
In neither case did I binge. I would simply have a couple pieces of candy or a few beers. Not everyday either, just when I needed to work past a craving.
The experience of tackling these challenges individually gave me a greater appreciation of the interchangeable roles alcohol and sugar play. Specifically how bingeing on one often leads to bingeing on the other.
With another couple of months under my belt since this experiment, I’m happy to report that I’m no longer bingeing on either sugar or alcohol.
But there was yet more bingeing to confront. I was in a house of mirrors.
Ego Binging
Ego is the root of ALL BINGING. Why do I say this? Simple. Because we binge to make ourselves feel good. Or if not good, at least a little better than we previously felt.
Sugar, alcohol, THC, gambling, sex, shopping, bingeing your favorite show, and a whole host of other things stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain when we consume or participate in them.
The irony is that the more we consume/participate, the more it takes to achieve the same level of pleasurably stimulation. Add to this the deep-seated problem our society has in confusing pleasure with happiness. Before you know it, you’re on the Highway To Hell. You’re addicted to whatever it is that once brought you pleasure but no longer does. The more you have, the emptier you feel.
In fact, there comes a point for many where excessive pleasure center stimulation merely brings them back to a degraded feeling of ‘normal’.
Stepping away from drug and alcohol addiction for a moment, I want you to think back on a recent material acquisition. Maybe that was a car, gaming system, a piece of clothing or jewelry, or a guitar (one of my guilty pleasures).
Have you ever noticed that given all of the anticipation and infatuation leading up to the purchase of that ‘thing’ you must have, within a very short period of time, you’re onto the next thing? That all important purchase is now ancient history. The thrill is gone, as they say.
Bingeing is like that. You are constantly shoveling external stimuli (drugs, shopping, gambling, Netflix, sugar, food, etc) into a hole that can never be filled. Not with external things, anyway. That hole can only be filled via the long arduous process of deep self-exploration and realization. By letting go of anger, jealousy, trauma, and pain rather than covering it up with distraction and dopamine.
It’s A Journey Not A Destination
Do not be mistaken, I’m very much in the throes of this whole Bye Bye Binge thing. But it is getting easier everyday I practice. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve installed a kind of Binge Circuit Breaker in my brain. This breaker pops just before enough becomes too much; before bite becomes binge.
I can’t say that I intended to create such a thing, but that is how I can best describe the result of 10+ months of mindfulness meditation to others. Decoupling happiness from pleasure and pleasure from external stimuli is a long road, but I can say with 100% confidence that it is a road worth travelling.
I always worry about complete abstinence for myself when it comes to anything. To me this is akin to fire suppression as opposed to controlled burns. When you let the dry brush and kindling build up for long enough, a small spark can burn the whole world to the ground. But when we replace fire suppression with fire management, we often experience a far different result. That’s been my experience anyway.
Yet, I must warn those who have dire addiction issues, that a bone-dry bush should not play with matches. As always, I point those folks to my addiction resources pages and may God be with you as you embark upon your own sobriety journey.
For me, there is still a long road ahead, basically the rest of my life, to see where this whole deal ultimately leads. And I’m quite good with that because I now understand that the anticipation of the journey far exceeds the fleeting pleasure of the destination once I arrive there.
