It is not hard to recall stories of rites of passage, visions, messages, healing and much more when looking back into the use of substances within civilizations. Priests and Shamans used plants that produced a trance like state for millennia. Amanita Muscaria, a mushroom with its familiar appearance of red with white spots, was used for religious rituals in Asia for 4000 years. It was also used in India and Siberia. Psylocybe or “magic mushrooms” as we know them now were used for religious rituals in Central America. Peyote, containing mescaline, was used for spiritual rituals by indigenous people in the southern area of what is now the USA.
History, legend and myth are replete with stories of rites of passage for youth and adults alike using various hallucinogenic substances. The experiences have been described as sacred, profound, enlightening and emotionally healing. The visions or hallucinations have thought to have been guidance for one’s journey in life.
There are other ways that substances have been used in all cultures including medicinal and recreational purposes. Here though, I want to stick with my experience of spirituality related to substance use. I want to describe how I seemed to take a path that actually led to the blocking of my own spirituality rather than enlightenment. Given that, it seems I must touch on all of the purposes of substance use in order to paint a whole picture of my own journey and perhaps the journeys of so many I worked with in my life time and career.
When exploring the definition of spirituality, I find the consensus is that it is a recognition of something that is greater than the self. It is not hard then to understand the creation of the various gods associated with mythology and the need to put form of some kind to an all powerful omnipresent being or beings. And it is not hard to see why we use metaphor to help us understand. However, I personally believe that as humans, we have created mythology as a way to better understand that feeling of awe I get when thinking of things greater than myself. And a way to describe my relationship with that which is greater than just me.
The mythology we have created also helps us to search out meaning and reason to why things are the way they are. How was the universe created? Why is the sky blue? Why are there so many different living things? What values do we put on things or take away from things? Why did I get addicted and others did not?
There seems to be a divide between science and religion today. As you may have guessed, with no offence intended to anyone, I equate religion with mythology. Again a way to find understanding of what is. Science is also a way to find understanding of what is. There is the common ground. The difference is that science often takes what could be considered mythology (hypothesis) and attempts to systematically confirm its validity. Religion is faith in something that is believed to be there while science rigorously attempts to confirm what is believed to be there. Spirituality seems to be the hardest thing to confirm either way except that it is a unique personal experience of awareness.
I feel that sense of awe most of all when sitting on a mountain top or sitting by the ocean or a lake or in the forest. To me these are all things greater than my perceived self. But I have also gratefully learned from Indigenous stories and culture that while these things are all greater, they are also related to me. My relationship with the world is symbiotic, not separate. So through that means of imagining, spirituality is translated into something I can understand. It is awareness. It is me, it is the world, we overlap as we are a part of a whole. I believe that our connection makes us one. I am part of the greater as the greater is part of me.
To me spirituality is my present awareness of all that is around me in relation to the thoughts and feelings within me. It is self awareness in relation to awareness of the world and the universe. That to me is how we are part of the same whole.
Sometimes we lose touch with spirituality, religion, mythology, curiosity, self awareness, self purpose and all of those things that I believe complete the concept of spirituality. I think that is why that over the millennia, we have created rituals, rules, organizations, institutions, policies, attitudes and behaviours that are meant to keep us aware of our spirituality. To keep us involved in all of the values and activities associated with spirituality. Over the millennia though, I’m convinced we have taken some drastic wrong turns taking us in directions that have actually led us farther from spirituality than we intended.
My own substance use transformed from a culturally recreational use to a psychological and physiological dependency into addiction. Through that process, I lost touch with my sense of self overall. My eyes closed.
Here’s how I think that happened:
I started with substances very young: 10 years old to be precise. At the time, any impact on the developing brain of a child was certainly not publicly known if known at all. Now we have to understand that addiction is far more than just using a drug. It is also more than what happens in the human brain. It is about the cultural environment one is raised in. It is about the lack of knowledge or understanding. It is about the demonization and moralistic judgments placed on it. In other words, addiction like spirituality, is about the relationship between the self and all other things. The difference for me and perhaps many who struggle with addiction is that my awareness of that relationship, if it was ever there at age 10, was minute if not non existent.
My first substance (after sugar and caffeine, but that’s a whole other story) was nicotine. Hell, the whole world smoked. All of my childhood heroes smoked. The coolest dudes, the sexiest women, my whole family, smoked. We smoked on the bus, we smoked in the theatres. We smoked while shopping, driving, mopping, walking. We smoked inside our high schools in the smoke pits. Smoking was the social and cultural norm with one slight hypocritical caveat; kids were not supposed to smoke because … it was bad for you? The irony and bullshit was not lost on me.
So I was warned at a young age, that I would get the beating of my life if I was ever caught smoking. (At least that’s what it translated to for me). So when I had my very first smoke, one which I snuck from my cousin, I did not go racing back to my parents and announce my successful quest into their world of smoking. Nope. I learned right off the bat, from the cultural warning I received, that if I were to explore the world in which so many people enjoyed the pleasure of smoking, I would have to sneak, hide, and lie. That nasty little neural pathway follows me to this day and is sometimes referred to as the addictive personality.
Now one could argue that I could have made a moral righteous decision never to explore or experiment with something so enticing. But you know, fuck that! My 10 year old self wanted a piece of that action. I wanted to know what the attraction was. And why it was so taboo for me. It excited me that I was taking such a risk. And I found out. I loved it! And it put me on par with the cool kids. But the main thing at that time, and pretty much for years after, was my lack of development of self awareness.
I ended up using many other substances which evolved into a little more than just recreational use. I was finding that I was losing control of my thinking and behaviour. My anxiety was actually increasing. My already tumultuous relationship with my step father got worse. In other words, this was not a spiritual experience for me at this time.
There came a moment when it became too much. A very terrifying bad trip and the appearance of a line I knew I didn’t want to cross (but did do the line literally anyway) triggered something in me. I refer to it as my crossroads moment at that time.
After leaving home briefly, I returned. The aggression was still present there and I did not feel very safe but I was determined to make a change in my life. The first night at home I had a very profound vision. Whether that was withdrawal or something else didn’t matter. It was a spiritual experience for me. From that vision I realized that I could have purpose and meaning in my life. I guess whatever that was, it is easy to explain it as something greater than myself. Currently I still see it as my eyes opening again to what was always there. Thus my relationship within and without changed.
I found a community I could live at where I could grow spiritually and culturally. From there I became a peer counsellor for a couple of years. I found that opportunities and positive things were happening. Long story short, learning self awareness through various spiritual means improved my spiritual being and consciousness of myself and my relationship with the universe and world around me. So things fell into place for me. I became the person I thought I wanted to be.
Later in life, I again lost that awareness.
Fraught with grief and loss, chronic trauma, a typical and damaging side effect from years of counselling others, I began to experience chronic traumatic stress. In simple terms, it became very difficult to hear of all the pain and suffering and injustice that people were experiencing. From sexual and physical abuse rampant in the drug culture to the same issues rampant in many families and society as well. The horror stories, the unrealized dreams, the hopelessness and despair from mental unwellness and the medicating from substance use in a society that demonized all of it. People were trapped, many with nowhere to go.
It became overwhelming for me. My self care started turning into medicating myself. It started with occasional glasses of wine or a couple of beers. When I became emotionally and physically accustomed to the relief I felt with alcohol I soon became dependent. Scared and ashamed, I started to hide it and lie about it. Eventually I just didn’t care. I wasn’t motivated. I wasn’t inspired. I lost my self awareness once again. I had lost touch with any spirituality I had enjoyed in the past.
I managed to gain abstinence off and on with sincere attempts to quit. I knew all of the tricks through therapy. But I could not talk to anyone about it. Because of my lies and secrecy, it seemed that no one would believe the strategies and what knowledge I did have about addiction and how I could get out of it. I gained 4 years and then 2 years and then a number of months of abstinence before I was finally able to identify what was missing in my life.
I use the same strategies now that I learned and taught as a counsellor. But what I have also included in my life is the renewed search and practice of spirituality in my life. Interestingly, many of the strategies taught in mainstream therapy are designed to increase self awareness. But that needs context and support. There are now people in my life that I can speak with that understand my journey, at least enough that I can feel connection with them. For that is also a huge part of being spiritual.
There is a recent saying out there that the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it is connection. And that saying is very true. Connection is the very essence of sharing spirituality. When I share myself, others share themselves. We become connected, and then we connect with our greater selves and the universe in which we dwell. And I don’t mean just sharing stories of addiction. I mean sharing of self; of our emotions, wants, desires, hates, challenges and strengths. All of it.
They say only an alcoholic can help an alcoholic. I say from my experience that we all share similar emotions, strengths and challenges. And we all share them differently. My experience of substance use, while similar, is also different than your experience of substance use or anything else for that matter. It is the unconditional sharing that counts.
So while substance use can be a spiritual pathway to opening up our inner selves to the universe around us and that which we are already connected to, as with all things, over use or use without true intent can lead to the closing of those thresholds to a spiritual world. Science is now returning to substances to help treat mental health and substance use health. As long as we recognize all of the nuances to addiction and all forms of mental health, we should be able to improve ourselves and the world around us by including the spirituality that is all around and within us.
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