1.1 Amanda W.

“[…] reality’s a trigger,” said the heroin addict who was going through detox at the time the article I was reading was written for the Washington Post.

It’s like saying one was allergic to life itself.
As if, in order to get through it, one needed a patch or a remedy to alleviate one’s negative reaction to it – not just once, but permanently.
And if one didn’t have an antidote at hand, life itself had to be suppressed, covered up, or camouflaged so that it didn’t pose a threat.
In the end, it sounds like one is not up to life and just can’t take it.

Amanda W. was a teenager when she was prescribed opiate pills for a minor injury. The prescribed pills helped her cope not only with the pain but also with her anger when her parents divorced. They also alleviated her problems with self-doubt, depression and ADHD.
So it was that Amanda became addicted. Soon, even 15 pills weren’t enough to get her through a day, and she needed something stronger. The switch to heroin seemed inevitable.

Since then, Amanda has made several attempts to break the addiction cycle. In her case, as with many other addicts, the family is heavily involved, as the addiction affects not only the addict, but all family members as well.
Most of the time, however, the focus is on the addict alone.
What’s wrong with them? Why do they have to numb themselves? Why can’t they function like everyone else? Why are they so preoccupied with themselves? Where does their destructive attitude toward life come from?

When we acknowledge that no one is an island to themselves, we cannot isolate the addict and their addiction from all the factors and influences concerning the environment they grew up in.
When we acknowledge that we are all interconnected, the addiction might display something underlying that is much more fundamental than we would like to admit. Like a sign pointing at a deeper hidden cause.

Take a look at disease. Diseases are largely viewed as phenomena that exist on their own. We confuse signs and causes and fail to look at disease (w)holistically or to see the bigger picture of what is conveyed by the disease picture.
Similarly, we tend to view the addict as cause and effect in one and wonder why we are unable to find the trigger for suffering and work with it.

The story goes that Mullah Nasruddin had lost his keys. It was late at night, and he was frantically searching for them underneath a streetlight in front of his house. A friend who happened to be passing by saw him and joined him in his search. But even with their combined efforts, they were unable to find the lost keys.
Do you remember when you last had the keys, the friend finally asked.
Yes, said the Mullah. I had them in the house and lost them there.
The friend was visibly shocked.
Then why did we look for it outside in the street if you lost it in the house, he asked.
Because there is more light here than in my house, replied the Mullah.

We might laugh at the stupidity of the Sufi jester and think that it has nothing to do with us. We would not be so foolish as to look for solutions where they are not to be found, simply because the circumstances in which we seek them seem more controllable and convenient.
Behind the humor, however, lies a truthful and very accurate observation that pokes fun at the way we deal with problems.

When we are confronted with a “dis-order” or a “mal-function” we do not consider them as signs or symbols that could serve us. We don’t like chaos and flaws and would like them to disappear quickly, or at least not be seen again.
Instead of asking ourselves what they – which were previously in the dark, ignored, neglected or pushed aside and now demand our attention – might remind us of or point to, we do not look at the possible effects and consequences.

We don’t want to know where they will lead us, because we don’t know what to expect and – should we find it – whether we can handle it.
We prefer to ignore the inherent symbolism.

The famous warning “Here be dragons” (Latin: HIC SUNT DRACONES) is a phrase that was thought to be used in the earlier days on uncharted corners of maps and globes of our world. These were areas that were not yet explored and therefore dangerous. The warning as well as the image of dragons depict metaphorically our deep rooted fear of the unexplored that lies in the dark.
What scares us is, the uncertainty of the unknown.
It is the oldest and strongest emotion, an evolutionary trait implanted in our psyche when predators roamed the night and we were not at the top of the food chain. Fear of the unknown is primal.
Both the warning and the image of the dragons metaphorically represent our deep-rooted fear of the unexplored that lies in the darkness.
What scares us is the uncertainty of the unknown.

As much as we would like to predict and plan for what is to come, in uncertainty this is hard to do. It has proven to be life-saving to better pay attention once too often than once too little. To respond to uncertainty evolution has taught us to avoid it altogether or to put our body and mind in a state of arousal to respond to a potentially harmful situation. It is a natural stress response to keep us on our toes and to prepare our bodies and minds to fight or flight.

On the downside, uncertainty can stress us out. We don’t know what’s out there. And that can be terrifying. Our imagination runs free and tainted by fear it can fill in the scariest and worst possibilities. We might be in danger, we might be on our own, we might lose control, get stuck or lost and never be able to find our way back or even die.

Our brain can get caught up in simulating and playing out endless possibilities of such situations. The inability to process the unknown can send us into a spinning cycle and feeds back into a loop of anxiety and panic.

By contrast, a set and defined area gives us the illusion of control. We don’t feel helpless or overwhelmed. If we can use reason and intellect to figure out how to approach and fix the malfunction, we have a sense of control and power.
Most often than not, we will look for solutions in the worlds we know, in areas in the visible, in the light so to speak. We’d rather repeat the familiar, than to look for something new in the unknown, in the darkness.

But why does uncertainty make us so uneasy? What is so scary about it? What are those dragons?

It was a time of great uncertainty when Amanda learned that drugs could help her cope with the difficult emotional states triggered by her parents’ divorce. In children and adolescents separation anxiety during parental divorce is one of the most common psychological problems. It can trigger a variety of distressing feelings such as confusion, anger, guilt, and blame. It leaves children feeling helpless, worried and anxious in the face of impending loss and the grief they must deal with.

Even though Amanda is no longer the teenager she once was, the way she deals with negative feelings today is based on a mechanism she picked up accidentally in the past and unconsciously built firmly into the blueprint of her coping strategies – by using drugs.

But make no mistake. This isn’t just Amanda or an addict’s strategy. In one way or another, we all do it.
Maybe not by using drugs, but we all have our strategies for avoiding our negative feelings and trying to either numb ourselves or feel better.
We simply don’t know how to cope with negative feelings – with our pain, anxiety and insecurities – and run away from ourselves in a multitude of ways.
We don’t dare look at what is inside of us that is asking for our attention and care. It seems that inside of us are “dragons.” Outside of us, there are “street lights” where we can conveniently look for what has been lost without ever needing to face the “darkness in our home.”

But how can we deal with the plethora of negative emotions if we don’t dare to look at them? How can we learn to properly relate to uncomfortable emotions if we don’t stop running away from them?
What can be so disturbing, threatening or agonizing that we rather stay willingly in the gridlock of recurring suffering?

What is more painful: dealing with the emotions we run away from, or dealing with the no less bitter consequences of the mechanism we use to run away from them, which is basically that: an addiction. No matter what we choose, whether it is drugs, alcohol, food, TV, sex, porn, work, consumption, cosmetic surgery, workout and so on, it is what it is.

So what prevents us from looking openly at our inner realities?

We have to ask ourselves these difficult questions, if we want to use our suffering and not just lose ourselves in it.

By definition, reality is what exists, what is not imagined.
We all share this reality with each other, but somehow each of us seems to have a very personal and subjective version of it. The boundaries of what is real and what is not rather depend on one’s subjective and personal interpretation and how strongly one can stand behind and enforce them. Repeating a lie over and over again until it becomes a common reality is a standard strategy of the political playbook, and one that we may secretly apply to ourselves far more often than we would like to admit.

There seems to be a conscious effort to hide our feelings, to obscure the truth, to cover up or gloss over the “reality” within us and around us to protect us from what?

Deep inside we already know.