Archive 501
Vivian Galván García
Hello, from inside the rooms
By Samiera Abou-NasrHi, my name is __________________ and I am an alcholic.
Well, in reality, I was an addict but there’s this romanticism to that, that I think... that label, addict in a meeting of alcoholics, has some ego to it you know? Like I am worse than you, that I am different. But... but I’m not really, I’m not. When I say addict, I forget about alcohol, I forget that it’s, to me, this excuse that I have given myself. I can drink, but its not using. I can get drunk and ask a bartender for a drug dealers’ number, but I didn’t call. This free bottle of champagne in Paris at a cabaret is a gift, it’s this kind of vision that doesn’t feel the same. (sigh) and here I am talking about feeling like I could feel anything on drugs. That’s the thing isn’t it? When you remove yourself from the physical craving, well it never really goes away but when you aren;t high I guess... and you have this image in your head of an addict, it’s not me even when it is. I just see an addict. I can’t feel it in my body because I never did. I escaped my own body to this other plane of existence, for 20 or 40 minutes most at a time. I can sit here, and tell you the exact things that happen, and I won’t because this is a meeting, but whatever I could say, sometimes, it just feels like I am telling someone else’s story. Was that person even me? I mean, when I looked in the mirror I couldn’t even put together the thought that the person staring back was my body. I knew I was there, but I couldn’t believe it was me.
Jung talks about shadows, and I think that there is this shadow within me that craves this rush, adrenaline, extremes... I don’t think that will ever go away. I feel it creep in sometimes, and it is like a shadow, like Nosferatu climbing up the hallway stairs in silhouette, you know that image? I see it and I get anxious, like I’m coming down. And it’s getting better, but those nights I cant sleep and then hear the birds start chirping as the sky turns purple in the dawn... that just gets my heart racing. This looming fear still hasn’t gone away. I still feel that this addiction has a hold over me, drawing my eyes to that wine glass a friend has a dinner, or keeping me from going to places I used to use. I can’t even drive certain routes home because I get that hype like I’m going to see my dealer. I just... I just want to find a way to conquer this, and I know it’s not anything that one can do. Its the way I was made, a disease that I possess.
Some days are more difficult than others... I just want to figure this out because there has to be a gift in there somewhere right? Some of you get addicted to work instead you find the focus and drive to become great and I want to be great but I also just want to feel something. The world seems like it is made to dull us, and I think that’s what I thought I found in using this great uplifting spirit. But there’s this thing about spirits, and I think I read it somewhere, I’m not sure exactly, but the term alcohol comes from alkhul, which is arabic for body eating spirit. So it said that when you ingest alcohol, spirits, then your body becomes poisoned, your soul leaves until it is healthy, and evil enters the empty body. But what gets me about that is that I am here, I am doing the work and I feel healthy, but somehow that evil entity, my shadow is still in me. And now I’m starting to get into existential crisis mode where I’m thinking I should be kinder to my shadow and understand it rather than call it evil and thinking about if evil had ever actually existed or if it was just someone else’s truth or needs being met... But that’s what we do isn’t it, overthink, over analyze a situation until our heads are too loud for us to find thought in. And even that, can be a gift, I just need to find where these defaults of my character belong because I don;t think I’m defective, I don’t think that there are problems with me, at least I don’t want to... but I do know that not understanding them makes me destructive, and I am a complicated person that is open to the world, and I just need to take this challenge to decode myself as something that is a gift, something that can teach me more about life, maybe even other people’s lives and motivations. I’m just rambling now, I heard the three minute alarm go off like a minute ago so that’s it, thank you for letting me share.