Two months ago I buried a friend. Gosh (who says gosh?) it feels dramatic to say, as any one attached to my life as I am to theirs is going to ask, 'who died?' Rather, two months ago I buried a way of being with a friend.
I lack the necessary descriptor for the person I am about to refer to without discarding them and our relationship into the trash can of worker/client dynamics and, while this is indeed the way we came into each other's lives, we are now surely past this but friend doesn’t cover it either. So this assemblage of life ways, whose needs have found their arm pits met by my wooden soul, tumbled forth an offering to my regular reroutes of our conversation where I steer them away from individualist, analyst couch, safe and familiar discussions on Psychology and other therapeutic modalities toward cultural dynamics, shared therapy and psycho-spiritual healing.
It was a strange offering, itself firmly embedded in the entrenched and monolithic psychology that I don't have much time for (but that every now and then undermines some of its own assumptions, which intrigues me) an offering which attends to addiction and relationships.
In the topic of how to corral someone from their pen of repetitive consumption, of pain management, of loneliness stemming, of belonging poverty, a team of Psych’s have located a link that proves fruitful between attachment and addiction, though not in the direction I first thought.
As many of us are familiar the most abundant method for someone to get away from addiction is through the 12 step program in an Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous group. In terms of sheer numbers it dwarfs any other process. Mind you, it is one of the older ones that measures in the way that Psychology and mental illness are currently tracked. It is interesting to note, however, that part of the development of AA and the 12 step program was interactions between Carl Jung, Bill Wilson and Rowland Hazard. Carl Jung the Psychiatrist gave a candid admission to Rowland about his relapsing alcoholism requiring a conversion or union with God. Rowland discussed this matter with Bill, who later wrote to Carl Jung that such discussions were foundational to AA and the 12 step program.
New modalities such as psychedelic therapy is proving to be quite effective (Though to satisfy that former psychonaut in me, the 12 steps did originally or would have otherwise, included Psychedelics). Like some sort of spook at the window, hoping to steal the ingredient list for mind altering practices, I personally have found varying levels of assistance from the use of Psychedelics and, without a sitter, these will continue to be the results.
But this new one, as though it were read aloud from some dusty tome, some medieval monk's work getting past security and onto the desk of a clinician, seems to be doable on one's own and effective. For me personally, becoming entrenched in a practice in the solo first allows me to bring it to the others with whom I may like to elaborate it, minus some of the self-consciousness of an untested offering.
Preliminary research is showing that giving the object or substance of obsession the appropriate place within the influencing pantheon of one's life allows one to treat it as it is - a relationship. A relationship that has become toxic. I want to add here that it is toxic for both parties involved, the substance/object and the addict. It is this Animist adjustment that I think dissolves a few fundamentals of the theory behind the practice, more on that later.
In the way that we might have a break up with someone in our life, a final conversation with acknowledgements from both parties of wrong doings or of the indigestibility of the relationship, the way that we both failed to metabolise who and how the other person is, we are invited here to have such a conversation with our obsession. I like the idea of formalising this conversation and making offerings. Hence the use of pantheon before and not something tame like friendship group or sphere of influence.
Just as in the 12 step program, we acknowledge a higher power that will help us move through the change, here I also include Doug Stanhope's take on that portion of the agreement where he jokes that Vodka is the higher power he will surrender to. By placing the emphasis on the right syllable, we make better sense of the prompts we receive when away from such a friend by knowing that it is the pain of separation, instead of a bio-chemical imbalance or us teetering on the edge of relapse.
Now back to the burial. I decided to bury my relationship with tobacco, a long term friend and guide. Tobacco has been with me through thick and thin. Reminding me, in a backhanded way, to attend to my breathing. Reminding me to go outside. Reminding me to take a break. Reminding me to enjoy the little things. Counselling me through stress and hardship and creative ventures. In another place and time, if I were of another make and model, tobacco would be my sacred ally through traditional rituals and village ceremonies of many kinds. A plant spirit guide to rid my work spaces of disruptive energies and a way to honour, through offering, ancestors and gods.
Tobacco for much of Human history has been such a friend, guide and ally. In our recent blip history of amnesia and subsequent extraction, it has become a pathway of abuse. And let's not get it twisted, Tobacco growers and cigarette manufacturers definitely feed into the abuse cycle, too - we are accountable to these behaviours. The deforestation, land and water poisoning through radioactive fertiliser spraying, propaganda heavy, slave owning and movement co-opting behemoth of the tobacco industry has a lot to answer for and working within its paradigm is to perpetuate those same cruelties.
In a wooden box, that had been used as an ashtray, I packed away a cigarette, a packet of papers and a lighter. This is the coffin of our relationship. Now is where I show my membership to a piece-meal culture, as I put my headphones on and listened to music inspired by The Bardo Thordol, (Music from an Audiobook version) and walked up the hill I lived on into the forest, while acknowledging the relationship I shared with tobacco. I spoke to how I had perpetuated the colonial project of extraction, how I had engaged in disrespect of the spirit of the plant by treating it as an object to abuse myself with, how I had known better and still acted this way. I asked for forgiveness from tobacco, (I began calling tobacco Mapacho, deepening your skepticism) and also offered my appreciation for how they had shown up in my life and the guidance they had provided through many discussions. All the while I walked, I confessed to the box in my hands, while listening to the pseudo-Tibetan death music. It's all very white-guy-trying-to-be-spiritual, isn't it? Well it had an air of rightness to it and after I had found a place to bury them and offered the burial smoke from gum leaves as a signalling of how our relationship will change, I was left in a state very similar to having been at a funeral or a wake. That sober and quiet, yet earnest state of being.
Since then the difference between 'quitting smoking' and 'burying a way of being with a friend' is distinct, to say it mildly. It is an unparalleled experience, relative to my other attempts to stop smoking, to say it another way.
Those impulses to imbibe are not cravings but are instead the felt experience of missing a friend, which are feelings, not the cruelties of tyrannical addiction or the creaking timbers of my weak resolve. So I have just felt them.
To be clear, I haven't had that many moments of missing my friend. This has been the easiest month (nearly two) of that altered relationship, whereas 'quitting' was always a struggle at some point. I could get through the first few weeks and then any kind of prompt, which would involve spending time with others who smoke or when I was drinking, and often these would pull me back in. To be transparent here, I don't drink anymore and I don't smoke weed anymore, which have overall reduced my exposure to situations where the pressure is applied.
I don't feel lesser, like I often would when 'quitting', like a vital distraction was missing and I didn't really want it to be. But having 'buried a way of being with a friend', I feel fuller and more substantial. I feel more capable. I don't envy smokers, I don't even notice them or how their behaviour ought to remind me back to the practice.
I had attempted to quit smoking roughly four times in the two months before the burial, through sheer will and through the changing of an environment for a period of time. None of them stuck for more than a few days.
The Spirit Of Boundaries
The next part of the reality shift was where in my psyche tobacco had provided support and what flavours of feelings and thoughts I sought tobacco out to cleanse my palette of. These would come knocking on the open door of my mourning nervous system, handing me their casserole condolences, moving themselves back in to my newly aired and lonely cottage psyche smelling of dead flowers more than cigarettes.
Rushing back into my system like some kind of dammed substance, kept at bay behind the concrete smoke of tobacco, anger returned in a biblical flood. I hadn't been able to move anger once it showed up, perhaps ever, but certainly not this side of 20. As the rage would swell, I would consult my friend tobacco, whose response was always the same, 'Stay here with me. You don't need to feel that right now.' This had been the essence of the exchange since I started smoking.
Anger is a fuel source, though in many cases it is an impotent one. Allowed to boil over, the rage will come gushing from fists or tongues, to no avail but damage. Nothing is solved by this, in intimate relationships nor with unexpected delays or so on. Anger is, however, a holy gift in the face of injustices, telling you where your boundaries are. If every ounce of annoyance is dismissed by being rolled up and burned, then how am I to know the important logistics of boundary setting and maintenance? This anger and frustration of feeling disregarded, and ongoing sense of powerlessness to change it, eventuated in the victim portion of hardship. The avoidance of the trouble, of the conflict, of the relational ills, of the need to speak up, was my seeking after tobacco's comforting shroud.
Anger is an ugly emotion in our culture. It is seen, inherently, as a violent insurrection upon otherwise peaceful happenings. If you're in the middle of a disagreement and you throw out some anger, the other can assume this moral high ground disregarding anything that might have just been said, being able to call 'Barley!' and essentially get escorted out of the disagreement through the in a righteous parade. Anger is also a port of safety for the user, too. By brandishing one's teeth, we are often left alone. Men who are often left alone to their troubles, because they act this way, are not necessarily violent and dangerous. They simply haven't had any one stand and trade with them in a way that flips their anger on its head and shows that it is a mortar shell filled with putty. (And of course there are violent individuals who everyone needs to continually leave, while dropping notes at the door, 'This is because of how you behave. You could be loved but you attack any who carry it toward you, look into why,' until such a time as they eventually come to their senses.)
This is a rambling way of saying that being with your anger, in an overt way, receives a tut-tut and wagging finger at it's arrival. Anger in the flow of things though is part of the fabric. I've made more honest observations about people to their faces in the last month than ever before in my life. Anger well digested is annoyance. Annoyance expressed compassionately is an offering from your boundary edges. These are helpful to express. Someone in your life can know how to be with you, you can know how to be with someone and also there is room to say, 'I think that's unreasonable, let us discuss.'
More than anger being cause for concern of our legitimate safety, it is hastily hid from view like unexpected nudity, or a booger. Yes yes I know, upsetting other people, causing an argument, being silly, of course of course - Did you know, upsetting people close to you, is not only not a brand burned into their flesh which they are unable to get away from, it is, however, something that can be seen through to the other side and allowed to stand as either an agreement to disagree or a buried nuance that one or both parties were unaware of until the upset revealed the edges of the stranging. Deepening occurs in here. It can all stem from giving a proper place to anger in our relationships.
In part two I go into more around the dynamics of relationships within an animated worldview.
If this discussion has at all grabbed you, if you have been trying and trying to quit, as Mark Twain said 'Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it hundreds of time.' and you want some assistance or what I call an 'accountabilibuddy', please reach out in comments section.
Personally speaking, I didn't find it hard to be on my own with this, though I have a loving partner who regularly checked in and who in the first couple weeks was quitting with me (she isn't gripped by tobacco quite in the same way). But coming up with a ritual to do or even having someone there to do it with might interest you, you might not be so well educated into isolation and individualism like I am. I would love to be there for you.
The questions related to this piece are around addiction and attempts to quit that have or haven’t worked for you.
- What have you tried?
- What did you have more success with?
- Did you try any strange practices that you haven’t told anyone about before?