We’ll start with a definition. Addiction is a coping mechanism/behavior that has negative consequences in your life.
Of course, part of the problem is that people don’t recognize negative consequences, in most cases, until they are severe or even life-threatening.
The old joke goes like this: A man jumps off a 30 story building and about halfway down he says, “SEE! This isn’t that bad!”
We live in a culture that encourages easy solutions, and you might be noticing it even more during this quarantine time — in yourself or even in your Facebook feed.
More drinking. More excuses for really poor eating even though it makes us feel like shit. More total days of nothing but bad TV.
We’re coping. But we’re not coping.
And even if we’re not engaging in an obvious addictive behavior, we’re dissociating from all the stress and the fear and the not-knowing and the discomfort.
We’re lying in bed paralyzed.
We’re going through motions but not noticing.
We’re barely reaching out.
We’re ignoring the terror in our belly and locking up all the things that we think we “can’t handle.”
Here’s the secret: We CAN.
But we have to be brave; we have to FEEL.
The true rebellion, the REAL REVOLUTION, would start from our bodies.
The true rebellion would be BEING IN THESE BODIES UNAPOLOGETICALLY. Which is the same fuckin' thing as BEING IN OUR LIVES UNAPOLOGETICALLY.
Which then allows space for all other humans to do the same.
THIS is how important it is that we do the work to not be a Walking/Talking HEAD in a Culture of Addiction & Dissociation.
FEEL. BE. DO. EXPAND.
FEEL. BE. DO. EXPAND.
FEEL. BE. DO. EXPAND.
People in their bodies and in their lives FULLY? They don’t accept a culture that says one life is worth more than another or a culture that puts economy over health and happiness.
They build something brand new and they don’t fear the work of it.
They accept nothing less of themselves or the structures around them.
To quote Toko-pa Turner:
“We think of rebellion as something we put to external service in the world: we become activists in protest of some wrongdoing, some injustice we must speak against. But I think there is a rebellion before the rebellion—a more intimate form of protest speaking from and for the devalued feminine.
The feminine has nothing to gain. She doesn’t vie for leverage. She doesn’t want to prove anything or achieve dominion. She does something infinitely more rebellious. She strips falsity and stirs up feeling in the anaesthetized heart. She awakens a kind of long memory throughout and beyond ages. She gives shape to the swelling and collapsing heart. That is all; but it is so much. Because when we sing with her voice, anyone who hears it remembers what they too have forgotten: that we are noble, and beholden to each other.
Rebellion is the pushback on that long-standing amnesia. Like nausea rejects a poisonous substance, rebellion wants to see what is beneath falsity. What is really enduring when all else is stripped away? What longing, if we undam it, might pound through our lives, bringing life to the dryness of an over-harvested creek bed within? What if there is a story coming through us which is trying to find its way into the world? If we can withstand the trials of exile, can we have the chance at turning that story into something that shows others that they aren’t alone?”