The Beauty of Hitting Bottom

As a recovering alcoholic of 32 years, I’m always delighted to run across a fresh insight about addiction, such as the following from David Milch, fabulous writer of one of my favorite westerns, the HBO series “Deadwood,” set in raw, lawless South Dakota circa 1870, where you can hear the word “cocksucker” more times than you ever thought possible while marveling at the Shakespearean beauty of the exposition it embellishes and the characters who speak it.  Anyway, Mr. Milch’s ability to turn a phrase relating to addiction is equally memorable, if short on profanity:

Evidence that you’re close to hitting bottom:

Your circumstances are deteriorating faster

than you can lower your standards.

Hitting bottom is the goal of all addiction (all forms of unhealthy relationships we can’t seem to shake in our attempt to escape pain), though probably no addict realizes this until long after our bottom is behind us, so to speak.  That is, until we’ve learned the lesson that comes from feeling for absolutely sure that we either change or die.  And by die I mean more than literally.  Perpetual shriveling, being a victim, having rage our primary fuel, for instance, can be just as much a death as a stopped heart.

Of course what I’m speaking of applies beyond individuals, to communities.  Our nation, for instance.

Without despair of a depth that ignites our willingness to go to any length to make better choices, we haven’t really hit the bottom we need.  Why?  That willingness grounds the passion essential to overcome the obstacles to any great achievement, such as the steady alignment of our inner compass with integrity––an alignment unreliable in any active addict.

In the film “The Big Chill,” a fellow posits to his friends that rationalization is more important than sex.  When asked to explain, he says, “Ever go a day without a good rationalization?”

Addicts of every stripe are the royalty of rationalization.  The Duchess of Denial.  The Prince of Prevarication.  Lord and Lady Flimflam.  

I think about my own lunacy prior to admitting that my circumstances were deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards, and I dance a little jig of gratitude for the grace of God eviscerating every last rationalization that kept alive the lie that my life was fine, or at least good enough. 

Among the boons of hitting bottom is feeling the pain of choices made in ignorance.  This offers us the opportunity to realize that every person on earth, addict or not, carries within them the same pain for the same reason.  Such is the soil in which we grow patience toward our own suffering, and compassion for the suffering of others. 

No wonder there may be no greater moment in the life of an addict––person, tribe, hometown, country––than when the universe, grabbing us by the big toe, dangles us before the jaws of oblivion, and asks, in the spirit of Deadwood, “What’s it going to be, cocksucker, love or fear?”