WHAT FILLS THE VOID AFTER RECOVERY?

Just For Today

As a drug addict, once I took away the dope, I looked for something else to fill the void inside me.

It's hard to describe what that feeling is like to someone who hasn't experienced it.  It's an overwhelming, gnawing ball of darkness that sat like an anchor in the center of my chest.  When I was high, drugs covered up that void.  Once I was clean, its presence was undeniable.

My first few times through recovery, I sought something external to fill that void.  Rather than recognizing it for what it was -- an ugly, infected emotional wound that would take time and effort to heal -- I thought something else could ``fix'' it.  I tried a lot of things -- relationships, money, work -- but nothing seemed effective.

That's because I carried around that emotional wound, and it was all too easy, without drugs to cover it up, to try and fill that void with something tangible.  As an addict, I wanted the quick fix, the easy solution - -- something I could do that would remove those troubling emotions instantly.  It took a couple of relapses for me to understand that the only sure way to repair that wound is through the 12 Steps of recovery.

Among other things, addiction is a disease of the feelings.  We use to keep from feeling negative emotion -- guilt, shame, depression, fear, loneliness - -- and once the drugs are removed, those feelings come flooding back.  We may have to face the consequences of our actions -- things we did while using drugs that hurt those who love us -- or we may no longer have drugs as the armor to keep from remembering traumatic or tragic events from our past.

Recovery teaches us to deal with those negative emotions, which are all balled up together in that dark void that weighs so heavy on us.  The 12 Steps help us to recognize that drugs are just a symptom of a much larger problems -- an over-inflated ego and an emotionally scarred inner self that doesn't know how to function in society.

Those emotions can often seem too overwhelming to deal with without the aid of dope -- but we don't need drugs to cope with those feelings.  Feelings are just that -- emotions that ebb and flow like the tide, washing over us in powerful waves one minute and retreating the next.  We have to remember that feelings, as powerful as they might seem, won't kill us -- no one ever died from a ``feeling attack,'' as one recovering addict told me several years ago.

Eventually, the longer we abstain from drugs, the clearer our minds become.  The fog begins to lift, and the confusion that permeated our brains in early recovery starts to dissipate.  It becomes easier to keep our feelings in check, and we no longer feel like our minds are in a constant state of chaos and disorder.

For me, the only thing I've found that keeps my mind focused and helps me deal with negative emotions is the 12-step program of recovery to which I belong.  I've learned that life on its own terms can be dealt with, without me having to get high.  And incidentally, that goes for negative and positive emotions; I used not only to forget about emotional pain, but also to heighten my emotional pleasure during good times in my life.

But eventually, I reached a point where I didn't feel anything -- not happiness, not sadness, not joy, not sorrow.  I felt nothing but the hunger of my addiction, always screaming for me to get more.  Any semblance of humanity I had and any sort of spirituality I might have obtained were gone.  I lived like an animal and felt like a vampire, a man without a purpose and without a soul.

Today, I know I have a choice.  I don't have to go back to that subhuman existence.  Recovery has helped me fill that void, but doing so has meant constant work on the inside.  I can experience feelings today, both positive and negative, and I know two things: that they won't kill me, and that I don't have to get high to cover them up.

Steve Wildsmith is a recovering addict and the Weekend editor for The Daily Times.  His entertainment column and stories appear each Friday in the Weekend section.  You can contact him at steve.wildsmith@thedailytimes.com or at 981-1144.