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.