My History of Anxiety, Pt 2

I recently wrote about my history with anxiety, extending all the way back to my childhood and the odd way it manifested itself back then. I'm no expert on actual diagnoses or the labelling of things, but I certainly feel some of my behaviors smacked of OCD and really could have taken over my life. I am not exactly sure how I escaped that fate, since the temptation to focus on them is still there. But I do know of people who suffer from full-blown obsessive thinking and behaviors who literally can't leave the house.

The Teen Years: Addiction Enters the Picture

I started drinking and taking drugs later than a lot of kids I knew. Maybe it says something about the times, but I was 16 before I ever took a sip of alcohol, and that was considered late. But within a month, I was drinking every weekend, was smoking weed, had tried quaaludes and mescalin.

I never thought of myself as an addict, even after I started college and added hash, opium, coke, speed, mushrooms, ecstasy, and acid to the mix. Probably others that I'm not thinking of right now. Some of these continued well into adulthood. In fact, I was well into my 30s when I took this stuff called Special K for the first time.

To me, though, an addict is someone who basically drinks a beer and wakes up 3 weeks later married to a hooker in Tijuana. Or they are homeless and begging or stealing to get enough money for their next fix. I didn't do that; not even close. I held jobs throughout all this. My parents, bosses, neighbors, basically anyone I didn't do drugs with would be shocked to know I did this stuff. So no way I could be an addict, right? I was a partier, and that's something different.

Well, maybe not a full-blown addict, but someone with addictive behaviors. I have just recently come to terms with the fact that I have exhibited several addictive behaviors down through the years (thanks to a very good therapist I have been working with lately). I've learned that what makes the behaviors addictive is how I thought of them and what I used them for.

The Search for A Higher Plane of Existence

When I took drugs, I didn't just take them to have fun. I took them because I always felt there was some sort of higher plane of existence that they might help me attain. At least, that's the best way I can describe it. When I drank, I fell into this thinking that if I drank more and more, the night would become more and more fun. Of course, at some point, whatever makes alcohol fun suddenly becomes what makes alcohol not so fun as you begin to slur your words, say stupid things, get angry for no reason, stumble, puke, pass out, wake up with a hangover, all that horrible stuff that comes along when you go too far.

With pot, ecstasy, 'shrooms, acid, all those types of things, it wasn't enough for me to just get a buzz, or to even just get messed up. I had to keep going. So if it got to the point where I could barely raise the bong to my lips, I'd keep going. I know you aren't supposed to hallucinate from weed, but I swear I was in a friend's dorm room one night and I kept thinking the girl in one of his posters was turning and looking at me. With acid, it wasn't enough to just take a hit. I had to take three the very first time I tried it. I loved the fact that I was standing on campus talking to a friend while I hallucinated helicopters landing on the field behind him.

Addiction vs Addictive Behaviors

I'm trying to keep these stories short so I will end part 2 soon. But first, I want to address full blown addiction as I understand it vs addictive behaviors. Addiction is what I think I and most people think of when they hear these terms. I know I think of alcohol black outs that lead to unemployment and homelessness; or of heroin addicts jonesing for their next fix.

Maybe it's because of the types of drugs I chose, but I never experienced the classical kinds of addiction you thnk of when you think of heroin or crack or meth. I think the closest I came was cocaine and that never really did it for me. To me, all that did was make me talk a lot and grind my teeth. Remember, the attempt was to find some higher plane, and cocaine just wasn't doing it for me.

But my search for that higher plane was the catalyst behind a lot of addictive behaviors. Ironically, it was that very drive that made me quit them all slowly but surely. When I knew the major hallucogens wouldn't take me there, I stopped them. Then weed. And now, I barely drink. I'm writing this in 2021, and I don't think I've taken a recreational drug other than alcohol since the last millenium, and I had 3 beers the other day for the first time in so long that I got a headache.

Next Time

That's all I'm going to write for today. In the next part of this series, I'm going to discuss the other addictive behaviors that I've exhibited over time, how they affected me, and how I dropped all of those one by one when I found they couldn't deliver on the nirvana I seem to have been seeking.

Eventually (probably a 4th part), I'll discuss how the realization that there is no higher plane affects me now, both the good and the bad.