Addict Nation (40 page)

Build trust

Be patient and

Be persistent
⁴²

I would add one additional key:
imagine peace.

“We’ve lost our capacity to imagine an alternative to war. We need to regain that capacity. We need to understand that peace is not simply the absence of war; it’s the capacity for renewal, for transformation, for growth, for benign social and political discourse. We have to re-imagine our democracy as including this potential for peace which, frankly, was there at the founding.”

—Dennis Kucinich, Congressman (D-OH)
and sponsor of the Department of Peace Act (HR 808)

It’s difficult to imagine a world without war. But a couple of hundred years ago, it was impossible for most Americans to imagine a world without slavery. Eventually people made the evolutionary leap. So it’s conceivable that we could also end war. But the first step is to open our minds and imagine the possibility. Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh sums it up in his book
Peace Is Every Step,
writing, “Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it.”

Chapter Twelve
THE SOBERS: Emotional Sobriety

W
e look back on medieval times and marvel that women were actually forced to wear chastity belts. We gasp as we read about ritualized human sacrifice by the Aztecs. We shake our heads when we think about the Salem witch trials or America’s slave trade. We find it hard to believe that American women only won the right to vote in 1920. We look back at segregation and wonder how so many people could have blindly accepted sick manifestations of prejudice. It’s only in hindsight that a culture’s irrationality, absurdity, and cruelty become obvious to everyone. When we’re in the thick of it, grappling with daily issues, it can be hard to see the big picture objectively. When we’re brought up to accept something as normal, it can be difficult to condemn and reject it, even when it’s diminishing us.

Today, in America, slavery is alive and well. You are a slave and so am I. Our shackles are invisible but strong. Today, slavery is a state of mind, a twisted belief instilled in our psyche that says we can consume, indulge, and bully our way to happiness and success. It’s a form of mob psychosis. What we think is normal is really nuts.

We think our drug is the solution when it’s actually the problem.

We drink alcoholically to get relief from the strain of life, unable to recognize that boozing increases the stress of life.

We pop prescription pills to alleviate our anxiety and, in short order, pill popping causes even bigger problems than the ones about which we were originally anxious.

We eat over our emotional issues, ignoring the obvious fact that life’s inevitable struggles and humiliations are only compounded when we are walking around with pounds and pounds of extra weight.

We buy lots of stuff we don’t need to feel more secure about our place in the world, blind to the truth that all these possessions quickly become new responsibilities that drag us down and drain us financially.

We gorge on violent entertainment in the hope of distracting ourselves from our mundane existences, only to feel queasy and nervous, even double-checking our doors, after watching hours and hours of back-to-back murders.

We waste our time and energy obsessing over celebrities we’ll never meet in the irrational hope that somehow their glamour and charisma will rub off on us.

We keep our heads buried in high-tech toys as a miraculous world passes us by.

We buy a slew of chemical-laced cleansers and beauty products, telling ourselves this is what we need to be really clean and pretty, when—in fact—it’s those very products that are making our world dirty and ugly.

We send our brave American soldiers to foreign lands on ill-defined missions and watch them die and get maimed, physically and psychologically, as our amorphous enemy uses our missteps as a recruiting tool.

And, like every addict, we keep doing it over and over again and expecting a different result, hoping somehow that, on the next try, we’ll finally get it right. The wanting never ends. The glory of one acquisition or engorgement quickly fades into disillusionment, leading to a craving for the next. This is the cycle of addiction.

Faux Freedom

We tell ourselves we are making these choices of our own volition. But, in truth, these choices are being made for us. An addict is precisely the person who lacks the power to say no. An addict is, by definition, the person who is powerless in the face of temptation. You get a craving to eat or shop or pop, and you grapple with the urge for a few seconds but ultimately succumb and indulge. You are not making a free choice. You are an addict giving in to the inevitable. The same reasoning applies to groups of addicts.

As an Addict Nation, we are letting others write our life stories for us. The media, corporations, and government bombard us with images and messages about how we should live, what we should wear, what we should eat, who we should have sex with, and who we should consider our enemy. These powerful forces like to script our behavior for their own self-interest, not ours. But the script they’ve written is at worse a tragedy, at best a farce.

Addicts Live in a Paint-by-Numbers Universe

Powerful interests draw the outlines of our lives and then convince us that freedom is being allowed to choose the color paint we want to use to fill in the blanks. By moving in uncritical lockstep with narrow social norms, we are robbing ourselves of our uniqueness. No two human beings look exactly alike. No two human beings should try to live exactly alike. But we do. From childhood on, we yearn to conform so we can be accepted and liked. It doesn’t work. It usually just makes us miserable. The people who are most charismatic are those who break the mold and allow themselves to be what nature intended: an original.

It’s time we each start writing our own stories. America became a world power because of rugged individualism, not blind conformity. Freedom from cultural addiction means personal liberation: mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially. It means being your own person.

A Moment of Clarity

So how do we break through and kick these socially accepted forms of self-destruction? First, we must experience a moment of clarity. We have to take an objective look at our behaviors, and instead of asking if other people think it’s okay, ask ourselves,
Does this really
feel right? Is this environmentally sound? Is it financially sound?
And the most important questions,
Is this morally right? Is my behavior ethical?

Often, an honest answer to those questions will take some investigation. The worst cruelties on earth are kept hidden far, far away from those co-conspirators we call consumers who want—more than anything—deniability. We would rather not think about the big picture if it’s disturbing or distasteful and conflicts with the concept we have of ourselves as “a good person.” But in the words of Albert Schweitzer, “No one must shut his eyes and regard as nonexistent the sufferings of which he spares himself the sight.”

Do we consumers have the courage to learn about the factory farm that produces our eggs? Will we take into consideration the working conditions of the sweatshop that makes our shirts? Or look into the business practices of the companies we buy stock in? Are we willing to look up the chemicals listed on the back of our shampoo, deodorant, and laundry detergent? And if we find ourselves ethically opposed to what these corporations and brands are up to, will we finally make more sober choices?

Admitting a Problem Is the First Step

What we need to develop, more than anything else, is self-awareness. After all, what is a “habit” anyway but something that we do by rote, almost unconsciously. So to break a bad habit, or a dozen of them, we must first become conscious. Every day we all make hundreds of decisions. We must learn to slow down enough so that we can observe ourselves in the process of making those choices. Then we can learn to stop ourselves before we take an action reactively, reflexively, and unthinkingly.

Whether it’s watching a violent movie, eating an unhealthy fast food meal, or blindly marching to the drumbeat of war, we can learn to first ask ourselves,
What are the repercussions of this decision? How is this choice
going to impact me and the world around me? What is my responsibility to
myself and to this earth? Are lazy, shortsighted choices making my life
unmanageable?
We must take off our blinders and get honest about how our cultural addictions are hurting others and the planet.

The Happiness Test

One way to encourage change is to acknowledge that our addictive consumptions are not making us any happier. While those whose basic needs and comforts are met report greater levels of happiness than those who are struggling to survive, there is no correlation between excessive, addictive consumption and happiness. Quite the contrary. Americans—the biggest consumers on the planet—are not the happiest, most content people on earth, according to numerous surveys. In a Gallup World Poll, the United States came in at number sixteen for overall well-being and number twenty-six for enjoyment.
¹
Think of that the next time you reach out to make an unnecessary purchase.

Once we have that
aha
moment and avoid a toxic choice, we can then take the next step and move toward a more evolved alternative. One thing we know about addiction is that you can’t just take away an addict’s drug and leave it at that. You have to substitute it with something that is ultimately more rewarding. It’s a trade up. This new “something” may not give you a rush or an immediate high because it’s a different kind of pleasure. Sobriety offers a more incremental, more subtle payoff. But it’s one that is ultimately much more powerful, fulfilling, and enduring.

Defining Sobriety

Since this is an intervention for an addicted nation, the goal— obviously—is to reach to the polar opposite of addiction. That is called sobriety. So what exactly is sobriety? With alcohol and drugs, you can define sobriety as the state of being 100 percent free of mood-altering substances . . . period. It’s that simple. That’s a literal definition of sobriety. But for many of the behavioral addictions covered in this book, a broader concept of sobriety is required. That’s why recovery work also focuses on “emotional sobriety.”

I would define emotional sobriety as being comfortable in your own skin, living in the present moment, facing life with courage, grace, kindness, compassion, humility, and humor, avoiding the temptation of self-destructive escapism, being about something more than yourself, and caring about others and the greater world while taking care of your own needs.