AN EXISTENTIAL VIEW AND THE 12-STEP TRADITIONS

LIMITATION OF BEING We admitted we were powerless over alcohol / behaviors

Acceptance of our limitations

Understand our vulnerability and embrace it

We are not in control of our alcoholism nor purely of ourselves (e.g., Not-God-ness)

Limited Control – Limited Dependence Warned against promising never to drink again

Learn rather “not to take first drink”, and “one day at a time”

“God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”

I CHOSE TO DRINK

HITTING BOTTOM: AN EXISTENTIAL VIEW POINT The Abyss

Acceptance of limitation sometimes requires a wrenching away and ruthlessly exposing false assumptions and deceptive facades

Emotional upheaval is required to before individuals will truly question core of their existential predicament

The eye begins to see,I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;I hear my echo in the echoing wood--A lord of nature weeping to a tree,I live between the heron and the wren,Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.What's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,That place among the rocks--is it a cave,Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

In a Dark Time...

A steady storm of correspondences!A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is—Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

THE ABYSS The Journey of the addict takes her/him into the bottom of an abyss where we

surrender and begin the ways of transformation or we may instead begin to rot in hellish proportions

In the abyss we look straight in the face of our humiliation and demise and here is the place of asking for support

We are fearful of the abyss and yet fascinated at the same time

Is this not the impetus for addiction itself?

WHAT IS THIS PREDICAMENT? Bad faith – we don’t want to face reality on realities terms

Hanging onto illusion – we don’t want to face death, terror, and suffering in life

Two real truths in life –

We are going to die, and after death there is nothing

CREATIVE CHAOS

ENGAGE IN A JOYFUL PARTICIPATION OF THE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD Learn to suffer without too much pain

Removal of cheap thrills and tricks and replace them with authentic earned happiness

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we make ourselves happy: but how we make ourselves worthy of happiness

Happiness is a happening – it happens to us – not manufactured (don’t suffer for wrong reasons)

FINDING MEANING IN SUFFERING

WHAT DID YOU SEE?

WHAT ARE YOUR FEELINGS

OTHER THOUGHTS

BECKER AND BATESON There is no self to control unless one is operating under the

illusion that one is separate from oneself and others

I think the world is full of too many cheerful robots who only talk about joy and the good things… My task is to talk about the terror and suffering in the world

Joy, hope, and trust are things one achieves after one has been through the forlornness

BIG QUESTIONS FOR OBSERVERS OF ADDICTED SUFFERERS Why are addicts so reluctant to seek treatment?

Why must they hit bottom before they will ever admit that their addicted?

Why does everyone else know they are alcoholics and what blinds them to miss this reality?

ANXIETY AND ALIENATION Denial and self-deception (pervasive universal characteristic)

State of isolation

State of anxiety

Leads to existential crisis – he or she is no longer part of the whole and has no real freedom to choose

SELF DECEPTION AND DENIAL

HEIDEGGER AND THE IDEA OF SCHULD (GUILT)

We think we can pay off our debt to the Moneylender, thereby becoming free of guilt as though we were objects that could be completed

But, since as Heidegger proposes, we are not the source of our own being, and don’t have total control, we cannot be perfect

Thus, our real guilt may stem from (not being) or remaining committed to actualize our potential at the core of our being.

Living an objectified existence keeps us in a “purgatory of guilt” on earth - that can never be eschewed - which keeps us from becoming human

BARGAINING WITH THE ADDICTED SELF

Making bargains with the addicted self is an attempt to cover the nothingness–or gap in our being

In addiction we avoid facing the nothingness – (open place that is also dark face of wholeness) and because we become objects early in our development we lose the mystery of who we are and the creative potential to mold the mystery that we are.

Ultimately we must face the addicted self and its death

TRUE RELATING In harmony with the universe

Open to experience of true relating

More than a rational animal – don’t need confirmation of their own being

Need to have a presence in the being “of the other” … “We are nothing in ourselves”

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Rights, Guilt as a Killer, “I Can Remain In Control”

Carried away with the Killer’s energy and driven by the addicted self the addict believes they have a right to their addiction

They are superior to others and justified in their actions (nihilistic)

But this stance is contradicted by the emotions that the person feels

For guilt is a killer and maybe the measure of possibility for transformation

But the act of transformation (step toward recovery) is frequently curtailed by the addicts’ philosophy of “I” (can remain in control)

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“Self Will Run Riot”- I am Not Ordinary -

Half hearted glimpses at listening deeply to our guilt “Self will run riot” the mind of the killer is addicted to power and

diabolical pride Is the motive of addiction born from the split motive to prove

that “I am not ordinary” or above it all Inside I am feel impotent - I feel and see thru the ego - but

don’t want to surrender to the nothing in me - Which is actually NO-THING

SELF WILL RUN RIOT

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Kierkegaard’s Human Condition

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Human Condition

Possibility Limitation

Spirit Matter

EgoEgo

Transcendence Human AddictiAddictionon

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Tension of Opposites Tension of Opposites

Kierkegaard’s Human Condition Most of humankind tries to escape their own finitude

unconsciously or consciously

Reality may breakthrough and it is here we experience despair (depression / anxiety )

We feel something is not right / we feel the disconnect

Do we turn toward the disconnect or run away from it

Despair of defianceDespair of defiance Despair of Despair of weaknessweakness

Leap of faith

From the existential perspective then…

Therapists must carry out this act of entry into that unique dimension as an act of their lives, without any prepared philosophical security: that is, they must expose themselves to all that can meet them when they are really living.

VICE AND VIRTUES: SAME ORIGINS

HARDWIRED TO CONNECT For meaning / for attachment

Built in capacity to ask the big questions and seek answers – who am I

How should I live and what is my purpose?

Across time and cultures

Disordered attachment and addiction can and often bury and distort these drives

THIS IS CALLED SURRENDERING