disconnected Tag

May 24 2021

Getting Sober During COVID-19

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If I’m being honest and I’m looking at what it means to be getting sober or being in an early recovery in the middle of COVID, I have no idea. I know that there are a lot more challenges than there used to be.

Isolation vs. Human Connection

There’s something about community and human connection that, in my mind, is fundamental and instrumental in the transformational process of going from somebody who’s in an addicted state to a person in a state of recovery.

That almost never happens in isolation.

I can’t even imagine for myself, and I’m a person in recovery, what that would have been like to try to do that in quarantine. I’m sure it could happen…but I just couldn’t imagine it because my experience of recovery is that it’s something that we do with other people.

This was so challenging, and the other piece that’s challenging is a lot of people have crashed and burned their lives. They’re trying to rebuild their lives and get sober at the same time. That process is one of the same.

Rebuilding During Uncertainty

But to rebuild your life in the midst of so much uncertainty and with very little opportunity– economically speaking–it’s a challenge. There are just less jobs that you can do. That’s terrifying.

I feel like I’m trying to rebuild my life but where am I going to work? What am I going to do? And so I think there are just all these mounting challenges for people that are getting sober right now and the largest support system for people getting clean outside of treatment is Alcoholics Anonymous.

The meetings, most of them aren’t in person anymore so they’re on Zoom. You got 30 people, like the Brady Bunch, on the screen.

Sure there’s some benefits. And there’s problems. It’s easier to check out, disconnect from your program, and isolate.

People have too much time. There’s just a lot going on. That makes recovery very challenging and it makes the treatment very challenging.

I see it as part of my mission to try to take people from an addicted state to a sober state–to a sober state of integrity and productivity of working in the world. That last phase is very hard right now.

I don’t know exactly what a lot of people are going to do. It’s hard for me to have a lot of confidence and faith that I can give to another person to figure it out because I’m still like, “What exactly are they going to do?”

Like this person, a musician,…but he can’t do what he normally does. Or this person works in restaurants but there are no restaurants. Whatever it is. I find it incredibly difficult. I’ve been impressed with the people that are getting sober.

Distinguishing Personal Issues vs. COVID Challenges

One person I was working with relapsed. He went through our program, he actually worked. He works as a nurse. As he’s working on the front lines, he relapsed. So he came back to our program.

I believe that he couldn’t get support from our program while he was being a nurse except via Telehealth because he was too exposed to COVID-19. We couldn’t have him in our treatment program. It was too high-risk because he was frontline–which was horrible but you have to make these tough decisions.

When he came back in, I said, “Listen I feel so bad that you couldn’t be part of this community and get the support that you needed to stay clean when you transitioned. You worked really hard at getting clean while you were here.”

And he said, “To be honest, it was that I really just fell off my program.”

I thought, “Wow, really impressive for that person to be able to distinguish what was his, and what was COVID and the scenario.”

It’s tough stuff. And honestly, people can help each other get through this.

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May 17 2021

Remote Counseling in COVID Time And Beyond

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I find it fascinating. We are living in COVID time. I wonder, if this ever ends, we will be looking back and be like, whoa, COVID time…That is when everything changed and this happened and that happened.

One of the things that has happened in the therapeutic field–drug and alcohol treatment, mental health treatment–is a lot of people began to work from home. They began to offer what used to be an in-person experience–therapy, counseling, even spiritual work–via Zoom or FaceTime or other platforms.

Remote Therapy: A Counselor’s Thoughts

And so as I work in the field, like a lot of people, I am asking, “Okay, what is going on here? Is this working? Is this sustainable? Is this good? Should we keep this? What if it goes back to normal? Should we keep doing this Zoom session, this kind of thing?”

And the first thing I noticed–because I always notice the bullshit first, that’s just my cynical part–is people started saying, “I see a lot of things better about Zoom.” A lot of therapists that I know seem to think that.

And I was kind of like, well, that is convenient because you are at home.

So if you said, this really sucks, it is a bad incentive because you get paid to not leave your house now. Be on the computer and probably like to keep it that way if and when things go back to normal.

But if I asked you right before COVID, what do you think is more effective, a Zoom session or an in-person session, I doubt you would say Zoom. But now, suddenly, I hear that a lot. That being said, I think there are a few benefits to Zoom.

Pros and Cons of Video Counseling

One of the benefits is, because you are communicating through a medium, there are some layers removed there. And so for a lot of people–because a lot of people suffer from anxiety–it is hard to have somebody look at you. Even if you do not have anxiety, just intimacy is difficult for people. It is a little less intimate. And because it is a little less intimate, it might mean you are a little more comfortable. And because you are a little more comfortable, it might make that process of being vulnerable easier.

So I think that is a big deal and really helpful. Of course, there is the exact same downside…it is a little less intimate. And sometimes the most powerful moments that we experience in a therapeutic process, spiritual process, or counseling is a deep moment of intimacy with another human being in the room.

That is when the healing generally happens, to be witnessed, seen and held by another human being in a deep and transformative way. It can happen by Zoom, but it is not nearly as intimate.

Zoom works a little differently for everybody. I have been diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, among other things. I have a difficult time staying focused on a screen for multiple hours during the day, whether I am on the receiving end or the counseling end. And that is just how I am built.

And so I think that a huge piece is differentiating who benefits early on. In drug and alcohol treatment, I think absolutely no way. I think people need physical contact with other human beings early on.

By early on, I just even mean the first couple of weeks. There is somebody else there that is real, that is grounding you and with you. Someone breathing with you as long as you can see, etc.

Just Another Way to Feel Disconnected?

So, in general, there are tradeoffs. I think remote counseling will stick around and will be somewhat beneficial. But, my concern about it, I would say in the long term, is about people being disconnected from themselves in general for reasons I have talked about in other videos.

Our society seems to be more and more atomized and disconnected. And it is like, here is one more form of separation from each other. And so it is not my cup of tea in general, but we will do the best we can with it.

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May 11 2021

Past Experiences Are More Than Just Memories

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There is an idea just popularized–but has been around for thirty year–that congealed into a little phrase that I hear all the time. And it just sort of dawned on me–I did not use to hear that ten years ago when I was working in treatment and recovery.

You will hear therapists, clinicians, and facilitators at treatment programs or in transformational programs talk about “being in your body”.

Growing up, I do not remember hearing that phrase because I felt I was always in my body, you know–so nobody ever stopped me.

Make sure you are “in your body”. That phrase sort of crept in on the scene and–at least in LA where I live–we accept it as like saying something real. But what exactly does that phrase mean?

Trauma’s Effects on the Body

I related it to a very famous somatic psychologist therapist. His name is Peter Levine. He talks about trauma in the body.

The notion is we have realized that our brain or nervous system does not just consist of what is happening in our head. Our nervous system actually runs through our entire body. And then, actually, our whole body is one system.

So when we go through a trauma–whether it be emotional trauma or physical trauma–the imprint of that experience is not just like a little invisible memory that you hold in your mind. It is actually imprinted in the nervous system, which means it is imprinted in the body.

Some of the ways that people adapt to traumatic experiences is to dissociate. Dissociate means to compartmentalize, to move away from, to separate from a particular experience one is having.

Dissociation: A Common Example

So, for instance, every night my whole body shuts down and goes into just like a temporary hibernation. We call that sleeping. Now, if I was awake for that whole process, I think I would be terrified…

I cannot move, everything is happening automatically. Weird things are floating through my mind…but I actually dissociate and move away from that experience of sleep into the realm of dreams and deep sleep.

So that is an adaptation towards an incredibly uncomfortable state–to dissociate. But what can happen in trauma is…

I can dissociate, meaning step away from an experience in such a way that when I come back, there is an experience that I have not fully processed. That starts to symptomize. Then how I adapt is a little bit complex.

But I adapted this experience without knowing that I adapted the memory of that experience. It is actually in my brain, nervous system, and entire body.

And I can have so much trauma in my experience that I kind of dissociate from my body altogether, which means I do not have the head, heart, body connection that I want.

I am not fully conscious of what is happening in my system. I am sort of just checked out–maybe living in my thoughts and ideas–but I am not really here…fully present.

The Importance of Being Fully Conscious

To be alive means to be fully in your body and fully present because we are embodied beings.

So you do not feel fully alive unless you are fully in your body. That notion of “in the body” is a reminder for everybody that we have the capacity as human beings to flee to the thought that, “Hey, do I want to bring that back to what is really going on?”

Or to address a variety of “being in the body” questions like:

“Well, how do I know what is really going on?”

“How fast is my heart beating right now?”

“How am I feeling throughout my body?”

“Why am I breathing really shallow? What is going on with that?”.

And so it is bringing consciousness back to the ground of our being…the body.

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May 10 2021

What are Guru’s Actually Selling?

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I was speaking in a previous video about the relationship between alienation and marketing. There is actually a brilliant sociologist, psychologist–a member of the hated Frankfurt group–Erich Fromm. And I really suggest you read his books. He was quite popular in the ’60s and ’70s. Then postmodernism hit…He kind of died out in terms of popularity.

But one of the things he noticed was in the 1960s people began to sell Eastern mysticism and spirituality. It became a thing. Fromm researched the difference between authentic teachings from the East–the Buddhist and Hindu teachings–and people marketing bullshit.

Commercializing Eastern Traditions: Paying for Inspiration?

The problem he spotted back in the ’60s was the influx of translations of the books coming from the Eastern tradition. I do not think he could possibly imagine the reality that we live in now.

If I go through my Facebook feed, the amount of people trying to sell me inspiration and motivation… it is absolutely unbelievable.

The amount of people out there selling to you…Give me some money, I will help you find motivation. What a very interesting thing to sell. It’s a very important thing. How do I find energy and motivation or dynamo so that I can live a good life? That’s super important. But I did not think it was something that you could sell to somebody else.

Somebody could inspire me. I could be walking down the street or in a class and have a teacher, my wife, or my kid…and there could be a moment where somebody inspires me. It could be the person working at Trader Joe’s. I am often impressed by the people working at Trader Joe’s. Like wow, you guys are really in here killing it. I find that inspiring.

But I did not think that they would turn around and say, “Hey, I can sell you some of this inspiration for a few dollars.”

And I think it is super problematic for reasons that Eric Fromm noted…there is the real deal out there.

If you buy into those people, programs, or traditions, it may engage you in such a way that you transform your life for the better. Some of the best of those, by the way, are free. Not all of them. But some of the best of them are free.

Everything is Hypnosis…Trance States…

And much of it is just crap. The problem is it can work for a second. Like a friend of mine is a psychologist and hypnotherapist. She says everything is hypnosis. All states are trance states. We are always in some kind of hypnosis.

Because everything is hypnosis, one of the ways we refer to that is the placebo effect. It means we can engage in an activity for a short period of time and actually get hypnotized into thinking that we have changed…but we have not changed at all in the core.

…Until You Have the Courage to Go Deeper

But if we look at our ancestors and the traditions that we came from, we know on some level what are the ways that allow us to fulfill our destiny as a whole, soulful human being. Discover the blessings in the world that are often overlooked.

We know those things. We even know the constellation of activities within our life and the orientation towards those activities that we should have in order to become who we should be.

I do not need an advertisement on Facebook to tell me what a meaningful life is…and neither do you.

You actually know what it is if you decided to stop and think about it for 10 minutes.

We are in a reality now where we have to wade through a lot of crap. And that is just what it is. But I guess the good news is that there is so much crap out there that when you find the real deal, you really appreciate it.

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May 03 2021

The Effects of Viewing Ourselves As a Commodity

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I often think that you can understand the trends of what’s happening in the mental health and substance abuse world. Meaning, what kind of drugs are people using right now. We’re probably a little past the middle of a terrible opioid epidemic. The trends of anxiety are becoming a more common psychological phenomenon that we’re talking about a lot. So why is this the case now as opposed to 10 years ago?

Our Culture Plays A Big Role in Substance Abuse

In my mind, those disorders are directly in relationship to what’s happening in the culture. The culture is moving too fast, everybody has anxiety. It’s like wow, okay, everybody’s using heroin.

Why are they using heroin? Well, heroin is one of those drugs that slows you down. Kind of slows down your heartbeat, slows down your system until you kind of nod off.

Well, to me, that’s adaptation. It’s an adaptive response to a society that’s moving too quickly. I think many of the ills that we’re all suffering have to do with a society that’s moving too fast on so many levels. The complexity that is required of us to function well in society. The amount of information that’s out there and that’s constantly being beamed into our lives.

It’s just happening so fast; how could I ever understand what’s really going on?

There are social norms that contribute to what’s happening in those realms, and there’s kind of a one-to-one correlation between all these things. It’s not always completely exact.

Propaganda, Marketing, and Algorithms

These have been going on for some time now–which maybe has to do with some of the blooming of psychedelic work that’s happening.

My dates could be off, but let’s say the 1950s, coming out of World War II, coming out of sort of national propaganda. There begin to be in the corporate world that concerted effort towards understanding marketing, understanding ideology, and understanding propaganda. How to get people to do and believe certain kinds of things. It became a kind of science in the corporate world.

That’s continued and been refined through the decades. We have companies like Facebook and Google that have algorithms tracking what we’re doing and feeding certain kinds of messages. Drawing us in to consume more and more content–to buy more things so that other people can make more and more money.

An interesting side effect of a society that begins to think about the value of everything in relationship to being bought and sold on a marketplace. Thinking about almost all things as a commodity. How much is it worth?

So, that very notion, meaning society as a marketplace, that begins to shape our consciousness. I’ve talked in previous videos about spirituality and the consciousness of the enlightenment. I could talk about the addictive consciousness, but there’s also a marketing consciousness.

Understanding the Marketing Consciousness

In a world where everything can be bought and sold on the market, what about me? Can I be bought and sold in the market? I mean, both literally, that’s happening. But also, like my personality, say when I’m going into a job interview. What am I doing? Well, I’m trying to sell myself.

What might I be doing here? I’m trying to sell myself and my ideas to you. In this case, however, I’m actually not. I’m trying to offer something of value, an education, but there are so many domains in which I’m selling myself.

What happens when a human being begins to orient themselves in a way where they’re thinking about themselves unconsciously as a commodity?

Well, we kind of know what happens, and I think Karl Marx was right about this, that the result of that is some form of alienation, some sort of disconnection from self. That’s in hyperdrive with social media and people taking pictures of themselves. Everybody has their own commercials basically that they’re marketing to everybody. We are in the hyperdrive marketing space. I don’t even think we understand that.

And in that space, what does that do to the consciousness of the people that are engaging in that? Well, they start to think about themselves as things that need to be marketed to other people, and that’s where their value lies.

Do you like my picture? Literally.

And in that sense, I don’t have much of a self, or at least I’m not connected to it because I’m just a commodity. I’m a thing that’s bought and sold in the marketplace like anything else. And what is the result of a human being that becomes alienated and disconnected from themselves? You don’t feel good.

Feeling Disconnected and Substance Abuse

It doesn’t feel good to be disconnected, unplugged, un-whole, right? And what do human beings do when they don’t feel good? They begin to try to find ways to feel good. We usually call those vices if they’re unhealthy. You can see the direct relationship between the trajectory the United States has been on–and some other countries–in terms of marketing, etc., now in hyperdrive and people using drugs and alcohol.

Well, if I’m just the thing, who cares if I stick a needle in my arm?

If we really think about that in a deep way, imagine somebody, or maybe know somebody, sticking a needle in their arm and pushing the plunger using heroin, the syringe, until they pass out.

For me it’s very metaphoric. I’m so disconnected from myself. I’ve lost so much value for my existence that I just want to disappear. It’s almost symbolic, like being nailed to a cross. It’s like, “Don’t you see how disconnected and how much pain I’m in?”

We have different coping mechanisms. Sometimes we cope by becoming workaholics–we get obsessed with our projects. The gym is an example. Which is all fine, but the root symptoms that we’re treating are the same: alienation, demoralization, disconnection, shame wounds, not feeling like we have a place, not knowing where we’re headed, not knowing what this is all about.

These deep existential issues. So, it’s always wise to look around what’s happening in society. It’s easy to look at somebody who’s suffering from addiction and say, that person sick, that person has a real problem going on. It’s much more difficult to go; actually, the whole society’s sick, and the fact that there’s so much addiction is a symptom of a larger societal ill.

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