John Du Cane

John Du Cane

The Death of Fun

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“Contemplate for a moment the possibility of living without the constant need to be entertained, to be satisfied, to be pampered, to be stimulated, or to be in a state of perpetual bliss.”—Wee Peng Ho

Can we have fun without being drugged up? To some folk, that might seem like a silly question. But to those of us self-declared addicts and alcoholics, the question was all too loaded. Was it really possible to have fun without being blitzed out of our noodles? It seemed incomprehensible to us that fun could be had without some sort of chemical stimulation to fire it up. No drugs, no sizzle, no fun, we thought. The sizzle would fizzle when the stash ran out.

Once upon a time, when the dose on the label said one teaspoon, we would add at least one zero and pour ourselves a glassful. If the indication was one cap per day, we would spill six caps into our palm and gulp them down. And if not enough fun happened within half an hour we would reach back and amp the dose a second time. Hey—as addict-wisdom had it—if one’s good, then ten has got to be a whole lot better, right? This would be too funny, if it wasn’t so true… But we were the little child—who hugged the rearing predator, oblivious to the risk…

Fun

Eventually, of course, the hungry lion roared and pounced. Some of us died outright. Some of us were terribly mauled, dragged to safety by our friends. Others of us escaped with some slashes and gashes—just enough to wake and shake us up. We, the wounded, entered recovery. Slowly we healed. But where, oh where, had all the fun gone? The cravings would be slow to subside. We begged to be relieved somehow, someway… It was a dicey time, was it not?

The discovery, it turned out, was that fun could still indeed be had—if we would only stop chasing so hard to grab it. There were safe places with safe people we could hang with. Slowly, we let fun seep into our bones without pushing for more and more and more. The nice surprise was that the more we relaxed out of neediness, the more fun could join us in our lives.

Here’s a very simple, pleasurable way to feel delicious quickly, without having to be aggressive about it (works like a charm):

Stand in a relaxed posture, with your arms by your sides. Close your eyes. Circle your arms up in a wide embracing movement, until your palms are facing your forehead. Keep the shoulders down and relaxed, elbows down. Inhale as you bring your palms toward your forehead, until they are a couple of inches away. Use your attention to bring the energy gently into your forehead. Rotate your palms so they are facing away from your forehead at about a forty-five degree angle. Exhale as you move your palms away from your forehead. Turn your palms towards your forehead and repeat.

When your palms come close to your forehead on the third iteration, turn the palms to face the floor and move them to mid-chest level. Inhale without any physical movement. On the exhale, rotate the palms to face out at a forty-five degree angle and move the palms away from the chest. Rotate your palms to face your chest and as you inhale bring the palms and energy toward the center of the chest. Repeat another two times.

When your palms come close to your mid-chest on the third iteration, turn the palms to face the floor and move them to stomach level. Inhale without any physical movement. On the exhale, rotate the palms to face out at a forty-five degree angle and move the palms away from the stomach. Rotate your palms to face your stomach and as you inhale bring the palms and energy toward the center of the stomach. Repeat another two times.

You have completed one cycle now. Complete as many cycles as you care to.

I relax out of neediness today and enjoy the gentle tranquility of feeling complete as I am right now.

Missing The Moment

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“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste, they hurry past it.”—Soren Kierkegaard

Our eagerness to be anywhere other than where we are now, robs us of much immediate beauty. Particularly in our using days, we sprinted and hurdled toward a hoped-for high rather than relax and appreciate the pure pleasure of being alive to the moment before us. Impatience would rob today’s open till —and we’d often then face our next opportunity with empty pockets.

There’s an apocryphal anecdote beloved in Tai Chi circles: an elderly Chinese man climbs into a rickshaw. The young buck of a rickshaw driver lurches off into the traffic, as if his life depended on arriving yesterday. After a few close shaves, careens and shouted curses, the old man cries out, “Slow down, young man, I’m in a hurry!” Indeed, there’s nothing like impatience to gum up the works with over-eager pushiness. As users and abusers, we most likely had a history of impulsive, compulsive haste that often left us high and dry in the results department.

Hurry

Now that we are in recovery, we may or may not have learned to modulate our eagerness for the next burst of pleasure. Often, we just redirected our energies into a series of speed-dates. We rushed from one escapade to another without really pausing to savor any one of them. We might be practicing “safe recovery”, but we had a reckless disregard for the subtleties of each experience. And where is the real joy in that? In fact, our joys were often tossed aside like rag dolls, when a fresh new prize was glimpsed across the way…

Today, then, let’s hit the pause button and contemplate what shows up on the frozen frame that—oh by the way—happens to be who and what we are, in our entirety, at this very moment.

Speaking of a pause, let’s pause our breath in the following fashion:

Sit comfortably. Inhale deeply through the nose and exhale strongly through the mouth 20 to 30 times. On the final exhale, pause and hold your breath for as long as you can manage without straining. While your breath is paused, put yourself into a state of “choice-less awareness”. That is, simply contemplate what you are feeling—physically, emotionally and spiritually—without commentary. When you are ready, take one deep inhale and hold that inhale for just a few seconds. Exhale and relax.

This is a powerful method, with many health benefits, physical and otherwise. One cycle is very fine. However, feel free to repeat for a number of cycles if you wish. Take care not to overdo it, to strain in any way. No rush, right? Time to put the joy back into enjoy!

I pause. I contemplate. I am what I contemplate.

Beyond Gallows Humor

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“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”—Erma Bombeck

We joke about what most angers us. We joke about our secret desires. And we joke about what we fear most. Our jokes release us from the tensions and stresses and anxieties that lace our lives. Small wonder then, that both pre- and post-recovery we relished the ghoulish end of the spectrum when it came to humor. For we were the ones possessed by death, despair and self-loathing. As we recovered and the pain began to recede, then so did the gallows humor—at least to some extent.

However, there remains a risk attached to dark humor for those in recovery. The risk is around sabotage—self-sabotage and sabotage of others. We tread lightly on the shards of our past, so that they cut not our soles as we begin our new path… Humor can help lighten our steps, but the lightening may sometimes dishonor the gravity of our experience. We need the balance and the wisdom to discriminate between humor that dis-empowers and humor that celebrates our essential dignity.

Our dignity took a hammering—mostly self-administered—when we were using. Now that we are picking up the pieces, it’s important to be delicate and sensitive to the chinks in our self-esteem. We once liked to chop ourselves up, as a way to distance ourselves from our suffering. While being overly serious could be considered a dis-ease in itself, too much “cutting up” can discredit our real achievements in getting straight and staying straight, sobering up and staying sober.

We can seek to lighten another’s distress by making them laugh—releasing them from what may be a self-involved drama-fit. But let’s always be sensitive to the true dynamics. Is the humor hurtful or helpful? Damaging or restorative? Wounding or healing? Each of us needs to approach our humor in these situations like the helmsman of a sailboat. Is the wind blowing strong, is it gusting, or is it just a faint breeze? How tight we pull the sail in—or how much we let it out—has to be felt for and adjusted to in that very moment. Such are the skills we build as we navigate our recovery.

Humor

Today, let’s do an exercise that dramatizes this dynamic. We will call it the Squeeze and Release:

Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and maintain an upright, yet natural-feeling posture. Inhale through your nose. Now, squeeze both your fists as tight as you can. You call that tight? Come on! Tighter, tighter… ok, that’s more like it! Feel the induced tension irradiate up from the fists, until both arms are as tense as you can make them. Hold the tension for a few seconds. Exhale forcefully through the mouth and relax the hands and arms completely. Collect yourself and repeat for a total of ten times.

I squeeze and I release, I squeeze and I release—and I can feel the stress disappear from my body and mind.

Grace Under Fire

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“When you know in your bones that your body is a sacred gift, you move in the world with an effortless grace. Gratitude and humility rise up spontaneously.”—Debbie Ford

When chemicals aren’t racing and raging through our blood and brains, it’s somewhat easier to move with grace and elegance through our lives. In our using and abusing days, we cared not much a whit about such niceties as grace and elegance. We wanted the firestorm, the maelstrom, the surge, the burst, the jack, the hit, the bang—anything that would push us into an extreme of feeling. Or we wanted the great numbing—the opiate that would anesthetize us to any possibility of felt pain. We met stress with either excess or freeze-out. We fought, we ran or we froze.

In early recovery, the turbulence in our veins began to subside. Our shot and frayed nerves began to soften and re-sheathe themselves. The oscillations in mood, the energy swings started to level out some.  We found we had to be patient with the process. There is only so much toxic residue and upset that can be safely removed and defused in a certain period of time. And each of us is remarkably different in constitution and capacity when it comes to that cleaning practice. We found great solace in knowing that we were not alone in this journey of recovery. We had a new fellowship who could sustain us in our darker moments, our waves of discomfort and discouragement. We realized that the chemicals had bitten hard—and those wounds needed plenty of time and care to heal.

In recovery, we are acutely aware that the little user-beastie still lurks patiently within us—just waiting for a slip, so it can pull us back into our former insanities. Getting impatient with the recovery process—trying to force the healing too fast and hard—can boomerang back on us and cause a dangerous distress. Relaxing and taking it easy is the ticket, we learned, to a safe, steady and resilient recovery.

When we relax and let our bodies feel themselves, we have the opportunity to move with greater self-assurance. And from that relaxed acceptance, we can move with a more gentle elegance. We will feel more graceful to ourselves and we will look more graceful to others.

Grace

When our natural-born grace feels under fire, it’s good to have a repertoire of movements we can use to douse the flames and calm things down. Today, let’s practice one such move:

Stand with feet shoulder-width apart, arms by your sides. Knees slightly bent, butt tucked under, shoulders down and relaxed. Put your attention in your stomach. Simply swing your arms behind you with a moderate push to get things going—rather like priming a pump. Then let the swings rebound forward and up with a sense of effortless grace. Push back when the arms reach the top of their unforced arc. Do at least twenty repetitions, but anywhere up to one hundred would be great.

This movement is very calming indeed—and also naturally detoxifying—as it will help activate your debris-cleansing lymph system.

I move gently—and as I move, the grace descends upon me and fills my being.

The Cost of Kindness

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“Your acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love, which linger and continue to uplift others long after your sharing.”—Rumi

Sometimes, in the throes of use, we were too busy with ourselves to be kind to others. Such was the life of a practicing addict. We were intent on more important things than kindness, we thought—like the next score. If we were kind at all, it tended to be a duplicitous kindness. We had a hidden agenda. We mimed kindness, in order to extract the wanted goodies from the unsuspecting mark. And we weren’t only misers in kindness to others. We doled out meanness to ourselves just as readily as we doled out meanness to our relatives, friends and colleagues.

Yet kindness extended on a rubber band is no kind of kindness at all. As the band snaps back against our hand, we sting from the rebound. And a frown will pass across the face of the one we just betrayed, a grimace, a look of hurt. The cost of fake kindness can be measured by the cupful… Conditional kindness is bitter in the giving, bitter to receive. And nobody is finally fooled.  Such unrepentant caginess may have appeared to serve our short term needs as practicing addicts, but the formula fell apart when we entered recovery.

We learned in recovery of a more noble path—the path of unconditional kindness. And the path began in our own hearts. We learned to be kind to ourselves, first. Because we came to understand that there can be no genuine kindness given to others from an unloved heart. When we shower our own hearts with acts of kindness, those hearts respond by radiating kindness back. We learn to feel good about ourselves that we may be authentic in feeling good about others.

Cost of Kindness

For today, let’s commit an act of kindness with our own hearts as the recipient.

Sit or lie in a relaxed position. Put your attention in your heart. Breathe gently for a moment, just being aware of that beating heart. Put a gentle half-smile on your face. Inhale through the nose as slowly as you can manage without strain. As you inhale, imagine you are drawing in a sense of benevolence from every direction and let it be naturally attracted toward your heart area. Exhale slowly through the nose, smile some more and feel all that benevolent energy condensing in the heart. Repeat ten times—or more if you want. Feels pretty transcendent does it not?

It feels so comforting to feel my heart accept my own kindness.