What Are You Craving?
I think the biggest lesson in Vipassana is learning what cravings actually are.
The question that kept haunting me going in was will I always be an addict? I couldn’t help but notice that even after getting over the “big” addictions, there were always other ones creeping in.
And how exhausting it is to be stuck in a cycle of dopamine fixes and quick comfort - food, online shopping, TV, social media. The faster the cycle of instant gratification, the more addictive it was.
And the more addictive it was, the less gratification there was. Each day more stimulation was needed for the same amount of comfort it provided the day before. I felt more and more zombie-like. My attention span got shorter. My frustration threshold got lower. Joy was short- lived and rarely celebrated. My brain kept asking, “Okay, what’s next?”
This was, luckily, all addressed within my first couple of days there. It seems this is an issue that’s arisen universally, and not just for people who’ve struggled with substance use.
At the heart of all craving is a feeling we’re trying to satisfy. And that feeling might mask itself as a physical craving and if we stop there, this is where the frustration kicks in. This is where I ask myself, “what’s wrong with me that I can’t get a hold of this?” If I watch it long enough though, and follow the path of where it's trying to lead me, it always leads back to an emotional need.
And sitting with myself in meditation, a lot came up. A lot of the same theme, over and over. I couldn’t figure out what it was trying to tell me.
Until I stopped rationalizing. And started feeling.
From as far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be in love. And not even necessarily romantic love. Just the feeling of being so completely enraptured by something or someone. Where everything about it or them seems perfect, and new, and exciting. Where the thought of it first thing in the morning would fill me with excitement. It could be a novel I was reading, a new game I’d invented, a new toy, a new project my cousin and I had decided to work on in her backyard (we lived two doors down from each other as kids). And then into adolescence it did become about people. Crushes, unrequited love, all of those hours of teenage melancholy after school, lying on the bedroom floor, listening to the radio, scrambling to hit record on the cassette player when my favorite song of the moment came on. Burning CD’s lol. Listening to burnt CD’S from other people.
And then entering adulthood, and navigating the world of sexual relationships. Mistaking it for love. Mistaking attention for love. I think this was when things got complicated. It was also around this time I started drinking, and shortly after got quickly addicted to ecstasy and cocaine. And up until now I never really did see the correlation. But over the last few weeks I’ve definitely come to see how closely tied this all was.
When I wasn’t able to satisfy the craving for love, alcohol was a close second. Ecstasy was a very close second. Cocaine was the closest.
The irony about sex is while you can’t physically be closer to someone, the chasm it is capable of creating both between you and the other person - and you and yourself - can be devastating. I think I wasn’t able to fully comprehend the vast difference between the highs of the previous night and the lows of the next morning in a way that made sense to me. I was constantly unsettled and needed the next thing to settle me. And the easiest, most fast-acting salve was always a drink. And that was the gateway drug to everything else.
Of course, looking back it’s easy to see how quickly tangled one could get in this web of dissatisfaction and craving. In the midst of it it seemed normal, especially when drinking was so socially acceptable, even encouraged.
When I finally did stumble upon love with Noah, we were both so wrapped up in our own webs and then tangled into each other’s, the substances came part and parcel with ourselves. Every time we got bored there was a quick fix for that. A chemical to spark our brain into new love again. Maybe that was the most addictive part. Wanting to be each other’s most exciting thing always. The alternative - getting bored of each other and separating - was terrifying and unimaginable.
This was the hardest thing about sobriety. Fearing this distance between us. That the new love feeling wasn’t ever going to come back after 14 years of navigating life together.
And then, after these 10 days away, everything changed.
By seeing this craving for what it was, I knew it was a feeling I could always create. Noah went through the worst anxiety of his life not being able to talk to me for 10 days. It was the longest we’d gone without speaking. He cleaned the entire house inside and out. He barely slept. And I, I saw for the first time what the last 14 years had really meant. To go through so many seasons with someone, through so many changes, the new love feeling had always been available, because we were constantly shifting. Every day I got to be with someone slightly different than the day before, if I cared to take the time to notice. We are still falling in love with the newest things about each other, with the addition of all the old that is still there. That was the magic. It was exactly the impermanence I feared that would keep us always in wonder. The kind of love that takes observation, patience, and being with each other. It cannot be rushed, or faked, or brought on by a substance. It simply has to be lived.
