gingernyc

I had this thought that for many of us, drinking was a quasi-spiritual experience. We had intense "talks" with people we might never talk with, and really felt they understood us or vice versa. We had mind-blowing sex that took us to some other plane because we were free of inhibitions. We laughed so hard and we were left feeling transformed. We danced all night without feeling the pain in our feet. We sat on a riverbank with a glass of amber colored booze and watched the most beautiful sunset...and on and on. I feel that for me, drinking transformed me, made me feel somehow a part of something bigger than me, connected to others in a way I didn't normally experience. Drinking helped me escape my mundane existence, and elevated the ordinary into the extraordinary. This spiritual lift from drinking was something I didn't have in my regular life. I turned to drinking to feel an otherworldly, nearly out of body experience. Alcohol allowed me to seek a spiritual experience in an unhealthy, but socially acceptable way.

Clearly, there was a huge hole that needed filling. I think perhaps that's why right now, a spiritual program of recovery is working for me. Without alcohol, I can have a spiritual, otherworldly, exhalted experience any time of day simply by being grateful and appreciating what I have. I can really tune into others, and be in the moment. I can have this exalted experience without the hangover, and without the embarrassment, shame, and physical, mental, and emotional cost.

Curious what others think--and if they can relate to this.

mmeat

I SOOOooo know where you are coming from! For me, when I get those first few drinks into me, I feel like I am King of the world. I can go to any bar or club and chat up anybody...I can ask a girl to go hit the dance floor, I can be the funniest most hilarious guy in the world.
For me, when I try to stop drinking, I romanticize alcohol so much. I start thinking of ( like you said)...the amazing conversations...the intense laughter....the feeling after an awesome night of drinking, about all the great moments. Then days and weeks afterwards, of remenicsing with friends about " the night"....telling everyone what a great time they missed. ( of course I leave out the feeling of dread the next morning. The sickness in my stomach, the anxiety..shakes...the embarassment of what I may have done after I blacked out because I have no self control with booze...)
Uuuuuuuughhhhh...I just wish drinking didn't have to be an issue for me. But it is.

stormyknight

Much of my lot in life has been overcoming the challenges of addiction which perhaps sprung from a dysfunctional family history. I smoked for 20 years, tried giving up hundreds of times and have been successful for the last 15 years or so. A multitude of obsessions and tricks have dwelt within my mind. I know when I'm tired physically, mentally or spiritually I am vulnerable. Oftentimes I think it swings in cycles, so as I gain experience I now get some advance notice to begin preparations for the difficult times. Its day 128 now for me sober. I walk 3+ miles twice a day, take vitamins, I keep a "me" list of the things I like to do that especially make me feel good and take time to think about and do many of those things each day. Being sober I'm better able to focus on so much more especially on strong days. When I'm strong it makes me feel renewed. It's like my mind and senses capture more of life. Earlier in life I craved rushing from one encounter to another. Many times when I feel good now I appreciate it because I crafted it and purposefully made a real thing happen that day. I never want to forget what a blessing and opportunity life has become. I can recall when I first drank I thought I was experiencing a spiritual nirvana just like you so aptly described. I think I'm relearning to experience the exhilaration of that again today. Except it isn't happening to me as often as I am making it happen on a higher plain.

TheSunAlsoRises

Yeah I thought it was an intense spiritual experience... After some time under my belt though I can watch others drinking heavily and with a clear mind observe that there is nothing fantastic about it... But that is why a spiritual program of recovery is helpful to many of us...

sfgirl

You might want to check out the book Not-God, an intellectual history of AA by E. Kurtz, it sort of talks about this kind of thing. I am not even in AA and I found it really interesting.

I know what you are saying but it was sort of the false prophet and gave but an illusion. Working a program of recovery has really opened up the world. Alcohol had given me such a narrow view of everything. It really is fascinating how much can change just taking out one thing.

Boleo

Dr. Carl Jung said something along the same lines in his letter to Bill Wilson:

"You see, "alcohol" in Latin is "spiritus" and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum."

A.A. History -- Dr. Carl Jung's Letter To Bill Wilson, Jan 30, 1961

LBW

Gingernyc,

I know exactly what you mean. I can remember nights where I felt this way perfectly.

The first night my husband and I moved in together and we were sitting on our balcony watching the sunset and drinking beer... wow! We talked about everything and I felt so much love toward him. what a marvelous feeling! Somehow I attributed the whole thing to the beer, not the the circumstances of the moment. I can remember drinking up there again and again trying to reproduce that feeling and it was never the same. Didn't stop me from trying.

I think only 1/100th of my drinking experiences were really, truly amazingly fun or spiritual... and I'm not certain that it was entirely due to the alcohol as I've always thought. The great moments always had some other element that made them awesome.

Nevertheless, I was a crazed person obsessed with trying to re-create the happy feelings... and 99 times out of 100 drinking didn't live up to the hype I imagined.

It reminds me of college pyschology 101. I remember watching this video of an experiment on birds. They had this cage where the bird could tap a button and a pellet of food would drop out. The bird would eat until full (about 10 pellets) and stop. Then they had it rigged up where the bird had to tap the button a random amount of times before a pellet would pop out. Sometimes he could tap it 2 times and get food, sometimes 100 times before anything... The birds would go crazy. They would tap, tap, tap, tap well past getting 10 pellets... they would tap until their beaks would break. If they took the button away, the birds would maniacally tap the walls uncontrollably.

That's what we alcoholics do... we drink and drink and drink chasing down these happy moments that are fewer and fewer between.

joedris

After years of heavy drinking, the spiritual "experiences" I encountered eventually turned to nightmares. There was nothing spiritual about those experiences. The progression of this disease will do that. To recover for this disease, I had to learn anew the concept of a spiritual experience. This time it was an acknowledgement that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. And my spiritual experience today is infinitely superior to that "experience" I had years ago

ClosetExtrovert

I agree with you, Joedris. I can't romanticize my drinking days. I don't know why but this whole thread freaks me out. Guess I have to ponder why this is pissing me off so much.

soidog

I hear what you mean. Some of the funnest, most awesome and enjoyable times of my life involved alcohol or drugs. But also some of the worst as well. Looking back at my own experience, when i was younger (i.e. college or early-mid 20s) most of the "good" spiritual types of experiences I had involving alcohol were also very social in nature - being with lots of like-minded friends, etc.

As I got older and my social context changed (i.e. as I entered the "serious" workforce), alcohol became less a fun thing and more and more a very bad crutch. I went from being the fun party guy in my 20s to being the loner alcoholic in my 30s, basically drinking alone almost all the time because everyone around me was moving on with their lives, getting married, and so on. For me my alcohol addiction was in many ways an attempt on my part to want to reconnect with a youth and social life that I no longer had as an office pencil neck.

For me, a critical part of my maturing and moving on has been finding new forms of happiness with life. Its something I still very much struggle with today, but at least I'm much more healthy without the bottle keeping me down.

gingernyc

Though it may sound like it, I'm not trying to romanticize my drinking days, I'm trying to uncover a parallel between what I thought I felt while drinking and what I can feel in moments of lucidness and gratefulness while sober. I really do think the spiritual approach is working for me, rather than a more rational approach say Rational Recovery. For instance, that clear, present, connected feeling that happens after a good yoga class. That is spiritual, and so much more real than anything from a wine glass. I think that clutching the wine glass represented a yearning for a deep experience that is accessible to me when I let go and stop being afraid of my own true nature--my essence, my life force. I don't know if I'm articulating this clearly, but anyway, the dialogue is interesting.

ClosetExtrovert

Ginger, I'm the one reacting, so this is my issue. Others can relate to what you're saying. It's all good. I just need to figure out what's going on with me here.

Overman

I had a lot of intense "talks" with Ralph on the big white telephone.

Dee74

There's nothing new about people equating drug use or drinking to heightened awareness or spiritual experience. I did it myself.

But in my experience when you have a true sober spiritual experience - there's no comparison.

Maybe my spiritual experiences don't match up to others...

but for me it's like comparing a brilliant sunset....to a sunset, shot with a pinhole camera from a moving car, in black and white, in tiny resolution, in the newspaper....

It might be the same event, but from where I am now? I doubt it.
D

Mark75

I don't know... I read the OP and didn't particularly want to go there either, the whole romancing thing... But if I react to it, I know why... I know what ginger is saying and have dealt with it myself....

For me, It was part of the grieving process... I mean, hell, there was something I liked about it, duh..... I don't mind too much going there in my head at times, but my spiritual condition needs to be good... I kind of feel like if I don't acknowledge it, then I never deal with it. And, it is a big deal...

So... to the OP, yes I can relate...

And why the hell is it such a big deal? Because I am an alcoholic!! Non-alcoholics and non-problem drinkers don't romanticize drinking...

Hmmm.... time for another 1st step...

Mark

Ninsuna

Your post makes me think of what some people call the "God-sized-hole" we try to fill with booze. Or maybe...our HP loves us so much that even in the fog of our drinking days that love managed to poke through on occasion, to let us know there was more out there than the addicted painful life we were living.

soidog

I am definitely able to relate to your experiences and thoughts, although I would have articulated it in a different way. People become alcoholics for a variety of reasons. For me, alcohol was definitely a stimulus (ok technically I know its a depressant but you know what I mean). For years when I drank or used drugs, it was always something fun, exciting, sexual, daring, etc. And yes, some of those stimulating experiences I had I would have also described as "spiritual" as well, but most of the time it was just plain fun.

The problem for me was that I got into a cycle of continually trying to recapture that stimulus by drinking all the time, and that's when my alcohol use became abuse. This is why I think that for some alcoholics, boredom can be a major challenge, because it increases the desire to seek out stimulating experiences, and hey, the easiest form of stimulus is to just head down to the store and pick up a 12 pack!

My challenge in sobriety has been - like you - to continually seek out new, healthy forms of stimulus that don't involve alcohol or drugs. Its hard for me because I believe I am one of those people that is just hard wired to need more stimulus than others. Which also explains my alcoholism - when some people only needed to drink 2 cans of beer to feel a "high" - I needed 10. You know what I mean.

As you mention, beyond regular "spiritualism" - we can get healthy forms of stimulus in all sorts of things: exercise, the pursuit of hobbies or creative activities, going to a museum or concert, walking in the park, love, sex, anything! Part of the challenge is discovering those new things, breaking out of your routines, and of course, trying to put aside the constant message from society that drinking is cool, fun and exciting, and so on.

Thanks for posting this thread. Its helped me formulate my own thoughts a bit more about my experiences!


It was Some people are just hard wired for stimulus more than others.

ClosetExtrovert

I don't grieve drinking. That would be like grieving Rahway State Prison after I'd been released.
I think I'm jealous you all had such a good experience.