Moderation and I have never been friends. Not natural friends, anyway. I tend to do better with strict rules or total freedom. Anything with too much wiggle room and I turn into a rebel without a cause.
Food and substances have always been common culprits. I’ve always kind of wished I could be one of those people who says, “oh no thanks, I don’t feel like cheesecake right now,” or “nah, one drink is enough for me,” or “I’d rather just stay in tonight.” Rather than feeling compelled to try everything delicious on the table, to drink whenever the opportunity arises, to take every opportunity to hang out.
In recent years I’ve had some success at cultivating a more moderate relationship with food. Sometimes I can even say “no” to the cheesecake. But it’s been hard work and it’s still a work in progress. Especially if it’s a baked cheesecake.
When it comes to substances, I decided a few years ago that any attempts at moderation were futile, and stopped everything cold turkey. And it worked – in so far as I wasn’t drinking or smoking or partaking in any other substances… but I never really stopped thinking about them. Never stopped mourning the loss of a future I once saw for myself, with grown up versions of the fun I had throughout my teens and 20s. Wine with friends when the kids are asleep, a joint on the roof with my husband, work drinks. But just every so often, moderately. Mature fun.
So a few months ago I decided, fuck it. I’ve made so many other changes in my life – maybe I can learn to be moderate. Maybe with the thousands of hours of meditation and therapy and dharma books and writing… maybe I’ve changed. Not completely, but enough. Enough to sustain a couple of glasses of wine and a joint here and there. Enough to have my cake and eat it, too.
At first, it seemed I was right. Anything more than a glass of wine and I felt horrible the next day, so it was easy enough to avoid overdoing it there. And when I first shared a joint with some friends when we were camping it was even easier not to repeat that every day – because I had no weed in the house.
But as time went by I stopped noticing the alcohol in my system the next day so much, and – surprise, surprise – it’s actually pretty easy to find weed. I probably should have seen that coming since I work in a cannabis company, and never used to have any problems finding something to smoke back in my younger, cooler days.
So now it’s just me and my mind. And that nice bottle of single malt we bought at the duty free a couple of weeks ago. And a few buds in a jar at the top of the cupboard next to the whiskey.
Did I mention that moderation and I have never gotten on that well?
As it turns out, all that meditation and therapy did sweet fuck all to change my natural tendencies. Now that these substances are back on the table, I’m basically up for them anytime – just like a toasted cheese sandwich pretty much always seems like a good idea. Those cravings that I was hoping had disappeared with my years of abstention did nothing of the sort – they were just sitting and waiting for me to pick them up again.
So now the question is, what do I do with that? Do I take the “easy” route and ban them all again, so that I don’t need to constantly worry about sliding back into addictions and dependencies? But that would mean giving up this newfound integrated self that I quite like, and going back to feeling bummed out about missing out on all of the fun. Not the end of the world, I know, but it’s the truth.
Or can I learn to live with these cravings? To indulge sometimes, even a lot of the time, but in moderation and not every time. To decide on certain days that I’m not going to drink or smoke – and then to feel good about myself for sticking to it. To recognize the cravings, stare them right in the eye, and say “no, not now.”
So that’s where I’m at now. Playing with it. As mindfully as possible. Keeping up the practices that have helped me to live a conscious lifestyle the last few years, and hoping that they’re strong enough – that I’m strong enough – to be able to see what’s going on. Watching the thoughts and pulls and temptations. Seeing them for what they are, and responding, moderately.
Somewhere along the line in the past few months an old friend told me how happy he was to see me giving this a shot. “When you used to smoke and drink in the past it was extreme, and then you stopped completely, and that was extreme, too. What you’re doing now seems moderate”
Perhaps the only way to learn how to get on with moderation is to try it.
My romance with the green flower started in the mid-90s, around the same time as I met cigarettes and alcohol and Pearl Jam and teenage angst. Somehow I remember my first cigarette, trying to be cool and pretending I knew how to work a Zippo lighter, yet I have no memory of the first time I got stoned. Either way, I tried it, I liked it, and pot was part of my story for the next two decades or so.
The details aren’t so interesting. Countless bongs and joints, across various countries and stages of life. Baggies of buds and sticks of hash stashed in the back of drawers. Laughter and bonding and writing and talking shit and paranoia and music and movies and baking cookies at 2am. Pot was always there with me – even as I moved countries and made a new life for myself and started a career and dated and started meditating and “growing up.”
Usually it made me feel good – but not always. I think one of the main reasons I used to enjoy drinking and smoking pot together was that the alcohol would relax me enough for the pot not to make me anxious or paranoid. I was always looking for the sweet spot – that delicate chemical balance.
It was a lot of fun, but also a lot of overdoing it and hangovers and stinging for a smoke but not being able to get any and deciding to only smoke on weekends then breaking my promise to myself over and over.
Until one day in 2013, I decided enough was enough, and I quit everything – cigarettes, alcohol and pot, all in one fell swoop. I went on a long meditation retreat, “saw the light,” the pain that all those cravings were causing me, and that was it. Never smoked (or drank) again.
And as much as it pains me at times, as much as I wish I hadn’t felt the need to be so hardcore that I had to quit everything, I’m still pretty happy with my decision. Proud of it even. I fantasize every now and then about being able to share a joint with my husband on the roof once in a blue moon… but then the thought of breaking my sober streak doesn’t feel worth it. Not to mention the fear of the pot paranoia that I used to know oh-so-well.
So that was my cannabis story… until a couple of months ago when I was approached to run the content operation for an up-and-coming startup in the medical cannabis space. I connected to the mission instantly, I was ready for a change, I liked the people, it was mutual, and I started work about a month ago.
No, I haven’t started using again. It’s not that sort of office.
But I have been thinking about it.
When I took the job, I honestly thought I knew nothing about medical cannabis – I saw this world as only vaguely connected to my past experience. As it turns out, I know a fair bit about this plant. I’ve grown it and I’ve smoked it and I’ve stored it and I’ve baked with it. I know about its effects and side effects. I can smell it from a mile away.
But there is so much that I don’t know. Learning about cannabinoids and terpenes and the range of products on the market and the even wider range of conditions that this impressive plant is being used to treat… it’s kind of blowing my mind. It’s a different world from the cannabis culture I grew up in – of taking whatever we could get from whatever dodgy dealer we could find. I never had any idea of strains and certainly not active ingredient profiles. No wonder sometimes it sent me into fits of giggles and sometimes I was sure everyone was whispering about me – I had no idea what I was taking.
I keep thinking about how cannabis is being used these days to treat anxiety, a condition I’ve struggled with on and off over the years. And in the years since I quit, there have been some pretty tough patches. I gained so much clarity and stability when I stopped drinking, and smoking cigarettes… but maybe I threw the baby out with the bathwater? Of course it was recreational use, all those years, but maybe there was some healing happening there, too?
And really, how much can we really separate the two? Stress is a risk factor for so many diseases and conditions – so stress relief tools are just as much for the body as they are for the mind, and for the fun of it.
Of course, I’m well aware that this could just be me looking for loopholes, looking for an excuse to “allow” myself to drink and smoke again. To fill that gap that all the fun stuff left in my life. And what were the chances that taking a job where I write and talk about cannabis all day every day wasn’t going to stir that up?
So for now, I’m just sitting with it. Talking about it. Processing.
I have no plans to do anything right now – and anyway it’s still illegal here who are we kidding, I live in the suburbs and go to sleep at 10pm and have no idea how I would even go about finding anything to smoke.
As the first chords of “Release” rang out across the Stadio Olimpico, low and dissonant, tears ran down my cheeks. Tears of excitement, of pure emotion. Tears that are pricking my eyes now again, a week later, just thinking about it. Tears from a part of myself long dormant.
And by the time that epic 9-minute long song built to its—who are we kidding—almost orgasmic peak, I was tingling and wired and rapt and just so fucking there. In every brooding chord and every solo and and especially every note coming out of Eddie Vedder’s lips. And every girly “whooo” coming out of mine.
Yep, I’m going to try to weave some deep story out of a Pearl Jam concert. Readers who knew me in high school probably won’t be surprised.
Obviously, it was an amazing gig. A 3-hour long, high energy, thumping, beautiful concert, with plenty of “old stuff” and classic rock covers and two encores and a Pride flag with the slogan “Fuck Trump. Love Life” scrawled across it. These guys tear up the stage, they’re such pros. They just love it.
And it came in the middle of a 3-day escape to Rome with a close friend—leaving kids and jobs and partners behind, momentarily. What a luxury.
But it was more than that, for me. Layers more.
The first layer probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t get out so much right now. And that’s okay, I love my family and my work is important to me and I usually make it to yoga once a week; there’s understandably not so much room for rock-related engagements. And so being out with thousands of people, none of whom were relying on me for sustenance or guidance or cleaning or attention, just Having Fun in capital letters—that’s a standout experience for me right now.
It didn’t used to be, though.
There was once a me that went to concerts every week. Local bands, alternative festivals, big events like this one. I camped out to get the best tickets, snuck out of the house if necessary, spent half the week with my ears ringing. I had Dr. Martens and a purple mohawk. I was young and cool and I knew everything—including all the words to every song on “Ten” and “Vs.” and “Vitalogy.” And when “No Code” came out it became soundtrack to those high school years, spinning countless times around my Discman, giving voice to my angst, wrapping melodies around my soul. It was with me through acid highs and weed lows and my parents’ divorce and my first love and my first breakup and stupid amounts of Jim Beam.
I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life
I know you’ll be star
In somebody else’s sky
But why can’t it be mine?
– Black
And a few years after that, onto the next boyfriend, there was more freedom, and different drugs and a mini 4WD with a zip-off roof. And instead of rock concerts at the Metro, weekends were for raving and clubbing, for bouncing up and down to happy hardcore tunes for hour upon amphetamine-fueled hour. DJs replaced rockstars, but not all the time. As “Yield” and “Riot Act” came out, Pearl Jam still felt like home. For spaced out Sundays, coming down and talking shit. For studying for university exams. For singalongs with my three siblings on the way to family dinners, all of us wading through our own shit, separately and yet together.
By the time the self-titled album and “Backspacer” were released, I’d grown out of the raves and the eccy, and moved myself over to the other side of the world, from Sydney to Jerusalem, to try out another new me. With a new language and new friends and youthful, liberal idealism and piles of hash and a new national beer. And yet as I got to know Israeli rock, and American hip hop, and the British jungle scene—depending on whose iPod was on shuffle as we smoked up—Pearl Jam was always my contribution to the playlist. While living with flatmates and then by myself being oh-so-grown up in Tel Aviv, and finally meeting this man who changed everything, these songs were being fused more and more into that vague concept that is “me.” Of self-identification through the whirlwind of time and experience and love and drugs. Of life.
I cannot stop the thought
I’m running in the dark
Coming up a which way sign, all good truants must decide
– Immortality
And so while I was right there, at the concert in Rome last week, moment by moment, through song after fucking brilliant song, I was also in my head, in the past. In flashes. In memories that only music and smells can dig up. Being all these past me’s again. Remembering who I was and who I was after that and after that. Mourning it in a way, sinking into this deep, longing sense of nostalgia for a me who had these dramatic, sensual, substance-fueled experiences on a regular basis. For a me who was cool and happy and carefree.
But was I really? I mean come on, what the fuck was a 16-year-old girl doing drinking hip flasks of Kentucky bourbon and punching bongs every other night. It’s not exactly a picture of contentment. And cool? Well maybe, but that mohawk certainly wouldn’t look cool on me now, so what’s to mourn?
This longing, for my past self, it’s not new. I’ve felt it often over the past 5 years, since I stopped drinking and smoking, settled down, started a family. It’s like everything changed too abruptly and I’m still catching up. Finding my peace with the addictions and lifestyle that I supposedly got over, but really still lurk within me, looking for different outlets and expressions.
But somehow, this longing felt different.
There was a moment, just before the concert began, when I suddenly thought, fuck. Do I even like Pearl Jam anymore? Did I ever?
Come to send, not condescend.
Transcendental consequence.
Is to transcend where we are.
Who are we? Who we are.
– Who you are
These songs have been with me the whole time, crooning to my soul, to my struggles, to my heart. It’s all me. I’m that fucked up 16 year old and I’m a raver and I moved across the world and I’m a mother and a wife and a writer. I like rock music and drum and bass and hip hop. And sometimes even happy hardcore.
I am myself, like you, somehow.
I’ll wait up in the dark for you to speak to me
How I’ve opened up, release me
– Release
And now as I work through this, back on my couch, in my beautiful house, surrounded by the sprouts of the life that we’re cultivating here, tears sting my eyes again. I feel it in my chest. It’s all welling up, all of those hyper-color experiences that built me and ripped me apart and pushed me onto the next phase, and the next, to now. And on that backdrop, the tingly rush of serotonin I felt during the concert last week showed me that despite my relatively new-found sobriety, it’s not over. Those highs are still accessible to the me of today, and they feel just as good as they did for $50 a gram.
My baby keeps waking up while I write this—nothing more rock ‘n roll than worms and teething, right?—and with Pearl Jam lyrics spinning around my head, I feel healed. More whole, somehow. Like something has released. Like reliving these phases of my adult life with one unifying, powerful soundtrack and a natural high has helped to integrate them. All of these me’s, different and yet the same.
I think it might be time for GG and Little A’s Pearl Jam education to begin.
To bring the rock into the mundane, unapologetically.
I didn’t know it would be my last drink at the time.
It was a fun night, a spontaneous party at our rooftop apartment in the middle of Tel Aviv. It started with hamentashen – traditional cookies for the festival of Purim – and whiskey sours. Because all social events revolved around alcohol for me those days. Not that weird for a 30-year-old single woman, living and working in a grungy, beach-side city perhaps, but I think for me the two were a little too closely linked. Like the socializing was an excuse for the drinking and not the other way around.
The party started when it was still light, with a few good friends sitting around chatting. It ended with a purple wig, lots of tears and an empty bottle of Glenlivit – and I don’t remember doing much sharing. Well to be honest, I don’t remember that much at all. Things started light and fun, got really fun, and then got messy – this was often the case when I partied. A deep conversation with a good friend from out-of-town had me a blubbering mess, I have a vague memory of arguing with my boyfriend about cleaning up, lots of vomiting (let’s not forget that I was pounding a cocktail made up mainly of single malt and raw eggs)… and that’s about all I can remember.
Whiskey sours and hamentashen: the beginning of the endI have much more vivid memories of waking the next morning, feeling like death warmed up. I spent the entire day trying to keep fluids down and running back and forth from the toilet to bed. And with the physical hangover came the emotional fallout. The sick feeling in my stomach as snippets of ridiculous things I’d said and done the previous night came back to me. The cringing regret. The long, nagging black holes in my memory.
It was 7pm before I managed to keep down some juice. I don’t know if I managed to eat. I didn’t care. I just felt so wretched and sorry for myself.
And it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. Not by far.
This sort of thing had been going on for a long time, around 15 years. Every party, holiday, meal and meetup was an excuse to get drunk. I drank when I was happy and when I was sad, to celebrate and to commiserate. Part of it was about dutch courage, part was about enjoying the physical sensations of getting wasted, part of it was just pure fun. I fancied myself as a connoisseur of whiskey, wine and beer – but at the end of the day it was all about getting drunk. There were a bunch of other party drugs involved too at different points, along with I can’t even begin to imagine how many cigarettes and joints.
And yet despite how trashy that must all sound, my life was ostensibly in pretty decent shape at that time.
Until a few months earlier I’d been living by myself – a life-long goal – in a cute apartment three minutes from the beach. I had a high-energy journalism job that I loved and lots of friends living in walking distance from me. I ran 5km a few times a week, practiced yoga regularly and meditated every day. And I’d just met a man who was different from anyone I’d ever dated, and things were going very well.
I guess this is why people squirm when I use the word alcoholic. It doesn’t quite fit. But it’s true. It’s just that I was a very high-functioning abuser.
No smile like a Bloody Mary smileThe day after that horrible hangover was the day I headed off for my first long Vipassana course – a 12-day silent meditation retreat. It sounds like a cliché but there’s no other way to say it – those 12 days totally changed my life.
In order to take part in the course, students agree to take on the Five Precepts, or training rules, for the duration of the course. And so without thinking too much of it, I undertook to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and using intoxicants. The Buddhist tradition has it that accepting these rules gives the mind the moral freedom to properly engage in contemplative practice. Simple enough really, and it made sense to me. And then just kept on making more and more sense.
Somewhere in among the grueling hour-upon-hour meditation schedule, I found some clarity about these substances that had become such an integral part of my life. Sitting on a cushion, painstakingly bringing my mind back to the present moment over and over again, the cycle of craving that I’d gotten myself into finally started to make sense. I understood on a physical, visceral level that I was completely addicted to how these substances were making me feel, and I realized – it was time to take drugs and alcohol out of the picture completely. At least for now.
I’d known it for years, I think, but I hadn’t been ready to admit it. I’d played around with drinking “moderately,” with only smoking pot on the weekends. I’d stopped smoking cigarettes for a few years, then started again during a breakup and been so furious with myself that I’d been unable to stop again. It just wasn’t working.
And on top of that, I simply didn’t want to taint the purity of mind that I was just starting to cultivate with the mindfulness practice. I was finally working through so much of my shit – psychological, spiritual and existential, alike – and felt ready to fully apply myself to the task.
I also knew I would have the support of that promising new boyfriend once I got back home to the real world, because he’d already raised “my substance issue” a few months earlier (at which juncture I’d basically told him to get fucked, naturally).
And so I just did it. I came back home, reintegrated into most of my life, but just not the alcohol, drugs and cigarettes bit. It’s been over four years and I’m proud to say that I haven’t had another sip, drag, snort or pill since.
I thought the cravings would be the hard part, but actually once I stepped off the wheel, it was kind of like I closed a door and that was that. There are still moments when a beer would go down well, or a cigarette on a particularly bad day, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.
The social bit was much tougher. While I did have real, close friends – not just drinking buddies – the substance abuse was an integral part of my very active social life. So I had to find social activities that didn’t revolve around drinking, and also to admit that without alcohol I actually didn’t want such an active social life. Time alone became far more tolerable, and sometimes even preferable. It was a shift that I didn’t expect, but ultimately it was quite welcome, and fit well with my meditation practice and an increasingly serious relationship, too.
So it’s been four years, and I feel like a completely different person now. That supportive boyfriend is now my dear husband and we have two young children. We bought a place in the suburbs. Meditation is still a cornerstone of my sanity but I definitely don’t fit in the hour in the morning and hour in the evening that I was doing in the months after that course. Life is good. Calm and happy and fulfilling.
A recent smiley momentBut recently I’ve been thinking that it might be even better with a glass of wine in my hand at the end of the day, once the kids are in bed. And that maybe I’ve changed enough that I’d be able to handle it differently this time.
I talked it out last week, chatting with my mother and stepfather over a couple of glasses of San Pellegrino. They were drinking wine and beer, respectively. And to be honest I had half a mind that the conversation might end with me deciding to have a drink myself, but it didn’t – and here’s why.
I know that if I had a drink then – or right now – I wouldn’t end up drunk on a street corner somewhere. Of course not. I’d be able to have one drink, maybe two, and call it a night.
But I wouldn’t want to.
From that first sip I’d be thinking about the next one, and the one after that. About when and whether I could pour myself another. Even just writing about it now I can feel the craving starting to build. The metallic taste in my mouth, salivating at the thought of something I haven’t even tasted in so long. And at some point I’d start thinking about smoking too – because drinking and smoking really are such a beautiful match. I wouldn’t actually do it, but the mental suffering I’d cause myself in going over and over it just doesn’t seem worth it.
There are other reasons, too. Empty calories and all the crap I used to eat when I was drinking, drunk or hungover for one. Pizza after pizza, delicious of course but basically just clogging my arteries and making me miserable about my body. Clarity of mind is another. It’s bad enough that I can count the amount of full nights’ sleep I’ve had in the past three years on one hand – why add insult to injury? I’m about to go back to work full time – I need every brain cell I can get. And then there’s the emotional stability. Sure, I have my ups and downs, but they’re nothing compared to the serotonin crashes I used to experience even after a couple of glasses of wine.
But the cycle of craving is the main reason that I’m not having another drink. At least not for now. I’m making a conscious choice to live without a well-earned beer – so that I can also be free of that world of inner turmoil.
So, was I an alcoholic? Am I still?
It doesn’t matter. All I know is that for now – right now – I still feel good about that decision I made four years ago, and kept making every day since. And I’m eternally grateful for the conditions that helped me to come to it and to stick with it – the gift of meditation, my rock of a husband, and a significant amount of dark chocolate along the way. Gotta keep a vice or two hanging around just for fun, right?
My iPhone was nestled in a bag of rice at home after an unfortunate incident with the toilet the night before, so I was phoneless for the morning. I meditated my way to work and wrote a Facebook post to show the world how mindful and enlightened I am. I mentally planned out a blog post that I would write later in the day about all the deep things we can learn when technology fails us.
And then, I proceeded to spend the rest of the day completely distracted and absorbed by setting up my replacement phone. The exact opposite of what I professed I would do.
I had piles of work to get done and yet over and over I found myself updating software so I could restore my latest backup. Despite knowing that GG’s daycare had my office number in case of emergencies, I became borderline obsessed with getting Whatsapp up and running. I spoke to the IT about WiFi settings (twice!), I googled why certain stages were taking so long. Time and time again I realized what I was doing and resolved to leave it for now and get back to work… and then before I knew it I was fiddling around with the phone.
I was the freaking opposite of mindful.
I knew I was doing it and yet somehow I was unable to get out of the loop. Looking back, it reminds me of when I used to smoke pot. All day I’d tell myself that I wasn’t going to smoke today. I’d plan a wholesome evening, meal, whatever. And then inevitably within a few minutes of getting home there’d be a joint in my hand.
I guess I’m more addicted than I thought.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this mindless muddle I went out for lunch with my boss and a colleague. At that point the phone had 8 minutes to go on the restore so I decided to leave it in my office. And of course as chance would have it, we got stuck out in a hailstorm and lunch turned into a two-hour affair. For two hours we chatted and ate – and every time there was a lull in the conversation the other two picked up their phones, checked email, commented on messaged and otherwise filled the void. And I felt high and mighty like a reformed addict, looking out at the weather and thinking deep thoughts.
Eventually we got back into the office and my mind left the building again. I was so close to getting the phone sorted out that it seemed a shame not to finish. By the time I headed home I felt like an absolute wreck. I finally had Whatsapp but what did it matter? I’d wasted an entire day.
What’s the lesson? I’m not interested in a life without an iPhone if that’s what you’re thinking. As soon as funds allow I’ll buy myself a nice shiny new one.
BUT – I am going to bring more mindful attention to how I use it. I already charge it in the other room overnight so it’s not the first thing I look at in the morning – now I plan to disconnect a little earlier in the evening too. Every time I catch myself mindlessly flipping through apps or scrolling through feeds I’m going to use it as a reminder to come back to the present moment. To take a deep breath and ground myself. To realize the nature of the addiction.
And most importantly – I’m not taking it to the bathroom with me anymore.
