Part Six

The World Can Be A Smelly Heck Hole: Learn to Love it or stay f**ked. 

Pinot Gris is the best wine for mornings before work. A Pinot Gris with a couple of ice-cubes in fact. The fresh pear flavoured vino is a great wine for mornings because it’s never too heavy, nor too fruity, and not too boozy. In my experience, when waking up bitterly hungover, never reach for red wine - it will make you drowsy. Sauvignon Blanc is just too acidic from the tummy first thing. Chardonnay will smack you round the chops.

Yes, Pinot Gris is just right – it’s a little mellow, a little bit fruity, cleans the slime from the lips, and most importantly – it takes away all the pain.

I got something to admit to you: I’ve been escaping pain all my life. 

What I have discovered when I look back on my 20 years of drinking and drugging, is that it was all about me NOT being able to sit with myself for too long without feeling an overwhelming discomfort - head full of worries and burden; a heart full of shame and confusion, alcohol was the PERFECT drug for me

Alcohol – whether it was wine in the morning or vodka in a Pump bottle in the afternoon - is an instant relief from life. 

Drugs came later because they helped me stay awake at work or at home with my partner or out for dinner with friends. Speed, cocaine, diet pills, party pills… They helped me function when it was obvious, to me anyway, that alcohol – from that first sip in the morning – would dull my mind and my senses.

Let’s be straight up. My whole life has been about avoiding ‘life’. When I should’ve had the tools to face the world – as it is - with all of its bumps and grief, looking back, I’ve had my hands over my eyes. 

Indeed, it’s probably the only thing we never learn in school. We learn about writing, arithmetic, hell we even learn about great painters and poets. But we never learn how to be an adult. To understand that the world is going to throw a whole bunch of shit at you, and you have to learn how to weather the storms drives many of us, paradoxically, to seek safety in the most harmful of places. Whether it’s alcohol or drugs, pornography, violence or crime, we are at the mercy of our inability to face life on life’s terms.

“Buddha was right: life is suffering. It’s how we face it that matters.”

I will never forget the night I came home from work to find my wife sitting on the edge of the bed crying. At her feet were empty bottles of liquor (I had graduated to bourbon and vodka by then, Pinot Gris just couldn’t cut it anymore). She had found the stash of bottles before I had managed to sneak it out to the recycling. 

I felt ashamed. I felt guilt. But the strangest – and perhaps the most obvious - thing occurred to me: I had spent all that time and energy avoiding the same shame and guilt only to have it crash into me like a cement truck-sized load of disgrace and hurt. How ironic and tragic is that?

You probably wonder where I am going with all this. I think recovery can be best summed up with an analogy about quitting smoking. I myself had smoked for years, and the first time I had tried to give up I did so for a whole six months in my early 30s! But it was only after the first month that I began to smell something strange. 

I told my partner at the time that I think something was wrong with me: ‘I think I have brain cancer, honey! I smell something really sickening and gross.’ 

“She looked at me and said: ‘David, that’s the world!’”

We both lived in a city at the time, and it turned out what I could smell was car exhaust fumes, garbage… and humans! Years of smoking had dulled my olfactory senses (the shit I could smell). But after giving up, it was as though someone had torn my skin off, with wounds exposed to the world. It hurt… It was uncomfortable… But ultimately, it was real! 

I look back now at the early days of my recovery. When I was in treatment, I asked the clinical staff: “Why do feel so horrible?” In shorthand, they responded: ‘That’s the world.’

Well, what they actually said was: ‘That’s growing pains David, and it’s gonna feel crap for some time. You have to learn to sit with it.’

And that was the answer for me right there. Instead of searching for ways to mask the pain, the way I was going to get through this is to ‘sit with it’. To sit with feeling horrible, I’ve learned strength and ultimately to grow up in areas of my life whereby I had stunted my own cognitive and emotional growth with years of chemical anaesthetization. 

Nowadays, I use the gym, and physical exertion to help me strengthen my core emotional well-being. When I see a personal trainer it’s crucial that they ask me to go the extra distance – beyond what I thought I could ever do. Sure, I need to meditate more (I am a restless being)! But for me, being inside my body while moving and aware of it has helped ground my troubled mind. 

I am now better at growing with what life throws at me. Shit, the pain of ‘adulting’ will never go away after you stop drinking or drugging. Hells to the no! Problems will never go away. But at least I feel I can face them now with a healthier heart and a healthier mind. Knowing that whatever life hands to me, I can do this! Growing up is hard. But at least I feel I have chosen to face the fear and do shit anyway. 

We only get one shot at this ‘life thing’ – do we do it with our hands over our eyes, or do we hold our noses high into the wind and take a deep breath? 

The world is a smelly place. That will never change. Learn to love it or stay f**ked.

Written by: David James