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Larry Pesavento is a member of the TMC Advisory Council, a therapist, an author and the Founder of CHRISTOS - A Center for Men located in Cincinnati, Ohio.
"In 1993 Larry Pesavento started CHRISTOS men's center to help initiate a dialogue about how a man in this confusing, elderless world can find a sense of identity, place and pride. He had been counseling men for close to 25 years and learned from their struggles as well as his own. He then decided to write a book about the internal journey that a man must take in order to find a sense of peace and generativity. He felt called to write this book to share what he had learned as part of his own journey and struggle with manhood.
For more info about Larry Pesavento, visit his web-site, http://www
.christoscenter
.com/
E-mail:
MENSIGHT will publish a chapter each month and we would like for you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.
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Chapter 5 - Addictions: Life Behind the Wall (Part 2)
Retreat
Substance addictions are what most people think about when addiction is brought up. Addictive substances range from alcohol and hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, to 'soft' drugs, such as marijuana and tranquilizing prescription drugs, to tobacco and caffeine. Some experts call these addictions ingestive addictions, and include food under addictive substances.
Substance addictions are insidious because of the acceptability and prevalence in our society of mood altering chemicals. It's interesting that we accept mood altering substances for what they are. They temporarily alter our mood. The assumption is that we all need our mood altered regularly. There is little questioning of why. Why do we need substances to make us feel better? Why does the natural cycle of our life not give us enough? What kind of satisfaction are we looking for?
Changing a feeling through addiction is like touching up an X-ray to solve a health problem. The underlying problem gets worse as we put more and more effort into ignoring it. The underlying problem is the young, helpless, depressed boy inside who is looking for anything to feel a bit better. The underlying problem is most often depression.
For most men, addiction is the result of an aborted separation experience, leaving the young boy in a dark separated limbo. He will be stuck in the pain of separation, yet without anyone around to tell him how to negotiate the pain and the transition. This dark liminal place is terrifying. There is separation with no place to go and nobody to connect with. To the young boy the trauma can be so severe he retreats, in utter desperation, to the only thing that he can count on for solace. To the man who feels betrayed by a loved one, the only reliable alternative feels like a comforting substance. The substance is controllable. The substance never leaves.
The trauma of a ruptured separation experience can keep a man behind walls for most of his life, the memory of the trauma always fresh and terrifying. Most men retreat farther from life and into addiction because they have not been taught by society how to separate. The natural place to find help in this transition is the father. However most of our fathers have themselves been fathered by a flawed patriarchy. When faced with the pain of separation the patriarchy turns to painkillers. With no reliable, mature father around a boy is thrown back on the patriarchy. The boy inside learns this father lesson quickly. The patriarchy sees nothing wrong with addiction, as long as it keeps a man producing. And contrary to popular opinion, the majority of addicts are productive.
Some men may never have had a reliable mothering person to protect them from pain and to nurture their need for healthy dependence. Their trauma is especially severe. I speak to many men who feel stuck in their need for comforting and understanding. They feel empty inside, hopeless, often jittery or anxious. These are signs of traumatic depression.
As I have mentioned the tendency is to blame an uncaring mother for this neglectful situation. However most of the time this is not the case. I have found that often the mother was depressed or periodically physically ill when the man was growing up. And it was during the times of depression or illness that the mother was unable to be there though she wanted to desperately. This was when emotional neglect took place. This was when the boy learned to give up emotionally, an unfortunate situation for mother and child. This was when the boy was traumatized. Periodic neglect can lead to a man who finds a substance to soothe himself any time he feels his loved one about to leave again. Abandonment fears, fueled by subsequent disappointments, will drive this man to substance addiction as the only reliable mother object.
Most men have had a good enough mothering experience but are lost in the trauma of negotiating the next developmental stage. The patriarchy teaches addiction in response to inner pain. The addiction keeps a man tied to the world of the mother. Addictions then give a man a feeling of manhood without the maturity. In the patriarchy, this feeling of manhood is the substitute for manhood itself. Substances can give a man a temporary sense of power, like rage can, in the face of an underlying feeling of powerlessness.
Signs of Substance Addiction
I don't want to be black and white when talking of substance addictions. There is not some concrete line which someone crosses into addiction. Often people question the number of drinks or pills per day that constitutes addiction. How many times or how many drinks or how many hours are often not helpful questions, because they muddy the real issue. If a man has two beers at night "to relax" yet works on his primary relationships and faces his life and identity issues then he is relaxing. If a man has two beers a night then goes to bed, depressed about work and with little communication with his wife or partner, there is strong indication of an addiction.
Throughout the ages people have taken substances that alter consciousness in ritual form. From the wine in the Mass and in bacchanals, to peyote for some native American rituals, to the substance that Tomme smoked in his initiation rite, substances have been used in religious rituals. Substances have been used since prehistory for a sense of heightened awareness by artists as well as mystics. Certainly, for celebrations or conviviality, alcohol or other substances can give a sense of a special place and time. However, these uses of substances are meant to give a greater sense of connection, either in community or to a higher power.
The addicted man is hiding behind walls. He is running from significant connections, even though he may seem jovial and friendly. He is trying to treat his depression with alcohol. He is either finding refuge in a euphoric feeling or he is unconscious. The paradox is that alcohol and many other drugs, such as opiates and barbiturates, are themselves depressants. After an initial euphoria they bring a man lower than when he started. So to continue the mothered feeling of euphoria a man needs to take more and take it more often. After a while he can no longer get the good feeling. He takes the substance to ward off the larger and larger depression of withdrawal.
This whole cycle usually takes years for a man, years of wasted time and accumulating depression. The end result is the body damage we talked about earlier, from the substance and from the depression. Like in other forms of depression, addicted men also isolate themselves more and more from people and relationship. The addiction takes a man toward a feeling and away from significant people. So a man within the mother addiction feels more and more alone and depressed. His cohort becomes his drinking buddies who share little except the same feeling. His typical movement is withdrawal and retreat.
A man who is addicted will find himself feeling trapped in his life situation. He will feel caged, edgy, unable to enjoy the people around him, especially loved ones. He will continually yearn for the environment where he can use his substance of choice. Only then will he feel truly free, behind his walls.
The dark mother archetype, the mother who holds on long after sheÕs needed, will always draw us toward unconsciousness and passivity. Those in the field of addictions call this unconsciousness the defense of denial. Connection to the dark mother object brings a blindness to oneÕs own actions. The dark mother has a great interest in keeping us unaware and unmotivated. Most men who are addicted do not know they are. They are trapped in a hedonistic world where pleasure is good and pain bad. Addicted men believe, more than other uninitiated men, that pain means something is wrong.
I can tell an addicted man is making progress in counseling when he no longer dwells on his pain. There is progress when he no longer asks, ÒIf IÕm growing why don't I feel better?Ó Men who wonder about their addictiveness to substances must ask themselves if they are using the feeling to run from the pain and problems in their life. To check themselves they should seek out an elder man or woman, whom they trust and respect, to ask them the same question. This elder can be a counselor, minister, spiritual director, or a recovering addict as sponsor. This process may involve going to a 12-Step meeting such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous and taking what is said seriously.
The insidiousness and seductiveness of substance addictions is why many people consider alcoholism and other substance addictions a disease. It comes upon us unawares and keeps us unawares, aided by an addictive society. Yet we suffer unknowingly until much damage is done both to ourselves and to those around us.
I know few men who choose to hurt those they love. Yet addictive men do this regularly. Sure a man must make a moral decision to stop an addiction, once he realizes he has a disease. The problem is bringing a man to the moral realm at all, where he is strong enough to both understand and make a choice. As we will see, it is up to fathers and elders in society to bring a man to the moral realm, the realm of consciousness, the realm of the ordeal. It is up to other, mature men, as I will show in this book, to show a man a path out of his addictions.
Larry Pesavento and MENSIGHT ask you to submit suggestions and discuss your opinions on our Men's Issues Forum.
Larry Pesavento ©2004
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