“The Art of Seeing” By Michael Milton
Two years ago, I nervously stood up in the presence of a group of twenty or so men and women—all of us arranged on the lawn of a Pacific Beach park, a typical cloudless San Diego afternoon—and I softly croaked out, “My name is Michael and I am an addict.”
What separates addiction from a bad habit? I’ve had many habits in my life, some good, some not so good; brushing my teeth twice a day, making the bed every morning, pushing more weight at the gym than wise, telling lies I deemed “necessary” and sometimes lying just for fun, gossiping, being a perpetual people-pleaser.
I suppose if I brushed my teeth 30 times a day, it might be said I had I might have slipped over the line that divides habit from addiction. So, perhaps the border at which the topography of habit turns into the blighted landscape of compulsion or addiction is when we engage in a behavior for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeat the activity over and over despite detrimental consequences.
“My name is Michael and I am an addict.”
Speaking those words that first time launched me into an out-of-body experience, a feeling I was looking and hearing myself from afar, accompanied by a cavalcade of emotions; anxiety, shame, pride, helplessness, embarrassment, incredulity.
Many people around the world have now come to recognize these introductory words as a tradition when anyone speaks at either an AA meeting or any of the other out-lying Twelve-Step programs which have come into being over the years since the establishment of AA.
These words are part of the backbone of a program created back in 1935, an inspired initiative cobbled together called Alcoholics Anonymous by Bill W. (Wilson), a helpless alcoholic himself.
“My name is Michael and I am an addict.”
My most powerful feeling that first sunny afternoon was disbelief; I couldn’t believe I had arrived at this point, never, ever imagining this day and those words would be a part of my life’s history.
Impossible!
After all, I’m Michael Milton! I have worked all my life, supported myself, my family, have been what I thought was a good friend to many, had a beautiful home, paid my bills, had some notoriety in New York as both a writer, an award- winning producer, sang with a highly respected chorus and was a much-lauded Toastmaster. I didn’t stumble about or wear lampshades on my head, or shoot up under a highway. I hadn’t gone into debt gambling, or gotten a venereal disease from too much sex. I hadn’t put on too much weight, lost all my teeth, and had never gotten a DUI, much less been in jail or committed a crime.
What the hell was I doing here?
Well, it works out that I had a fourteen- year addiction to opioids which, though tough to break, turned out to be the addiction more easily shed than many other “bad habits,” I had deeply buried, which were gradually revealed over my time to date in Narcotics Anonymus.
The opioid addiction began shortly after having had a year of chemotherapy for Stage Four lymphoma two decades ago. I don’t remember the particular ingredients mixed together for my arm-fed ‘cocktail,’ though I do remember the oncologist saying there was a chance that this particular mixture could cause shrinkage in the cartilage surrounding major joints.
The doctor was right. One by one, beginning with my hips, (followed by both shoulders and finally both knees,) the pain of bone- on- bone friction acting upon all of these joints necessitated a series of replacement surgeries.
Opioids were still easily accessed when I had the two hip operations and also for the first shoulder replacement. And with each operation followed by the recovery period and PT work, I would stretch my stay on the pills just a bit longer than absolutely necessary until finally they had become a daily thing.
An addiction.
And as I fell prey to it, I found creative ways to delay the next joint replacement surgery or complain over-dramatically to the doctor about my post- surgery pain, a ruse that allowed me to float along on my drug of choice for a few months longer.
Not only did the pills ameliorate physical pain, it also took away a different kind of pain, a spiritual pain which I had carried around long before the arrival of cancer.
The years of feeling this non-specific kind of fear and anxiety disappeared with the opioids. I had an easier time of being with people. I could perform with a calm I had never before known. I had more confidence; no more worrying that I wasn’t good enough or smart enough or kind enough. Loneliness disappeared. I felt buoyant and happy for absolutely no reason at all.
For a while.
Of course, along with all of these “benefits,” came much deception along with the eventual shrinkage of my world leaving an all- consuming, narrowly focused view point on how to make sure my last prescription would last through the month while madly conjuring up ways in which I could increase my dosages.
The United States’ war against opioids coincided with my prescribed dosages becoming less and less effective. By the second shoulder surgery, I needed more and more pills to fight off my anxiety. New laws were passed limiting the number of pills doctors could prescribe under most any situation.
I could no longer phone in refills which carried me through months at a time. Then came a lowering of my dosage and on to recommendations for me to switch to far less effective medications leading me to frantic thoughts of how to obtain more pills, legally or not.
Ultimately, an intervention of sorts occurred which, without going into any of the gruesome details, was humiliating. Who enjoys having a dark secret brought out into the light?
I started attending NA meetings daily. I began to share more and more of my experiences with others, people who had hard-won insights making me feel less alone, less of a loser, less of an embarrassment. I saw how so much of my pain had been generated by the many masks I had worn for protection through my life. I saw the ways I had cut myself off from what might have been an infinitely more fully lived life. I gained a sponsor. I did the Twelve Steps. I began to be of service.
And, most importantly, I developed a relationship with a Higher Power.
As some of you readers might remember, my last piece was entitled “There Are No Atheists in a Foxhole,” pondering on the nature of my Higher Power. I was writing it to build up the courage to share all of this new article with you, a sort of amends, I suppose.
For a man with a distant relationship with God, I realized, as I struggled through getting clean and fishing about for a new direction for my life, I understood far more clearly the truth of no atheists in foxholes. It all hurt too much; my body, my soul, my confused head. It was a big internal explosion in every atom of my being.
I had spent my life stuffing my mind with information which, I thought, if I rolled around in my mind long enough, I would eventually come up with an answer. If I hurt too much, I could switch to my “fantasy” mental tapes, scenes of winning a lottery or having a better body or living on a yacht.
I was the one in charge, wasn’t I?
I had heard that doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same result was someone’s definition of insanity. But it wasn’t until I began my NA program that I could begin to see my own level of insanity in action.
I had believed in God before. Sort of. A distant, angry, judgmental God. A God I thought I could hide from. Rather than envisioning a God I could be friends with, mine was more a pissed- off father who I would never be able to please. There were times I would interrupt the endless merry-go-round thinking with an internally screamed, “Help me, God!”
Problem was, I didn’t wait around for an answer.
So, this is what I have learned about God through NA.
The program is a spiritual, not religious one. My Higher Power is mine to find, to cultivate a relationship with, to converse with, to trust and have faith in. Some are able to find their God within their religion. Having no religion, I had the freedom to create a God completely my own.
I also learned that God needs space. God needs patience. God needed a place in any stuffed head, even just a moment, in order to get an answer through.
And I noticed early on in NA, messages actually did get through. What I had once thought of as coincidences I now saw differently; a needed out-of-the-blue phone call, a recommended reading, a surprising job offer. And the more space I created, the more “thinking” I allowed myself to let go of, the more the answers came.
Not always immediately. As I said, patience is a big part of the NA program. Addiction is, after all, a lifetime threat to our well-being.
Sometimes I had new insights the next morning after some whispered prayer. Some answers I am still waiting for.
Now, when I see myself switching on some decades old fantasy tape, I stop and simply say, “I turn this over to my God.”
My God is a dear friend. A God who loves me. A God who sees me and accepts me-- who also sees all I can be and the ways I can serve while I am on this plain of existence.
Gradually, I stopped asking my Higher Power for things or answers. I began to realize that I had the self I was meant to be within me already, the self I was before my vision was clouded by the various dust storms stirred up by a chaotic world we encounter from almost our first day on earth.
NA worked to help me find my way back to the “I” had always been meant to be. The more I came to realize how little I knew myself, the more my energies grew to discover myself more fully.
And now my prayers have become an ever- growing list of "thank you’s." Alice Walker said, “Thank you is the best prayer that anyone can say. It expresses extreme gratitude, humility and understanding.”
I have come to believe that we are all addicted to one thing or another; anger, laziness, boredom can all become addictive. And surrendering an addiction is scary. Will someone be there to catch us if we let go of the actions that are unconsciously, negatively driving our lives?
Yes. Yes there is Someone there. I have seen hard, empirical evidence all around me now and my trust in the NA miracle just grows and grows.
It is a trust that now allows me to say proudly, “My name is Michael and I am a gratefully recovering addict.”
