Writing and Addiction
To follow in the theme of my posts from the past several months, I’m continuing to drill down to my own foundation in order to build fresh and set myself up for the success I’ve been denying myself for a long, long time. There is no way getting around it and I have to be honest if I want to make it where I believe I should be, but substance abuse and addiction have been a part of my life since before I was born. I hate to be cliche, or worse, sound like I’m glorifying things I’ve never wanted to glorify, but there has been so much clear intermingling between addiction and my ambitions as a writer. Likewise, creativity and pain so often intermingle, but does that have to be the case? As we all know, correlation is not causation, and while pain may inspire the type of introspection that breeds certain forms of creativity, I do not believe the process is ever made better with the addition of further conduits of pain. In fact, I’ve learned firsthand just how tumultuous and ambivalent the relationship between the two can be.
Yes, unfortunately I’m proverbially going there for this month’s entry. Not because I want to, but because it’s inevitable, and I think I have to. If this month’s topic isn’t for you, I won’t blame you for skipping it, or even thinking less of me altogether - that’s pretty chill, to be honest. As with any of my entries, particularly the ones from this horrible, horrible year, I don’t deserve any applause or recognition. I’m simply doing the necessary work. But before I wallow any further, let’s do the monthly progress update.
I’m happy to say that my recent efforts to figure myself out and / or get my shit together has at last resulted in tangible progress towards publishing. Last month all I had to say was that I finally came to the realization that self or indie publishing is the way to go for my little niche work of art. Pursuing publication is now a task on my semi-daily to do list, alongside writing, practicing music, and learning Spanish. That said, I now have a much clearer idea of what I’m specifically trying to accomplish with my publishing aims.
While I’ve clarified my goals and have made numerous, specific plans that I had never quite conceptualized before, the biggest thing I’ve got going recently is that I’ve hired a new editor for Codetta. I honestly haven’t been this excited about the concept of publication itself in quite some time. I think this one will be a good fit, so expect more to come on that!
Aside from moving the needle on publication, I’ve still been trundling along on the redraft for Shelle’s Island, the second manuscript I ever wrote. It’s still been slow going, mostly because my writing hasn’t been quite so bad in a few years and it’s a little disheartening at times to be reminded. That said, I think I’ve learned many valuable lessons about when to edit and when to rewrite altogether - which I think will pay off once I begin the rewrite of Codetta’s sequel…
On to the topic at hand. When I was ten years old, my dad was arrested for a felony. Neither of my parents were terrible people, there was some emotional abuse and a bit of neglect (which was offset by quite a bit of material spoiling when possible), but they were by no means wicked towards me for the most part. The tendency toward addiction is in my bloodline, and the trauma and knowledge of all this made me more or less straightedge throughout my teens and the first couple years of my twenties. (Full discolure: I wasn’t literally straightedge, but I was a hanger-on in some of those circles when hardcore punk was a big thing in my city - just had to get that out there, as it’s one of the few phases I truly cringe about).
As I grew more and focused on what it was I wanted to do with my life (ie, this shit right here), I eventually was recommended Stephen King’s On Writing. It’s worth a read, but I’ve grown rather critical of the old man as I’ve come into my own style. I bring it up, because King doesn’t shy away from going into his own relationship to addiction. This, compounded with the cultural cliches about what a writer is - well, substance abuse seemed to always be there in the mix. I wondered to myself if I had what it took to be a writer because of my aversion to drugs and alcohol… I was very naive, given how this wouldn’t be an issue for that many years longer.
I had an awesome relationship around the beginning of college. We grew together until it was time for us to go our separate ways. In the wake of that relationship, I found myself alone, yet excited to make new friends. Of course I was more or less college-age, and even though I still had so much hesitancy around drugs and alcohol, my loneliness won out. I eventually acquiesced and simply began going through my own substance abuse phases simply a bit later than most. There was nothing else to it than that: I wanted to make friends and I didn’t see where I could have that opportunity without partaking myself.
Of course, it wasn’t much of a phase, but rather like coming to terms with some sort of inverted destiny. I’ve not been the worst person I’ve met in regards to substance abuse by any means, in fact, I’ve ashamedly written off people who were worse off without looking back. So many people in my life have echoed that I don’t have a problem - and I can’t help but wonder, is this because they don’t want to face their own problems? For so long, I was barely hanging on to functioning, but eventually I got good enough to do everything pretty well while fucked up. It’s been that way since. This is by no means me stating that I’m going to be sober now - things aren’t that bad yet. But my new essentialism kick has made it to where I have to face these things in some capacity, and I will simply state that I’ve moved into a somewhat more sincere phase of addiction management (editor’s note: who am I kidding).
So what’s my point? I don’t know, it got lost in there. Sometimes I start these entries with a topic in mind but no conclusion or theme - usually that comes to me while writing. I guess I really just want to say that if you too have an addiction, just know that it’s not you. It’s not your personality. It’s not your art. It’s not your destiny. No crucial aspect of your life requires the presence of pain or any of its friends. If you’re like me, there will come a time when you have to make a decision, but I hope that time comes because life has given you a better, more fruitful path, rather than rendering you sunken to the bottom. We’re all just muddling through these days, and maybe that’s the best we can do for now. Perhaps this post was just an attempt at solidarity in the void, maybe I just needed to rally the energy because the past few weeks haven’t been easy going. Either way, I’m thankful as always for you reading - so keep fighting, because we’re in this together.
