"The Pursuit of Oblivion" chronicles 3,000
years of humankind's obsession with mood- and
mind-altering substances.
The ancient Egyptians had a cookbook with
recipes for 700 opium concoctions.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust, Edgar
Allan Poe and other literary giants did their
best work despite battling the demons of drink
and drug.
In the 1840s in Georgia, "ether frolics" were
popular. And when a doctor noticed that people
who injured themselves during these wild parties
didn't seem to mind their pain, he experimented
with the drug as a medical anesthetic, thus
shaping the course of modern surgery.
Blot out the pain, alter reality, highlight
the pleasure — the book is filled with examples
of how our human species has pursued oblivion by
getting stoned or drunk or both.
But a few sentences in this voluminous
history book resonate with me, especially with
an anniversary looming in June. Writes author
Richard Davenport-Hines: "Intoxication is not
unnatural or deviant. Absolute sobriety is not a
natural or primary human state. Drugs are
variously swallowed, injected and inhaled. In
one form or another, humans have always used
drugs — legal and illegal — using substances to
meet an immense range of human wants and needs."
In other words, it isn't unusual, unnatural
or odd to use mood- and mind-altering substances
— alcohol, nicotine, prescription medications,
even hard drugs — through life's ups and downs.
It is unusual, even extraordinary, to live
without these substances.
I've been free from alcohol and other drugs
for 16 years now, because my pursuit of oblivion
evolved into a full-blown addiction before I was
30 years old. Most people who drink or get high
don't end up like me. But for about 10 percent
of the population, this pursuit becomes an
obsession of the mind, to the point where
nothing else matters except getting high or
staying high. The result is the destruction of
all else, even life itself.
It took several stints in treatment to
finally wake me up to the fundamental fact that
to survive I had to stop blotting out the pain,
highlighting the pleasure or altering reality
with alcohol or other drugs. All these years
later, however, it isn't treatment that keeps me
in this unnatural state of sobriety. It is a
recovery program that recognizes addiction as an
illness stronger than willpower and enrolls the
addict or alcoholic, sometimes unwillingly at
first, in the solution through personal
responsibility, accountability and helping
others in the same condition. Redemption,
indeed, but only through challenging and
continuous efforts over a lifetime.
On June 10, people across the country and
around the globe will mark the 75th anniversary
of the founding of this program. Many thousands
of them will gather at a convention in San
Antonio, Texas, to celebrate by telling their
stories, laughing at their shortcomings and
counting down the decades, years and months of
their unnatural state of sobriety, which is
rooted in the common denominator of just one
day, today.
What they won't do is rally in the streets
for a march. There will be no full-page ads in
The Washington Post or Internet media alerts
issued from this program's main offices in New
York City. Any publicity will feature people who
won't use their last names because theirs is a
recovery program focused on attraction rather
than promotion, especially for themselves.
What an irony: anonymously celebrating the
success of recovery. No wonder it has worked for
so many for so long.
William Moyers is the vice president of
foundation relations for the Hazelden Foundation
and the author of "Broken," his best-selling
memoirs, and "A New Day, A New Life." Please
send your questions to William Moyers at
wmoyers@hazelden.org. To find out more about
William Moyers and read his past columns, visit
the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
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