Hi! My name is Max, and...

"If you're fixing good heroin, there's nothing like it. It's like finding the thing at the end of the rainbow, or like finding God, or finding love. There's like a warmth that hits you in the stomach, at least it always did to me, and the stomach would just... it was like laying in a beautiful meadow someplace... and that would go to the rest of your body and you'd say 'Oh!' It just solves everything. There's no worry about sex, no worry about nothing... it's just marvelous... but the dues are so bad, you know, that anybody who uses it is really crazy, because they're gonna go through such agony. I still have dreams about it." --Art Pepper, jazz saxophonist, in the movie Notes From A Jazz Survivor


So, my friends, I have a confession: I'm an addict. So it's ruined my life in a lot of ways. It's miraculous, really, that it hasn't wrecked my life in more ways, really. Miraculous that I've somehow managed to complete a masters degree and finish a novel.

Not that my addiction has been life-threatening in any way, as much as it's just been energy sapping, time-sapping, isolating... and maybe that's because the vehicle I found to fuel my addiction is in no way life-threatening or physically toxic.

I'm still kind of new at this confessional thing; I feel really kind of scared to post this... and I don't really want to go into the specifics of exactly what the vehicle for my addictive tendencies has been; just suffice to say that I'm not a drug addict or an alcoholic. "It" is not that. When you get right down to it, what "it" is really doesn't matter much. "It" could have been anything. What really matters is that for the last two decades, I've kept going back to it in spite of myself.

Two decades. Yeah.... the feeling of being addicted --of feeling like there's some dark force in my life over which I feel like I have no control-- is one with which I've grappled to varying degrees since age 25.

So in answer to the question "You seem like a nice guy; why have you been divorced twice?" there you have it. There may be other reasons (immaturity, incompatibility, financial woes, etc etc etc ad nauseum) but if I had to cite a "big reason," addiction is it. My addiction overtook the good feelings of my love relationships and marriages; and rather than deal with those other problems I faced with my two wives, and the uncertainty that came with being in love with them, I escaped into the certainty of the feeling that my addiction engendered. And it killed love.

Anything that kills love is a problem. That's why, even as I grappled with this, I always sought a solution.

Addiction is a strange feeling. Indulging my addiction never felt like a choice, and yet... it always felt like something I could choose to overcome, if only... if only... if only...

I've always seen my addiction as something that indicated a weakness on my part. If I only had more willpower, I'd think, then I wouldn't grapple with this... if I'd just get a grip and grow up... if I'd just "get over myself," "get to the bottom of myself"... if I wasn't a bad person... if I didn't have "issues"... if I'd get to the bottom of my issues... if I'd go for counseling... if I'd connect with God.

A favorite quote from a friend of mine rattled through my head during (and especially after) a recent bout of addictive behavior: "Character is what you do when no one's looking."

Well, there you have it, I thought. I must not have any character.

I've noticed that solutions you need and answers you seek desperately come to you serendipitously if you only ask and remain open. As the spiritual writer Vernon Howard put it, "Requests to God for the light are never denied." And that's one thing that my addiction has made me seek actively. "Show me the way here, God... show me the light... show me what to do... show me what not to do..."

So of course, after one particularly terrible bout a few weeks ago, I found a little light on the shelf at the library: a book called Addiction: Why Can't They Just Stop?

It's not that this book has healed me; rather, it's empowered me with insights. Engaging in addictive behavior "repeatedly over time alters brain chemistry and function. Addiction is a brain disease." Physiologically, the way addiction works is that addictive behavior "activates the same brain circuits linked to survival, such as eating, bonding and sex." This "causes a surge in levels of a brain chemical called dopamine, which results in feelings of pleasure. The brain remembers this pleasure and wants it repeated." Eventually, the addiction "becomes more important than any other need" and an addict needs his drug of choice not "for pleasure, but... to relieve distress." Chemically, an addict's dopamine levels get disrupted and this "renders the addict incapable of feeling any pleasure--even from the drugs they seek to feed their addiction." (p. 56)

The worst part for someone who is addicted to drugs or alcohol (and again, I am thankful that, for me, "it" is not drugs or alcohol or some other controlled or uncontrolled substance) is that the "altered brain regions (are those) that control decision making and judgment," and since "drugs of abuse affect the regions of the brain that help us control our desires and emotions... addiction can develop in people despite their best intentions or the strength of their character." Thus, "Drug addiction is especially insidious because it affects the very brain areas that people need to 'think straight,' apply good judgment, and make good decisions for their lives." (p.56)

Reading this book (I'm about a third of the way into it) made me think two things:

1. O.K. This really isn't my fault. Finding treatment of some kind is my responsibility, but this is the way my brain works. Nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. It can be helped and treated. Stop beating yourself up.

2. It could have been a lot worse. What if I HAD gotten hooked on some chemical somehow... alcohol, or hard drugs, like, for instance, Art Pepper?

In the documentary Notes From A Jazz Survivor, Pepper described the first time he used heroin:

"I sat down when one of the bars closed in Chicago, and I was in Stan Kenton's band, and I was rooming with someone who was using heroin, and I knew that I would become hooked if I ever tried it. I don't know... I guess I just gave up... my wife wasn't on the road with me, she was at home with Patricia, my daughter, and I had this real strong sexual drive, and... so I said, 'O.K.'... so... I sniffed it, you know... this girl came into the bathroom and locked the door and she just ran the whole thing down to me and after I sniffed it she said 'Look at yourself in the mirror.' And I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw my pupils go, like, from big to just tiny pinpoints, and the feeling was just... it was so beautiful... and she rubbed up against me and, you know, started, like, fondling me, and I said, 'Boy, if this is what the devil's got, man, then that's what I want.' And that was the beginning and the end. From that moment on, I was hooked."

And...

"I thought that I was, like, you know, sort of unique because I got so scared. I just got panicked. I would start getting hung up for three or four days before I would play. I would get sick. I would actually get sick to my stomach, you know, and the only way I could handle it was getting loaded. It's like, if you're really going to do something different, it's going to scare you, and if you're not scared, it means you're not really planning on doing anything different."

What rescued him? Love, basically. He met his wife Lauri, and, in his words...

"She saved my life. I never thought I could stop using heroin and (now) I have no marks, I don't use heroin, and I'm playing better than I ever played before. I'm making as much money as a jazz player can make, and she did the thing with the book, the autobiography, everything that we've done. She gets royalties from records that I didn't even know existed... people just used me and used me and used me... all I cared about was if I get enough money to buy a quarter of heroin so I could shoot it--- yeah, take a job, I don't care about royalties, songwriting, contracts, as long as I've got enough money to buy some heroin, you know, everything would go... except my honor."

In a way, seeing Art Pepper talk about his addiction in that documentary helped wake me up to my own. Seeing him talk about it honestly and openly helped me to see that I needed to face this and admit to it and, using my writing, find a way to help others who might be suffering in the same way.

So that's what I'm doing. I'll write more about this occasionally.

In the meantime, if you're grappling with this sort of thing at all in your own way, all I can say is, I feel your pain. Not just "been there, done that"... am there, doing it.

As the book Addiction: Why Can't They Just Stop? says, addicts "are not bad people who need to get good, crazy people who need to get sane, or stupid people who need education. Addicts have a brain disease that goes beyond their use of drugs." Addiction is not a "willpower problem... addiction occurs in an area of the brain called the medolimbic dopamine system that is not under conscious control." Addiction is not a "behavioral problem... addiction is a brain disease that can be treated by changing brain function, through several types of treatments" that include counseling and medications. (p.37)

What you do with that information is up to you. Like I said, I'm new at this; I'm still getting used to the idea that I can do ANYTHING.

But I'm glad I can. And I'm glad we had this talk.

Email me (maxshenkwrites@aol.com) if you need an ear or a shoulder or a hand.

As Red Green put it, I'm pullin' for ya. We're all in this together.