My Addictions

Good Morning Y'all!

Many of you responded to the Love Letter I sent out yesterday, expressing interest in hearing more about how addictions are symptoms of the problem, not the problem itself.

I thought the best way to illustrate this point would be to share with you my own personal struggles with addiction.

HOW IT STARTED

My need for an addiction started when I first went to college.

I was leaving a healthy and extremely structured childhood home to attend college at the University of Nevada, Reno, which was about an eight-hour drive from my hometown.

For the first time in my life, I was living around normal people.

The bubble in which I lived in for the first 18 years of my life had finally popped. In doing so, I was now exposed to people from all walks of life.

I was introduced to a new culture filled with drinking and drugs with which I wasn't familiar.

Despite growing up in Las Vegas, the Mecca of vices, my family and friend group weren't involved in the major industries, which meant I left feeling mostly unscathed.

College was a big wake-up call.

Just moments after my parents had dropped me off, I had a conversation with my next-door neighbor that went like this…

He asked, "I have a plug for fake IDs. They're $60 bucks a piece. You want one?"

In my head, I immediately thought, "Oh my god! This is just like what happens in the movies! College is awesome!"

I responded to him by saying, "Hell yeah! I'll take two."

Later that night, a cheerleader took me to her room and I had my first sip of alcohol, Malibu Rum.

It tasted absolutely terrible. But she was cute, so I acted like I liked it.

That first weekend, I went to a party and got drunk for the first time.

To be honest, despite feeling incredibly sick the next day, I had so much fun. I felt like I had just started a new chapter of my life.

This was just part of the college experience.

A few weeks later, I tried smoking weed.

Weed felt a lot different from alcohol.

While high, all I wanted to do was laugh, eat good food, and then sleep for about 14 hours. Every time I did it, I would wake up feeling like a newborn baby the next morning.

I thought drugs were awesome.

HOW IT EVOLVED

Like most drug usage, it often starts from a fun, light place. You take them to have a good time and enhance the moment.

Because I was now more of a social drinker and weed smoker, I'd often go to bars on the weekends with a few of my college buddies.

In doing so, my mindset towards these drugs started to shift.

Remember that gift that I told you about in one of the first Love Letters?

The one where I can feel the pain and suffering others are going through simply by being in close proximity to them?

That feeling was alive and well at this point in my life. I began to see that many other people I'd be hanging out with were deeply suffering.

This made me realize that many people are drinking to numb themselves from their current reality.

The other part of my gift, when I'm not intentional about my environment, is that I can easily take on the current state of those around me.

That means if people are feeling shame, guilt, or deep sadness, I immediately adopt that same feeling, even if I have no personal reason to feel those emotions.

I began to feel conflicted because my friends and I wanted to party, but I also didn't want to experience secondhand depression.

It felt like two voices in my head.

One voice was saying, "Suck it up, and go have fun with your friends," while the other voice made it clear that I wasn't meant to be there.

THE VOICE

Over time, as I continued to attend these events filled with drugs and alcohol, I remained a casual user.

I'd only drink or smoke weed (or take edibles) when I was in these social settings.

The more I attended events like this, the deeper I began to understand others.

Now, not only would I adopt their current state, (some being joy, but often times guilt and anger), but I'd also have a voice in my head telling me exactly why they felt that way.

It's as if a movie would play in my head, depicting what that person had gone through to make them want to pick up the bottle.

These movies ranged from them trying to forget the comments someone made on their most recent Instagram post,

to attempting to forget the abuse they suffered while they were a child.

Getting these insights from every single person on a packed dance floor became immensely overwhelming.

But I found one way to shut off the feelings and the voice....

Get high or drunk myself.

So that's how it started. It was my attempt to drown out the voice.

HOW THE VOICE CONTINUED

The voice continued to speak when I was off the dance floor.

Because I had now learned how to shut off my gift of deep empathy for others (through drugs and alcohol), the voice began to act the same way it does for everyone else on the planet.

In moments throughout my daily life where I wasn't being distracted, the voice would begin to ask me questions...

Why am I so insecure about how I look?

Why do I feel like I need to make so much money?

Why do I not get close to people anymore?

Why haven't I cried about the passing of friends and family members?

All of the questions that, up until this point in my life, I never had to face.

So I went back to the same thing that worked while I was on the dance floor.

I'd take marijuana edibles in my free time, all the time.

I was a daily user for years.

It allowed me not to think about the answers to these questions.

Only my roommates knew. They only found out because I'd be acting incredibly weird nearly every night.

I'd eat all of my roommates' food in the pantry, and have to go to Walmart in the morning to buy it all again for them.

I feel like I probably set the Guinness World Record for eating an entire sleeve of Oreos in less than a minute.

Most days, I'd take an edible when I got home from school or work.

Then I'd just veg out on the couch for the rest of the night, watching a funny movie or playing video games until 2 in the morning.

No, don't get me wrong, I think having fun with drugs and alcohol on occasion isn't necessarily bad.

It's important to understand our intention for why we are choosing to pick up the bottle or blunt.

My intention at the time was to numb myself from thinking and feeling certain aspects of my life.

ESCAPING THE ESCAPISM

I began to take edibles nearly every day, for two years straight.

I remember there would be a handful of times where I'd cry on my way to the weed dispensary, knowing that I didn't actually want to use this drug.

But I had built up a dependency, because it was the only thing that was stopping me from feeling my emotions.

I began to romanticize living in a world where weed wasn't legal.

I thought it would be great if I moved out of Nevada, to a state where I couldn't get my hands on it.

When the idea of moving to Bali came to my mind, a large part of me was so happy that Indonesia gives out the death penalty to those who were caught with marijuana.

It definitely wasn't the largest reason why I went to Bali, but it was definitely a bonus.

If I lived somewhere that I'd get killed for doing it, that'll stop me from doing it, right?

So yeah, I moved to Bali.

Once I moved there, I realized that I'm the same person who now just lives on the other side of the world.

I still have all of the same problems and insecurities, and now I don't have my coping mechanism of choice.

What do I do now?

Find something else to drown out the voice.

That's when video games, doomscrolling YouTube and social media, and drinking alcohol came back into the picture.

I did that for nearly the first 4 months.

FEELING THE FEELING

After having been in Bali for a few months, I had somehow mustered up the courage to get out of my little shack, stop playing video games, and face the world.

In doing so, I gave the voice within me the space to speak.

It began to say to me, "It's Time."

I had no idea what it meant, but I knew I was about to find out.

The voice began to instruct me to go to a quiet place, and sit alone with my thoughts.

I began to do this every day.

The same questions that I mentioned earlier came back into my awareness. But this time, I was ready to face the answers.

Why am I so insecure about how I look?

Ever since I was about 5 years old, people have picked on me because of how I looked.

I had abnormally big feet for my age and I'd walk funny. For most of elementary school, I was called “pigeon” or “penguin”.

I also had one friend who I knew my entire childhood, that would constantly poke fun at my body and call me fat.

Due to my speech impediment at the time, I lacked confidence when it came to standing up for myself.

These were just examples of kids being kids, I never thought it had really stuck with me all these years, but it did.

I was still insecure about how I walked and how big my stomach was, despite objectively walking normally and being skinny.

My insecurities defied the truth.

Why do I feel like I need to make so much money?

For some reason, success had always been the number one metric in my life.

I thought that I needed to prove my value to others, and money was the best metric to demonstrate competency.

I didn't understand that it was okay just to be myself.

It didn't matter if I was a billionaire or flipped burgers at Burger King.

Why do I not get close to people anymore?

At this point in my life, I never allowed myself to sit with the undesirable emotions that come with losing the people I love.

People that I loved have passed away from car accidents, drowning, drug overdose, murder, and suicide, and I refused to tell anyone about it.

I didn't want to burden others by telling them such sad events had taken place, and I also had convinced myself that not talking about it, would make it less likely to happen in the future.

This led me to develop a fear towards getting too close to people, because they may also leave me.

Why haven't I cried about the passing of friends and family members?

When people around me passed away, I defaulted to the person who would "stay strong" for those also involved in the situation.

I told myself that I needed to be the shoulder they could cry on.

This gave me an excuse to not face those emotions.

I was finally able to feel the feelings associated with these experiences by listening to the voice as it guided me back to these events.

The voice had me sit alone, close my eyes, and then started to describe how my environment looked when all of these events took place.

It guided me through asking myself how old I was, who was in my life at the time, and where I was when I got the news that a friend had passed away.

I took myself back to every moment where I had unsettled emotions.

No matter if it was being picked on at the playground, or finding out that a friend had committed suicide...

I allowed myself to feel all the feelings associated with those moments. All of the pain, sadness, and even guilt.

I cried for days.

I punched pillows.

I wrote down everything I wanted to say to those who had hurt myself and my loved ones.

I did not judge how I reacted. I decided to love myself in these moments.

I said enough with telling myself "I'm weak" for crying.

I said enough with "staying strong". That was just an excuse to not feel the feelings.

I said enough with hiding from myself and the world.

I must face the monster.

WHY I'M MENTIONING THIS

After experiencing these emotions, I no longer feel the need to numb myself.

I no longer have any urge to drink, smoke, play video games, watch porn, overeat, or do anything else that sabotages myself.

I was able to painlessly transcend my need for vices.

I was able to cure the root problem, which made all of the symptoms go away.

This is exactly what we're missing in today's society.

If you look outside of nearly every Alcoholics Anonymous event space, you'll see a group of people smoking cigarettes.

What they've done is go from one coping mechanism, to a slightly less destructive coping mechanism.

Until we address the main root of the problem, the symptoms will always be there.

Many go from alcohol, to cigarettes, to chewing tobacco, to nicotine, and so on.

Yes, it's getting slightly better for their overall health, but it's still not solving the problem.

Everything we've ever wanted is hidden behind the work that we refuse to do.

We need to finally stop running from the work.

We need to face the monster that's hiding under the bed.

CONCLUSION

Everything I spoke upon above, like drinking, smoking, playing an excessive amount of video games, watching porn, and overeating aren't inherently bad.

What we must be cognizant of, is WHY we choose to partake in these activities.

Are we doing it to genuinely enjoy that part of the human experience?

Or are we doing it to escape?

That is a question only you will know.

I bring this up because I believe our society has pointed the finger at these activities, and say that they are the problem.

No, they are the symptoms of the problem.

This is the sole reason why I've created projects like Solitude 60 and The Men's Circles, to give people the necessary tools to feel their emotions.

Doing so allows people to access a level of the human experience they didn't even know was possible.

I've seen it first hand in my own life.

I enjoy the beauties of life more than ever before.

I have less judgment than ever before.

I'm able to love people more deeply than ever before.

I feel more present throughout my day-to-day life, making it feel like time doesn't exist.

I've gotten out of my own way, and I wish that every human being could do the same for themselves.

It's time to fully let go.

I understand that addictions are a sensitive subject for many. I hope my personal story and beliefs are received with the same level of love with which I intended them.

It's time to feel again. It's time to awaken.

I love you all.

-Cameron Hogan