Clarke's Third Law, part 1

If I can just
Make it up there
And if I can walk
Through that City bright and fair
There'll probably
Be a thousand things I'd want to tell the Lord
On that day
On that day...

I'll just
Begin to cry
He'll wipe the tears from my eyes
I'll say "Thanks" - He'll ask, "Why?"
This will be my reply:
You know millions didn't make it,
But I was one of the ones who did.
--The Winans, "Millions"

So runs a gospel number from my childhood, one of my favorites. Although my conception of God is no longer bound entirely by what I learned in church, gospel music retains a certain power over me. I've heard this power referred to as "catching the holy spirit" - a description generated by my old religious framework. The feeling of it is unadulterated joy - a rush of pleasure, chills waxing throughout the body, goose bumps, even misty eyes. Although this sensation is pure, the closest thing to it I've experienced otherwise is an IV morphine high. The buzz from marijuana or alcohol (or a finely tuned combination of the two) are rather blunted alternatives. Intravenous heroin users have experienced the feeling as well, ratcheted up in intensity to a level I can only imagine.

I don't find it coincidental that Carl Jung defined alcoholism as, among other things, a "spiritual search." I have experienced this personally: I have filled the inner void alternately with drugs and with an operational God-concept. The hard truth is that before all of the consequences of addiction began to pile up in my life, they worked interchangeably well for most things. Each has seemed to be, at varying points in time, that missing piece of me I needed in place to function as a productive social being and to cope with negative emotions.

(This, as you might have noticed by now, is a more personal post.)

I've had the lyrics to that song in my head recently. They certainly seem to apply to my new life; I'm grateful for my broader conception of spirituality now, because I don't need to wait for "that day" - my death - to experience spiritual redemption. Millions of drug addicts don't recover; I was one of the ones who did. In that alone - in the four years, seven months, and 26 days of sobriety I've accumulated - I have a great sense of pride and gratitude; but there's more to the journey than abstinence, more even than learning to function as that productive social being without psychoactive numbing agents.

Let me back up and see if I can explain more thoroughly.

There's a thing called anticipatory socialization: it's the process by which we place ourselves in hypothetical environments and imagine how we'll interact with them, how we'll act within them. It begins when we're children as make-believe, and remains an integral part of identity formation thereafter. Kids play grown-up; preteens imagine how much cooler they'll be in high school; college students picture life in the Real World (and then avoid living it for as long as possible). I've always sucked at it.

When I was 14 years old, I had yet to consume a mind-altering drug for any purpose other than the relief of physical pain caused by Sickle Cell (well, there was that time in kindergarten I broke my hip, but I digress). I suffered from depression as well, and had a generally gloomy outlook on my life. Most important to my eventual point, I didn't think I'd live to see adulthood. I tried to picture myself at 18, and I just couldn't. I couldn't see myself surviving that long in a cycle of pain, hospital visits requiring long absence from school, and lengthy recovery times. I couldn't see how that David Sherrell would ever contribute anything meaningful to his school community, much less society at large.

When I was 18, I had a somewhat fulfilling life despite the Sickle Cell and depression. I had found a niche in my school community, the lengthy absences were fewer, and I had started to believe I had a life somewhat worth living. Around this time, I had my first drink, my first hit of weed. I hadn't heard until then the concept of social lubricant - and I took to it like a fish who'd just learned of water. Although spirituality can be nearly identical to a good high, there was (back then) that major difference: God had never made me feel less completely awkward in any social environment. So I kissed off God in favor of a Corona lime and didn't look back.

But I couldn't imagine myself at 25. I couldn't see myself graduating college, becoming self-sufficient, falling in love and building a family. I had no idea how these things would happen, or what my role in bringing them about would be.

Clarke's Third Law, part 2

When I did live to see 25, I wasn't particularly grateful for it. I hadn't graduated college; I wasn't self-sufficient; I'd fallen in love and had blown it. Addiction, depression, and Sickle Cell had me fully in their shared grip; each was worsening the others in a pas de trois that left me off the stage. I had made a halfhearted (and half-assed) attempt at suicide, and failed even at that. The only thing left in my daily life that generated any sense of self-worth was my skill with a karaoke microphone; this did not exactly leave me inclined toward sobriety. To say that at this point I couldn't picture myself at age 30 is not entirely accurate – I didn't want to live to see 30, and was terribly afraid that I would.

I despaired: my life was going to be an endless tailspin of misery, pain, and self-defeat. I was not cognizant enough of my own addiction to label my substance abuse as a problem. Quite the contrary: those brief escapes from the gray hopelessness were my only coping mechanism. Stolen moments of artificial peace; a silence obtained not through the cessation of sound but through the plugging of the ears. An overinflated bouncy castle in the sky, whose resident is given to clothing himself in thumbtacks. And it was all I would ever be; all I ever could be.

I'm writing now from the Grand Hyatt Doha. I sit at an office desk in a king-size suite; the balcony door is open to allow the faint desert breeze through. My view is of palm trees, gardens, and a white-sand beach on a blue-water bay. I am paid to be here, all my expenses covered by our client. I'm here to provide substance-abuse prevention: to tell my story and speak my truth to children, some of whom feel as I have felt. I'm here to give them the answers I didn't have in my youth, to questions I didn't know enough to ask. I have found a productive use for all of my past experiences; there is a vindication here, for each prior version of David Sherrell who suffered and despaired. This is redemption; with it comes an indescribable joy. (And a paycheck.)

This is my point: to have been where I've been, and to live the life I'm presently living, is as indistinguishable from heaven as any sufficiently advanced technology is from magic.

If I were to describe my life to 25 year-old David Sherrell, he would not believe me; moreover, he'd be hurt and would resent me for dangling such impossibility before him. It would seem to him the cruelest of taunts, the notion of this heaven on Earth. To an extent, that disbelief still exists within me. When the gratitude and the joy are upon me, I often look around my life and think, this cannot be right; this cannot be me. Then that small part of me cocks a disbelieving eyebrow, lets off a sardonic snort, and waits for the other shoe to drop.

Granted, there are areas of my life ripe for further improvement: I’m not fully self-sufficient, despite the literally incredible job, and I’m still pretty socially awkward at times. I could be doing more to find that special someone. My perspective is often lacking, and I deem that the gratitude and the joy aren’t upon me nearly often enough; I still have depression, although I’d say I’m living with it rather than suffering from it. And as long as I live there's the chance that I will at some point forfeit my redemption for a fresh hell of my own making; such is the nature of addiction, and only an addict would ever make that choice (or, really, even contemplate it). But for now, I'm still "one of the ones who did," and I don't have to wait for an afterlife to revel in this joy. So when that small part of me strikes the disbelieving pose, I remind him: the other shoe may indeed drop, but I’ve earned this, and while it’s mine I will give thanks and enjoy the ride.