If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing

The mind of an addict as it relates to my writing.

The only thing that pairs better with a cigarette than aged whiskey is new sobriety. When I gave up drinking seventeen years ago (for reasons those of you who have read South of Bixby Bridge can probably guess), I spent many hours standing around outside of church basements with my similarly afflicted fellows smoking cigarettes. Beer gardens but with bad coffee in Styrofoam cups. As an on-again, off-again smoker since my youth, it seemed cruel to have to give up nicotine along with the booze. But eventually it too had to go.

When an alcoholic quits drinking they suddenly discover lots of time. I spent mine in those early years climbing mountains. Turns out it’s difficult to light up at 14,000 feet, and even more difficult to keep up with your climbing partners if you do. I found my solution when someone passed me a piece of Nicorette. The addict was still wrestling for the helm however, and I’d pop these little chewable stimulants like Chiclets until I had a wad in my cheek and sweat breaking out on my brow and my smartwatch sounding off elevated heart rate alarms. It got so bad I had to start smoking again just to quit the Nicorette. (Despite never having read the instructions, I’m pretty sure that’s not how it’s supposed to work.)

I remember my first drink: Bacardi 151. Strong choice for a kid. We drank the pilfered bottle on railroad tracks beneath the stars. It tasted like gasoline smelled, but then the alcohol hit my blood and my mind hit the roof of the Milky Way. I felt right for the first time. It was as if chains I hadn’t previously realized were there suddenly unlocked and dropped from my guts, freeing me from a terrible weight. Born anew! It was my first spiritual experience; although it was stolen, and restitution would have to be paid. I spent close to twenty years trying to recreate that feeling, without much luck, creating mostly wreckage instead. I did the same thing with my first drag of a cigarette, and my first piece of Nicorette. I still do it occasionally with chocolate. (Progress not perfection!)

I haven’t had a drink or drug or cigarette in many years, the desire having been lifted, but this abnormal disposition that plagued my early life—whether it’s cyclothymia, an addict brain, a spiritual malady, or something else—affects my writing. It may even be the reason I do it. I’m a binge writer. I dabble every day, just playing with it, aware of the cost if I really take the plunge; casting a line into the shallow waters of creativity here and there. Maybe I jot notes, sketch a story, pen a poem or essay, but I’m in control. Then I sit down one day having sufficiently chummed the waters, and suddenly something strikes, and the line runs. Now I’m just as powerless as if I were drunk. I’ve hooked a whale, and as it sounds there is nothing to do except hold my breath and hold on, riding it into the depths, hoping to wear the thing out with pure endurance and come up with a prize worthy of the scars and lost time. Worthy maybe even of being read.

When I’m in this flow, days sometimes disappear. Last week I looked up from writing to see a “Do Not Disturb” sign sitting on my desk. I asked my wife where it came from. “I put it there two days ago,” she said. “You just noticed?” She told me she put it there so as to know when not to bother me. She said she only ends up standing there and talking to herself. This made me a little sad. But she wasn’t goading. She knows I’m not a jerk. When this happens, I’m just gone. Even when forced away from my desk in the midst of these episodes, I’m still lost and holding my breath. I never know the hour, seldom the day or even month, and if I have occasion to write a check or sign a legal document, I usually have to ask the year. It’s not a particularly charming trait. It just is.

Yesterday I surfaced from one of these writing binges. I needed to synchronize and unwind, as I always do, so I strolled in the forest with my pipe. I purchased the briarwood pipe and tins of Virginia flake tobacco during a phase a few years ago where I imagined myself retiring and wearing wool sweater vests and reading the classics by night, and by day, restoring British cars. This did not happen. And in all likelihood, the pipe was just a way for the addict to cheat: You don’t inhale a pipe, so it doesn’t count. Brilliant! Yet yesterday I dusted it off and lit it up. Sunlight was slanting through the forest canopy and kindling in my cloud of tobacco smoke, and I felt weightless and free again. The chains were gone. I know now it’s a fool’s errand to try and recreate these feelings. You just have to take them as they come, if and when they do. Same goes for writing. The malady, whatever it is, the thing that demands more, will always be there. It’s just locked away in the basement of my mind with a little hard-won wisdom holding the key. And the pipe is locked away now too. At least until next time.

So, there you have it. A thousand words or thereabouts of shameless navel-gazing to explain why you all got a sunset photo and not an essay last week. As it turns out that sunset photo is my most popular post, with 30,000 views on my otherwise inactive Facebook page alone. (Does anyone read anymore?) Seeing that response, and knowing a fresh sunset is served up at my window every day without my wife having to put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign, I was tempted to forgo writing this essay and turn this into a photo blog instead. But as someone dear to me once said, you can tell everyone you’re a writer, but they can tell if you’re truly a writer because you write.

And even now I feel the gentle tug on the line, and sense something bigger circling the bait. If it takes it, if it runs, I’ll be lost again for a while. But that’s okay. We’re all just paying out line, living on a blessing of borrowed tomorrows, moving toward something deeper, something truer, one breath, one step, one day at a time.

An audio recording of this essay can be found here:

Audio: If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Overdoing