Dancing with Addiction, Despair and Hope

How Playmates get me through

Is it daft to be 69 and still thrilled to have playmates? Not if your playmates got you through a decade of despair. But first, I had to learn that I am not smarter or wiser than addiction.

I play to survive! And when I am doing OK, I live to play!

Playmates are people who live to create, not destroy, who are more prone to imagine rather than fix things, who choose to dance even in despair, and who, in playing together, let creativity return them to healthier and more joyous states. Check out a gggreat interview on play below.

Despair-

For ten years, I had a front-row seat at the opioid epidemic. My only child was prescribed opioids for a back injury in high school. No one asked if addiction was in her genepool. One thing led to another.

The Descent-

• I witnessed the repeated agony of withdrawal at home when painkillers ran out.

• The misery of hearing parents talk about "launching" children when I was asked to join mine in dark places below.

• Navigating accusatory psychiatrists, therapists, and medical systems that not only demeaned and gave NO support to my family but added to the work.

• Succumbing to adrenal burnout despite being a resilient, soul-connected, artful initiate.

I couldn't recover from these circumstances. I was powerless and in despair.

IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR ALANON, INTERPLAY, DANCING ON BEHALF OF, AND THE ART OF ENSOULMENT, OH MY GOODNESS, WHERE would I be?

my 12 step shrine

The Hope-

Deep within, I held hope for a way forward as my world fell apart.

• I gathered playmates into the Art of Ensoulment: practices and wisdom that help me navigate life experiences as a sensitive being.

• I led and danced in an Online Dance Chapel and invited others to dance on my behalf.

• I maintained an Alanon practice, including a weekly group, listening to readings, and meeting with a sponsor to remain clear that addiction is a disease, not a moral failing, and that it impacts the thinking and reactivity of ALL FAMILY MEMBERS, hence my need for ongoing recovery.

• I joined a small Zoom group of visual artists and found rest and joy in the play of my visual imagination.

• I organized an art therapist to help hold a monthly space for me and similarly distraught moms. We share our dilemmas each month, using creative forms to reach for resilience.

• I found playmates keen to help me write, publish, and produce The Art of Ensoulment.

• Weekly acupuncture was essential to help me reset my nervous system to a relaxed state and remember my healthy ground zero.

Today

I accept that I am not smarter than addiction. My baseline wisdom is to understand that addiction (like many personality disorders) is chronic and, in my case, a genetic disease. It's a relief not to use energy to resist the patterns of addiction in my body, family, or culture.

I am not alone. Many playmates are impacted by addiction, especially highly sensitive and neurodiverse artists. We need ecstatic states. We need relief when we feel beleaguered by modernity's overwhelming, disordered anti-body procedures and unritualized suffering.

I feel my serenity grow in the face of despair. It's odd to be grateful for what can kill you, but many do feel grateful when our bottom-line consequences lead us to the help we need. To experience an enduring freedom from an addictive behavior, substance, or people is an unbelievable gift. It helps so much to find the right exoskeletal body, a body around our body, a strong, reliable group wisdom where people see us and want us to dance again. When we no longer have to rely on the energy of personal will and effort, we slowly relax as others become part of the higher or bigger power.

I lean into a vast cosmos of exoskeletal playmates. They are in real time, in the realm of the ancestors, and in the imaginative playground where beings and energies offer love to me. And you too! Because of you I am here, dancing, breathing, writing, and hopefully, loving.

In this big dance with despair (and of course, there is a lot more of that to be had in the world right now), I cannot say how grateful I am for my family's devotion to the art, practice, and science of recovery. My daughter is an addiction counselor in a men's prison and was recently honored in a national leadership program through her university. My niece is a medical doctor and activist in the addiction field. My partner trained as a chaplain in the recovery field, and one of my most influential teachers and counselors was Roberta Meyer, a former Balanchine dancer who integrated the principles of AA, EST, and dancing. She wrote several books, including Listening to the Heart: Creating Intimate Families Through the Power of Unconditional Love.

If there is hope in recovery from a death-dealing, mind-killing way of life, there is hope for all kinds of recovery. Keep coming back to it!

What is play and all this business about playmates? Listen to my two brilliant playmates in Australia, Susannah Pain and Rod Pattenden on the Australian Broadcast show Soul Search. As cofounders of InterPlay Australia, they know a lot about the spirituality of play and its power in their lives as contemplative, creative, and properly troubled souls. ;0)