the bonds of betrayal

~ O serpent heart with a flowering face
Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)

With the drama of addiction, flying and crashing get progressively intertwined. Like the flower and the weed, the highs and lows start coming up together. You can no longer pull up one without the other but you keep trying, beyond your drug's ability to satisfy because it has become wired to pleasure in your brain even if, when you get a hit, now it delivers mostly pain.

This is the bond of betrayal: an insidious and progressive slavery to poisoned love.

What a phenomenal act of will to walk away! I've heard it takes months, or years, or never- it takes death- to finally break the cycle of addiction.

Even when you do walk away, they say the hand that delivers is not your own but the hand of God, a Higher Power, something greater than me, because- free to choose- I am yet powerless over my own desires. I choose only to give them up. And I mean UP.

Only then, in time (and I'm not there yet), will the hiccups of my heart stop threatening life, and my blood once again run clean.

* I have picked the caduceus as symbol for this blog post because, although it is ironically used as a symbol by physicians, it is actually a symbol of Hermes's staff, mediator between the upper and under worlds, having the power to make people fall asleep or wake them up; it was also carried by the messenger Mercury, guide of the dead and protector of merchants, liars and thieves!

release versus relief

Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is...
~ Alka Seltzer ad jingle

Anxiety is a kind of pressure, usually experienced when an emotion is being pushed down or repressed.  Although it is not itself an emotion, anxiety is definitely a state. It is inner tension, or stress.

There are two things that help with this.

One is to release it.  This is what is happening to the tablet in the glass of water pictured on the right. Passing from a solid to a gaseous state, inner tension is being released.  Words, actions or emotions, all these convert trapped energy into another state. They express it.

Relief is slightly different from release in that it does not convert trapped energy as much as minimize the tension around it.  It is like what a fizzy drink does for an upset stomach, shrinking gas bubbles so the stomach becomes less distended. If you're anxious and you go for a massage, take a hot bath, or pop an anti-inflammatory, all these relax the body so tension dissipates and you experience relief.