Addiction is a fixation on anything outside the self that you believe can deliver your happiness.  Anything.  Drugs and alcohol are givens.  But also included are romantic relationships, clothes, cars, money, prestige, jobs, adventure, and excitement.

These enticements are cunning, baffling, powerful, and no one can escape this dragnet.

So much time is wasted worrying about marriage, jobs and money.  When people lose these things, they act like their worlds are destroyed.  That’s no way for a human to live.

We continue to smash our heads against the wall because our happiness is dependent on some external agency.

This is the hallmark of addiction.  It’s a clinging dependency, despite negative or even catastrophic consequences.

I speak from experience.

I knew early on in childhood that I was destined to become an addict.  I was never comfortable in my own skin, and I never felt part of the world.  This made it easy for me to pick up the booze at age ten.  I was getting high at age 12.  By 14, I was snorting cocaine.  By 15, I was dealing drugs and smoking crack.  I was thrown out of two high schools and the family home, and I had been held up at gunpoint.

Thirty-two days before my eighteenth birthday, I was living in a friend’s attic, listening to Cat Stevens’, “Tea for the Tillerman”, and filling a pipe with lint I picked up from the carpet.  I caught a glimpse of my shadow on the wall.

I realized that I had hit bottom.

I entered treatment on January 24, 1986.  I’ve been sober ever since.

I learned ten years into my sobriety that yoga was going to be essential in my ongoing recovery.   Because as soon as I stepped onto my mat, I couldn’t hide from myself anymore.  So I didn’t come back for three years.

Yoga offers a spiritual roadmap to find your individual truth, and that isn’t always comfortable.

Yoga and recovery are spiritual kin.  Karma Yoga is the action of selfless service.   Bhakti Yoga is the acute awareness of the infinite blessings that surround you.  Jnana Yoga is the study of the universal principles of living.  These yogic traditions are the heart of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

I don’t pull punches.  I want to keep it real.  Yoga is not about poses or poseurs (not a typo – poseurs are people who try to be someone other than their true self).  It’s not about trying to master a physical position.  No matter how beautiful your warrior is, it doesn’t make you a warrior.

Yoga is not about standing on your head; it’s about getting your head out of your ass.

Namaste,

EP

Based on an interview I gave to Nancy B. Loughlin, a writer and yogi in Fort Myers, FL