A story of addiction
Tibetan Buddhist texts liken addiction to licking honey off a razor. The first taste is sweet—irresistible even, and seemingly harmless.
Then, what was once saccharine turns metallic on tongues. What once seemed a good idea now tastes of blood and flesh and shreds of us. No longer whole. No longer able to withstand ourselves.
Despite knowing this—despite knowing from soul to bones that desperation for refuge is deadly—we open wide and we ask for more. We swallow honey-dipped blades by the handful. We feel their edges slicing us open, and we say: Yes, please. More, please.
We know. And, we continue.
Tibetan meditation master Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche says:
“Seeking satisfaction in others or in external objects or events reinforces a deep and often unacknowledged belief that we, as we are, are not entirely complete; that we need something beyond ourselves in order to experience a sense of wholeness or security or stability.”¹
Wholeness. Security. Stability. How many of us feel that, lately? How many of us embody that with our words, habits, and choices?
And look, I’m right here with you.
I grew up fearing alcohol and what it does to us. I grew up begging those closest to me to please, please skip the drink.
Then, at 22, I gave in. I walked into the 7-11 on the edge of campus, bought a tallboy of Budweiser, and crouched behind bushes to drink it.
Did it turn me into an addict right then and there? Like a werewolf in moonlight, from Jekyll to Hyde? No. But it was a succumbing and the wrong kind of surrender. It was finally, after years of refusing, taking that razor to tongue like communion.
I fit now. Now, I’m with you.
And now, I am and do not.
More than four years since my last drink, I thirst for a different edge. I crave a more perfect surrender.
The kind at the interface between self and not self, known and unknown. The kind that demands we show up fully and wholly. The kind in which the sharpness holds sweet and the sweet holds sharpness, but none of it hurts us. Or, when it does, it’s a hurt that is healing.
The kind that brings us back to ourselves and to something far bigger.
This is sobriety, for me. This is recovering.
Am I sober from honey on razors? No. Not even close.
My relationship to work is manic. My appetite for approval, insatiable. I triple check. I numb with rules. I’m magnetized by online consumption.
Some part of me is still up to the same tricks and still trying to solve what doesn’t need solving. Some part of me is still seeking wholeness and safety in places that will never, can never deliver.
I know. And, I continue.
But the cuts are less jagged now. The metallic taste, fading. Because naming our poison—bringing it into the light and telling the truth—already weakens it.
Choosing something different weakens it further, and the more times we choose, the more we succeed. Not always, but more often. One day, one choice, one truth at a time.
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¹From Joyful Wisdom, by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with Eric Swanson (which is also where I heard about the razor).