The Frequency Of Addiction – Recovery 2.0 By Tommy Rosen

In the Doctor’s Opinion in the Big Book, we have the phrase ‘restless, irritable and discontent’. This article takes us from just a discussion about alcoholism to a much broader discussion of addiction and our response to this human condition of restless, irritable and discontent. The point here is not to violate our singleness of purpose tradition but rather to allow those of us who see our addictive behaviors manifesting themselves in many different ways beyond just drinking to have some new perspectives and tools to understand and move forward in our sobriety path. The article includes three videos at the end which allow you to explore this movement from alcoholism to addiction more comprehensively. You can find Tommy’s book which this article is extracted from entitled Recovery 2.0 on Amazon. His experience and goal is to use the Twelve Steps as his base to a broader movement to address these addictive behaviors. He also has a strong online presence

Everything in the universe vibrates. Of course, you are no different. Think of your body-mind system as a tuning fork that vibrates at a certain frequency, which is influenced by all inputs from your life: family, friends, education, culture, food choices, media choices, personal habits and lifestyle choices, deeply held beliefs, thoughts, and more. As you change the inputs, your frequency—the way your cells vibrate—will change as well. This is subtle yet very profound.

Addiction carries a frequency all its own. If your mind-body system is attuned to the Frequency of Addiction, you will be under the influence of the energy addiction brings. It will affect the way your entire reality unfolds for you. Your thinking will skew negative and feel quite loud, if not completely overwhelming at times. You will have a sense that something is lacking, and you will be disconnected from your body and intuition. This means that the decisions you make may not be in your best interest. Instead of living a life that attracts harmony and flow, you will be like a divining rod for difficulty, challenge, and pain. You will feel like you are swimming upstream in life. These are the conditions from which anyone would seek refuge. And, oh my God, have I been there!

I will share with you an experience I had in Florence, Italy, when I was 21 years old. Keep in mind that by this point, I had been “seeking my refuge” in drugs, sex, and other distractions for about eight years. I had just finished a semester abroad in Cannes, France, and had come to Italy, where I spent several well-intentioned but disconnected days with my mother. She had returned home, and I would have about 36 hours to myself to explore Florence before heading to meet up with my girlfriend at her home in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Florence is by all accounts a magical city. If you are interested in painting, sculpture, and architecture, you could not hope to be in a better place. I arrived in the morning and checked into a small yet comfortable hotel room. I planned to walk around the city, stopping in museums, churches, and cafés, seeing the sights and eating some great food. What an adventure!

Coming down from my hotel room around 10 A.M., I began to feel a bit uneasy, maybe a little lonely all of a sudden. I asked the concierge how to see Michelangelo’s famous statue of David at the Galleria dell’Accademia, and he suggested I take a cab there. On my way out of the hotel, I bought some cigarettes, Marlboro Reds. They tasted different from the American version, but they served their purpose.

Cigarettes gave me an identity. They helped me portray an image that, suddenly, I very badly needed to portray. The image was something like this: “I am a foreign traveler in this city. I am intriguing, fun, and not afraid. I have it together. If you are a woman, you’ll want to go to bed with me. If you are a guy, you’ll want to hang out with me. I’m cool. It’s cool. It’s all good.” Cigarettes also served another purpose, which on this day was very important: they helped to pass time.

I arrived at the Galleria dell’Accademia and lit up a smoke outside. I started to think about where I might find some pot in a city where I knew no one. For the past eight years, I had never been far from marijuana, and my semester abroad in Cannes was no different.

Inside the Galleria I navigated to the statue of David. I did everything I could to appear as if I knew what I was looking at, I was moved deeply by it, and I had some kind of understanding of this piece. But the unavoidable fact was that I couldn’t have cared less about this statue. I was consumed by my feeling of dis-ease. What are people in this hall thinking of me? How do I appear? I was so cut off from any inspiration that it was painful to try to pretend otherwise. Yet I held what I felt was a look of deep curiosity and knowing as I looked at David.

When the truly disturbing negative thoughts started to come, they stuck to me like flies on molasses. I could not get away from them. What are you doing here all alone? You can’t even enjoy yourself in this amazing place. Everyone else is having a blast. They’re loving it. Not you. You’re miserable … and so alone.

I had no idea why these horrible thoughts were bombarding me. I was in a beautiful city, but I might as well have been in hell.

Smoke a cigarette, Tommy, I thought. Good, I’ll go outside.

Heading toward an exit, I passed extraordinary works of art, feeling all the more insignificant. An astonishing wave of worthlessness came over me. It was horrible. I didn’t feel as if I belonged anywhere. I started to become inwardly desperate. My breathing became shallow and the chemistry of fear began to flow steadily through me.

I did what I could do to catch anyone’s attention, but it was as if I had a visible plague that everyone knew to avoid. I stared at every attractive girl I saw, trying to get her to look at me. Perhaps we would have a conversation, which would lead to a meal and then I’d be okay. But I wasn’t okay. I was having a panic attack.

I headed back to my hotel, went upstairs, stripped down, showered, and decided to start the day again. Sitting at the edge of my bed, though, I could feel that the thoughts were not subsiding. With each passing moment I felt more and more like a loser stuck in a hotel room in a beautiful city with no ability to simply have an enjoyable day. What was wrong with me? What was I going to do to occupy myself for the next 36 hours before I headed to Greece?

A few blocks away from the hotel, there was a post office with a bank of phones inside. You could pay at the counter to call anywhere in the world. I thought of calling my girlfriend, but what would I tell her? I had no idea what was happening. But I knew I needed to talk to someone to be relieved of this madness. I started to call everyone back in the U.S. whose number I knew by heart. Maybe it was the time change or just bad luck, but no one was picking up.

Suddenly I remembered that a dear friend of mine was traveling in Europe—Germany, I thought. I called her home in New York to see if there was some way I could get her number in Germany. Her mother picked up, but unfortunately, she didn’t have a way to connect with her daughter at that point. I pressed to get any information I could, because by that moment I had made the decision that I would travel to Germany if I had to in order to be with someone I knew.

All in all, I spent about 90 minutes in the post office trying to connect with someone, but I struck out. As I wandered the streets like a schizophrenic, my outward demeanor was relatively calm, but inside I was completely freaking out. I was vibrating with the Frequency of Addiction.

The next thing I thought about was food! Yes, I would go and eat a ridiculously expensive dinner somewhere, and I would drink a lot of wine at that meal and I would feel better. I found just the spot and hunkered down at a table to begin what was probably a two-hour solo feast.

There were multiple courses, all very good, and an amazing bottle of red wine, a 1977 Barolo that they decanted for me at my table using a candle as backlighting. This was culture. I felt special, relieved for a moment.

I got drunk but not drunk enough. I rolled out of the restaurant, smoked a cigarette, felt a bit nauseated, and got a cab back to my hotel. It was only six in the evening, but I was done for the day. I stripped down, got into bed, turned on the TV, and eventually fell asleep. My glorious day in Florence had come to an end.

THE UNDERLYING “ISM”

I would not fully understand what happened to me that day for a long time to come. Now I consider it to be one of the most important days of my life because of what it taught me about the conditions that underlie addiction.

In recovery circles, people often use the suffix of the word alcoholism, the “-ism,” to describe the irritability and discomfort that plague most addicts. “He’s got the-ism,” one might say about a person who is struggling with that underlying condition of restlessness. This feeling compels a person to reach for something to feel better. Even if you know you have a problem and want to stop, this sense of dis-ease is incredibly difficult to sit through. If you do not have help to get out of it, you will reach for whatever is around you to shift this dreadful feeling.

I spent my childhood using kinetic activity, television, movies, sports, sports trading cards, pinball, video games, and sugar-filled food to distract me every possible moment. I was always active and never alone. I only knew myself in relation to other people. What people thought of me was what mattered. I had no idea how to look inside and get to know myself. I had never developed the capacity to be alone. That day in Florence at 21 years of age was the first day I had ever been alone in my life.

Long before drugs and alcohol entered the picture, I already had a sense of insecurity and discontent. These feelings are hard to pin down in the moment. Something feels wrong, but you can’t point to anything in particular that, if it were fixed, would make you feel better. It’s like you have a feeling that you forgot something important and it’s nagging you. A friend might console you and ask, “What’s the matter?” You’ll say, “There’s really no problem. Everything’s okay.” But you know that there is something wrong and it grows in importance with each passing second. It’s a kind of madness. It’s the “-ism.”

By the time I was 21 and had that day in Florence, my sense of discomfort had grown quite a bit. I was fine as long as I had people, girls, drugs, adventures, excitement. I had been successfully avoiding the-ism for so long that I had forgotten I was still vulnerable to it.

Yet the minute I was alone, the-ism came out to mess with me. I could not sit comfortably with myself. Much later on I would realize that the day in Florence was a snapshot of a young man perfectly attuned to the Frequency of Addiction.

To explore this topic more deeply ; check out these videos from Tommy below: