Reply To: How to deal with inner demons?

[peter]

I have lots of addictions. A big boost for my recovery came when somebody brought to my attention the prevalence of “combat language” that I used when I talked about my addiction. I was always fighting this or that – frequently myself, it turns out – always doing battle and waging war against my urges. I would don my armor and go in swinging… unfortunately, my armor looked suspiciously like many of my worst character defects – defensiveness and righteousness, and “should” and “must” language.

Then and now it’s the same for me: splitting myself into two parts, labelling them as addict/non-addict, and then duking it out armored to the hilt, only ends up making me feel just as incomplete, battle-weary, spiritually seperate, and exhausted as my addiction ever has. A recovery text I like to use tells me that my addiction is a part of me, not a seperate diseased entity that I can simply single out and remove with a scalpel, like a bad spleen. I suppose I’m saying that I’ll always have the demons around – need them around, in fact – to be a complete person. Recovery simply shows me that I don’t need to give them the time of day. Not today, at least.

Instead, I can look to the spiritual solution for a daily reprieve from any misguided self-conquest I might feel like dutifily embarking on.