Lost In The Translation Of The Past

There's a semi-recognizable quotation that reads as such - The Past Is Prologue.

Considering that our past is supposed to aid in shaping us into the people that we are to become, I find myself reviewing my particular 35 year path and positing a series of questions:

What would happen if I removed even the most miniscule of of events?

Why do I feel this sense of nostalgia for moments in time that ultimately hurt me?

The final question reminds me of Frank Zappa's theory for how the world will end - with an ever-growing, collective, desire for things of the past. More explicitly, as an exponentially growing number people pine for moments in time that happen closer and closer to their relative placement in space-time, we will eventually long for things that happened mere moments prior until there is nothing left to be nostaligic for. At that point, the human race will no longer have any need to exist.

As someone with an addiction, I all too often find myself reviewing those moments where I was placed into a situation that caused me to use a particular substance. Whether it be chemicals or drink, I have realized that each instance has been catalyst that has propelled me to this exact moment. But did it have a purpose? By that, were all the moments that I used individual pieces of a broader puzzle that would bring me to where I am now?

People are want to say that "things happen for a reason", but it is the reason that I find myself struggling with.

Taking a mental inventory, I realize that my usage of some of the more harsh chemical substances found across the landscape of the South lead me to abandon a specific subset of "friends", move back to my hometown, meet new people, and start a family of my own. The only caveat to that is that I had failed to moderate the one thing that I never imagined would be my undoing.

It is from this point where I get to asking myself what I would do had I never taken up drinking in the first place.

There are a multitude on incidents and occurances that I would prefer to have wiped from my past - some due to the complete and unblushing embarassment factor and others because I ended up simply hurting myself physically. But how would that affect my place in the landscape of existence now?

Altering ones past, even by the tiniest of degrees, would ultimately cause a paradox in their current plane of existence. To put it another way, had I not started drinking, I very well may have ended up a cross-dressing treasure hunter in Southeast Asia. And while that may sound ridiculous, one has to understand that altering one event has a systemic effect on everything that happens after it.

I am attempting to come to terms with the fact that there are more than enough reasons for me to NOT desire to change my past than there are reason to do so.

One of the most difficult things to deal with, from an emotional perspective, is the fact that I have so many pictures of great times from my past. I'm a very visual person and a very emotional one. When these personal traits meet with outside stimuli like a picture of a house party I threw during college, an image on my computer of me DJing at a packed club in Nashville, or even a family portrait, it triggers those moments of nostalgia and a desire to change even the most recent past.

In "12 Step Culture", there are various atrifacts/emotive states in everyday life that are referred to as "triggers" - meaning that any and all contact with them will ultimate end with usage of the "drug" of choice. The only problem with this is that 12-Step programs reinforce the idea of "triggers" to the point where a Pavlovian Response is generated. More sucinctly, a person deal with addiction is instructed to list no less than 25 individual "triggers" as part of a given therapy packet during rehab. That particular person may simply be drawing from memories of whom/what was in their immediate vicinity during usage. It's highly likely that most of these( or at least a plurality ) did not contribute directly to the usage itself. It's this aspect of "12-Step Culture" where the therapist is trying to convince the addict that they aren't the ones solely controlling their usage, but it's outside influences that bear a brunt of the blame.

For example, a councelor recently stated to me that he would not drink Sprite because it was a "trigger". Some have even gone so far as to say that driving a particular way home from work constituted a trigger for them. Others have even stated that certain words or inanimate objects are "triggers" for their drug of choice.

If an addict manages to convince themselves that they have no control over these "triggers", then they are removing themselves from almost all accountability for their usage and the actions that occur afterward.

During rehab, I found myself writing out a list of "triggers" that included places, people, and objects. As I put more honest analysis into my list - which came nowhere close to the minimum that was required by the assigned treatment - I began to realize that my usage was no more elevated by these than any other outside stimuli. I was equally as likely to drink had none of these been within my proximity. A picture of old friends, a recording of a radio program I hosted, or even a favorite film of the past had no verifiable affect on my desire to drink versus playing new tracks on my turntables or cooking a dish that I learned from my father. "Triggers" are only as strong as the addict allows them to be.

It has taken some time, but I am becoming quite comforted with what has happened to me in the past. There are many people that I have reconnected with over the last few years that some addicts would consider "triggers", but it has generated the opposite effect - I have gained a deeper understand of specific areas of my past that I had once used as an excuse to use. These people - and the experiences shared with them or because of them - were not to be "triggers" for me, but effective tools for recovery.

With the ideas of the past, "triggers", and emotions in mind, the perfect track to end this post would be this:

The Cure - Pictures Of You