This Naked Mind. Annie Grace

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      Imagine you are on a ship, and you sail into a storm. The captain can no longer see the shore or the stars and is completely dependent on the ship’s navigational systems. A bright red light starts flashing. This light lets him know one of his navigational instruments is low on battery. He can’t accurately navigate without it. What if, instead of replacing the battery, he removed the red indicator light? Did the captain fix the issue? Nope. He compounded it.

      My mother is a health nut. She ate organic food before most people knew what organic food was. She won’t even take Advil because she believes our ailments can and should be healed through natural, herbal, and food-based remedies rather than with chemicals. Although I ignored her guidance for many years, especially in college when I rebelled against my healthy upbringing with a diet of Taco Bell and Nerds candy, I have come to realize how poignant and true her advice is: We must exercise caution before doing anything that alters our normal functions. It can be terrifying to realize how little we know about the inner workings of our bodies and minds. When we mess with the functions of our bodies or numb our senses with alcohol and other drugs, we act like the captain, inviting catastrophe.

      Tommy Rosen, founder of Recovery 2.0 and an addiction specialist, teaches that we have an “infinite pharmacy within,” meaning inside we have every instinct, hormone, and drug we need to help us live long, healthy, and happy lives. If you look at your body’s ability to produce adrenaline or endorphins, you see they are supplied in the perfect quantity at the exact time needed. We possess a phenomenal system.

      Your immune system is your single most powerful weapon against disease. It is significantly more important to your health than any modern medicine. Ask any doctor and she will tell you the same thing. We’ve discussed how alcohol severely damages your immune system’s ability to function. Drinking is like removing the red indicator light on your immune system.

      A rare genetic condition aptly referred to as Congenital Insensitivity to Pain prevents a person from feeling pain. At first this might seem like a good thing. A life with no pain, who’d complain about that? It is actually one of life’s scariest disorders. You wouldn’t realize the shower was scalding until your skin reddened and blistered. You wouldn’t know your bone was broken until it protruded from your arm. People suffering from this disorder have no chance of living a normal life. It would be hard to make it past childhood unless you lived inside a bubble. Pain gets a bad rap, but it is our friend—it keeps us alive.

      As kids we longed to be older, to have our own houses, cars, and money to spend. As adults we wish we were young again because we are always tired and life seems to get increasingly stressful. It shouldn’t be this way. During childhood and adolescence we undergo more changes than at any other time in our lives. In every other animal, childhood is much more stressful than adulthood.⁵²

      Think about how tough high school was. Remember the mental strain of the changes you underwent. As a child you don’t feel in control of your life and your destiny, which generates fear and stress. When you are mentally at peace and physically strong as an adult, you experience the best of both worlds. You regain the vigor of youth, and your actual age no longer seems to matter. You feel more comfortable in your own skin. You are wiser and better adjusted. These are the best years of your life. You have more energy, joy, vigor, courage, and self-respect than ever before. Alcohol steals this from us. We drink more and more and become sicker and sicker. It is gradual, and we don’t realize we no longer feel our best. We become accustomed to it and actually believe it’s normal to feel fatigued, stressed, and somewhat unhappy. Now, granted, exhaustion can be caused by many things besides alcohol, but if you are drinking, there is no doubt it exacerbates these stresses, making exhaustion and even regular hangovers an unpleasant way of life. There is not a clear sign that we are doing something to hurt ourselves other than the hangover. Perhaps this chronic exhaustion is the body’s way of saying that something’s wrong.

      These days I have so much energy it’s incredible. It took time to regain my energy, but over time I healed from years of drinking poison. When you are physically strong, you feel on top of the world. You are present to fully enjoy the great moments in life. I handle stress better too. Before, my stressors multiplied because, instead of dealing with my problems, I ignored them by drinking. When left unattended, they grew inexplicably large. Without drinking, I can mindfully manage stress. In fact my ability to handle the things I once drank to ignore can be empowering. I don’t mean to say I never have hard days—of course I do. But when you are healthy and happy, everything becomes easier.

      Your Warning Mechanisms: Instincts

      We have a staggering intellect that both helps and harms us. It’s helpful when we use that intellect to recognize our bodies’ warning lights—symptoms—and search for the root problems. It’s harmful when we rely solely on our intelligence and ignore our bodies’ instinctual knowledge. Instinct is the work of our bodies’ senses alerting us to what will harm us. Sadly, we often ignore this most basic warning system.

      When something goes wrong with our body, we visit a doctor. Doctors will tell you that we understand relatively little about how we are made and how to heal ourselves. We continuously learn more, disproving existing medical theories. We used to think that bloodletting— draining blood from a sick person—would cure illness by draining the malady from the body. We now realize this actually harmed the patient, sapping vital strength from an ailing body. Now, of course, our knowledge and technology is growing at an unprecedented rate. We are more informed than at any other point in the history of the world, yet we would be stupid to imagine that our knowledge is complete. You only have to read the news to realize we are constantly discovering new things and disproving existing theories.

      Our health is the single most important thing we have, and without it, nothing else matters. Our instincts are specifically designed to guide us. Yet in our stubbornness, we rely heavily on our own intellect, trusting our knowledge more than our senses, even though common knowledge is often later disproven. We ignore our instincts in favor of intelligence, not realizing our instincts are designed to keep us alive and healthy. Alcohol deadens our senses and mutes our instincts. It is important that we do not ignore our natural instincts; they are the most valuable source of information we have regarding our health and longevity.

      We need to see that we are strong, whole, and complete. We need to understand that alcohol, instead of acting as a support to help us deal with life, actually deadens our senses and harms our immune system. Consuming chemicals, which affect the functioning of our bodies, is reckless. And in this case, the danger is increased because our chemical of choice is addictive. In truth, you don’t need alcohol to enjoy life or to relieve stress. You only think you do. And in reality, it does nothing for us. As you uncover the truth, your perception will begin to change, both consciously and unconsciously, and with this knowledge you will no longer desire alcohol. You will be free.

6.

       LIMINAL POINT: ARE WE REALLY DRINKING FOR THE TASTE?

       “Recovery is all about using our power to change our beliefs that are based on faulty data.”

       —Kevin McCormack

      Before you ever drank a drop you observed everyone around you drinking, seeming to enjoy the taste of alcohol. Yet your early experience probably contradicted that belief. Kids generally don’t like their first sip of alcohol. Since you continue to observe others around you drinking, you assume there must be something good and beneficial about drinking, despite the taste. You conclude that you should persevere in drinking; you may even be told you need to “acquire the taste.” Over time, you do СКАЧАТЬ