I attended a weekly meeting sharing Cosmo Form at a drug rehabilitation centre with young men recovering from heroin addiction. Not having taken heroin myself I was enquiring into it’s nature. I was curious to identify what it teaches and eventually understood that it created a feeling of profound joy and happiness.
If I’ve never experienced profound joy and happiness this could be useful to show me: ah, this is what profound joy and happiness feels like! In my experience, such things can be recognised, felt in the body and remembered. Once I’ve experienced something it gets stored in my system of memory for later recall. I know this about negative experiences, but the same is true for the positive. Once I’ve felt profound joy and happiness, it’s available and accessible to me at any time. It can be brought back in an instant without relying on the initial stimulus.
Let me put this another way. Hypothetically, I may never have experienced what it feels like to have a loving and supportive father to hold me in a time of need, or protect me when I was incapable of protecting myself. In this example, I may be seeking this from another: from a lover, a teacher or an authority figure. I project this need onto them in the hope that I might experience it. If I’m working with this consciously I would create this experience for myself in a session with someone I felt could facilitate it. Once I’ve experienced what it feels like to have a supportive father, felt it in my body at a deep cellular level so the memory is stored, I can access it again at any time. I am not dependant on someone external for this experience because I know it within myself. This is self-resourcing and self-empowerment. I become the father I need, whenever I need.
This however is not what’s happening with heroin addiction. The profound joy and happiness seems to be used as a way to mask extreme emotions that are too difficult and painful to be felt. It’s a coping mechanism, a numbing out. Not only is it masking these, it is possible it creates a confidence that overrides a person’s natural inhibitions. One of the men we were working with said quite pointedly: the emotions come back to be felt even harder.
But let’s talk about sex, because the same thing is happening.
There are those for whom sexual encounters carry mixed-up feelings of guilt, shame, anger, pain, inadequacy, unworthiness, revolution and harsh judgements (to name a few). Particularly where sexuality is associated to some form of abuse of power, whether physical or emotional, these emotions can be too painful or exposing to feel. These are feelings that are unlikely to be admitted to personally, and especially not to a lover when trying to win, and afraid to loose, their love. Feeling vulnerable and exposed is not typically encouraged or supported in any way, regardless of how safe it might be.
So numbing occurs that either prevents a person from engaging, or results in them engaging in situations that are beyond their natural capacity. The uncomfortable feelings are compounded and amplified to be felt even harder.
Working with this consciously, such as in a session, the intention is to allow the emotions to be felt such that it is safe to do so, not overwhelming and the numbing out can be brought to awareness. In other words, work out what the capacity is to just be on the edge enough to feel and not need to escape. Be in that place, feel everything and reassess. It’s a delicate fine-tuning that slowly, slowly increases the capacity of what can be faced and felt. Heroine (and any other form of numbing out) does not allow for that. Ultimate something else needs to support a person to allow in, as slowly as necessary, all the bits that have been denied.