Beyond Addiction

Remember Don? He was the frequent flier whose newfound sobriety suddenly hit a turbulent patch when the passenger next to him started drinking on a coast-to-coast flight. We connected via on-board Wi-Fi, and he stabilized himself. I'm relieved to report he landed safety, still sober.

Nothing so clearly defines addiction than that phenomenon of craving. Only addicts and alcoholics desire to put back in their bodies the very substances that wiped away so much of what really matters and came close to killing us.

To understand this, read "Craving: Why We Can't Seem to Get Enough." It's written by my friend and former Hazelden colleague Dr. Omar Manejwala. The book hits a home run.

This has been a bad week for reminding me what happens when people act on those cravings.

On Monday, a good friend of mine ended up in the emergency room, probably from taking too many pain meds after back surgery. Once, this friend had 20 years clean and sober, but he relapsed after a similar run-in with meds a few years ago. This parent of two beautiful kids denies the problem is real this time. Everyone else sees it, though.

On Tuesday, a young man from a family of means and prominence called me desperate for help. "I've got the 'yipes,'" he admitted. "I just picked up my six-month (sobriety) chip, and now I want to get high again."

The "yipes." I never had heard it described that way. But it resonated. The "yipes" is a scary moment when that stealth appetite for a drug or drink suddenly blossoms through the top of our heads. It consumes our thoughts. It vies with what we know we shouldn't do. Often it feels as if fighting it is much harder than just giving in and defaulting to the "relief" offered by that substance.

Just one, we tell ourselves. It never ends up being just one.

I told this young man what to do to ease his appetite. It didn't stop him from satisfying it with those pain-killing lollipops they give terminally ill people at the end of life. Last night, his family found him passed out on a couch. We talked briefly. Groggy and consumed with guilt, he told me, "I've got to figure out why I need this drug in my life."

Today Barbara called me. Her 50-year-old son's higher power is crack cocaine. He's relapsed over and over again, to the point that not even a long stay in rehab last year kept him clean. So he went home to Missouri, pulled himself together somehow and finally got a job. Two days ago, he got his first paycheck and promptly disappeared. "My son stumbled home this morning, out of his mind," sobbed his mother. "I just don't get it anymore."

I get it. Many times before I finally got clean, I was obsessed with getting high one more time. Often I consummated the deal. But it never ended the way I planned. It always ended worse. Much worse. I still have those "yipes" moments, too — especially in the course of a regimen of dental work that has required limited medication to ease the pain. When I take the meds, I sense my illness, in remission since 1994, on the move again, sneaking around while looking for a crack in the buffer between my sobriety and my disease. So far, I've been fortunate; what's happened to others reminds me of what can happen to any one of us whose "yipes" defy logic.

William Moyers is the vice president of public affairs and community relations for the Hazelden Foundation and the author of "Broken," his best-selling memoirs. His new book, "Now What? An Insider's Guide to Addiction and Recovery," has just been published. Please send your questions to William Moyers at wmoyers@hazelden.org. To find out more about William Moyers and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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