Before I say anything about this topic, I want to make one thing clear: I wouldn’t have the life I have today without my sobriety. Six years ago, I wasn’t able to maintain a decent job, couldn’t afford a shitty apartment, spent all my money on drugs and alcohol, floundered in alcoholic relationships…you get the idea. If I wasn’t sober I’d most likely be dead, either by substance or by my own hand. Sobriety has given me a full life with beautiful relationships and, for lack of better phrasing, some really cool shit. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and I’m grateful for it every day.
That said, it isn’t easy. At all.
When I say that, I don’t mean it’s not easy to stay sober. By some miracle of God, I haven’t had the desire to drink or drug since that fateful day six years ago. What I’m talking about is life afterwards, which I’ve found to be completely different than what I thought it would be. In some ways it’s better, and in other ways it’s…well..not necessarily worse, but more raw and real than I initially bargained for.
When I first got sober, I imagined myself at the base of a mountain stretching towards the heavens. I was finally free of all the chains that bound me and everything I ever wanted was inevitably going to come my way…or so I thought. Somewhere deep in my subconscious was embedded the insidious idea that as long as I did the right things on this path, all of my desires would be granted. At points that vision became true, but at others it fell desperately short. I imagined myself bathing in money, sleeping with hordes of gorgeous women and being loved and adored by everyone I encountered. I would eventually become the living embodiment of Nietzsche’s Übermensch and sail off into the sunset on my glowing white steed. Needless to say, none of that’s happened - I don’t even know how to ride a horse!
As the years moved on, my vision and I would often clash. Sometimes I would get little hits of it - a pile of money here, a cute girl there, but it never came close to that magical ideal. I found myself angry at God, expecting all of my “rewards” to have shown up already. At times I struggled financially, and I spent many periods alone and away from love and pleasure (and when I did have those things, they were often filled with drama and chaos). The longer I stayed sober, the further I drifted from Uber-Denis. I found myself spending many nights in isolation and confusion, rueing my lot in life and cursing my God with questions that sounded like this:
“After all the great things I’ve done, this is how you repay me!?”
As time continued to pass and I spent more years away from my vices, I started to notice a strange sort of separation between myself and, well, most other people. At this point I had gone as far as I could possibly go down the path of self-improvement, altruism, and all other “good-guy” things. Contrary to what I initially believed, that proved to have the complete opposite effect on my reality. I thought it would draw people in, but the evidence showed that it was in fact pushing people away. People ghosted and ran. Others stuck around, but it felt like I was speaking a completely different language with them. I may have helped save a young man’s life the night before, but I didn’t know who scored the final goal in the Ranger’s game - and for some reason that seemed to be more important. I spent years climbing my mountain only to realize that it’s frighteningly lonely at the top.
Throughout these years I spent many nights in hopelessness, wondering if and when things would ever be “okay”. I wondered why everything in my life felt like an uphill battle when to other “normal” people they seemed so easy. I began to wonder if there was something fundamentally flawed with me, something I couldn’t quite pin down or articulate but something that everyone I encountered sensed. Was I too short? Too smart? Too anxious? Too kind? It was as if I always had something stuck in my tooth and everyone knew except me, yet nobody had the guts to tell me. This wasn’t the sober life that I had envisioned.
Eventually the separation and rejection became so constant and egregious that I couldn’t chalk it up to a coincidence (like I would so often do to make myself feel better). Something strange was happening. It was at this point that a lightbulb went off in my head and I began to understand. There was truth to everything I had been thinking, although - yet again - it wasn’t what I thought it was. It felt like life had programed a virus that was out to fuck me over, but that wasn’t the case at all. I was the one who created the virus and I wasn’t even aware of it. Let me elaborate…
Carl Jung described the Shadow Self in a variety of ways, and I think it would be helpful to list a few of them here:
“Man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."
“Closer examination of the dark characteristics – that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow – reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality.”
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
That last one particularly hits home for me, as I recall the countless situations in my life in which I cursed my “fate”. As it turns out, it wasn’t fate at all, but rather my shadow running the show from behind the scenes.
What the hell do I mean by “shadow”, anyway?
The only way I can explain it is by recalling my experience because that’s all I know. I remember being a little boy, crying in the mirror because I was disgusted by what he saw. I remember that I wanted so desperately to be loved and seen by my peers and the ensuing sleepless nights that would come from not receiving that. I remember that I wanted to have sex badly as a teen but not being able to get it for years, and I remember how that first drink took the exquisite pain away. I remember the muck, the self-hatred, the denial, the suffering. That, my friends, is where my shadow comes from. The only thing I didn’t know was that, in many ways, it was (and is) still running the show.
It’s hard to explain, but I can feel it - especially in romantic relationships. It wants me to run away when I see a beautiful woman because to him I’m still that acne-riddled, pre-pubescent boy. It pressures me into doing and saying things that don’t reflect my real self because he believes my real self to be worthless and unloveable. It encourages me to fall in love with broken and unavailable women because to him, that’s what this monster deserves; heartbreak and chaos are his playthings. The scariest part is that it has created so much of my reality, even in sobriety. The hidden thoughts that I’ve held onto all my life (which, by the way, I do everything I can to hide with big muscles and blue-collar machismo) have become my puppet-masters.
Fuck me, right?
Well, not so much. Paradoxically, this is in fact a wonderful realization. According to Jung, most of us go through life without ever meeting our shadow in this way and are fated to be ruled by it until we die. To me, this is nothing short of a miracle.
Sobriety didn’t give me millions of dollars and orgies with models. It didn’t give me trophies or accolades. Instead, through years of having to deal with my own pain and emotions without numbing myself or running from them, it’s forced me to meet my shadow. That’s the greatest gift. It’s a far cry from glowing white steeds, but it’s even more extraordinary. What I do with it and how I face it is up to me, but I can’t help be curious about what’s on the other side. Only time will tell.
Maybe the Uber-Denis will rise after all :)