Читать книгу This Naked Mind - Annie Grace, Annie Grace - Страница 14
Оглавление“The most fundamental harm we can do ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
—Pema Chödrön
You are the most awesome living organism on the planet. Your mind can do more than any computer. In fact, it creates computers. Your body is self-regulating, self-healing, and self-aware. It alerts you to the tiniest problems and is programmed to protect you, ensuring your survival. It is infinitely more complex than the most intelligent technology. It is priceless.
Since alcohol affects how your body functions, it is vital to understand how your body works when sober. When you are ensnared in the cycle of addiction, it’s easy to forget how competent you really are. You are balanced and strong. You are equipped with two phenomenal guidance systems—symptoms and instincts—which help your mind to understand your body’s needs.
Your Extraordinary Mind and Body: Complex
We learn more about the human brain every day. We are awed by its abilities, and, despite our technological advances, we cannot come close to replicating it. Your brain is capable of more in a single second than I could describe in hours. It can do more than I could ever explain because much of its power is still unknown. We know of nothing more powerful than the human brain. Astonishingly, the majority of your brain’s activity happens without conscious thought. It’s designed to keep us alive and highly functional without our direction. When we are asleep, it allows us to breathe, keeps our hearts beating, and regulates our temperature. Our immune system fights a daily battle against millions of toxins, both externally and internally. We take all of this for granted.
Your extraordinary brain is housed in a body that sustains and communicates with it. Your senses alert your brain to new information. Our abilities to smell, feel, taste, hear, and see connect us to our surroundings. They allow us to function and protect us from danger. Survival depends on our senses.
It’s astounding how far we’ve progressed in science and medicine, yet nothing we’ve accomplished compares to the miracle of a single human cell. And we possess trillions of cells, each unique. Human beings are more sophisticated than anything in our known universe. It can be argued that a human being is the apex of the known universe. It is important to be aware of how awe-inspiring, complex, and powerful your body is. We’ve been created for the survival of our species and ourselves yet with capacity for emotion, empathy, reflection, and compassion; we are able to accomplish so much more than just survival.
Your Extraordinary Mind and Body: Balanced
One of our miraculous abilities is achieving and maintaining homeostasis. Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary defines homeostasis as:
homeostasis: ho·meo·sta·sis | /hō-mē-ō-'stā-sәs/ noun
: the maintenance of relatively stable internal physiological conditions (as body temperature or the pH of blood) in higher animals under fluctuating environmental conditions
: the process of maintaining a stable psychological state in the individual under varying psychological pressures or stable social conditions in a group under varying social, environmental, or political factors
Homeostasis is a vital life force. We must remain in balance to survive. If we get too much acid (low pH) in our blood, it harms our organs. Consider how we take care of a houseplant. We need to make sure the soil is moist but not oversaturated. We need to give it sunlight but not scorch it. We do all these things to ensure the right balance of water and nutrients. We as humans instinctually do this inside our bodies. We sweat when we are hot so that water evaporates. Evaporative water is cooling, so sweating regulates our temperature. When we are trying to rid our body of unwanted intruders such as bacteria and viruses, we get a fever, but not so high of one as to kill us. By heating itself up, our body kills the intruders without harming itself. When we need oxygen to feed our cells, we naturally breathe at a faster rate. All of these, plus an uncountable number of other functions, work as your body’s optimal survival thermostat, helping to maintain homeostasis.
Your Extraordinary Mind and Body: Strong
We are constantly exposed to messages from the media about the fragility of our bodies. Look at how we consume hand sanitizer by the bucket. America spends more on healthcare than most other countries, yet has a higher infant mortality rate and relatively lower life expectancy for the developed world.50
We often feel weak and incomplete, yet nothing is further from the truth. Despite drinking poison in increasing quantities, usually daily, we still function. By believing we are weak, we foster the misconception that we need something more to thrive.
We are not weak; we are strong. We represent the very pinnacle of existence, stronger and more capable than anything we know of. We populated and explored the entire planet and even the moon before most of our modern medical discoveries.
It’s a miracle I survived all my years of heavy drinking and am healthy and thriving. It’s a testament to how strong we are. When I decided to stop drinking, I expected to lose weight and improve my health. I was not disappointed—I lost ten pounds in the first month. The real surprise was how my life improved in ways I didn’t expect. For one thing, my confidence skyrocketed. Also, when my body healed, I found myself amazed at the difference in how I felt every day. During my years of drinking I didn’t feel particularly sick, but I didn’t feel physically great either. I completely forgot how it felt to have tons of energy. Now I’m often surprised by how much I can get done, while still feeling motivated and happy. It is staggering to realize what we are capable of when we are mentally and physically strong.
We know more than ever about the dangers of alcohol and drugs, yet addiction is on the rise. As a society we find this confusing. The “Just Say No” campaign, introduced by First Lady Nancy Reagan, remains one of the most famous anti-drug campaigns of all time.51 Between 1998 and 2004, the U.S. Congress spent almost $1 billion on national anti-drug media campaigns. Why? Because we continue to see addiction on the rise, and we just don’t understand why. Youth today drink more than they did in the ’80s, and though we are concerned, we can’t seem to understand why the rates of drug and alcohol use are increasing. I believe part of the reason is that we inadvertently condition ourselves to believe we are weak. We believe we lack some vital ingredient necessary to the enjoyment of our lives. We conclude that we are deficient; we need substances to enjoy life and deal with stress. We’ve been unconsciously conditioned to believe alcohol helps us compensate for this deficiency, that it will help us feel strong, uninhibited, creative, and confident. Or maybe we think it will help us deal with the pressures and hassles of daily life.
Your Warning Mechanisms: Symptoms
Now let’s look for a couple minutes at the most common way our body warns us when something isn’t right: symptoms. When we feel a symptom of illness, we usually hurry to the medicine cabinet or the nearest doctor to make the discomfort go away. The pharmaceutical industry has never been bigger.
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.
