13. Chapter 9: Trauma is the Gateway Drug

If this audiobook is resonating with you, there are a few ways you can support this work and help it reach more people who it can help:

1) Free (and so powerful):
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this with someone you love.
This is one of the most impactful ways to help this message spread.

2) Join the Substack community ($10/month):
Come deeper into this work with me on Substack, where I share weekly writing, reflections, and teachings on sobriety, yoga, and healing:
https://www.soberyogagirl.com/

3) Own or gift the book ($25):
Purchase a hard copy on Amazon - for yourself, or for a person in your life who might need this support:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1739094379

4) Practice with me in real life:
Join me for a retreat, training, or program and experience this work in a deeper, more embodied way:
https://www.soberyogagirl.com/p/upcoming-retreats-and-trainings-47b

Brene Brown said, “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else's survival guide." That is my hope for this book - that it reaches whoever it needs to reach, and supports you on your journey.

Your support in whichever way means so much!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Chapter 9. Trauma is the Gateway Drug. Whenever I told someone I was moving to Kuwait, their first response was often, Where is that? Kuwait is a mostly desert, a tiny, oil-rich country, sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. In 2015, when I was moving there, it didn't make the news often in North America. But it did in the 1990s when Iraq invaded. That war occurred just before I was born. So like me, many of my friends who were my same age hadn't even heard of the country before I decided to move there. After that question, the quiz would continue from my friends, family, and acquaintances. Is it safe there? Or isn't that a war-torn country? Yes, it's safe. And no, it isn't war-torn. The last war in Kuwait was in 1991, before I was born. Unfortunately, people tend to confuse a continent with a country frequently. They hear about violence in the Middle East from the media and they think that the whole of the Middle East is violent. It's not. Kuwait is actually extremely safe. Do they have air conditioning? Yes, they do. Kuwait is a developed country and temperatures in the summer skyrocket to over 50 degrees Celsius. Kuwait definitely has air conditioning. Why would you want to move to a country where women are treated so badly? It's not that bad. I don't have to wear a hijab, I just cover my elbows and knees. Alex, every time I've seen you, you've had the largest bottle of liquor in your hands and you're making out with some guy. You are going to get arrested. Crickets. I'll be fine. In my head, yep, you're probably right. One of the biggest concerns for me about Kuwait was that alcohol was illegal. There are 195 countries in the world, and alcohol is illegal to consume in 10 of them. In retrospect, the fact that when moving abroad at age 23, I chose one of those 10 countries with prohibition to move to perplexes me. I hadn't gone a week without at least one drink of alcohol since I was a teenager. How did I think I would survive? And why was it I was so dependent on alcohol already at that age? There were various factors that influenced why I began drinking in the first place, and it would be naive to blame any one reason or cause. Growing up, I had issues in my family home that caused me to have unhealed trauma, and I was searching for a way to cope with it. Beyond this, I saw my parents drink alcohol regularly and my grandparents too. In Toronto in the 1990s, drinking alcohol seemed synonymous with stress relief and celebrations. This culture around alcohol was not unique to my family. It was woven into the culture of most families in Canada, not just mine. When speaking about the five causes of human suffering, or klecias, my teacher Rolf says that all addiction falls into the third and fourth klash, desire, and devishha avoidance. In my case, when I first began drinking alcohol, I was drinking it out of desire. I desired to have fun. I desired to release stress. I desired to let loose. This is Raja. Once I started drinking heavily, I realized drinking alcohol was also a good way to avoid my suffering, avoid my trauma, avoid tough conversations. This is Devasha. When we look at addiction from the Western perspective, we often see someone with addiction as having something wrong with them, or we view them as being different. We lack compassion for the addict precisely because we are so addicted ourselves in ways we don't want to accept and because we lack self-compassion. Gabra Mate. But once we examine dependence on any substance from the Eastern perspective, we see addiction as landing on the scale of Raja and Devesha. When we look at struggling with drinking or any other substance in this manner, we can start to see addiction as an extreme example of a very normal human experience. Charlotte was completely unconscious, limbs limp like spaghetti, neck weak like a ragdoll, head hanging heavy. I got separated from her at the beginning of the night and later found her with an older boy in this state. I never knew what happened to her that night, but I can only guess. I think that night changed the entire trajectory of her life. I know for me it set me on a path of self-destruction. Whilst most of my friends ran away from the park, I attempted to carry Charlotte home. I made it about half a block down the street until a woman came out of her house and called the police. A police cruiser arrived shortly after, flashing red and blue lights. The two police officers asked me to call my parents. What I remember is that my parents were furious at me that night for lying, for sneaking out, for stealing alcohol. In hindsight, with several years of maturity later, I think they missed a key point. That when everyone else left, I stayed with Charlotte. I didn't leave her alone in the park. I made sure she was safe. And I told the truth to them and the police about what happened. The practice of love and the practice of truth. Ahimsa and Satya, the first two yamas of yoga. That I think should have been acknowledged. I didn't drink again for about six months until I started dating someone older than me. But around that time, I became obsessed with partying. I don't know whether I was addicted to alcohol yet or just suffering from major FOMO, fear of missing out. Whatever it was, I had to go to a party both nights of every weekend, and I couldn't see the cause and effect, how all the drama, all the chaos, all the dangerous situations, and all the gossip of my teenage years were fueled by my drinking. I didn't understand that my depression and anxiety were caused by my drinking. And if I just cut out the alcohol entirely, my life would be a whole lot happier and simpler. When I took first-year psychology, I read in a textbook about bipolar disorder, and that was when I decided this is what is going on with me. Bipolar wasn't a brand new concept to me at that point. I had heard of it before, but I didn't know much about it. Growing up, I knew that bipolar ran in my dad's family. The existence of mood disorders within my family was something that no one ever talked about. Also, Charlotte, the same friend that I'd carried out of the park at age 14, had bipolar disorder. She eventually transferred to a different high school because her struggles were interfering with her academics so much. When I found this diagnosis, the idea of it brought me comfort. I wanted a conclusion so I could have an explanation, clarity, and a reason why I was the way I was. Nowadays, in 2023, I no longer identify with this diagnosis whatsoever. But in 2010, it really resonated with me. According to the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, bipolar disorder is characterized by mood swings, depression, and hopelessness, followed by periods of being manic with high energy and irritability. While I may not have struggled as much as Charlotte did in high school, or some of my relatives, I felt I had some form of it. I felt certain that finally I understood myself. One thing that I want to share around bipolar disorder is a conversation that I had with a friend recently. When she was reading my book, she asked me, is there a reason why you say have had bipolar instead of M was bipolar? I realized that the language choice that I made in this book might not be widely understood, which is why I want to explain it here. The choice to describe bipolar disorder this way is a decision to use what is called person-first language. Most commonly in our society, there is a tendency to refer to an individual with bipolar disorder by stating he or she is bipolar. This language can be stigmatizing and make people feel labeled, abnormal, or separate from society. When I became aware of my language and made shifts towards person-first language, I found that it made a huge difference to me. In my opinion, this person-first language, for example, she has schizophrenia versus she is schizophrenic, is less stigmatizing and more inclusive. However, not everyone likes person-first language when describing their conditions. For example, within the autistic community, there tends to be a preference towards describing an individual as an autistic person as opposed to a person with autism. The best practice is to ask individuals or groups which language they prefer when describing themselves, and then utilize the same language. I now identify the moods that I experienced as simply extreme manifestations of the guna. The guna refer to three states explained in the sutras: tamas, inactivity, slowness, or lethargy, rajas, anxiety, stress, or sympathetic nervous system arousal, and sattva, equilibrium. The nature of everything in the material world, prakriti, including human beings, is change. We move through these states. We just need to identify when we're in a state that's not sattvic, rajasic, anxious, stressed, or manic, or tamasic, slow, depressed, or low, and constantly cultivate practices to bring ourselves back to sattvik, back to balance, and back to peace. When viewed from the Eastern perspective, mental imbalances are not necessarily indicative of a mental illness. They are simply an extreme manifestation of normal emotions. Our goal as humans is to constantly try to come back by cultivating mindfulness around the things that knock us out of balance and implementing practices to return to center. At the time that I had diagnosed myself with bipolar disorder, I was 22 years old and had just recently started yoga, and I lacked the spiritual awareness and understanding that I have now. So a diagnosis and medication were all I wanted. I was unaware that there were other holistic alternatives that now, 10 years later, I know about. And Western medicine seemed to be the only solution. But I think what I really wanted was for someone to recognize my struggles, validate my experience for me, and help me feel seen. I wanted someone to see my suffering and hold space for my healing journey. I wanted to experience the world in a manageable way, the way I thought my friends and classmates did. I didn't want every day to be a fight for my life.