Epiphanic Delusion

Yesterday morning at AA the topic was "moments of clarity," which in the context of AA is really about the conversion narrative: the moment when one realizes that one can live without drugs or alcohol and be happy or just live at all, for starters. The moment that makes the rest of your life possible. It's a big deal, this moment of clarity. I'm sure I've told the story of my big similar moments somewhere on this blog over the years, though I just did a quick search to make sure I haven't written this exact same post before, which sometimes happens.

The problem is that the moment of clarity is also analogous to the concept of "buzz" in substance abuse, that ever-elusive state of momentary vision and joy that substance consumers seek. Back when I was in college, Mark and I had a practice of doing mushrooms once in the spring and once in the fall but no more. Timed for nice weather so the day could be spend outside, wandering around, talking, throwing a frisbee, communing with the One. We knew not to do it more often because shrooms were very powerful and took a day or two to recover from. It was clear that tripping was chasing enlightenment of a sort that one could not take with one upon return from the trip, however hard we may have tried. Really good weed offered a shallower and similar if even more evanescent clarity with shorter recovery periods. It also left one more or less on the same planet with other people, unlike psilocybin.

Moments of clarity in sobriety are like that. They are highs to which one keeps trying to come back. The fortunate thing is that the culture of 12-step programs, with its well-developed apparatus of meetings, peer support, literature, steps, traditions, etc., is all geared towards helping people memorialize and institutionalize those insights in one's life. But it is the engagement in and doing of those things which offers us hope and the possibility of preserving the clarity found in those moments. 

After all, one would never think to ask Michael Jordan "What was the moment of clarity when you became a great basketball player?" It was decades of hard work and practice, Malcolm Gladwell's proverbial 10,000 hours. Maybe the question would be "When was the moment when, as a sophomore at Laney, that you came to believe you might make the varsity team?" Could be a bad analogy. He probably never doubted it.