The Best Gifts Can't Be Wrapped

By Joe Nistler

The “Unhappy Holidays” event presented by Dissonance brought to light some great perspectives on navigating the holiday season when you suffer from addiction, mental illness or—if you’re like me—both. For most people, holidays mean reuniting with family. And for many, that means diving into an unhealthy atmosphere that we do our best to avoid throughout the year. But the panel got me thinking that the holidays don’t have to be unhappy. I can find plenty of things in the past year for which to be grateful—things that will get me through the season unscathed, even when circumstances conspire against me.

This holiday season has been humbling, to say the least. For all intents and purposes, I got laid off from my full-time job yesterday. They call it a "two-week unpaid vacation," so technically I’m still employed, but I’m pretty certain that I won’t be called to go back—no one will, the company’s done. I loved my job to the point that it often felt too good to be true. Now the cynic in me is laughing, saying, “See? I told you it wouldn’t last.” The funny thing is, despite being thrust into easily the most unstable financial situation since I’ve been sober, with more unknowns than I ever hoped to encounter at once, I can’t help but feel grateful—even happy—for the spiritual wealth I’ve come to grow in my recovery, and the friends and family that helped me along the way.

I’m fortunate enough to have a family that is starting to understand my substance use disorder and my recovery and support me in it. I was looking forward to buying gifts for the people I care about, to show them how much I care. It would have been the first time in years I would have been able to wrap presents, and now that option is gone. But I don’t feel the shame or disappointment in myself that I thought I would, because in the past year I’ve stumbled upon something much more valuable than the things we put under the tree.

This day last year, December 16th, was the last time I picked up drugs, and in two days it will be the anniversary of the last time I put them down. Last Christmas was the first in this new era of recovery for me, but it didn't feel all that different from the other unhealthy ones in my past.

This year is different. I can feel satisfied with my accomplishments and stand tall on them, rather than using them like a smokescreen to distract from the underlying addiction. I have seen the people around me grow and learn along this journey, too—I don't feel envious of them anymore. I can share honest moments with the ones I care about without crawling through the foggy haze of addiction. I welcome the unknowns and see them as opportunities, rather than devastating setbacks.

I still worry about what will come next, and how to find the right way—the worrying is a part of a clinical disorder with which I'll always have to live. But this holiday season, most importantly, is the one-year anniversary of the day I decided that everything would be all right. It was more powerful than a realization, it was truly a decision to start doing right, with the understanding that somewhere, some cosmic force would recognize that decision and allow me to persevere through the hardships. If I can remain genuine in my humility, gratitude and servitude to my community and higher power, I strongly feel that things will work out how they're meant to.

Call it faith, call it "turning my will over to a higher power as (I) understood him," call it a spiritual awakening—the only thing I realized last December was that things were never going to improve in the long run if I kept acting on the same impulses and trying to cheat the system for instant gratification. Looking back, my decision touches on several of the Twelve Step principles that have proven such an effective solution for me—turning over my will, addressing character defects, taking personal inventory and practicing the principles in all my affairs. But it’s hard to nail down just which step led to that moment. How do I really explain the instant I decided to change my life? How much of a role did I, myself, even play in that?

I'm certain of one thing—without loving people and opening up to some positive forces in my life, I would not have come to the same conclusion. I would not have recognized the blessings around me and the journey that lay ahead, and I would not be able to look around today and recognize the same loving joy around me amplified by my spiritual presence.

Life is stressful right now. There are a lot of unknowns, and I’m waiting to see what comes next. I always thought having to file for unemployment the week before Christmas Eve was a Dickensian cliché that couldn’t happen in real life, yet here I sit. Before, these circumstances might have broken me, but not anymore. The only antagonists in this story, though, are my addiction, my mental illness, and that one drink or hit that could return me to despair. I hear it calling to me from time to time when I’m most vulnerable, but thankfully I haven’t had to feed it for a full year now.

So maybe I can't fulfill that ego-driven homecoming fantasy of showing up at my parents’ door with presents under each arm. But at least that’s the only thing this holiday has in common with those in the past. I don’t think that’s the point of the holidays, anyway, nor is it the point of recovery. The desire to give “things” to my loved ones wasn’t entirely altruistic to begin with. Instead, I see that the best gifts can't be wrapped. They are the ones that keep on giving, for as long as I work at them. They are the ones reassuring me that when one door closes, another one opens. And until I find the next door, I have a lot to celebrate this year.

Joe Nistler is a Twin Cities-based writer for recovery-focused magazines across the country. He also covers local music and culture for 608 Magazine in Madison, WI, and is a graduate of the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

What If Nothing is Wrong With You?

By Jordan Hansen

What if nothing is wrong with you? What if my favorite part is the part you think is broken? 

I am a therapist. I love my work. I don’t think there is much wrong with the people I see. At least not in the way they think there is something wrong.

I find that the biggest struggle for most of the people I work with is that they are unable, for a variety of reasons, to be the only thing they are capable of being: Themselves. Not the façade-appearing-authentic that most of us cultivate as if our life depended on it. Not in the cliché, saccharine, eyeroll-inducing sort of way that we are used to either. I’m talking about the inimitable, kind, ferocious, authentic, at-ease way that we come by through sweat, tears, courage, risk and connection.

This is the journey of a person who only felt comfortable as a woman, in feminine clothes in makeup, in a small town, as a teenager, with all eyes identifying her as a man. This is the journey of the person attempting to live life without the protective shield of chemicals, bombarded by a harsh, vicious perception of human existence, tempted by the ease that comes with that first shot, hit, drink. These are the people who feel that their lives depend on producing authentic work and finding meaning, and yet can’t get themselves to put pen to paper or pick up their instrument due to some vague fear or anxiety. These are the journeys of those who feel they have no right to their pain, as if their life was too good to experience existential terror, the horror of solitude or the pain of self-loathing. Pain combined with judgment is potent. There are many who, seemingly without cause, are drawn to anxiety, depression, chemical use. We often find through our work that there is a piece of them beaten, forgotten, buried, neglected. This is what we look for, together.

The trick—under all of the techniques, pedantic jargon and fancy terms that can take the life out of therapy—seems to be to find truth. And the truth (as I see it today) is that we are really weird creatures flying around on a weird rock, doing amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring things. We are busy finding secrets in others and ourselves, and if we are able to have some idea of what we are meant to do and connect with our people and the universe around us, we can feel better. If we can find safety in our world while being the true, distilled, unadulterated, authentic people we know we are, we can find something like happiness. Even if our entire experience seems to have conspired to convince us otherwise.

I am invested in the scientific and clinically-measured approaches in my field, but I embrace them while anchored by belief in the ecstatic weirdness of the deal. Why does driving around listening to music with the windows down, heat on, music up, on a sleepy Minnesota night feel the best? I’d like to see a peer-reviewed study on the therapeutic effect of a drumset or the length of sobriety achieved both with and without an 808. Drum machines for everybody! Medication saves lives, but maybe we should mandate that it be paired with musical recommendations for specific diagnoses.

Anxiety? Mazzy Star, Sigur Ros, Spiritualized  
Depression? The Funky Meters, tUnE-yArDs, Os Mutantes

Or maybe we lean into the turn?

Anxiety: Aphex Twin, Death Grips, King Crimson
Depression: Bill Callahan, Elliott Smith, anything off Beck’s Sea Change

I want to ask for $9 million to design and execute a study to finally determine why cats are helpful for anxiety and dogs seem able to pierce the fog of depression.

So many other questions too, like ...

If I imagine motivational readings in Mavis Staples’ voice, will they be more effective? Why do the hugs at NA meetings and the laughter in AA meetings feel awful and amazing at the same time? Why can’t I write the same affected stories I used to? Will she/he/they still like me? Why do new songs feel so terrible and amazing to make? Is quitting my job to knit an appropriate reaction to crippling anxiety from a “real” job? What is a real job? Did I dance without arms when I was drinking, and if so, did I enjoy it as much as when I am able to dance alone? How do I feel comfortable dancing? Without substances? While using my arms? What do the arms do while dancing? Will I ever be OK being me? Is there another way? Why do I STILL feel terrible, even as I get better? If you hold a drink, that is normal. Maybe adding something in the other hand would work. Or, is holding two things too weird?  Can I write a blog about being a therapist and how great it is without thinking I am a fraud and contributing to some sort of in-crowd exclusion that I feel myself judging, like I would judge anybody who wrote about Bill Callahan …

There are times when I want to recommend people to people.

“Hey. There’s this guy, Bob. He owns a coffee shop. He is kind and rad and will tell you that we are all lucky to be alive and that he loves you. See him and then meet with Laura. She’ll get you fired up to be alive. She really lives, that one. A jolt out of the doldrums when you need it.”

Add it all up, and a treatment plan might look like:

• Drums – hit hard (or soft) daily/as necessary
• Look out some windows for at least a half-hour each day (bus windows very effective; also looking at anything like crowds, clouds, rivers or trains)
• Hang out with cats (dogs, or even children, can be substituted as needed)
• Tell people about the super shameful thing that you think is unique to you, but is in fact universal
• Listen to Lizzo or Jenny Lewis when negative self-talk occurs
• Talk to rad people
• Dance (exercise in other less-fun forms can be substituted)
• Don’t beat the hell out of yourself when you sleep too much, drink, cut yourself, or have a panic attack
• Find nice people, and do nice things for them
• Find what makes you you, and hit it hard

This is the work of therapy. It is so much bigger than what happens in my office, but what happens in my office is meaningful. When those of us who feel broken show everybody what it looks like to be broken, everybody gets to tell us that we’re f---ing amazing and that their favorite part is the “broken” part. We get to find out why we are here and what makes us special and useful. Sometimes, we find out that the thing that made us hurt—the thing that we thought was useless, futile, random—is actually the thing that makes us uniquely useful. We find out there is something we have always been that we didn’t know about, or were too afraid to embrace—something that makes us us.

If you are hurting, find a therapist you love. Find music you love. Try to read books you love, meet people you love, love people who love you. Don’t stop until you find them. Acknowledge the pain, and hold it close when you need to and loosely when you should. Listen when the people who love you say that you are lovely and that, despite your best efforts, you have no idea how to accurately gauge your worth. Let those who love you decide. When in doubt, find a person to help, be vulnerable, listen to the little scared, squeaky voice inside you that knows the kind truth. Love that thing. Dance.

Jordan Hansen, MA, LADC, LPC, is an experienced clinician, speaker and writer focused on integrating the science of cutting-edge treatment modalities with the wisdom found in peer-supported approaches to recovery. His approach is based on authenticity, interpersonal connection and a steadfast focus on person-centered, evidence-based interventions. His experience within residential, long-term and outpatient levels of care is informed by his background in journalism, vocational counseling and nonprofit management. Areas of recent focus include assisting in the design and implementation of Medication-Assisted Therapy for opioid addiction, policy work with the MN state legislature, distribution of naloxone kits to local opioid addicts at risk for overdose, and artistic and literary efforts aimed at sharing his experience with long-term recovery from addiction and mental illness.