Addiction, Loneliness, Intimacy, and the Role of the Therapist/Artist
In a lecture the other day on the usefulness of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for overcoming addiction, an elaboration on the definition of “addiction” was brought in. It was posited that the substance of choice can become a most intimate companion, more intimate even than any human relationship. And, if we assume the angle (which has gained popularity in recent years) that addiction is the opposite of connection, suddenly a poignant vision of loneliness and intimacy comes into focus.
Immediately I thought, “Oh! My journal! 🤣” Growing up as the only girl in a family of seven, I became a sojourner in the kind of intimate privacy that can be found in a room of one’s own, in books and in journals. I would not have survived the lonelier stretches of my life without my journal (or more accurately: my endless series of journals). So I am certainly an addict in this way.
A dear friend told me today that sharing publicly from a space of tender vulnerability is, in a way, what a therapist does, and is also what an artist does. (And it doesn't have to be done in direct "I statement" self-disclosures. It can be told askew. It can be told through presence and resonation.) I love and adore that the line grows thinner with time . . . Or that the line has entered a kind of twilight space of no hard delineation. I want to live in that twilight space.
Because I feel an urgency to stand in the truth of what it really feels like to be human (and in my case, a human woman). Especially when social media distorts our understanding of ourselves and each other so drastically — when it reduces us to pale fractions of who we *maybe* were at some other time. What loneliness. I have always been driven (before I fully recognized it) by an innate faith that telling the truth publicly (which is what artists do) somehow helps to create a wiser and kinder world. Save or share this if your soul bends inexorably in the same truthward direction, or visit my Contact page to reach out to me about ways we could explore this together.