In my story, it’s nearly impossible to untangle the interdependent relationship between mental health, addiction, and spirituality. I began using alcohol (and other substances) to open my mind, and I eventually became hopelessly dependent on surges of dopamine to feel any possibility of having purpose in life. I lived the parable of ‘Man takes drink; drink takes drink; drink takes man.”

I am a panentheist, and have been for the majority of my almost 60 years. Very briefly, panentheism is the belief that there is a universal spirit that exists within everything and that is at the same time greater than the universe itself. I don’t understand what this ‘spirit’ is, but the closest human-like word that touches its essence is love. Kindness and compassion could also fit. Anyways, we all have personal beliefs or non-beliefs about this sort of thing, and I’m not here to preach. In my life story, however, the spiritual quest plays a significant role, and my goal here is to try to unpack and share my experience of its relationship with addiction and mental health.

I have always thirsted for an ultimate reality greater than that in which we live our days. The search has enriched my life, but it has also brought me grief when I felt lost in my journey. For that reason, at times, I have envied both those with unshakable faith and the die-hard atheists. At least they stand on what they believe to be unshakable ground.

As a child, my only forays into any places of worship were to attend funerals or weddings. My mother’s interest in world religions was mostly academic, but she did have a personal relationship with the mystical and spiritual; my father’s entire religious beliefs were summed-up in one sentence: all religions have one thing in common—the Golden Rule. He believed in values and lived by his ethics. Our parents raised me and my sisters with an agnostic approach to matters of the spirit. They left us to find our own way, if we chose any way at all.

As one who came to believe he was ‘saved for a purpose’ because I survived childhood trauma, I became very curious about what it was that had done the saving. Throughout most of my teens, the answer to that was summed-up in the words ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’. It is quite unfortunate that the explanations of ‘chance’ or ‘luck’ never took root—it might have lifted some of the pressure that came with ‘purpose’. In my teens, I went around to different places of worship like I was shopping for a pair of shoes. No particular denomination of faith resonated with me.

I experienced phenomena early in life that I could not account for. As a child, I saw what I believed to be the ‘heart’ of the maple tree in the backyard. One summer’s day, I was playing on the grass and looked up at the trunk of the tree. In the centre of the trunk, just before it split into the main branches, I saw a shimmering iridescent circle of vivid green with a red corona surrounding it. I was transfixed in wonder. Then I jumped-up and ran into the house to call anyone outside to come see this wonderful display. My mother followed me back to the tree, and it was gone. I tried to explain it, and was told I had a very vivid imagination. Most likely, it was phosphenes in my retina, often called ‘seeing stars’, which created the illusion. But at the time, I saw something in that tree. A few years later, I was speeding my bike down the street and I heard someone shout, “Watch out!”. The next instant, my wheel hit a rut, I veered into the curb, and flew over the handlebars. Forewarned, I was ready and braced as I tumbled onto the lawn and rolled to a stop. I got up to thank the concerned neighbour who called out, but there was not a single person around.

Such events can be explained, but I chose to embrace them as evidence of something very real that exists beyond what is known. Throughout my youth, I never accepted the idea of an anthropomorphic ‘God’, but I did come to believe in something like ‘spirit’. As the years went by, it became increasingly important to me to quest for the ‘Truth’ of this spiritual reality. I felt that if I discovered something in my search, I could locate my purpose. In writing this now, I wonder if that is the normal goal of a spiritual quest. Should it not be to answer questions concerning ‘How can I be a better person?’ or perhaps ‘What is the next right thing to do?’? But my quest concerned ‘What great works in life was I saved from death to accomplish?’. It looks a lot like grandiose delusion born out of trauma. Yet, it became my normal, and I didn’t really question it until after I entered into recovery in my late thirties.

I used alcohol and drugs to silence the noise and open my mind. Alcohol, in particular, worked like a key that opened doors into higher states of spiritual understanding. I still don’t know exactly what the relationship was for me between alcohol and spirituality, but I discovered that the C₂H₆O dopamine rush made me feel connected with all-that-is and, in the right measures, maybe unlock mysteries that I could interpret through my writing. Many hours were spent alone in dark corners of pubs writing in my journal.

This effect circles back to the programmed notion of ‘saved for a purpose’. I could never articulate what that ‘purpose’ actually was—I only knew it was significant. As I have written earlier, I experienced solipsism OCD, a belief that I had special awareness that others did not. I didn’t feel like I belonged in this world, that I was an outsider or a visitor. I was attracted to ‘aliens among us’ stories because I thought perhaps I might just be one of them. If indeed I was a Pleiadian in a human anatomical suit, I must have come here for a special reason, right?

I became obsessed with delving into esoteric spiritual knowledge, especially Hermeticism, alchemy, and sacred geometry. I thought I could discover the Philosopher’s Stone in my investigations of thea occult, nature, mathematics, and so on—some sort of technology that could transform the world. I became convinced that there was hidden knowledge, buried by the church and suppressed by powerful people, that humanity needed revealed. At one point, I had a library of esoterica and a filing cabinet filled with notes and writings. Sometimes I felt like I was getting close, but the Master Key kept retreating from my grasp. The old masters said to look within. During every journalling session, my alcohol consumption would inevitably outpace my chemically-induced awareness and the window of perception would slam shut. I’d pop my journal into my backpack, head to the pool tables, drinking until the pub closed.

In my active addiction, I was not only chasing that elusive release that alcohol promised, but I was also engaged in an obsessive pursuit of my purpose in life. For most, I’d imagine that substance use is in a separate part of life from ‘life’s purpose’. When addiction starts to seep into family life and career, that is when it threatens their life purpose. But in my case, I was searching for my life purpose through using. My addiction was inseparable from spirituality, the latter containing the key to my purpose in life. In other words, my purpose was to drink.

The connections between addiction, spirituality, and purpose in life for me were inseparable. My obsession with unearthing lost knowledge was tied directly to my reason for being alive in this body, and both were conditional upon my alcohol-induced state of mind. After a couple of decades of seeking, I was teetering on the edge of a state of psychosis from which I may not ever return.

Eventually (and thankfully), the booze stopped working. It was as if I had burnt-out whatever relationship there was between my neurotransmitters and the imaginative, questing part of my brain. To no surprise, addiction was destroying all other aspects of my life as well. I believed that my body could continue to process alcohol at the rate with which I was drinking for another five years, maybe. But I was overwhelmed with a foreboding that, emotionally and mentally, I had weeks to live. Addiction had triumphed—it was going to succeed in destroying both my spirituality and my mental health.

That was the first bottom I hit, in the summer of 2001. Going into a treatment program and diving into the recovery program saved my life. The spirituality I found in recovery groups pulled me out of myself and into fellowship, love and service among my peers. I found ‘my people’. Recovery groups not only got me sober, but helped to heal the relationship between addiction, spirituality, and mental health. I found purpose in listening to and sharing with others like me. I found a practical spirituality that removed me from the centre of the universe and put me in a circle with peers. I didn’t find ‘God’, and that was just fine. I did find something similar to, but better than, the ‘release’ I chased in drinking. I dropped that obsession for finding the Master Key—I felt as though I had found something even more valuable: A place in the world where I not only belonged but also had found purpose.