Part II - Medication

After my night of ‘Acceptance’, I had three hours where I felt I couldn’t take the sensation – feeling panicked and scared and looking for anyway out. The idea of ‘checking out’ with a sleeping pill kept coming up. However…

I’ve been so ‘hexed’ around medication. This means I have judged it, and myself for taking it , as bad, and whenever someone confirms that point of view I go down. By medication I’m talking suppressants – sleeping pills, tranquilizers, anti-depressants, mood-enhancers. My views have been: “Medication is bad; people who take it are weak; it means something is broken; if I take it, I’m just delaying the inevitable; I’m missing out on huge spiritual growth; I should be stronger; I could be harming my body; I’m a failure; my friends will lose respect for me; my friends may shun me”. Interestingly, my ego comes up with all these judgments, and my ego is the very source of the trouble I want the medication for!

These points of view gave me no freedom, and I felt backed into a corner with no choice. Which should be a clue that it might be an illusion.

To make it worse, I’ve surrounded myself with spiritually minded people who have strong view points just like mine. At the mild level this is: “It’s best to let the body heal everything naturally”. At the strong level this is: “Medication is bad, and it is wrong to take it”.

On the other hand….

I see now that I tend to be extreme, seeing things in black and white. When I decided on a charity project, I shot for $10m – despite no experience. When I go for spiritual growth, I try and do it 100% and be brave and handle everything – all at once. When I learned to snow board all the beginner runs were closed. My companion – a complete jerk - took me to the top of the mountain on my first day, and secured a promise that I would keep the board on all the way down the mountain – with only intermediate runs available. It’s next to impossible, and I was crying by the time I reached the bottom – although on the last run down to the lodge I absolutely nailed it. But that approach is not fun!

And yet – isn’t one of the great things about being human the fact that we can choose? One of the delicious things in life is we can often choose how intense the ride will be. My buddy Reid said: “Suppose you’re a Formula One race car driver. On your first day of training, you don’t go out and race at full speed. Sometimes you’ll want to slow it down. If you want to take a sleeping pill to smooth it out at some point, that’s your option”.

My friends at the More House told me “Everything you do is right. You’re always making the best decisions you know how to. God gave us chemistry; how could it be wrong to use it?”

And just this moment I flash on this nugget: “Almost all my friends who I’m worried will judge me, have used medication at some point in their lives!”. One of my amazing guides in this process was a drug user and then a drug counselor. A good friend of mine who has a wonderful full life has been using an anti-depressant for years. And last night in talking to a friend, I realized I was holding back that I was thinking of taking a sleeping pill; I was ashamed to tell her. And what do you know? I found that this Goddess – this fountain of life, this incredibly powerful being – is taking a mood-enhancing drug. She want through all the judgments I have, she experienced life without it, and decided her life was better with a little chemical adjustment. I couldn’t believe it! In me all I had was judgment, but seeing this example of a vibrant human being – I could accept and love and approve.

I spoke to a brilliant man yesterday who seems to know a bit about everything in the universe. He’d grown up around pharmacology, and lives a very switched-on, turned on, fulfilling life surrounded by amazing people. I was surprised he didn’t say “drugs are bad; the only way to a fulfilling life is to feel it all cold turkey, no matter how intense it is”. Instead he said when our chemistry is out of balance, medication can help bring it back into balance. He also said medication alone will not work – the rest of our lives need to be in order, including exercise, diet and DEEP CONNECTION with people (something our society doesn’t support). Pills aren’t necessary, but they can assist in smoothing the way.

I felt such a freedom in having my intuition confirmed. I intuit there is a great spiritual lesson here for me. I intuit that this is a test of some kind; a purification. I know that when we go into our fears, we create personal freedom. And that this ripples out and affects other ‘mind-bound’ people, and, helps to free the planet. I believe this is our purpose on the planet – to unlock those unconscious, tight places in ourselves. This is my purpose: to do this for myself, and then to guide others, with humor, love and curiosity.

At the same time I sense that we have choice – we can choose the speed and intensity of the ride. We don’t have to learn snowboarding on the intermediate runs. We can take on what we feel ‘ready’ for – and in the end it’s all a game. As my friend Beth says: “It’s all research”. Oops – do you think I may be taking any of this a touch too seriously? Is it actually possible to have fun with this whole process, and not have to be a spiritual samurai at every moment? Ha!

Having decided that I could take a sleeping pill if I wanted to, and enjoy it….Having come to a place where I saw I was CHOOSING to take this spiritual test at this level of intensity, not forced to….

I decided to turn out the light, lay down and go into the feelings….