my new psychiatrist. LOVE LOVE LOVE! ! !
He is wonderful.
He is OLD and little and sheepish and small voiced and meek. He has a funny little upturned smile like a drawing of a smile and upturned crescent eyes like a drawing of happy eyes, and spittle collects sometimes in one corner or the other of his mouth, and he sometimes eats during a session. He is hilarious and easy not to take too seriously. And yet he is fucking smart as shit and lovely and compassionate and I fucking love him.
SIGH. Thanks great universe. THANKS.
I feel I’m on the right track here, with a good helper. I need lots of helpers. He’s a good one.
Today we talked about me and alcoholism and how I’m now NOT (woopsie daisies. I meant to write not... ) an alcoholic but I like the 12 steps and I think I need a community and I think I need some spiritual help and he was ALL FOR IT. And we talked about how I am an addict in a lot of different ways, how I do a lot of things additively, and sometimes it’s one thing and sometimes it’s another, and how I’m smart about it so I find ways to avoid being a clear cut obvious case – a drug addict or an alcoholic… but that I do a lot of things and whether or not I’m “REALLY” an alcoholic isn’t the right question. The right question is, all of my behaviors, collectively, the ones I know I do too much of… they are all anesthesia.
ANESTHESIA.
ANESTHESIA.
And the reality is, I’ve been trying to anesthetize myself all my life in a lot of different ways and it doesn’t MATTER what ways they are. The thing is to look for the use of anesthesia – whatever it is, look at THAT. And sometimes it’s compulsive internet searching and sometimes it’s compulsive eating or compulsive TV watching or video game playing or things that everyone does.
So, Ahhhh. I feel so much better now. I feel validated. I am a general addict sort. I don’t need to definitely be one specific kind of thing. I may not be specifically an alcoholic, but that doesn’t mean AA isn’t good for me. He said a lot of people could really use the 12 steps in their lives, because it’s essentially a community focused on physical health, mutual support, and spiritual growth, so I can just go and see if I like it and that’s good.
So. I am an addict in my nature and the thing to look at is the seeking of anesthesia.
He says, also, that I’m addicted to my infatuation with.. something. I missed it because I was interrupting him, because I thought I knew what he was going to say, but when I heard him say “infatuation” I thought, ohh, what an interesting word. I AM! I AM addicted to my infatuation… with certain luminous things, like potential and fantasies about the future.
No more anesthetic. I told him I got all this, and was trying. But it’s hard.
He said something quite beautiful when we were discussing how I feel I need some spiritual core. He said, well, you can feel your spirit washed away, sometimes, overwhelmed and washed away, if you try to fix too much and look at too much all at once. We need to turn the heat up a bit, yes, but also turn it down a bit.
This was upon my telling him that since stopping drinking and stopping eating carbs and trying very hard to avoid doing things like sitting in front of the computer reading recipe blogs all day… suddenly I find myself weeping every time I hear a pin drop.
You can feel your spirit washed away.
I had an image of Alice in the pool of tears, then. And I was so happy he’d used this phrase because it felt like good synchronicity.

I’m grateful. So grateful he gets the whole spiritual core part of it.
I still have to relate this other thing, this other great thing. From last friday.
But right now I’m headed off to the inaugural meeting of a brand new Artist’s Way meetup starting in Cambridge.
Morning pages! Writing! Creativity! Collages! Artist dates! I hope it’s good and will be one more battering ram working toward creating the breakthrough.