A Scattered Spirit: Joy on Drugs vs. Joy While Sober

How a Chinese Medicine perspective can help free us from the hamster wheel of ecstatic highs and plummeting lows

I grew up in woods surrounded by cornfields. My best friend Kim and her little brother Tom lived down the street.

Weekend days and vacation days were spent in her woods or mine, and when the snows came one winter, we spent hours taking turns with the toy skis they’d gotten that Christmas.

Staying upright on yellow plastic strapped to sneakers was difficult enough. Add motion—in the form of launching ourselves down her sloping backyard and into the forest—and falling was a matter of when.

Still, we kept at it. For hours and hours. For way past the point of feeling fingers and toes. For a parenthesis in time that held exhilaration, wildness, and laughter. For a parenthesis of life that held pure, unfiltered joy.¹

Those days stretched forever but could never, would never stretch long enough.

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I didn’t do hard drugs until my thirties. And by hard drugs I mean mostly cocaine but also whatever powder made the rounds in its absence.

Days were spent studying in a small town tucked between mountains. Nights were spent snorting blow and dancing naked with the crowd of my dreams.

Making wise choices after a line or two was difficult enough. Add motion—in the form of bodies dancing, music booming—and disastrous decisions were a matter of when.

Still, we kept at it. For hours and hours. For way past the first high. For a parenthesis in time that held exhilaration, wildness, and laughter. For a parenthesis of life that held all I ever wanted, if only I could feel it.

But the highs went fast. Desperation set in. We danced til the inevitable, abominable day after.

Those nights stretched forever but could never, would never stretch long enough.

In Chinese Medicine, each emotion holds a spectrum of expression. For example, expressions of anger are all part of nù 怒. This includes hostility, outrage, aggression. Also passive aggression, annoyance, resentment. Energetically, they’re in the same family.

In general, emotions are not “good” or “bad.” They’re movements of qi that want to be felt and move through. They become harmful if the particular manifestation is damaging or if we get stuck there—filtering ourselves and our world through a misted, myopic lens.

Whether reviewing childhood or adulthood, it’s easy to see the pull of certain emotions towards unhelpful patterns. Fear. Anger. Sadness. With others—like joy—probably less so. Let’s take a look.

Some of my treasured Chinese Medicine texts, image by Brian Limoyo

What we think of as joy in Chinese Medicine falls under xi 喜 but is often paired with le, forming the couplet: xi le 喜乐.

Xi 喜 depicts a drum with a hand beating it. We might translate it as “joy” or “elation” or “excitement.” In pathology, it leans towards excess states, such as being overexcited, over-stimulated, manic.

Le 乐 depicts bells and a drum atop a wooden support. It too can be translated as “joy,” but evokes a sense of inner happiness that comes from connection and unity—such as at a musical gathering in the centre of a square. Its purest manifestation is one of openness, communion, and belonging. In pathology, it leans towards deficiency of joy due to being disconnected from true self, others, or a life that holds meaning.

When we have an excess condition of xi, our spirit (shen 神) scatters and becomes untethered. We trade groundedness, clarity, and presence for chaos. We trade being whole and embodied to moving up and out.

For many people, this scattering of self is attractive. They may seek it out through using certain drugs, going on impulsive shopping sprees, creating interpersonal drama, engaging in reckless behaviour, or doing anything that is hyper-stimulating.

The first line brought instantaneous confidence and bravado. It also brought the full-body bliss of being in love. Not Unity Consciousness or We’re-All-One sorts of love, though there were hints of that too. More, the peak stages of in-love-ness. The kind vibrating with possibility. The kind that infuses one’s being and world with rapture.

Addiction to this state of “excess joy,” leads a person to fixate on such experiences and requires more and more intensity to achieve the desired effect.

Addiction to over-stimulation induces vexation in the Heart (xin fan 心烦, which we might translate as “anxiety”) and takes a progressively destructive toll on body-mind-spirit. The high is insatiable and unsustainable. Fan 烦 depicts a person with their head on fire.

In this state, the Heart has difficulty organizing the spirit because everything revolves around attaining and communing with the sought-after experience. The drive is one of more, more, more. The spirit shines blindingly bright but is frantic and scattered.

With cocaine, this first hit of love and over-joy moves energy up and out. For me, this meant being fully engaged with whomever was in my immediate vicinity. My spirit shone bright—too bright—commanding communion with another’s spirit while demanding the spotlight for self. The intensity was genuine…and blinding. Wired this way, there was too much charge for the system. So, at a certain point, conversation shifted to movement.

All of us, to different degrees, were in this place of disembodiment and disconnect. We took things to escalating extremes in a crazed effort to close the gap and force our way to the other side. The side where anything is possible. The side where fantasy is real. So clothes came off, outrageousness ensued, more lines were had, and we danced until sunrise spoiled the party. All the while—as my wildest dreams came true and I watched myself partaking—I was in fact numb. It was all just out of reach.

This can manifest all sorts of ways, but at one extreme we see manic behaviour or a psychotic break.

We call this kuang 狂, and, as the saying goes: What goes up, must come down. Kuang ultimately swings into collapse, withdrawal, and deep dark depression.² 

Overexcitement or “too much joy” also leads to a deficiency of le 乐. When healthy, le speaks to intimacy, belonging, and balanced union. When deficient, there’s disconnect and a lack of inner joy and contentedness.

Once the immediate hit, high, or burst of excitement or euphoria is over, the person is left feeling empty, lonely, deflated. This eventually leads them to seek out another hit or high—despite knowing its promise is never kept and always leads back to the same empty, disconnected scenario.

The day after, Yin-Yang prevailed. However high the high, however equal and opposite the low. In the worst of times, I plummeted towards annihilation. I didn’t know myself. I couldn’t even feel myself.

My companions countered the descent by carrying on the day after—no longer “partying” but meeting sunrise with a breakfast of blow. I gasped when my girlfriend proposed this. For one, I wasn’t sure how much more my body-mind-spirit could handle. For another, I knew this was a line I could not cross. I knew that doing so would open the door to some new realm of Hell from which I would not return. So when she insisted, “No, really—this makes it way better!” I said no thanks.

My soul and some deeper inheritance knew the momentary relief of morning-after cocaine would destroy me. Instead, I let myself fall into darkness, into despair, into excommunication from self, others, Source. I knew that darkness was the only way back.

Hooked on stimulation and deficient in true connection, a person begins to filter everything through that next fix.

The mind and attent are attuned to their drug of choice (whether a substance, behaviour, or both). Perception of self and world is disconnected from true self as well as from anything that’s not stimulating enough for their progressively desensitized senses. Natural joy and simple pleasures no longer register—now feeling boring, flat, non-existent.

Chasing after becomes everything: Chasing after a past experience or something better. Pursuing more stimulation in an attempt to achieve satisfaction or even feel anything. Normal and natural are no longer enough. Even the drug of choice is no longer enough.

There is only perpetual seeking of the next best thing or some imagined ideal. Even if the person plans, carries through, and gets “that thing,” it can’t compare to what they hoped and imagined. Rather than appreciate what’s real and true, they persist in the pursuit and are addicted to a promise that can never be kept.

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So, to connect some dots:

• When we’re addicted to the pursuit of “excess joy” and hyper-stimulation (whether through doing cocaine, drinking alcohol, watching porn, engaging in thrill seeking, going on wild shopping sprees, creating drama, etc.), we scatter our spirit and become untethered from our truest essence.

• In the process, we deplete and lose touch with deep inner joy and connection, as well as the capacity to have true intimacy and experience shared joy with others (which is drastically different from bonding over a shared drug of choice).

• Chasing after the next hit, fix, high, shiny object, or distraction, we’re held hostage to a promise that can never, will never be kept. In an effort to fill a void, soothe a wound, or get a need met, we instead cause harm to self and others…and reinforce and perpetuate the origins of the problem and the same painful, predictable cycle on repeat.

• And it gets worse: Excess and extreme highs flip into deficiency and extreme lows.

• Related: Numbing pain (or even boredom) also numbs everything else—joy included. That’s just the way drugs and physiology work.

• In the process, we lose our sensitivity and capacity to feel simple, everyday joy, contentment, connection.

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How to choose one joy…and let go of another

Well, what then? Are we a lost cause? No—not at all. You were born with the capacity to love in the way your child-self loved. Alive, awake, present. Able to feel excitement and joy without the aid of harmful behaviours or substances.

Getting back to this place now, as adults, was the focus of this week’s edition of the Sobriety Series. If you’re a paid member don’t miss that letter, link-up, and guided meditation.

And, as a starting place for gaining clarity and discerning one sort of joy from another, ask:

• Is partaking in this substance or behaviour connecting or disconnecting?

• As in, is it connecting to true self, others, and Source?

• Does it make you feel more connected to what you truly want and need?

• Does it make you feel more connected to others in the sense of true intimacy—not dependent on a shared drug of choice?

Now you.

I’d love for you to share in the comments:

• Where and how do you experience joy in your life currently? Does that expression of joy feel connecting or disconnecting? Helpful or hurtful?

• Where and how did you experience joy as a child? Did that expression of joy feel connecting or disconnecting? Helpful or hurtful?

• How’s your relationship with le 乐—the sort of joy that’s connecting and tethered to true self and spirit?

Those are suggestions—feel free to freestyle. And if you’d rather not share, no pressure. Either way, please tap the little ♡ if you’d like to bring the best sort of joy to my day.

Thank you. I appreciate you. I love you.
Dana

1. I borrowed this use of “parenthesis” from Wayne W. Dyer’s Manifest Your Destiny: The Nine Spiritual Principles for Getting Everything You Want: “Your highest self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.”

2. The withdrawal phase of this cycle is called dian 癫.