Whispering Wyrd

I spent most of my life searching for a spiritual path that I could feel and see the truth in. One that was me, not one I was told to believe or threatened with hell if I didn’t. One that I could feel the truth of with every fiber of my being.

Christianity never did to me. And yet, I could still see the beauty in it, at least in the Catholic church. I could step into a Catholic service and feel something deep and moving in the reverence, the ritual, and the sense of awe there. I never found that kind of beauty in the tiny, ultra-conservative Church of Christ I grew up in or in the Baptist churches I would attend with my wife.

So I kept searching.

That search took me down a lot of roads. Christianity in different forms, Judaism, Asatru and heathenry, ideas close to Native American spiritualities, humanism, neo-paganism. I wasn’t just curious. I was looking for something real. Something that felt like home.

About twenty years ago, I found that home in Buddhism. But even then, I couldn’t fully live it. Alcoholism and addiction kept pulling me away. I drifted in and out, touching something true, then losing it again. And then came withdrawal.

When I came off benzodiazepines after more than twenty years of high-dose use, everything stripped down to survival. I was literally just trying to survive day to day. There was no room left for abstract ideas. No room for philosophy. No patience for distant promises or concepts of help that lived somewhere “out there.” I needed something immediate, something real, and something that could meet me right here, right now.

There’s no adequate way to explain what benzo withdrawal does to a person. Not really. You can try, but unless someone has lived it, they won’t ever fully understand. It was hell. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. It was hell in the most literal, embodied sense. My mind, body, and my nervous system, everything was breaking and trying to rebuild at the same time.

It hurt in a way that words just don’t describe. I remember someone telling me recently that the fact I came out the other side alive, after that long at those doses, was remarkable. That hit me hard. Not in a proud way. In a sobering, sort of frightening way.

Because when I look back on it I realize how close it all came. Doctors told me I couldn’t do it.
 Pharmacists told me I couldn’t do it. One pharmacist I trusted, someone I had known for years, looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’ll never be free of benzos now. Your nervous system depends on them just to function.”

But I did it anyway. And it hurt me more than I can ever explain. Even now, my body is still learning how to exist without them. I still have waves that come and go. Days, sometimes weeks, where things feel off. My heart still reminds me, with those runs of PVCs, that healing isn’t always linear.

Sometimes it hits me just how enormous that was, getting through it. And I still don’t completely understand how I did. I’ve talked to so many people in recovery who struggled deeply after shorter use and lower doses. By all logic, I shouldn’t have made it through the way I did.

But I did.

And in that experience where everything was stripped away, Buddhism wasn’t an abstract philosophy anymore. It was something I could do, something I could feel. Something I could hold onto. It was something that met me in the exact moment I was in. It helped keep me here. It helped keep me alive.

After going through something like that, things shift. I don’t have anger anymore toward people who try to convert me to their beliefs. But I don’t have room for it either. During withdrawal, when I was suffering the most, there were people who tried, more than once, to convert me. I think they meant well. I think they saw the pain I was in and believed their path could magically fix it. But suffering like that teaches you something very clearly, what helps… helps. And what doesn’t… doesn’t.

These days I live a lot more quietly now. More simply. I tend my bonsai trees, I chant “namo Amituofo”,  I meditate. I spend time with my wife. I read. I write. I practice Qigong. I walk. I breathe fresh air and enjoy the mountains.

I take care of this life that I’ve been given back. And I love it! I love the freedom from substances. I love not trying to outrun or numb my past anymore. I love building a life that doesn’t revolve around escape or substances. I love the peace I’ve found.

There’s only one thing I sometimes wish… that I had found this sooner. But that’s not how it works. Maybe the road I took, as long and painful as it was, is the only reason I can feel this peace now the way I do now. And maybe that means I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be now.

Amituofo
~Buck