Saturday, February 25, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Congratulations On Your New Book | Charles Atkins | Blog Post | Red Room
Congratulations on Your New Book
By
Charles Atkins
Years back I was in therapy. "What?" you ask, "You, the epitome of mental health? Say it's not so." Well, let's just say it was part of my training as a psychiatrist. All of which brings me to something brilliant my therapist said. It was this,
"Congratulations."
"For what?" you ask.
For getting my first book written. Not published, just written. And here's the point. Why is it so difficult for many of us to acknowledge the good things in life in the moment? We are admonished to 'not rest on our laurels'. I think it goes even deeper, that somehow stopping to enjoy our achievements is wrong or big headed.
Let me break it down. For years, possibly my entire conscious life I've been a writer, and have wanted to write books. As a medical student this blossomed and I began to win some essay contests and have smaller pieces published in literary journals and some of the bigger medical ones. As a resident this picked up speed and finally I started in on my first book-length manuscript. As with many writers this first novel-length extravaganza was a roman รก clef aka thinly veiled autobiography. It was about a conflicted gay surgeon who finds love and liberation. Along its 600 pages it veered into action adventure, there might have been a murder, boy met boy, lost him and then found him again, I seem to recall a hurricane in Mexico where my main characters formed an impromptu medical response team, and it was all tied up with a happy ending that involved an unexpected inheritance and beach-front property. I see you wincing, and please bear with me.
When I'd completed this masterpiece, there was no fanfare. No patting myself on the back. It was just done and I was off and running trying to think about what to do next. Send it to publishers? Find an agent. So when I told my then therapist I'd finished my book and he said, "Congratulations". I stopped dead.
Right, I thought, I've just achieved something I've always wanted, something big, and yet I didn't take a millisecond to stop and recognize the moment. What was that about? And I realized a couple important things. First, my ambition as a writer is far more about the process than the product. How do I become the best writer possible? How do I continue to get published and reach a bigger audience? It's a constant striving toward what comes next. Like deciding to do a blog, if even in the beginning no one reads it. There's nothing wrong with any of that. Yet, there's something equally important on the other side of this forward movement. The moment itself.
Over the years, as I've become successful in my two careers--author and psychiatrist--this theme repeats. This week my ninth book under my own name arrived in the mail--VULTURES AT TWILIGHT (Severn). There was no fanfare. A UPS truck dropped off my author copies in a brown cardboard box in front of the garage. I went out, saw the box, wondered if it was something I bought on eBay or Amazon, and then I spotted the address from my publisher. It was the new book.
I took it inside, ripped off the tape and got my first look at something I started writing over ten years ago. This particular book has been through many incarnations on its long road to publication. I examined the glossy cover, which has a beautiful image of a misty cemetery and my name in bold letters over the title. I read the inside jacket, the back blurbs--not a wrong note anywhere. It's a lovely book. I opened the cover and saw the dedications to my grandmother, great Aunt, and my mother in law--three women filled with love and light. I felt dueling impulses--pride at the achievement and the opposing Puritanical voice--"And pride goes before a fall." "Shut up!" I told that second voice. I held the new book, and reveled in the moment. "Congratulations, Charles. It's a beautiful new book. Congratulations."
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Overcoming Addiction
By
Charles Atkins, MD
"Wouldn't it be great if you
could love me first and let the bottle wait?"
--Dolly Parton
"They tried to make me go to
rehab, I said, ‘No no no.’"
--Amy Winehouse
You know it’s killing you.
The alcohol, cigarettes, pain pills, illegal drugs whatever the habit is
that you’ve tried to change—repeatedly—but without success. Your conversations with yourself are familiar
as a favorite tee shirt, “I’ve got to stop…I’ll do it tomorrow.” And then tomorrow comes, and with it the urge
to drink/smoke/use illicit drugs and despite your best intentions you give in. “Okay, tomorrow then. I’ll really stop tomorrow.” So what’s wrong with us that we persist in
behaviors that harm us? And most
importantly, how does someone finally make the needed change?
As a psychiatrist who works with
people with drug and alcohol dependence I spend a lot of time on these questions. While the answers can be complex, I’m drawn
to some basic truths. First, the
destructive habit--whatever it is--serves a purpose, at least initially. The "why" someone begins to drink
or use drugs varies from person to person.
Alcohol provides a sense of relaxation and well being. For people who are anxious or socially
awkward it helps lubricate their tongues and makes them feel at ease in social
situations. Opiates (pain pills to
heroin) induce a state of euphoria and relieve not only physical pain, but
emotional suffering, as well. It’s no
coincidence that so many survivors of abuse and trauma become addicted to heroin
and prescription opiates.
For teens experimentation with drugs
and alcohol has become a passage rite. The
not-fully wired adolescent brain doesn't register the danger in the behavior,
and it’s during these young years where most pick up habits that turn ugly in
time. The magnitude of this is followed
by annual surveys that monitor high-risk behavior in teens. In 2009 24% of high-school students engaged
in binge drinking, nearly ten percent had driven in the past month when they'd had
alcohol, roughly 30% had been passengers in a car where the driver had been
drinking, 20% smoked cigarettes, 20% had used prescription drugs without a
doctor's order, over six percent had tried cocaine and/or Ecstasy, and 2.5% had
tried heroin.
Once established, negative behaviors
take on a rhythm and turn into a habit.
A smoker hears the phone and lights up, the morning cup of coffee is
accompanied by a smoke, and every work break includes a quick cigarette or two. A drinker anticipates the weekend, or the end
of the workday as the time for the first beer or cocktail. Passing a liquor store they think about
whether or not there's enough booze in the house, or who they’ll meet up with
for drinks at a favorite watering hole.
Depending on the drug of choice,
problems start to develop and can damage any and all aspects of a person's
life--physical and/or mental health, relationships, job, finance. An arrest for Driving under the Influence
(DUI) starts a cascade of losses and legal problems. Physical effects of excessive drinking
emerge, and dependence--the body's need for the continued presence of a
substance--takes hold. An opiate addict
no longer gets the euphoric high, but instead is chased by the physical and
emotional agony of withdrawal “Jonesing" that turns her life into an
unending search for the next fix. The
alcoholic becomes shaky in the morning, starts to drink throughout the day, has
unbearable anxiety, poor sleep, and somewhere around the 20-year mark of heavy
drinking heads into serious alcohol-related diseases such as cirrhosis and certain
cancers. A dangerous and potentially
fatal withdrawal syndrome--delirium tremens (The DTs)—traps the drinker and
their ability to “just go cold turkey” is no longer a safe option. As for cigarettes, there’s little doubt that
they represent the number one cause of preventable death in this country from
heart disease, cancer and stroke.
What's remarkable is that even in the
face of terrible losses--job, health, family--the destructive behavior persists. Deceit and minimization of the problem is
common, and attempts to quit or cut back are frequent and short lived. Motivation to do something about the behavior
is mercurial, changing from moment to moment.
Yet people can and do change. And just as the reasons why someone starts a
destructive habit are varied, the paths that lead someone to put down a bad
habit are particular to them. At some
point there is an awakening and with it a call to action. "This is killing me and I've got to
stop." For others it may be an
external force, a spouse threatening to leave, a child who can no longer bear
to see you drunk and cuts you out of their life, an illness or serious legal
problem that's a direct result of the addiction. Regardless, something in the equation shifts
and motivation moves into action: throwing away the cigarettes, dumping the
booze down the drain, checking into a detoxification program, attending a
12-step meeting. Again, there are many
paths and depending on the behavior, the severity of the addiction and the
person these vary from “going cold turkey” on your own to intensive treatment. Some will require the services of medical
professionals to get them through potentially dangerous withdrawals (alcohol
and certain Valium-family drugs), and many will turn to rehabilitation
programs, drug counselors and well-established self-help groups such as AA and
NA. The first days are the hardest as
well-worn patterns of behavior, and cravings have to be resisted and
changed. This is where familiar slogans
from 12-step groups such as AA become life savers, “One day at a time”. “Today I’m not going to drink or drug, I’ll
deal with tomorrow when it comes.”
What is clear for everyone who has successfully
put aside a destructive habit is that they’ve transformed a desire to change
into action. In time, the old
destructive behavior is replaced with newer and healthier ones. As I often tell my patients, putting down a
bad habit is both easy and hard. The hard
part is “just don’t drink” and the easy part is, “just don’t drink”.
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