How could I look at my wife and son when I was about to let them down in one of the worst ways possible? Shame and fear so overwhelmed me that even the sound of my child’s laugh was a reminder of my failure. I hid away in the bedroom desperately waiting for some miracle to save me while deep-down knowing it wasn’t going to happen.
This was the miserable state I ended up in five years ago. Like most smackdowns from the universe, it came out of nowhere. Things had been going well for me. I had somehow ended up with a family I adored, a great life in Thailand, and a dream job that gave me a sense of purpose. This was a dramatic reversal of the situation during my twenties and early thirties, so I felt grateful.
Up until my breakdown, I fancied myself as the perfect example of the ‘hero’s journey’ from repeated failure to eventual success. I had hit my first rehab at 19, and I had spent most of the next 16 years messing up my life through alcohol-fueled mayhem. I then surprised myself (and probably everyone who knew me) by turning things around. So even though there had been plenty of trouble and strife, I felt certain this was all behind me now. I was the ‘comeback kid’.
I was working as a freelance writer. This was an unexpected career choice for me. I had been writing about my addiction experiences on a blog, when I started getting requests from other people asking me to write for them. This turned into a full-time job. I felt privileged to be earning a living from doing something I loved – I saw it as a reward for turning my life around.
My downfall was putting all of my eggs into one basket. I’d found a client able to send me as many writing projects as I wanted. He paid well. I started turning down other jobs because it looked as if this client was going to be a never-ending source of income. The work kept coming for about 18 months until one morning there was a brief email informing me there would be no more projects.
My initial reaction to the news was to try and remain positive. I told myself that even though the situation looked bad, it was most likely clearing the way for better opportunities. I had been regularly turning down projects from other clients, so all I had to do now was let them know I was back in business. I’d soon be back on a roll – no worries.
Despite maintaining a state of forced optimism over the next couple of weeks, my situation was looking increasingly dire. All the previous opportunities for work had dried up. The clients whose projects I had been turning down had nothing to offer me now.
My financial situation was bad. I had no savings, only debts – I was in my forties and still paying off my student loans. I was living in a country where there was no social welfare for unemployed foreigners or any other type of safety net. My wife’s job didn’t pay enough to keep us in noodles, so if I didn’t find new work soon, we were in real trouble. It was bad.
I could cope with being homeless and penniless. I had briefly ended up living on the streets of London due to an alcohol induced mental breakdown in my early twenties. I would survive it, but I couldn’t bare the idea of taking my wife and son with me – just the possibility filled me with unbearable shame.
My positive attitude was masking a rising tide of panic. I had ignored it for so long that my stress had now transformed into a solid rock in my stomach. My thoughts were racing out of control – it felt like I was constantly on the verge of a panic attack. The desire to drink alcohol again didn’t arise, but the thought of jumping off a cliff did.
I desperately needed to take action to keep my family afloat, but I had allowed my anxiety to reach a point where cool thinking was no longer possible. This meant instead of seeking out new clients, I began to hide beneath my duvet curled up in a ball. Too ashamed to be with my family – I didn’t deserve them.
I had used mindfulness to escape my addiction problems. It had worked really well for me. Unfortunately, at the time of my financial meltdown, I had been taking a long break from the practice.
For the first few years after giving up alcohol, I meditated for at least an hour every day. Mindfulness allowed me to develop a new relationship with my thoughts and feelings. I had always been a bit of a worrier, but I started to see life as a far less threatening place.
The peace I discovered through meditation would last long after I got up from my cushion. I could be effortlessly mindful through most of the day. I began to wonder if my actual meditation practice was even necessary, and six months before my breakdown, I had stopped sitting altogether. This was a mistake.
I don’t really understand what happened, but the idea of using mindfulness just never arose during my two-week descent into madness. It had helped me so much in the past, so it would seem like the obvious thing to turn to, but I didn’t. I guess the fact that I hadn’t maintained my practice meant things had to get really bad before I remembered it.
I was lying on my bed wallowing in shame and fear when I got the idea of turning my attention to physical sensation. My concentration level was terrible due to my current stress levels and lack of practice, but the thinking started to slow down as I did this. I felt like a man pulling himself out of a deep dark hole using his fingertips one inch at a time. I focused my attention on the lump of stress in my stomach, and it began to dissolve. I stayed like that for about two hours, but by the end of it, the panic was gone, and my mind felt clear.
One of the things I realized as I lay in that bed was that I would always do my best for my family. If my best is not going to be good enough, what am I going to do? There is certainly no point in feeling ashamed. This negativity just gets in the way of doing my best because it paralyzes me – once I fully realized this, I was able to let it go.
Once my mind had cleared, it came up with options that I previously wouldn’t have considered. One of the things I did was get back in touch with a client who paid a lot less but always seemed to have a lot of work. This option hadn’t even occurred to me because I thought low-paid projects were beneath me. I wrote an honest blog post about my meltdown on my website and this also generated some new job offers.
It is now five years since that all happened, and I consider it to be one of the major turning points in my life. Why is it I only seem to learn important lessons through pain? I was able to find peace by being mindful during one of the worst periods of my life, and discovering the ever-present possibility of such peace was a game-changer for me – over the last few years, my mind has turned more and more towards this peace and away from worry and other unhelpful thinking patterns.
I now manage the mindfulness program at Hope Rehab Thailand. One of the things I try to promote is the importance of meditating (or doing another mindfulness practice such as qigong) every day. I found out the hard way that our mindfulness successes yesterday provide no guarantees for today – we have to keep on practicing or we may risk old thinking patterns regaining control.
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Thank you so much for your brave willingness to share your story and for the time and effort it took to recount it. I appreciate your honesty and your ability to recognize your own humanity through these challenges. And I certainly agree with you that the successes of yesterday provide no guarantee for today–that regular, daily practice is essential if we are to remain steady on our path.
So happy to hear that you’ve managed to turn the corner. I’m an expat in Thailand too, and often have that fear of aging, no social welfare and little to fall back on. Alcohol is a big problem for many people here, and even returning back home doesn’t seem an option anymore. I really enjoyed your article – focus and optimism are the only way forward.