Dear Lynn,

I have stopped using. I’ve been clean from booze and pills for almost a year. Why do I still feel so empty and alone? Does it get better?

Spencer

Wow, this question has just floated into my inbox and the right time. I know the emptiness and aloneness you speak of Spencer.

In fact I am walking through a pretty dark phase right now myself. Ghosts that I thought were long gone and buried have shown their ugly little ghoulish heads again.I have been battling this black cloud for the last two weeks, sleepless nights, anxiety, all of these old fears surfacing. Am I going crazy again? Will this ever stop? When will I feel normal again? I can’t feel like this.

After all, I am the one who writes the columns, I am the girl who speaks to audiences about healing and recovery, I have all the answers… I AM RECOVERED DAMMIT!!!

I stopped abusing drugs almost nine years ago. You see, I thought after I quit, after I just said “no,” I was done, through will all the icky feelings and rotten “stuff.” Once the drugs and booze were gone I would be just perfect, I should be just perfect, right?

Well it has taken me a while to realize this but rearranging the outside circumstances in your life doesn’t make any difference if you don’t rearrange what is on the inside first.

Let’s just say you have this house. It’s a lovely house but a pipe has burst in the basement. Water is flowing everywhere, it has filled the basement, it has destroyed the floors in the kitchen, the couch is ruined, the paint is peeling off or your walls. You panic, you know you have to do something; you can’t just sit there and do nothing. So you pick up the phone and decide to call an interior designer.You order new carpet, you buy new furniture, and you even repaint all the walls with shiny new colors. This will fix it you say to yourself.

This is what we have been taught; we have been programmed to believe that if we focus on the symptoms, if we change and rearrange what is on the surface, we can make it all go away. We continue to change the furniture, put up new drapes, paint a wall or two but it’s the same house, the broken pipe still remains. Everyone is afraid to go into that dark basement and fix that damn pipe…who knows what else is lurking down there.

Symptoms are being addressed, not causes.

And that is happening with you Spencer. That has been what is happening with so many people out there, including me. These last two weeks I have been focused on banishing the anxiety, the fear, and the insomnia. I have been so focused on ridding myself of the symptoms. If I just soak my bed in lavender spray from Bath and Body Works, load up on my B-Vitamins, and sit in lotus position it will all go away.

I sat outside crying this morning watching the sunrise…tears of fear and pain not tears of joy. But something in that sunrise “awakened” me, nudged me. What is at the root of all of this Lynn? What is the cause of these symptoms? Dig deep.

Going into the basement is not always easy Spencer. In fact in can be frightening as hell. But I have been through enough dark nights to know that I will never find peace by rearranging the outside. The only way to find peace in this world is by realizing who you truly are.

So Spencer it is time for you to get to the root of your issue. Yes you have stopped the booze and pills but now it is time for you to grab a flashlight and put on those rain boots.Yes you might find some yucky little monsters lurking and hiding down in the basement. But there is one thing I know you will surely find down there - yourself.

You can do this Spencer.

Well it’s my turn now. I just bought a new hot-pink raincoat for the occasion.

Lynn