Song Expresses the Inner Fight of Addiction and Recovery

The first boisterously-undeniable consequences of my drug use came in March of 2006, after a naked hotel rampage I have only the most abstract memories of.

When I regained some level of cognitive coherency, I was strapped tightly into a hospital bed with a catheter down my pee hole.

A social worker informed me that I’d been arrested for indecent exposure, assaulting police officers, destruction of property, and I’m sure some other things.

Up until then, I was convinced that my drug use was no one’s business but my own. This event demanded my prompt reappraisal.

The beast of addiction

This is when I realized how deeply my addiction had me in its chokehold.

I was supposed to turn myself in after being discharged from the hospital, but instead I went home (another city, another county, far enough away that no one would come looking for me) and binged on drugs for a solid five months before finally going back to face the music.

During the five month binge, I came to feel that my addiction was a force of its own, an entity having its way with me. It lived in my skin and pretended to be me, while its actions blew my life to smithereens.

Being in active addiction puts people in the strange situation of acting against their own better sense of will, chaotically leaving their values and priorities by the wayside.

In summer of 2006 I began writing a poem to reflect this conflict. It was written from the perspective of the addiction entity.

“I ride the highway of your veins

I am the words upon your grave

I wear your face, I share your name

My every move will leave a stain”

Mercy day

After finally turning myself in in August, thank my lucky stars that my felonies were dropped to misdemeanors and I was court-ordered into outpatient services and community service rather than the maximum potential penalty of eight years in the slammer.

This was my first taste of recovery. I added more to that poem, another voice, the voice of the side of me that was determined to get better and be free of addiction.

“You are the deepest part of me

You cut me down upon my knees

You bruise and boil my sanity

You are the slaughter of my dreams”

Mirror of Darkness: turning pain into art

Sometime around then, my Anorkia bandmate r@zorbla.de sent me a song concept he was working on, then called “Shadow Thinking.” A slow, melancholic but intense, brooding instrumental, and the title reminded me right away of my poem.

Turns out, the poem’s words fit in there nice and snugly too.

Right from the get-go, the voice of the addiction was to be deep and snarly, while the recovery side was meant to sound more human and vulnerable.

You aren’t likely to pick up on it unless your ears are amazingly attentive, but there is a layer to the “recovery side” vocals that was recorded while I screamed the lyrics into a pillow.

While writing, I kept visualizing a mirror, but the reflection looking back at me was not quite right. That’s how the chorus emerged.

“Mirror of darkness, anti-light

One way trip into the night

Decaying canvas, black and white

The serpent tempts for just one bite”

All in all, Mirror of Darkness was one of the most cathartic Anorkia songs for me to make, and one of my top three or so that I am most proud of for how well it authentically conveys what I aimed at expressing. Without further ado:

There is hope

My perception of addiction and recovery have changed a lot in the past fifteen years, so the words would be different if I wrote it today, but one thing is as true now as it was then:

Addiction is cunning, baffling, and in its most active form is stronger than any human’s willpower of better judgment.

Which sounds hopeless, but it’s not.

Recovery, stability, and sanity are still possible when we stop trying to solve our problems alone, and stop trying to fix our lives with the same logic, thought patterns, and ways of being that led to this madness to begin with.