Addiction:
Is this the sixth, seventh, or eighth class I’ve been to this week? I lose track sometimes. I find myself coming to Five Rings more and more often. I go to morning and evening classes pretty much every day and they recently started up a midday class that fits my schedule on Mondays and Wednesdays as well.
The instructor, Greg, is a purple belt that recently started training with us after moving here from California. Great guy, even if he is a Patriots fan. Seriously, how anyone still likes that team after my G-men crushed their ‘perfect’ season back in ’07 escapes me. Anyhow, his perspective and coaching style are very different from Coach Tom’s and Coach Eric’s. I find myself feeling more and more well-rounded after each of his sessions, particularly when he teaches a move I already think I know from an angle that I didn’t consider before.
We’ve got another tournament on the horizon. This one is called the Grappling X. It’s an independently run competition and we’re taking a small crew of people out to compete. Still, I’m pretty excited to get back on the mat. So, I guess that could be one reason that I’m up here so much. But if I’m being completely honest with myself then I have to acknowledge the other reasons, too. I’m getting addicted to the social network I have established, as well as the positive growth and changes in my body and fitness level. It’s nice to feel like I’m learning something every time I come here, too. It wasn’t that long ago that my addictions were a lot less healthy and a lot more detrimental to my well-being.
I remember the first time I stepped into the casino and sat down at the tables. Yeah, on top of being a smoker and an alcoholic, I was a gambling addict to boot. There was a difference, though. Nicotine and alcohol had their claws in me early in life and didn’t represent much of anything but an ongoing disease that I never treated. Gambling was something new. A true psychological escape. That first time I started putting real money down I realized that I could lose myself in the rush. I didn’t have to think about what my wife was doing behind my back while I commuted two hundred miles (anywhere from five to seven hours) from Palm Springs to Los Angeles and back every day. I didn’t have to worry about the unpaid bills or the birthday present for my stepson that I couldn’t afford or that sneaking suspicion that my co-workers at school knew something was wrong with me. All I had to worry about was that next card. The next roll of the dice. The lie that I could tell myself to make it all okay: “One big payday is all you need to turn things around, Dan. Just a little bit of luck.”
I remember the calls from my wife that I would ignore because I didn’t want to hear her yell. Even worse were the ones from my stepsons that I would ignore because I was too ashamed to tell them that I’d blown my entire paycheck again. I even hit the big payday more than once, only to walk out of the casino doors having lost it all. It was then that I knew that it wasn’t about the money. It was about getting away from the misery my life had become in the easiest way I could find. Then came the borrowed money (family, coworkers, payday loans) followed not too long after by losing the house, losing the job, and almost losing my life. I’d become really, really good at losing. In retrospect, I realize that it’s a pattern. I’d developed a habit; an addiction, if you will, to losing. It’s like I was searching for the bottom of the barrel. And then, I finally found it.
It’s difficult to relate my current experience of falling in love with the art of jiu jitsu as an addiction because of all the negative associations that I have with that word. I even went so far as to look it up to see if it really was fitting. The dictionary definition does mandate that there are negative consequences associated with an addiction, so since I am finding it very difficult to identify any that result from the time I spend at the gym I am going to modify my descriptor to a habit. I wonder if I can make up my own terminology and call it a ‘positive addiction’. Heh. Why not?
I do feel like I am at the tables sometimes when I get to Five Rings. It is an escape, of sorts, but more like the way meditation is an escape. I feel like I am getting myself ‘right’ when I am working out or rolling with my friends. I most definitely am not avoiding anything. Nor do I feel any shame. Just the opposite! I feel proud and enlightened and ecstatic when I am here. If this is a new addiction, then I wouldn’t have it any other way. My coaches are ‘enabling’ me to be a healthy, contributing member of society again. The friends I have made definitely make me ‘high’ with the laughter and love that I feel when we hang out.
As summer rolls on, my jiu jitsu game continues to improve. It’s a heck of a lot better than my poker game ever was.
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