Addiction and Kundalini

Everyone has a story with drugs.

Mine is the story of being a pretty woman living downtown in a major city. Growing up, we never had access to things like abundant finances or opulence - things I craved (my first apartment had a chandelier I installed myself). But somehow, I was always the lucky one with friends who did.

My story with drugs has been a personal one, and the gritty details will remain as shrouded as I feel comfortable to keep them - it’s nobody’s business how many times I stayed awake until sunrise, or simply didn’t sleep until we napped the next day after mimosa brunch. It’s nobody’s business how many intoxicated orgies took place, or how many lines happened backstage. It’s nobody’s business who died of an overdose, and who is still around today to bless us with their light.

But it’s obvious to me, as a former feminist porn star, spearheading sex parties in her twenties, and as a young woman in a city, no amount of sheltering could stop the inevitable experience of life, happening.

It is comfortable for me to share what these experiences have taught me. And for these lessons in compassion, awareness, I am grateful.

When we struggle with addiction - often something we don’t see while we’re in it, blinded by the myriad of other socially dystopian activities we actively, acceptably engage in - we also struggle with expression. Creativity in the body is located in the same centre as sexuality, intuition, emotional sensation and addiction. In yoga, this area of the body is the sacral chakra. When these areas of the body are stunted, through repression during childhood or puberty, through trauma or abuse, suddenly we discover ourselves grasping for a replacement sustenance. For me, it was partying. And extremely excessive wild sex. And damn it was fun.

The shadow of my self during these periods of my life tried to hide from the deep heartbreak that existed in my body. The wounds of feeling abandoned after my father’s death at four, of being “not allowed” to date during my teenaged years, of never having access to health and nutrition in the necessary ways due to poverty; the ailments of being uncomfortably unhealthy, of being fat (a very relative to health experience, I was almost 200lbs at my heaviest and it was all alcohol and recreational drugs), of being the fat girl who was somehow always friends with the one who either was, or looked like, a model.

The trauma that existed in me was so ingrained into my every day experience of life, it took a year of dedicated, radical reprogramming to shed this self-hate and move into a place of self-love for the first time. It took my best friend moving out west, and ultimately losing that relationship, and a year of intensive yoga for me to develop habits that weren’t always tied around the social norms of “let’s go out drinking tonight”.

It took a few years of professional partying as an event host and socialite, accompanied with being a professional slut, as co-founder of the feminist porn company, for me to recognize that the sex I was having and the lifestyle I was living weren’t coming from my soul. And quite truthfully, never had been. And it’s taken staying in a city (against my deepest desires), living in the area I used to frequent a decade ago, watching all the same bars and a good handful of the same people, fuel the same wounds, and occasionally falling back into these wounds too, to remember that this isn’t what I really value.

Truth be told, yoga saved my life. It taught me how to feel. It taught me how to learn my body’s needs rather than think them away with my ego. It taught me how to notice abusive patterns rather than ignore them, and continue with them anyway. It taught me compassion for myself, and for the people around me. And it taught me just how addiction really works, energetically, spiritually, psychologically.

Addiction is cradled in the womb, in the belly of our physical system. The place that finds inflammation with toxic substances, or disappears entirely with them. It’s the place we lust from, the place we hear our gut instincts from. Trauma here carries such a heavy imbalance, it can throw off our whole feeling of self worth, groundedness, any sense of emotional intimacy. Healing here is where life begins, both literally and metaphorically. The two sides to the coin of the sacral chakra are life and death. On one hand, here is where our fertility lies. On the other, completely self destructive chaos - and this is the condition of our society.

The entire human species has socially devolved from being life-oriented to being wounded with fear, fatalist mortality and death. We glorify alcohol and the majority of us, at least once, abhor the thought of having children. We place value on the things that bring us closer to death and we romanticize them, feeling need and unhealthy attachment to people, ideas, concepts of beauty, because they “never last”. We forget gratitude. We forget sacredness. We forget the human condition is to love, to live harmoniously, and to be compassionate and in awe at the world we live in.

Plant medicines have been an incredible boon for humanity, and are spreading like wildfire through the western consciousness - thank goodness! These ancient practices are here to provide salvation from suffering, through acceptance, transcendence and doing the emotional work to purge. And the difference between plant medicine and recreational drugs is simply the alchemical process that is undergone when we engage in these ceremonies.

Addiction leads to cycles of repression. Medicines lead to liberation. This is how you know if something is “addictive” or not.

The enlightenment of plant medicine is a total revealing of honesty. The truth lives, and one is able to face the darkness within through the compassion of the healing. The shadow is released, and the soul is realized.

Addiction and substance abuse creates toxic mind patterns, insecurities, social anxiety, physical illness and emotional trauma.

In plant medicine we find love, beauty. In distorting the earth to create unnatural drugs, we find discordance and disturbance within our vibrations and our physical systems. Our cellular structures respond to both, and find harmony in plants, and sickness in substance.

Kundalini, the life force in the body, rises from root to crown to reach enlightenment - read unconditional love and faith in the universe. Pain blocks this rising. Surrender releases the blockage. Love keeps this rising.

The power is in self reflection. Self awareness is one of the greatest skills we can begin to cultivate, and act upon, for the entirely of the species. Self awareness is the highest blessing we can ask for, because this leads to the truth within everything else. Self awareness is the method by which we reconnect to the earth through our bodies, through our magnetic emotions, through our calm minds and open hearts.

When I became self aware through my yoga practice, I became horrified at the world. I became horrified and wanted to hide from it, but I couldn’t. I had to be stronger, I had to keep living in it, I had to keep loving, and I had to keep speaking the truth. Freedom is a human right, to choose anything one could desire, but choice should be inspired by the desire to feel love. This is where the greatest evolution is. And this is what we are forgetful of, and remembering.

The heart is the key.

Through love, we find the path beyond death, into transcendent immortality.