Alpha Music

Information

Articles

Miscellaneous

The music was very peaceful. For a moment I felt like I was inside a soap bubble... it felt very cozy and nice like never before...
Ania, 8

Letters, Opinions and Testimonials :
Addictions - Drug Addiction...

Alphamusic in addictions
Henrieta’s story

"Silence of Heart"

Only another addict could possibly understand the desperation of this disease. I find it difficult to paint an accurate picture to ‘normal’ people (what we call non-addicts) about how it feels, as addiction is one contradiction after another. I was raging ball of emotion and the same time as empty as a vacuum. I hated myself, I thought I was the mud on your show and same time I thought I was better than you, more intelligent, a better person inside. I loved myself, I just presumed that nobody else ever would or could. The worst thing about it is the loneliness. Isolation breeds fear and by the end of my using I lived in constant fear of everything, particularly myself. I had no control. I was lost, worthless and hopeless.

The reasons giving up drugs is so hard is because you’re convinced yourself for years that it’s helping. Whenever you use, your feelings, those hateful, wretched feelings are chemically blocked out and you feel safe. I’ve had people ask me if I was scared to use drugs and I find myself baffled by this question – drugs were keeping me safe. They were my protector. So taking the drugs away, your emotional armour, the barrier between you and the agony of being alive, leaves you raw and vulnerable. Only raw and vulnerable are just words and don’t come close to the animal pain, terror and loneliness that getting clean entails.

Addiction is a peculiar disease, with a horrific stigma attached to it. Is it a moral deficiency? Is it their choice? What does an addict look like? Is it the crusty old man on the park bench with emphysema and a can of Special Brew? Is it the prostitute, working for her next fix? Is it the little old lady going to a different doctor every week for a new batch of prescriptions? Is it the high-powered businessman with the colossal arrogance and a penchant for cocaine? There is no right or wrong answer. Addicts look like us; you, me, anybody. Addiction does not discriminate.

There comes a point where the pain of using becomes so acute that one begins to question its effectiveness. There are physical rock bottoms, where one’s body begins to give out. There are mental and emotional rock bottoms, where the pain of being alive becomes so overwhelming that you believe you will never feel happy again. There are spiritual rock bottoms, when the gaping hole inside the addict, that they’ve been frantically trying to fill with narcotics, with sex, with television, with alcohol, with anything becomes so urgently large that they think it’s going to consume them, going to become so large that it will burst outside their physical body and swallow them whole. There are circumstantial rock bottoms, when due to the consequences of your using you face homelessness, prison and hospitalisation amongst infinite possibilities of negative consequences. And these rock bottoms are poorly named because they do not signify an actual bottom. There is always further to fall. But these rock bottoms are exit points. When one has a moment of clarity and realises that their actions, actions that had been designed to keep them alive are in fact killing them. Sometimes slowly, sometimes not so slowly. In these moments of desperation you are faced with a choice. And to explain this as well as I can, please forgive a quote from the film ‘The Shawshank Redemption’. You either “Get busy living or get busy dying”. I’ve met a lot of addicts in my time and I’ve never met one who hasn’t seriously considered death to be the easier option.

In one of these moments of clarity, in one of my rock bottoms, I became acutely aware that the way I was existing was not a way to live, but a way to die. And not a quick, easy way, but a slow, excruciatingly painful way to disappear into nothingness. For some reason, and I truly don’t know why because I was in so much pain that I barely knew what to do with myself, I chose to live. Then the real struggle began.

During a counselling session at the very beginning of my recovery, when I was still shaking from withdrawals, my counsellor asked me, “What do you want to get out of these sessions?” I thought about this for a minute and replied, “Some peace of mind. I want everything to be easier. I want to be enough.”

It was recommended to me to try yoga or meditation, to try and calm my racing thoughts and improve my quality of sleep. Just about any addict, regardless of their drug of choice, has sleep difficulties when they first come into recovery. After having spent years controlling my sleep and how alert I was during the day with narcotics, I think my body has just plain forgot how to do it. I was practically catatonic for weeks on end, and then I’d be awake for four days straight with the addict monkey on my shoulder. From as far back as I can remember into my childhood, I’ve had this part of my psyche, the monkey on my shoulder, telling me that I’m not enough, that I’m insufficient and don’t deserve to be happy. I thought that maybe yoga or meditation would provide me with some quite time, a time when the monkey could be gagged and made to sit quietly in the corner. I used drugs to shut that monkey up, to get some peace of mind. First I tried yoga. I remember clearly being in a large hall with a group of other people that I didn’t know during this yoga class. From about five minutes into the session, I began to cry. I tried to cry as quietly as possible, hiding my face so that nobody could see. I felt like something was being released from me, something I needed to get out but I felt exposed and uncomfortable because I didn’t want these people to see my weakness. This continued for about forty minutes, be just about keeping the noise down whilst tears poured down my cheeks. To this day, I have no idea what I was crying about. All of a sudden, the dam really burst, and gulping in big gulps of air and grabbed my shoes and ran from the class, sobbing and humiliated. Yoga was a brilliant idea, but not practical for me. I already felt defenceless and allowing that to come out in a public setting was crippling. I spent the next week in bed. And so I tried meditation. Again, I went to a class because as with yoga, I had no idea what I was doing and needed guidance. It was an unmitigated disaster. Looking back (hindsight is a wonderful thing!) it was a ridiculous thing to do. The concept of sitting quietly with oneself was something so far out of my capabilities at that point in time that I simply don’t know what I was playing at. As soon as I was told to try and empty my mind and focus on only one thing at a time, I began to freak out. I snuck a peak out of my closed eyelids at a room full of apparently serene people and began to internally rage at my incompetence. True to form, I waited until I was having a fully-fledged anxiety attack; hyperventilating, sweating, crying, feeling dizzy before I hotfooted it out of door, never to return!

The fact that these two events affected me so dramatically triggered alarm bells in my head. I usually ran a mile at anything remotely difficult, and I knew this was a part of my disease. I came to believe that my peace was in there somewhere; I just needed to find a different access point.

The first Alphamusic CD I ever listened to was ‘Silence of Heart’. I lay on my bed, turned the volume up moderately loud and listened to the whole piece, from start to finish. I thought it was warm and uplifting at first, but nothing out of the ordinary. After about 20 minutes I began to feel a physical change. Don’t ask me to tell you what changed, because I haven’t got a clue! But my body felt different somehow. I had the one-hour professional version of the CD and by the time I got to end of it I felt safe and held. I thought this was great, really excellent stuff. And then it hit me. Like a ton of bricks. From about 20 minutes in, until the end, I hadn’t worried about a single thing. I hadn’t obsessed or craved. After I felt it change something in my body I was paying attention to how the music made me feel. I went for 40 minutes with the monkey silenced. I’ve heard people say that ‘Silence of Heart’ is a release of emotion for them, but for me the crying came afterwards. When I realised that this could give me time off from myself, with down withdrawals and no come down I knew I’d found something incredible.

That same night (after listening to ‘Silence of Heart’ again in the bath with some candles… hey! I’m an addict, I like extremes…) I decided to try the ‘Orange Grove Siesta’ to help me get to sleep. At this point in my recovery it usually took me about two, maybe two and a half hours from getting into be before I would fall asleep. It wasn’t that I wasn’t tired, but I could never seem to switch my brain off. It made me feel ill. When I’m over tired, my jaw tenses up really tight and gives me a headache in my temples and behind my eyes. So I put ‘Orange Grove Siesta’ in my CD player, turned the volume down quite low and crawled into bed. I listened to the first few tracks thinking impatiently, “Um, why aren’t I asleep yet? It’s been ten minutes already!”. The last thing I remember thinking that night, as the first digeridoo kicks in, was, “This CD’s rubbish. It doesn’t work.” And then I woke up the next morning, after sleeping all the way through with no interruptions. After listening to the CD again I discovered that the digeridoo begins almost exactly 20 minutes into the CD. At this point I admitted defeat with this CD too. Twenty minutes is a dream compared with two hours.

Since discovering Alphamusic, I’ve collected the entire therapy collection. Alphamusic was the gateway for me into a new world. I still find meditation difficult, but bearable. But I love yoga! I wasn’t at a level where I could cope with them, Alphamusic eased me into it. I use Alphamusic in my yoga too, I prefer ‘Silence of Voice’ and ‘Silence of Balance’ for this. I don’t really have cravings anymore. I found that 10 minutes of ‘Silence of Peace’ is a cure-all for cravings. The thought will still be there afterwards, that I had wanted to use, but the obsession is lifted by about 4-5 minutes. I came off anti-depressants not long after I found ‘Silence of Heart’ after years of being on and off them. For the most part, I sleep well. I have bouts of insomnia, usually when I’m menstruating, that I successfully treat, usually with ‘Amber’ or sometimes with ‘Orange Grove Siesta’. Also, I love to make art. I prefer 3D art and have made some silver jewellery and ceramics, but I also paint at home. I love ‘Silence of Voice’ and ‘Silence of Light’ for getting that connection with myself that I need to focus on my art.

More than anything else, I see Alphamusic as a way of life. I have it on the background when I’m trying to read (‘Silence of Peace’ and ‘Silence of Spirit’ seem to work best for me on this front), when I’m doing the washing up (‘Emerald Forest’) and when I go for a massage (‘Silence of Heart’ or ‘My Little Sea Shell are my favourites for traditional massage or aromatherapy, but ‘Silence of Balance’ seems to really hit the spot for Shiatsu and Craniosacral Therapy in my opinion). I haven’t had a panic attack for over a year. I’ve had a lot of help getting clean and staying clean. I have a brilliant support network and an amazing family. But there came a time when then wasn’t anybody around to watch me, when I had to start learning how to cope by myself, and for this I would like to sincerely thank John Levine and his Alphamusic. I’ve been clean and sober for 2 years. I’m still learning and I suspect I always will be. Life isn’t perfect, but with my hand on my heart I can say that most of the time I’m OK. A lot of people helped save my life and it’s come as a bit of a shock, but I think it was worth saving. I’m enough.


		j b l
My wish is for everyone to be more calm and healthy, with the help of the wonderful and natural remedy of alpha waves. It is my special wish that my music helps you too!
J.B. Levine