Living With Addiction

Hello.  My name is Mark, and I’m an addict.

For those of you used to my posts on Ballast Water Treatment, I can assure you that this post is different.  If after this post you are curious about what I’ve written before, then you can find that here. But this article is different.  This post is a public statement of my own private addiction, an addiction that has consumed significant parts of my life and one that I am working to put behind me.

Addictions come in all kinds of flavors: alcohol, drugs, pornography, food, money, sex – mostly things that society identifies as morally deficit.  Addictions are powerful forces, each destructive in their own way.  But these are not the addictions that I have.  I have been blessed because I am not impacted by these addictions.  I know I am blessed because true addiction is something that is outside the ability of willpower alone to overcome.  Addiction is a serious illness and one that you need help, combined with willpower, to overcome.  That is why the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous focus on a Higher Power and using God to help in both overcoming addictions and living your life beyond your addiction.

The addiction I have is insidious.  Why?  Because the addiction I have is literally the goal of my society.  The addiction that afflicts me, guides my life and my decisions, and occupies the majority of my thoughts is the core tenet of capitalism.  And no, my addiction is not money.

I am addicted to success.

“Um, Mark,” you are thinking, “you can’t be addicted to success.   Success is a good thing.  You clearly misunderstand what an ‘addiction’ is.”

But do I?  I recently read about a signed note Nobel-prize-winning scientist Albert Einstein gave to a messenger in lieu of a tip.  The note read “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”  This note is from the same Albert Einstein who famously penned his own formula for success and was clearly one of the most successful scientists in modern time.

This simple note sent me into an intellectual tailspin, struggling to unravel what seems to be two discordant facts:  Einstein was clearly successful according to his own definition of success, but in the note he seems to promote the concept that a modest life brings more happiness than one engaged in the pursuit of success.  In other words, he appears to be telling the “modest” messenger that success by Einstein’s own definition, which at that exact moment was being affirmed by his notification that he had received a Nobel Prize, may not be the key to happiness.  

You may argue that I am missing how the statement links of the pursuit of success with constant restlessness.  It could be argued that you could read Einstein’s sentence to imply that the pursuit of success without constant restlessness may be superior to the modest life, but how can you separate these two states?  Success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose – so it is necessarily fleeting.  Success is a momentary achievement that leads to a steep high, but immediately after the achievement, where is success?  It is in the past, and I feel the letdown.

Which brings me to both the nature of my addiction and the reason I do not think that the pursuit of success is a universally positive thing: I am perpetually restless for my next success and my past successes never leave me fulfilled.

Does that sound familiar?   

I am always looking ahead towards my next success, the next big deal, the next promotion, the next opportunity, and the next challenge.  Regardless of what I have achieved, the world surrounds me with images of those who have achieved bigger, faster, prettier, more exotic things than what I have achieved.  While intuitively I know there are many that look at me and aspire to achieve what I have done, that does not help salve my mind.  I also intuitively suspect that many of the people I look up at are looking up at someone else with the same restless envy that I have, but again, that does nothing to satisfy my thirst for the next rung on the ladder.

But how is this ultimately destructive?  Why is this not ultimately the fuel that builds society and ultimately makes everything better for everyone?  For that, I have to look in the mirror, follow Step Four, and make “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself:

• When I get on an airplane and fly around the world to speak at a conference or close a deal, my children get older and my wife raises them alone.
• Before I go to sleep at night, I send my last email and shut down my phone so I can creep into bed and not wake my wife who went to bed an hour ago.
• When I wake up and check my phone to see what came in overnight, my wife checks on the kids to make sure they are getting ready for school.
• When I had a dream job managing six high performing teams in a home that my family loved and in a place where my wife had community, I quit and uprooted my family so I could take a job solving a global problem that no one seems to want solved.  Making less money.
• When I dream about work, I dream about my desires – whether I like to admit that or not.

And the reason that I know I am an addict is because I can make that list, and I can own that list, but I cannot stop doing the things on that list.  I claim to do it for money, but the money never quite covers the gaps that form.  I claim to do it for my career, but that just gets me more opportunities to be busy chasing successes.  I claim to do it for my family, but is this what they really want from me?  The real reason I do it is not any of those.  I do it for me.  I do it to feed my addiction.

I am not writing this post so you can feel bad for me.  I am writing this because Step 12 is having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps and carrying the message to other addicts as well as practicing these principles in all of my affairs.  For me, Einstein’s reflection that a calm and modest life may bring more happiness was the catalyst for that awakening.  I am therefore writing this piece because we do not recognize the relentless pursuit of success as an addiction despite the evidence to the contrary.  I am writing this piece because I am not afraid it will be poorly received.  I am writing this to validate that feeling in your chest that you may also be an addict.

When I look around my world, all I see is stress.  I see stress in youth sports, where games that used to be fun are treated like professional sports.  I see stress on the roads as drivers speed and drive recklessly as they strive to get to their destination faster.  I see stress in the workplace where people do whatever it takes to get ahead, even at the cost of their own friends.  I see stress in homes as the relentless pursuit of more destroys marriages and makes parents lose touch with their children.  There is real stress, I do not want to ignore that, but most of the stress in my life is the byproduct of my addiction to success.  If your basic needs are being met and you feel stress because someone else’s needs are being met more fully than your own, then you might be like me: an addict.  

When I look back on my life, my successes are a tapestry of images, not feelings.  Each success was a moment of satisfaction, followed by the immediate drive towards the next thing.  This has dulled my joy and left each success feeling paper thin.  The enduring events of my life have always been the successes of those around me.  The accomplishments of my kids, the joy in my wife’s eyes when we unplug and get away together, a promotion earned by one of my employees, these are the experiences and the memories that form the vibrant hall of my memories.  Ask me about graduating the U.S. Army’s Airborne School and I have an image.  Ask me about my daughter on stage, or my son playing hockey, or my youngest son building a Lego set, and I have a story.  Those are the investments that I need to make to ensure true, lasting value in my life.  That is what brings me happiness.

There are no easy answers to overcoming addiction.  There are no band-aids, no quick-fix solutions designed to get you back on track.  There are also no organizations that I know of that are designed to help with this type of addiction.  When you are literally addicted to American society your world bombards you with the seeds of your addiction.  Every time a brand new Mercedes Benz pulls up next to my seven-year-old pickup truck, I feel the tug of my addiction.  In those moments I have to go back to my steps and remember that I’m heading home to be with my kids.

And that is what really matters.