I had dinner with a new friend the other night and she said she was considering leaving a job she loved and was profoundly meaningful to her to take a job in another city that paid more money and had a bigger title. It also had lots of trouble and conflict.  She loves just about everything in her life, including all of the people she works with and we talked about a culture that puts money and status so far above happiness. I hope she stays where she is. Her story brought me back to my 30’s. I was a reporter and editor in several cities, and I loved journalism, loved every day of it. I was offered a series of jobs that led to more money, bigger titles and eventually a  career in network television, where I worked as executive producer of the CBS Morning News. It wasn’t enough to do what Ioved, I thought, I wanted to amount to more than that.

So I quit what  I loved and rushed into a snarling and pressure-filled bureaucracy that paid well – I was driven to work in a big fancy black car – and had a great title, a secretary and a mystical expensive account. I was never so miserable.

Within a few months, I was seeing an analyst – I would lock myself in the office and burst into tears, trembling from one panic attack after another. She prescribed Valium for me, to help my anxiety and to help me sleep. I took Valium for 30 years. No one ever told me that few people who take it for a long time can give it up. Nor did anyone tell me until much later – this shocked me to the core – that I had become a prescription drug addict, taking a drug like that for so long. Like many other people, I thought that addicts only took illegal drugs.  Doctor after doctor continued the Valium prescription until I stopped taking it during my struggles at Bedlam Farm. Had I known how difficult it would be to get off valium I would probably have stayed on it. As it was, I was determined to deal with my problems head on, and without medication. I will not forget the first night I went to sleep without it – I was suddenly into one of those noir films where the addict is locked in a cell going to pieces. Long nights of sweats, nausea, nightmares, struggles breathing, the shakes.  I met my real self that night, it was like being tossed into the middle of a loud and spinning carousel, whizzing by me faster than I could absorb or understand. I did not sleep much for the next two or three years and coming to see my mind really worked – this is possible without medication – was an amazing  if often horrifying experience. I needed for it to happen before  I could begin to get well. This, it turned out, was my hero journey, facing the truth about myself and beginning the process of healing, a process that does not seem to ever stop.

Maria was the only human being to see me at close range during that period, cut off finally from my hiding place, the the successful author giving readers, interviews and touring around the country. Valium was a good place to hide.  Just living my life, folks.

Addicts and alcoholics can always put it on when they need to, it is how they survive.They live in drama and crisis and draw everyone around them into it.  Joseph Campbell said you can wear the mask a long time, but when it comes off,  you better be prepared. I was not prepared.  I took valium instead. I will never quite see myself as an addict, it still seems ridiculous and strange to me, even though I was a legal and culturally-sanctioned one. Many of the people I meet are addicts, hooked on drugs for the rest of their life, their addictions a profit center for lots of corporations.

I learned back then that money does not buy happiness and money and a big title doesn’t bring security. And valium does not lead to authenticity.  I think money and titles often just give people more things to be insecure about. Every night, when I go to sleep I go into the bathroom and look up for my container of pills. I threw the last one out a year or so ago – I kept it just in case. I think an addict never quite gives up wanting a fix, it’s perhaps in the psyche and in the blood. I can’t blame valium for it. A doctor friend told me recently that no patient of hers has ever been able to give up valium after taking it a long time, they try, but they just can’t do it. But they can, I told her, they really can. When I gave up valium, I see now that I was taking responsibility for myself. Now, my fear is not living without valium, it’s taking it ever again.