Dead Set on Living Read online

  Praise for Chris Grosso and Dead Set on Living

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  “Chris’s books have been a significant source of inspiration in my own healing journey, and his newest work, Dead Set on Living, is no exception. Anyone looking for something real—something raw, ragged, and authentic—won’t be disappointed. I believe anyone who reads Chris’s honest and unabashed words will truly benefit. This is very, very real shit.”

  —Bam Margera, professional skateboarder, actor (Jackass/CKY), musician (Evesdroppers)

  “Chris Grosso’s Dead Set on Living is an awesome work, the totally honest account of a man seeking the realities of life and death, compassion and indifference, sorrow and joy—as if they really mattered. He tells his own moving story, holding nothing back, consults with many amazing people who work with depression, addiction, etc., and shares with us his process of integrating their teachings and advice in a vivid and beautiful way. If you and your loved ones struggle with life in an existential way, you will love this noble book—it will bring you courage and many blessings.”

  —Robert A.F. Thurman, coauthor of Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet

  “Chris Grosso is a Warrior of the Heart. With humility, honesty and courage as his weapons, he does battle with the shadows in the dark corners of our hearts.”

  —Krishna Das, Grammy-nominated kirtan musician

  “Chris Grosso, like myself, is a searcher. He is on a quest. He is thirsty. For what, you might ask? Wisdom! It is so rare these days to want to know truth that people who seek it are thought of as odd, out of the norm, or naive. Hunter S. Thompson once said, ‘When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.’ We are well beyond weird now. We are in the Twilight Zone of reality. We need the Chris Grossos of the world to tell us what they’ve seen and where we are. Read it!”

  —Bob Forrest, author of Running with Monsters, TV personality (Celebrity Rehab/Sober House), RehabBob.com

  “Chris Grosso comes at us with a deeply intense and personal sharing of his life journey, reminding us that you don’t have to be a goody-two-shoes to seek goodness and a spiritual life. It is often working through our darkest depths that we learn to become the light. Laying out some really easy practices we can all apply to our daily lives and advice from notable teachers of all lineages for all levels, this is a must-read.”

  —Jessica Pimentel, actress on Orange Is the New Black, Tibetan Buddhist, singer of Alekhine’s Gun

  “Dead Set on Living gets down to earth in dialogues that bring light to depression, addiction, and journeys through the dark night of the Spirit. Chris Grosso is an authentic voice of a new generation of meditation teachers. If you’re ready for a book that does not shy away from important issues that are not often addressed by spiritual teachers, read this one.”

  —Loch Kelly, author of Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness

  “What a read! What a ride! Chris Grosso shares his journey and brings in a team of others who tell the truth and give us hope, light, and direction. This is spirituality in action. Thank you for this valuable contribution.”

  —Raghunath (aka Ray Cappo), international yoga teacher, speaker, singer of Youth of Today and Shelter

  “Chris Grosso has assembled a team to help aid in solving the addiction crisis in America. It’s not a new drug czar, an expensive ad campaign aimed at the youth, or resuscitating the half-century-long War on Drugs. The solution is an integrated treatment plan in which each individual is a participant in their own inner and outer healing. We have suffered too long through the darkness and despair of mental illness, trauma, material craving, and spiritual emptiness. Thankfully a new recovery community has surfaced with a road map to personal and social wholeness.”

  —Eben Sterling, Thrasher Magazine, practicing yogi, recovered addict of twenty-one years

  “Chris Grosso comes from a place of compassion to bring hope to people who are suffering. He’s been through it all, and the result is a quality of empathy that makes Dead Set on Living such a valuable book. We need a fresh view on the way to recover, and this remarkable gathering of voices from all sorts of perspectives—traditional to innovative to experimental—opens myriad doors to integrated healing as it guides readers toward their individual path to wholeness. I’ve personally seen Chris work with many of the young adults at one of my facilities over the last three years, and he has a special way of making deep and authentic connections quickly. I believe this book will create a similar experience with its readers.”

  —Jamison Monroe, founder and CEO of Newport Academy, Youth Mental Health and Healing Centers

  Additional Praise for Chris Grosso

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  “Chris Grosso is an honest and engaging young teacher, and his work is both clearly expressed and inspiring.”

  —Andrew Harvey, bestselling author of The Hope

  “You awaken your True spirit by way of the broken heart: ragged, vulnerable, fierce, and finally compassionate. Chris trod this rough way and shows honestly how it can be done.”

  —Jack Kornfield, bestselling author of A Path with Heart

  “It is too easy to assume that America’s young rockers and hipsters are all casually nihilistic, but Grosso taps into the deep yearning for authentic spirituality—questions allowed.”

  —Library Journal

  “[Grosso] writes with refreshing wit and candor, deeply and broadly reflecting on what it means to be human, personally and collectively.”

  —Publishers Weekly

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  For Mom, Dad, and Jay.

  None of this would be possible if it weren’t for you.

  Forever grateful and I love you so much.

  CONTENTS

  EPIGRAPH

  PREFACE: SEA OF HEARTBREAK

  INTRODUCTION: SOMETIMES ALL I AM IS A DARK EMPTINESS

  1  THE TRANCE OF UNWORTHINESS

  Tara Brach

  2  THE PRIMARY PROBLEM

  Gabor Maté

  3  GOD IS NOT YOUR BITCH

  Lissa Rankin, MD

  4  DRINKING, DRUGGING, OVERSPENDING, AND SEXCAPADES

  Anne Davin

  5  I DON’T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING

  Ram Dass

  6  THE PLACE WHERE THE SWEETNESS HURTS

  Michael Taft

  7  THE LOVE THAT ROLLS UP ITS SLEEVES AND GETS MUDDY

  Sera Beak

  8  A LONELY CONSCIOUSNESS IN A BAG OF FLESH

  Chelsea Roff

  9  A HAPPINESS THAT ISN’T GOING TO SHATTER

  Sharon Salzberg

  10  WRITING AND FIGHTING FOR FORGIVENESS

  J. Ivy

  11  RISING FROM THE WOUNDEDNESS

  JP Sears

  12  A TINY BIT MORE

  Mona Haydar

  13  THE INEVITABLE CATASTROPHE

  Duncan Trussell

  14  THOSE DARK, HORRIBLE FUCKING PLACES

  Damien Echols

  15  THIS BEAUTIFUL, BROKEN REALITY OF THE HUMAN CONDITION

  Mirabai Starr

  16  THE GIFTS OF CRISIS

  Sally Kempton

  17  TRANSCEND AND INCLUDE

  Ken Wilber


  18  THIS SHIT ACTUALLY WORKS

  Noah Levine

  19  WE’RE ALL WE’VE GOT

  Deron Drumm

  AFTERWORD: ONWARD AND INWARD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NOTES

  Keep true to the rare music in your heart, to the marvelous and unique form that is and shall always be nothing else but you. Keep to that and you can do no wrong, which I realize is easier said than done.

  —Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

  It is impossible to explain the way God wounds the soul or to exaggerate the agony this causes. It makes the soul forget herself entirely. Yet this pain carries such exquisite pleasure that no other pleasure in life can compare to that happiness. The soul longs to die of this beautiful wound.

  —Teresa of Ávila: The Book of My Life (translated by Mirabai Starr)

  There ain’t nobody to be pretty for.

  Fuck it, let it rattle.

  —P.O.S (“Let It Rattle,” from the album Never Better)

  The dragonfly, in almost every part of the world, symbolizes change and change in the perspective of self-realization; and the kind of change that has its source in mental and emotional maturity and the understanding of the deeper meaning of life.

  —dragonfly-site.com

  PREFACE

  SEA OF HEARTBREAK

  I can’t breathe. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck I can’t breathe! My eyes pop open as a full-body panic attack sets in. Through my haze, I see my hands strapped to the bed. “Oh, fuck. Not again. I—” I’m gasping for air. There are tubes coming out of my mouth—This is new. I raise my head and realize I’m in a hospital. But where? How did I get here? What the fuck happened? That’s when I see my parents sitting in chairs at the end of my bed, near a window. The heartbreak and despair in their eyes are unmistakable. To their right stands a nurse. She’s telling me to calm down and let the tubes do the breathing for me, but I’m too panicked. I begin thrashing in the bed, trying to break the woven nylon straps that are keeping me from ripping the tubes out of my mouth. Later I’ll find out this is the reason I was restrained in the first place.

  I do my best to communicate with the nurse with my eyes. I’m pleading with her to take the tubes out, but to no avail. If my eyes could have screamed, they would have been saying, “I can’t force myself not to breathe! Please, for the love of whatever piece-of-shit god you believe in, get these fucking tubes out of me!” Unfortunately, the nurse was not fluent in eye language, but luckily my parents figured it out and advocated on my behalf.

  A doctor arrived and the tubes were removed. My memory is blurry, but I do recall it was painful, so painful that my mother had to leave the room. One of the tubes was in my lungs, breathing for me; the other was in my stomach, soaking up the alcohol, pills, and whatever other ugliness was down there.

  It may have looked like a suicide attempt, but it wasn’t. This was the result of a twenty-four-hour relapse that began with me sitting on a bus ride from Hartford (where I’d been visiting with family) back home to Ottawa, where my wife and stepdaughter lived. It started with a couple of Percocet, which I’d been prescribed after a root canal, and escalated during a layover at a depot in Vermont, when I bought a bunch of small wine boxes and poured them into a Powerade bottle so I could drink on the bus, which I did until I reached Montreal. There, on another layover, I found a liquor store and bought a fifth of vodka. I consumed most of it on the last leg of my ride to Ottawa, but decanted some into a plastic water bottle to save for later.

  I don’t remember arriving in Ottawa that night. I don’t remember hailing a taxi and stumbling into the apartment and somehow managing not to wake up my sleeping wife and stepdaughter. What I do remember is waking up the next morning sick to my stomach and walking out into the kitchen, where my wife was preparing my stepdaughter’s lunch for school. I gave her a kiss, and she could smell the mints I’d put in my mouth just moments before. She immediately had a panicked look on her face, thinking I’d been drinking. I lied and told her it was just mints. I walked into the living room, where my stepdaughter was watching TV as she ate her breakfast. I gave her a kiss on the forehead and told her I loved her so much. I had to vomit and I was trying desperately to hold it in for what would have been roughly fifteen minutes, since I knew that’s when my wife would be taking my stepdaughter to school. As hard as I tried, though, I just couldn’t. I was too sick. The devastated expression on my wife’s face as she entered the bathroom while I clung to the toilet and vomited will haunt me forever. She held the water bottle I’d hid in my dresser; it still had a little bit of vodka in it. As her eyes filled with tears, my heart filled with self-loathing. Neither of us spoke, but it was in that moment we both knew our marriage was over.

  When I finished throwing up, I took my last two Percocet and logged onto my computer to book a plane ticket back to Connecticut. I called my parents to let them know what had happened and that I’d need a ride from the airport. They were heartbroken and worried, but said they would be there—they’d been through this before. Luckily for me, my suitcase was still packed.

  During the taxi ride to the airport I felt so physically and emotionally ill that I asked the cabdriver to stop so I could buy a bottle of vodka. Then I went to a grocery store and bought a bottle of Gatorade. (What is it with me and sports drinks? They contain electrolytes, which can help with hangovers—or maybe that’s just some urban legend I’ve bought into for all these years.) I took my first swig of vodka in the grocery store bathroom and then poured the rest into the Gatorade bottle, leaving just enough so that the color stayed purple (a very diluted purple, but purple enough for my purposes). I got back into the taxi, and we headed to the airport. I was extremely nauseated. My hope was that the swig of vodka I’d taken in the bathroom would help settle me, but it had the opposite effect—for the duration of that thirty-minute ride it was all I could do to not throw up in the backseat of the taxi.

  I made it to the airport terminal, found a bathroom, and puked there. Then I drank more vodka and sat in a waiting area to let things settle, but they wouldn’t, so back to the bathroom I went for another round of vomiting. I followed that with another drink. I finished the bottle and this time didn’t throw up. The nausea was starting to subside, but the emotional pain was still there, and it took everything I had not to burst into tears in the middle of Ottawa International Airport.

  Once I got through security, I found a restaurant near my gate, ordered a double shot of vodka, and ate a breakfast sandwich. After finishing both, I ordered another drink, and the nausea was finally gone. When I called my parents to check in, I couldn’t hold back my tears. I was in so much pain about so many things, not the least being the fact that here I was again, putting my parents through the hell of having to watch me relapse. As I descended into the nightmare of my own making, it began to sink in that my marriage was over. My entire world was about to be upended—I’d built my life, my career around advocating for healing, spirituality, and recovery, and here I was returning to substances. I was broken and lost in a way I had never been before, and if you’ve read my previous two books, you know that, like many of us, I’d already been through my share of vodka-and-pill-induced wake-up-and-vomit marathons.

  After I got off the phone with my parents, I had an odd moment of clarity (odd in that it happened while I was a total shit show in every sense of the word and in every possible way). I knew that even though I’d taken Percocet and had a lot to drink, I was not going to travel all the way back down the road of an extensive, full-blown relapse as I had so many times in the past. I’d come too far and worked too hard on myself and in my life to do that.

  Knowing in my heart I would not return to the chaotic, self-destructive, and all-consuming cycle that is addiction, I called my mentor in Refuge Recovery (a Buddhist approach to recovery from addiction, which I’ll get into later) and let him know what had happened. I also told him that although I would drink a bit more throughout the day, I
was not going to succumb after that. While he didn’t want me to keep drinking, he understood where I was at with things and wished me safe travel home, letting me know he’d be there for me when I was ready. I also called my old college professor, who’d since become a close friend in recovery, and let her know the situation as well. She was very sad to hear from me, especially because she had spent time with my wife and knew how much we meant to each other. She, like my Refuge Recovery mentor, wished me safe travel and asked me to connect with her when I was back.

  I boarded the first of two planes back to Connecticut. When we landed in Toronto, I made my way through border security and headed straight to the airport bar. I ordered another double shot of vodka and a sandwich. I was feeling much better physically, but emotionally, no amount of alcohol could ease the hell blazing within me.

  From there, I sought out a duty-free shop and bought another liter of vodka. I went into a newsstand and purchased two big bottles of water. I went into the bathroom and replaced the water in the bottles with vodka. I took a big swig and proceeded to find my gate for the final flight. I gave my parents one last call to let them know I was all right. They could tell that I’d been drinking, but I was still coherent and, all things considered, doing okay. I boarded the plane and took my seat in the empty last row. I kept drinking.

  I remember landing in Hartford and meeting my parents at the baggage claim. I must have been visibly drunk at this point. I pulled out one of the water bottles of vodka and told my parents I had some left that I planned on drinking, but would stop after that. They told me they felt it best if I stopped drinking now. It wasn’t a forceful request, just one of care and concern. Since I still had a second bottle of vodka in my bag, I agreed and handed them the one in my hand. Then I told them I had to go to the bathroom, where I proceeded to drink down the entire second water bottle of vodka.