It’s been over six months since I quit drinking and cleaned up my diet.
Living really clean has been a strange experience. On the one hand I feel a lot more solid, a lot more present and a lot more me than I have for a long time. Physically and emotionally, I feel like I’m seventeen again.
On the other hand, I’ve been feeling a lot more cut off from the people around me. I won’t share their drink and I can’t share their food. I’ve become an outsider and, for once, that’s not the way I wanted it to be.
The question of how to handle Heathenism without drinking has also been bothering me for a while. 90% of my experience with Heathen group ritual has always involved massive binge drinking. It shouldn’t really be an issue, as I’m mostly what you’d call a solitary practitioner anyway, but I really miss toasting the gods (and a glass of milk just doesn’t seem to have quite the same zing).
This gets even more complicated when you consider the fact that, for a long time, I’d been getting signals that “the gods” wanted me to quit drinking. Alcohol had definitely ceased being useful as a social lubricant and instead become a threat to my work, my health and my family.
Staying clean is undeniably the right thing for me to do. My new ascetic path has, in some ways, brought me a feeling of being much closer to the gods (Odin in particular). Unfortunately, it has also left me confused as to how to properly express that closeness.
Perhaps now I finally have an answer.
In the past I’ve always “shared” a drink with the gods. Perhaps now I have a chance to really sacrifice. I’ve given up drinking (a sacrifice of self to self) but of course the gods have not. What greater sacrifice could there be than to offer them that which I crave without ever taking so much as a drop?
This idea requires exploration.
You immediately put me in mind of one of the Uruz rune poems:
“Slag is from bad iron; oft runs the reindeer over frozen snow.”
I see this as a comment about purification. By smelting the ore we strip away the poison and are left with something hard, strong, and useful – iron proper. Then once forged, we quench that iron in freezing snow (I am seeing the opening scene from Conan the Barbarian, nerd that I am)!
We sacrifice the slag and make ourselves as fine an instrument for the gods as we can be perhaps?
I deeply admire the changes you have made in your life. To me this sort of positive transformation is exactly what we need more of in Heathenry! Much strength to you!
For me I essentially _only_ drink for ritual purposes now, although of course we have different relationships to alcohol – my demon was tobacco, which I would never smoke again, even if a ritual called for it. So I do get where you are coming from. Hey…in 5 days I will be quit for three years! I’m so, so proud to be able to say that.
Clint,
I share your fate in this. As you know I also gave up alcohol for similar reasons. It was just a too destructive force in my Life. It’s not easy to say farewell to a demon that is so closely related to one’s nature. The Berserker within. However, I realized that alcohol is not good for my magic and self-development many years ago and I already have been going without alcohol for longer periods of time before (two years being the longest). But I understand the problem of using substances in Heathenry and Magic. In my adolescence I believed magic mushrooms to be the “soma”, the substance that leads to enlightenment, with Terence McKenna being my prophet (the “Leary” of the 1990s). It came as a terrible, cold, slow shock to me, when I had to find out for myeself that drugs are not the full answer to life (and everything seemed sooo easy) and that delurium is not the cure to the human condition. But crisis, like Hagal symbolizes, leads to enlightenment. Truely, this is a sacrifice of self to Self we are doing. The Path we are on (as different as our paths are in particular we are still heading towards the same direction), the Path of increasing Consciousness, is certainly not the “easy path” and not a cop-out.
I feel very deeply connected to your way of feeling. I’ve been there and I’m not through with all that. But I tell you, the right people will stay with you and all these “party people” one hanged out with are not worth a tear, or beer :-), for that matter. Like you I feel strengthened, clearer, BETTER! My Will is stronger, my Hamingja grows, I’m exercising again, my fields of activity expand. Now I will change my diet. (I downloaded the “Primal Blueprint” intro and cookbook.) And I feel that you also change in your own ways. I guess, we mellowed. We are fathers. We have become men. I love your blog (I just have not much time to read other stuff!) You’re making your own way. Damn, I never want to loose that clear mind again. There is so much pleasure, adventure and ecstasy out there (and IN HERE) that I must say that hanging out in the “beer hall” with other warriors is not what I need.
Should you ever come to Germany (all Elhaz Fellows are invited!), we’ll go out in the forest and go hunting – with bare feet, a painted body, singing Galdors of hunting-runes! We’ll kill a wild boar with spears. Then we cut it open, barbecue the meat, sacrifice it to Freyja and Freyr, and eat. Hail Chaos! Viva Loki! Aum Wotan!
And just as a sidenote: The true power of ALU is not in the ale. So binge drinking on Heathen feasts is up to the uninitiated (or unbalanced!). The Mead that we drink is stored in our brains!
Thanks guys.
I suppose I should specify that I don’t necessarily believe everyone should quit drinking. Just happens to be the right decision for me at this point in my life.
Matt, I’ve always wanted to go boar hunting…but with bare feet? As long as it’s warm out, I guess.
Good for you guys! I highly recommend being sober when our families are young. Not only is parenting a difficult job that requires us to have high energy, super high awareness, and mega responsibility – but there’s something even more important when one has kids – if I had the ability to be one too – to play, romp, make believe instead of always being preoccupied with grown up things (including grown up play – partying) I was a better parent.
I learned to “escape” through romping with them!
Then they all started to party, so what the hell :)
Watch, they’ll have kids, sober up and then I’ll have to as well so I can be an attentive grandma.
Classic, I hadn’t quite thought about it like that.