Sobriety and Recovery

Every practice the Order describes is sober. The rule appears in its Statements of Position, in the principles on the Practice page, and among the three rules on the page On Magic. It is stated briefly in each place. This page gives the reasons at more length, and draws on the accounts of practitioners of other currents who learned them at great cost.

It is also written for anyone who has come to the left-hand path, as many have, in the middle of an addiction or on the way out of one.

Why the Order Works Sober

The Order's reasons are practical before they are anything else.

• The record. The practice depends on an honest record, written at once. A mind that has been altered cannot report reliably on what altered it, and a practitioner who cannot remember clearly what happened cannot write it down.
• The test. Every method is to be tested. A working done intoxicated has two causes for everything that happens in it, and no way to tell them apart.
• The reason for the ritual. Practitioners who spent years in addiction say that the drug soon became the reason for the ritual, rather than an aid to it. The working had turned into an occasion for using.
• Sovereignty. The left-hand path aims at a self that governs itself. A self that a substance governs is not sovereign, however much it feels so while the substance lasts.

Why the Two Tangle

Practitioners who have been through both addiction and the occult give several reasons why they so often go together.

• Escape. Both promise a way out of ordinary life, and a person in pain is drawn to anything that offers one.
• The feeling of power. Intoxication feels like control, and so does magic. Neither feeling is reliable evidence of the thing it feels like.
• The claim of other worlds. Some currents hold that certain substances open doors to other levels of reality, and some scenes around the occult are heavy-using ones. Practitioners who once took large amounts of hallucinogens say that the work they produced under them was never as good as they believed at the time.
• The same wound. Several practitioners describe an emptiness that something will always come to fill. They filled it first with drink or drugs, and only later with practice. The emptiness was the same in both cases, and it was the emptiness, not what filled it, that needed attention.

Indulgence and Compulsion

The carnal current of the left-hand path has always championed indulgence: the deliberate enjoyment of the body and the world, against teachings that taught people to despise both. The Order has no quarrel with that. But the same current has always drawn a line that many of its teachers repeat. Indulgence is chosen. Compulsion is not. A practitioner who cannot stop has not indulged a desire. They have been taken over by one.

Practitioners who have come through addiction put it with the force of experience: self-destruction is not the path. Teachers of the devotional current say the same thing in their own terms: the path is not about destroying others, and it is not about destroying oneself with drink and drugs. It is about preserving the self, and making it healthy and clear.

Venom and Remedy lists the signs of a transgression that has turned to poison. Compulsion and escalation are two of them, and an addiction shows both.

The Arguments for Sacred Use

Not every practitioner agrees with the Order. Some hold that substances have a proper place in ritual, and point to history: the tantric left hand made sacramental use of wine within a strict discipline, and many peoples have used plants in their rites. Some point to recent medical research into hallucinogens as treatment for certain conditions.

The Order's answer is short. The tantric use was a discipline undertaken within a lineage, under a teacher, after long preparation, and it was never meant as a regular indulgence. Medical research is conducted under supervision, with screening and controlled doses, and is a different thing entirely from a practitioner dosing themselves at home. And whatever a substance might do, a working done under it cannot be recorded or tested as the Order's practice requires. Practitioners who disagree are free to, and are responsible for what follows.

What Practitioners in Recovery Report

Several practitioners of the left-hand path have spoken openly about their recovery from addiction to alcohol, heroin, methamphetamine, and other drugs. Their stories differ, and some of what they credit is not what the Order would credit. But they share a number of observations that anyone in the same position may find useful.

• The moment of seeing. Many describe a single moment in which they saw themselves clearly: a face in a bathroom mirror, a night beside a highway, a realization of where they were and where it was going. The moment did not cure them. It began the work.
• Taking ownership. Several describe the turning point as the moment they stopped blaming anyone else and said, in effect, that they had done this to themselves. They describe it not as shame but as relief, because what they had done they could also undo.
• Writing. Some began filling journals in the first days of treatment and have not stopped. Several describe the record, or something like it, as the thread that held.
• Small rituals. A morning cup of coffee taken deliberately, a token kept where it can be seen, a regular walk. The practice of marking time with intention, which is what a working is, turned out to be useful for marking the days of sobriety too.
• Company. A weekly evening with friends, a game night, time outdoors, people to be a good example to. Isolation was the condition of using, and company was the condition of stopping.
• New abilities. Several found, once sober, that they could draw, paint, or write in ways they never had. The page Making says more.
• Relapse is common. Most did not stop on the first attempt. They describe the decision that held as coming, in the end, from being tired of feeling bad.
• Leave the scene. Practitioners whose occult circles were also using circles had to leave both.

Many Routes

There is no single way out, and practitioners have taken several. Some found that meetings saved them. Others found that meetings did not work for them at all, and went on to stop without them. Some practitioners of the left-hand path have formed peer support groups of their own. Some found that programs built on a religion they did not share were a poor fit. Practitioners in that position should know that in many places they have the right to treatment that does not require a profession of faith, and should ask for it.

The Order recommends no program and has none of its own. It would only say that the route which works is the right one, and that a doctor or an addiction specialist is the right person to help find it.

What the Path Cannot Do

Practitioners who have spent years helping others out of addiction say that many of the people who come to the left-hand path in crisis are hoping it will fix their lives. Their answer is blunt: the path will not fix your life. You will, with whatever help you need. The Order's second tenet, No One Initiates You But You, says the same thing about initiation, and it is equally true of recovery. No figure, real or imagined, can do it on your behalf, and no working can.

What the path can offer is what it offers anyone: a record that tells the truth, a discipline of attention, the habit of examining what governs you, and the conviction that you are the one responsible for your life. Those are real goods. They are not treatment.

Medical Cautions

Anyone who wants to stop should begin by speaking to a doctor or an addiction service. Venom and Remedy is plain that addiction is not suitable material for solitary nightside work.

If you are in danger now, from a substance or from thoughts of harming yourself, put this page aside and contact emergency services or a crisis line where you are. The texts will still be here.

The Order's Position

No practice of the Order requires alcohol, drugs, or any other intoxicant, and the Order does not advise anyone to use any substance in connection with its practice. A practitioner in recovery is as much a part of the Order as anyone else, and may find in its disciplines a useful companion to their recovery. They should not find a substitute for it. The serpent rests in winter. Setting practice aside, for as long as recovery requires, is not failure.