Book 274 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Always stay busy, but busy with the right things!

Book – The Fifth Vital by Mike Majlak and Riley J. Ford

Book Description:

Mike Majlak was a seventeen-year-old from a loving, middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting OxyContin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends. Unable to escape the noose of addiction, he eventually lost the trust and support of everyone who had ever loved him. Alone, with nothing but drugs to keep him company, darkness closed in, and the light inside him--the last flicker of hope--began to dim. His dreams, potential, and future were all being devoured by a relentless addiction too powerful to fight. Despair filled him as he realized he wasn't going to survive.

Somehow, he did...HE NOT ONLY SURVIVED, HE THRIVED. This is his story.

Reflection:

What is it with me and my desire to want to explore learning about dopamine, addiction, and specifically this opioid epidemic?

I really have no idea what it is at this point, but for some reason it keeps drawing me in with more stories like Mike’s. If I had to guess why I’m so curious, it is because of the lessons that can be naturally learned from living life at the extreme’s that illuminates human nature. Sadly, you can’t get much more extreme than the life of a drug addict. If you read Mike’s story, you will understand the incredibly lengths and depths of which people will go to power our addictions.

I’ve sadly been an observer to the extremities in which drug addiction can take someone in my personal life when I watched one of my best friends almost destroy themselves when we were in our early twenties. Thank God, like Mike, he was able to fight his way back from the depths and reclaim his life through his sheer willpower and help from family and friends. I’m glad that both of their stories battling back from addiction had a “positive” ending, but many others aren’t as lucky.

I don’t know if you feel the same, but when I hear the word, addiction, I immediately associate it with something negative. After this journey, my thoughts and feelings toward the word “addiction” have been slowly evolving as my understanding grows.

What I’ve learned on this journey already is the understanding that addiction is a part of human nature.

We’re all addicted to something in this life. We’ve talked about this through our past reflections from Dopamine Nation and The Molecule of More when we discussed ideas like making our addictions matter. You can either choose your addictions strategically, or life will choose them for you randomly.

I’m happy to say that this journey has helped me to take ownership of my addictions by guiding me to better understand my values, purpose, and mission to live a balanced existence.

This whole journey is about exploring human nature and trying my best to design a life that can have an opportunity to find harmony and balance.

We all know that pure balance doesn’t exist in this world.

There isn’t a single human being in this world that gets to wake up each morning, stretch their arms, and feel in perfect alignment with the themselves and the world around them. That isn’t how this works.

Balance must be earned each and every single day that we step onto the playing field of life.

Ask Mike shares as an insight that helped him through his recovery journey, “Always stay busy, but busy with the right things!” I learned the same thing as well as I “recovered” from the traumatic events that altered my life as well.

We are all “addicts” who are driven to create! Channel that knowledge into activities that point your life in the direction of balance and you will find a sustainable existence. It won’t be easy, but life isn’t supposed to be easy.

Get out there and keep fighting the good fight each day on your quest to live a life of Purpose, Balance, and Sustainability. I look forward to seeing you on the field.

Question: Are your addictions pointing you in the right or wrong direction toward a balanced life?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Fifth Vital