Confessions of a Drug Addict

Over this last weekend, events happened that have led me to realise that I have to finally acknowledge a long time drug habit, that I'm totally addicted to.  I am a complete junkie, to this drug created naturally in our systems, and dispensed to us as a reward for behaving evolutionarily, or in a way that our evolution has adapted us to expect to act to survive.  I hunt for experiences in my life so I can feel my high, and get a hit of my most favourite drug.  A large part of our surrender to birth and babies and the amount of children we have, was so that we could get our fix of it.  In generous doses while engaging in the intimate and connected sex we created that created our babies, and during the pregnancy when all our hormones and bodily parts and odours were changing as a reflection of the life growing.  In birth with the massive doses of our favourite ever drug that we share together, co-dependent in the hugest degree.  The bonding that washes over us all afterwards.  The connections we feel because of it.  The closeness and empathy we have for each other because of our closeness.  The dawning and enlightening conversations we all have as well.  And then that extension from our family into our close community and heart family, and then further into Nimbin and the market that we're playing with there. This drug that we love is most likely a palpable bubble around us most of the time, after we've loved or bonded, or understood and transformed, or had intense and deep interactions with complete strangers, or gone into a potentially non-friendly situation and left with warm hugs and a whole circuit of new friends.  From all the births that we've shared, and the travels and connections and relationships we've had, no matter how brief.  We are all total slaves to our addiction to our entire families drug of choice.

Oxytocin.

Since reading this article by Michel Odent, I've really been sitting with oxytocin.  I've always associated oxytocin with birth, and knew that my natural ones were much better, and a necessary part of birth, often needing quiet and dark undisturbed places to unfold, and that they were pumping through my body when birthing, and most strongly just after.  I've joked about how midwives are drug addicts, addicted to that energy of birth.  I've known that there are oxytocins associated with sex, and with breast feeding, and with holding your newborn close, but I always kinda considered them almost half arse, piss weak drugs, when it comes to comparing them to other drugs and the drug taking methods of  ganga for example, or eating halluciongenic mushrooms, or reports of ayahusca, and shamanic drug rituals we have in our collective consciousness.  They somehow seem more real and formal 'drugs', because they're the result of an external item that you ingest in some way, and have an easily defined reaction.  A drug that is made inside you and released naturally in moments of sex, birth, bonding, great connection, spiritual connection, conscious death, hugging, unconditional love, realisation, empathy, compassion, a strong sense of identity, and feelings of spontaneous love and community..........can't be that potent and mindblowing really can it?

Well maybe it can.  And maybe the point isn't a mindblowing experience, but a carrot given as a reward to expressions of love, bonding, family, and empathy, cause if you were getting that little carrot, you were well on the way to forming tribe, helping each other, caring for each other, and surviving.  Maybe the point was that in all those little carrots, if you kept following the trail, you would blend on the path with other hunters of the carrot, who would keep eating those carrots with you when you helped each other on the path, becoming a stream of a family around you, and then a river of community around you, that washed you in the waves of oxytocin regularly, co-creating survival as a bonded and harmonious feeling of drug induced love and community, so that it did indeed create mindblowing internal and interconnected drug induced situations on a grand scale, to dwarf the potential of any external drug induced ecstasy.  Because it comes from us and the love and community that we create together.  And instead of draining us or leaving us weak it feeds us.  Gives us the experience of that effortless ease that you can have in a conversation, that connects the dots between you, and traces a shared moment of enlightenment.  That sense of timelessness and complete interaction and love with your whole present experience.  That dropping away of the world 'out there' that impinges on so many freedoms and tentacles of connection.  That incredible lightness of blossoming completely into who you really are with witnesses around you, who totally adore the spark of the authentic you, they can see as a reflection of themselves.  

So yesterday, driving home from a our first official day as a family of co-conspirators of community and markets, after having such a long break between drinks, of that particular oxytocic drug rush in particular, it just hit me like a train.  We spent the day in complete chaotic harmony of time, surrender and love.  Max and Merlin were with Shen, and had a totally adorable day and didn't miss us once, which meant we could actually have conversations without having to dash off every couple of seconds after a twin.  We stepped into an incredible communal oxytocic rush of interactions, people stating passions, obscure stories, deep moments, everything happening in the right time and place with no control needed, serendipitous meetings and realisations of connection, shared stories, tears, hugs, enlightenments, networks, musicians turning up and playing little miracles, kids flowing round in a river of kid world safely boundaried by adults, problems raised and solved, and immovable objects flowed around, while sparkles and bubbles and great gooey globules of oxytocin were puffing thier way gently all around us.  

And it was more the afterglow than the glow itself that I first noticed most.  The talking and hooking up of stories and people and amazing events that we were all tumbling over each other to relate.  Trying to soak around in it and lush it up while the glow was slowly receding.  Trying to witness our stories to ourselves and each other to pin it up in the winds of time as a noticeable event of connection.  That slightly exhausted feeling being over-ridden by joy and smiling and afterglow.  Of all the moments when we felt so incredibly real, and seen, and heard, and loved.  And now there's more kids in this new market experience, and more stories to relate, I noticed very clearly this oxytocic afterglow, and recognised the amounts of times I've felt that afterglow before.  I've been lucky enough to have experienced a lot more sex, birth, intimacy with strangers, deep spiritual belief and connection with others, and family bonding than a lot of other people I know.  And I see the echoes that come from all of them, as the echoes of the great drug I adore......oxytocin.

Another thing that's emerged really strongly from the article I mentioned in the beginning about Michel Odent, was a huge sadness that the conversation can even exist about 'getting men out' of birth altogether.  For the very same reason, and to the very same purpose as this whole thing I'm talking about here - oxytocin.  For the bonding that he spoke so strongly of, that I loved to read in anothers words so much, I personally believe that everyone in the family needs to be involved.  For that oxytocic rush, and for the love and care afterwards, it's essential that fathers (when the situation forms naturally that way) and mothers and all the other siblings are there for that magical oxytocic soaked moment of birth.  To connect, imprint, and bond their binds to each other, that will carry them through life, and through care, empathy, and relationship with each other, to survive and thrive in a world of family and community.  I wrote a statement in passionate avowal and honouring to the importance of my man in our births and lives and family, that my Currawong has wanted and needed to hear for a long time.  And I'd really like to share it here.

 I just feel so sad, in all this talk about men getting out of birth, that there aren't more experiences represented in our consciousness of men like Currawong.  We've birthed 7 babies together, and from the very start, I NEEDED Currawong there, especially for transition and what came after.  There was no preference or thought about it, it was a PRIMAL AND URGENT NEED!  He and I both knew when the act of love that we'd started months ago was being born, and he was always there in whatever way I needed him, without question or thought.  Behind me in the bath, or above me and holding me with his arms as I pulled down on him, staring into his eyes, or crying into mine when I was telling him I loved him, as Spiral was being born, or his countless hours of carting water and making sure it stayed clean and warm, or of keeping people out of my space with Spirals birth and telling them very clearly to let me go into my primal space and not talk to me or touch me or bring me out of my feelings, or crying in-between contractions when he knew that we were going to have to go to hospital to have Balthazar by caesarean, but drying his tears before I saw him cry, and holding all his fear at bay to get me to the hospital, and staying strong and loving by my side while it happened, and then staying awake in the hospital, almost as exhausted as me, so he could watch Balthazar and keep him from the nursery while I slept, and then coming home and cleaning my wound, and wiping my arse, and dealing with my shit, and holding all the kids and keeping them clean and fed even while I went through Post Natal insanity, and nursing our babies when even I was afraid during whooping cough, and staying strong in the love of me and our children, and keeping up the slack, and HE was the warrior who turned our twin birth around, talking me strongly into how this was TWO births, and everyone was fine, and he knew I could do it, and then he cleaned out the bath while we all slept and it was HE the birth warrior who shifted that energy and bouyed our spirits and kept us all going, and it was he who bottle fed the twins when I was so nipple sore and kept people away from me and rode my waves of overwhelm, and HE who gave me love and faith and strength.  And he who showed me how sexual and primal and ribald and goddamn sexy birth could be through the birth of Zarrathustra.  He who gives me power and the wings to self acceptance on the complete love and adoration he gives me and us and him for our connected journeys that have opened into bonding and a sexual journey that I keep trying to get the flavour of to convey to a world that hasn't experienced anything like it.......I stake my claim and fly our flags on the timelines of evolution, as one of the first Post Modern, Fully Bonded, Sovereign Families I know of.  And to me, and our loin fruit, and my man, all of us are as integral to the whole as each other.

In a world where birth is so incredibly focused on individual elements, in one way or another, I just think there is a place to stake a claim on birth for the family.  For the whole.  Father, Mother, Child trinity.  And for what they can all become when they bond with each other, strive to protect, respect, and accept each other, and bring all their valued threads to the whole rope of a family bond, that can grow to embrace the whole world, and go beyond the importance of any single thread to what can be created in the singularity.  That can indeed feed the thread more fully than any internal individual process.  And can help the singularity of the rope of oxytocic connection from our families throughout our communities, and to even greater global connection with each other.  

Our family is a strong singularity of a whole, with threads that pull out and go to all different places with other people, but pull back into the singularity of our family more regularly than not.  Every single one of us has equal importance to our singularity, but extra special qualities that are just us.  And in that singularity, our kids always have either their tribe or their parents nearby.  Most of the time.  When something disconcerting happens, or they're hurt, or afraid, they know that we're only a stones throw away, and are always gonna have their backs.  We'll listen to them, take them seriously, take action if it needs to be taken, and defend them if they need it.  There's really no gender distinctions in jobs around the house, or general survival work that needs to be done, so to all our little younglings, we're known as MumanDad.  Cause it doesn't really matter which one of us responds, either one of us will do, and are usually always available.  We feel connection and sanction often.  See ourselves reflected in each other.  Have the opportunity to work through issues together because of our love.  

That bonded connection relies on introspection, self honesty and evaluation, and appreciation.  And when practiced regularly, it becomes easier and easier to practice self and other acceptance all the time. And when practiced often at home, it becomes easier to practice with broader community, and market community, and regions, and environments and histories.  Our kids roam the world with freedom, and connect with who they will, and are supported in their connections by us, as we also connect with those who do with our kids.  They're used to bouncing round in a relative and respectful world, full of loving mentors, oxytocic soaked events, and interested new folk.  

To live this experience makes it impossible to not notice all the anti-bonding moments encouraged between us, especially between adults and children.  All the potentially oxytocic moments that are crushed by judgement, control, separation, rules or cultural fads.  Not to mention that the foods we eat, our anti-bonding practices, and the possibility that synthetic oxytocin (made from pig sperm) actually suppresses natural oxytocin, and could result in lower production levels of it.  What's the opposite of oxytocin?   Adrenaline?  Hate?  Fear?  Suspicion? Could it be that our oxytocic supressions have resulted in our alienated families and communities? With all the disruptions placed between us and potential bonding with our children, and our parents, and our extended families, and work mates, and communities?  How much importance is placed on cohesion and community love?  Acceptance?  Respect?  Connection??

And what could you do to increase your share of oxytocin in your own life?  

What gives you an oxytocic rush?

Have you ever thought of oxytocin this way?