After the War
Our People, Ego and Distractions in Homer’s Odyssey
The Odyssey follows the action of Homer’s Iliad, the ten year saga of the Trojan War that features such heroes as Achilles, Hector and Ajax. If you’ve read the mythology or watched Brad Pitt’s beautiful performance in Troy, you might know the basics of the story. The Greeks wanted something - a woman, revenge, land, glory - and saw victory over the formidably walled city of Troy as the thing necessary to fill that desire. Though Odysseus’s intellect and tact let him excel in the art of war, he doesn’t want to be there. He enters reluctantly, leaving his home behind to engage in a war with his fellow Greeks that they all think can be won much more quickly and with greater ease than is the reality. He has no idea the scale of the enterprise he and his peers have embarked on; none of them do. Whether they’re eager for battle or just fulfilling an oath of allegiance, the Greeks cannot have predicted the cost and duration of the war their attack on Troy initiates.
The Trojan War reflects our experience in the cycle of substance abuse. When we begin drinking or using as a solution to our life issues, we too lack the ability to predict just how destructive and for how long the cycle into which we’ve entered will become. We may not even realize we’ve entered an inescapable war zone until the consequences and casualties become impossible to ignore. Odysseus may not have wanted to go to Troy, but he’s in his element there, as are the notable heroes whose names have been immortalized by Homer, Virgil, and their kind. But even the heroes who thrive on military prowess and the glory of battle can only stand so much time away from home and in the throes of war. Like Odysseus, we find ourselves in a situation that’s familiar and that we feel we can control; but it threatens fatality if it continues on, and we lack an accessible exit. Like many experiences in addiction, the Trojan War ends in tragedy and chaos for both sides, even the victorious Greeks, who face a return to their city states without so many of the men who entered the war, including their great Achilles. Though the survivors may hope for and anticipate a quick return over the geography separating them from home, their journey proves to be a harrowing adventure worthy of its own epic.
I had the idea to analyze The Odyssey back when I first started writing these essays, but I didn’t do anything with it until recently, and that’s good because my perspective on it has shifted. Initially, I envisioned The Odyssey as the story of active addiction. I had this idea of the sea as the embodiment of our liquid solution and our hero as a representation of anyone in active addiction struggling to make it through without drowning. I was really caught up on the water-alcohol comparison. Now, having faced the harsh reality that recovery comes with its own obstacles, monsters and unfamiliar terrain, I see his journey home as a more fitting embodiment of life in recovery. He’s left the war and is actively pursuing the recovery of his city and family. It’s not a quick return to life before addiction; rather, it’s a trying process of returning to our true selves in greatly altered circumstances after struggling with whatever forces have disconnected us from that state of being. Odysseus’s journey in particular echoes the challenges we encounter even after we’ve left the war of active addiction behind. The distance between Troy and Ithaca should have taken his fleet approximately a week to travel at the speed ancient ships can handle. It took Odysseus ten years: the same length of time he spent on the plains of Troy in the turmoil of war. And when he does make it home, it’s not the same home he left two decades prior. Our recovery is similar. We can’t just erase the time we spent in addiction or the pain we caused ourselves and others. We have to work through the feelings that surface in full force after their long sleep, to resolve resentments and work through fears, to take a hard look at our conduct in all affairs, and to amend past wrongs as best we can. We have to learn to live with a new solution in a world that conjures the same hardships and discomfort that our false solution used to temporarily erase or blur for us. Odysseus has survived the war, just as we have survived our time in addiction; but he does not earn an easy return, and neither do we. No one recovers in a week. For Odysseus’s sake, and for ours, it’s the plan of a higher power that we learn to navigate a longer recovery process so that we can gain much needed insight into our addiction mindset and the things that hold us back from true recovery. These things that hold us back are aptly represented by the many obstacles that Odysseus encounters on his journey and even upon his arrival home. I’m not including everything (that would be a whole book), but I’ll look at a few things especially pertinent to this recovery translation.
I. Our People
Though the Odyssey centers on Odysseus, it opens with the story of his family in Ithaca. The initial books accentuate their struggle to endure in his 20-year absence and force us to recognize the fact that his actions and choices affect more people than he may realize. Though his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, have not been in his war nor do they face the particular challenges of his voyage, they face other threats to their livelihood back in Ithaca. Odysseus went to war when Telemachus was an infant, so Telemachus has had to grow up without a father, and Penelope has had to maintain her loyalty to her husband as a collection of rough, power-hungry suitors have taken up residence in her home. Though they’ve been able to go on with their lives in the years Odysseus spends away, they suffer the consequences of his absence.
This account of how it’s been for the ones left behind reminds us that his story involves more than just him. Odysseus may hold them in his heart, but he can in no way know their struggles; and the immediate threats of the war and obstacles on his journey home keep his focus on self-survival rather than the wife and child he presumes await him safely at home. So before we’re even introduced to Odysseus, we find out how it’s been for them. This framing of Odysseus’s journey home with the story of those he’s left behind emphasizes the wider context of who he is and the people impacted by his life. The strain of knowing her husband is at war and not knowing when or if he’ll return weighs on Penelope, who must manage the household and raise her son alone. Telemachus grows up facing the pain of an absent father; additionally, he experiences the chaos of a home without a leader.
When we’re in active addiction and even when we begin the work of recovery, our people are affected; and though their stories are their own, they’re inextricably linked to ours by our relationship. Our family, partners, friends, coworkers, etc. can be impacted by our actions in addiction and even by our absence. Penelope and Telemachus endure this twenty year absence in their own way, but they remain loyal to the man who returns home once they can finally know him as the husband and father they’ve been waiting for.
II. The ‘I’ Problem
Early in their wanderings, Odysseus and his men land on the island of the cyclopes, the one-eyed offspring of the god Poseidon. The cyclopes live in cave dwellings on Mount Etna. (Fun fact for nerds: Mount Etna, an active volcano in Sicily, was used as a filming location for Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. The scenes themselves weren’t filmed there. That would be nuts. But cameras captured footage of the active volcano to use as the backdrop for the duel between Anakin and Obi Wan on Mustafar.) The cyclopes are giant, one-eyed creatures perceived as savage and monstrous by their human visitors in The Odyssey. The qualities that make them monsters or other to the humans extend beyond just their physical appearance. The ancient Greek people upheld certain values, one of the most important of these being xenia, the practice of hospitality. Hospitality was an expectation and right for both hosts and guests; there was a code of generosity, respect and friendliness by which both parties were obliged to abide. The cyclopes did not honor this code of hospitality; their priorities fell only within the sphere of their cyclopes-inhabited island, and anyone infringing on this space was viewed and treated as an intruder rather than a welcome guest. This limited scope of their loyalty and inability to welcome outsiders reflects the selfish nature of their existence. Even the manner in which their race lives is more self-focused than community based. The cyclops Polyphemus, whom Odysseus and his men encounter, is the only cyclops with whom they interact. The others don’t even know a stranger has entered their territory until after the fact. This is the case, because even though the cyclopes have loyalty and kinship amongst each other, they lead solitary lives. They mind their own business, tend their own sheep, get along with their own, and view anyone who doesn’t look like them as an outsider. In this way, the episode on the island of the cyclopes symbolizes the major obstacle that Odysseus’s ego plays in his life.
His ego is his fatal flaw, something the ancient Greeks called hamartia - literally, missing the mark. In the epic hero cycles, this flaw was some character defect that resulted in major consequences for the hero and needed to be overcome in order for the hero to succeed in his character arc. The translation of “missing the mark” implies that these defects were rooted in something that isn’t faulty by nature; rather, that it missed that area of balance that would make it a functional, admirable trait. Odysseus’s ego is rooted in a sense of pride. Pride in self and in the community of which we’re part isn’t a bad thing, but when that pride merges with selfishness at the cost of others, it becomes a problem.
Ego - the Latin for “I” - is this part of the self that feels like our true self but is really a construct rooted in our mind’s preferred conception of self. Latin helps in my understanding of it. Ego is “I”, but it’s kind of an unnecessary “I” since personal agency is inherently present in every verb of being or action in the Latin language. You can say “I am” or “I love” in Latin without the pronoun “I/ego”. The pronoun’s role is more emphatic than functional. It’s a bit egotistical. When we insist on pointing out our rightness, having the last word, or acting on anger when we feel wronged, we’re often letting our ego take agency. When we need to look like the one who’s right, in control, or better than, that’s our ego. That ego, disguised so effectively as our truest self, is the part of us that only looks out for us and our security. Like the one-eyed monsters of this mythology, when we let our ego dominate our minds, we look out for ourselves; and that concern only extends to those who fit into our agenda of self preservation.
The best way for me to make sense of it is that when I think with my ego, I subconsciously put walls between me and others. I am a separate self corresponding to no greater whole in this mode. I can be impatient or short when my ego calls the shots, but I can also be so overwhelmed with whatever’s going on that I completely shut myself off from others. I never viewed myself as particularly selfish when I was in my addiction because I spent the majority of my time doing things for my students and tried to be generous and kind to the people in my life. But I can see how my ego had a role in that, because it let me justify holding onto habits that prevented me from being truly present to these people and from giving them the kind of selfless love that I now realize I wasn’t capable of experiencing at the time.
When Odysseus and his men find the cave of Polyphemus, they expect the kind of hospitality they would receive anywhere in their known world. When the giant returns and finds them, he rudely dismisses Odysseus’s invocation to respect the gods by welcoming them, saying that he doesn’t worship Zeus, and he brutally kills and devours two of the men. His actions here reflect our ego’s strong stance against living in accordance with the will of a higher power and its innate disregard for the good of others. The ego doesn’t respect any authority aside from its own, and it views accepting the will of a higher power as going against what’s authentic for us. It’s important to recognize that our ego is not who we are even if it’s deeply connected to our true self. The dynamic between Polyphemus and Odysseus reflects this distinction: Polyphemus represents Odysseus’s ego, a superhuman sized monster with a single eye whose physical stature reflects Odysseus’s inflated sense of self and single minded view of the world as a universe in orbit around himself. Odysseus does care about the people in his life at this point. He cares about getting his men home safely, he cares about the companions he’s lost in the war, and he cares about the family he’s left behind. But when his ego takes over, it prevents him from loving them selflessly as they are. He may care about his men, but his need to bring them home also ties into his need to be a successful leader. He may love his family, but he loves them as his wife and son, roles that give them value for their connection to him and which Homer emphasizes in his narrative of them. We see a glimpse of this in the fact that Penelope is known and praised for her loyalty. Homer presents her great conflicts as the ones that threaten her role as wife even when she must have a thousand other things going on in the time Odysseus has been away. She’s loyal, yes, but she’s so much more.
So Odysseus gets his men into the mess with Polyphemus mainly because he insists on waiting to see who owns the cave so that he can receive the expected gifts of hospitality, even though his men want to just get out of there. Though he uses his wits to keep himself and several of them safe from the brutal treatment of their host, he makes the mistake of thinking he can manage the situation and escape unscathed. He tells Polyphemus that his name is “Nobody” in the beginning, and he establishes some kind of rapport with the giant, who decides to eat him last as a sign of respect or something. Odysseus schemes a way out for himself and his men involving getting the cyclops drunk, gouging out his single eye, and tying themselves under his sheep so they can exit the cave when the cyclops opens it for his animals. When Polyphemus yells to his fellow cyclops that “Nobody” has gouged out his eye, they naturally respond with indifference. They can’t be bothered to come check on poor Polyphemus if nobody has hurt him.
Odysseus and his men seem to be in the clear, but our hero can’t leave without asserting his ego. He shouts back that “Odysseus”has done these things, and in doing so gives agency back to his ego. He’s successfully navigated danger by being “nobody”, but he gives into his ego before he can be truly safe. This slip illustrates the unnecessary, assertive nature of the ego and results in terrible storms sent by Poseidon (Polyphemus’s dad). Odysseus succeeds in defeating a giant and rescuing part of his crew by being nobody, but his urge to name himself for this triumph results in disaster. It’s a reminder of the constant work we have to do to keep our ego in check. We need to practice putting aside our egos and being “nobody” in the way that Odysseus does in this episode. Not by going dark or downplaying our worth, but by recognizing that our true self is enough by nature of our connection to something greater, by being someone for others rather than for ourselves.
III. Distractions
Odysseus leaves the fallen city of Troy with a fleet of ships, but they don’t all make it safely back to Ithaca. A series of obstacles - wrought by the gods (who have a hand in more than the humans know in these epics), fellow humans, and forces of nature - gradually decimate his crew until he’s the lone survivor. It’s from this place of solitude and despair that he tells his story, recounting the experiences that delayed his return and left him alone and without a crew. We’ve come to know one of the first of these obstacles as the Lotus Eaters. The name and who they are (humans who eat the lotus plant) don’t seem to pose any big threat, but they’re easily one of most threatening obstacles to Odysseus and his men’s return home. The Lotus Eaters live on an island dominated by the lotus plant, and the inhabitants subsist primarily on its fruit, which is a narcotic. The men who consume this fruit drift into an apathetic sleep and forget everything of their lives outside the island. For men returning from a traumatic ten-year war, this state of pleasant oblivion offers freedom from both the memories of the war and from the daunting task of having to return to and assume the vast responsibilities of their lives at home. The lotus eaters live outside that world of pain and fear, and their lifestyle is particularly tempting for men who don’t yet know how they’ll go about transitioning back into their lives in Greece with the weight of a war in their minds.
The lotus eaters and the life they offer doesn’t seem harmful, but it’s dangerous to Odysseus and his men because it threatens their return home. The lotus promises a solution for the pain that doesn’t require facing it, but it comes at the price of losing touch with their true selves. The lotus eliminates all else beyond the immediate sphere of the island from the minds of those consuming it. It not only erases past pains; it takes away the uncertainty and anticipated discomfort of a journey at sea and integrating back into life after being away for so long. It puts a pause on the hard responsibilities that await the men who have been through the hell of war and will take any source of alleviation offered to them. They may not consciously want to forget their homes when they eat of it, but the relief is intoxicating and wipes all hesitancy and rational thought from their minds when they try it. Drinking works in that way, but so do many seemingly harmless little habits we pick up or intensify in sobriety.
When we stop drinking or using whatever substance was our chosen medicine, we don’t leave behind the pain that either led us to drink in the first place or piled up throughout our time in the cycle. Alcohol was a remedy for that pain; without it, we’re left solutionless. We can be pretty miserable if we don’t adopt a new solution to the spiritual malady that still keeps us very sick, especially in early recovery. For many of us, the twelve steps offer that kind of solution by facilitating connection with a higher power, exploration of self, relationships with others, meditation and service. But the kind of work we do in the program takes time and effort, and we may find ourselves vulnerable to other seeming solutions that ultimately distract us from fully investing in a lasting, true solution.
Drinking became a solution for me almost right away, and that’s true for a lot of people who find themselves in recovery. It was the solution to living in a world I didn’t want to be in, one with feelings and circumstances I didn’t know how to accept and didn’t want to figure out how to navigate. In my first real attempt to stop drinking, I lasted two months but didn’t work a program or find a community. I had solutionless sobriety - I’d eliminated my solution, thinking it was my problem and believing that everything else would sort itself out in its absence; however, I found that I had a lot of pain in need of a remedy. I tried to fill that need by keeping busy with running, art, and other activities, but they felt more like escapes or distractions than real solutions to the feelings. I was miserable and couldn’t understand why until months later when I began working a program of recovery in earnest. In recovery, we find a new solution in God, in connection with others, in the work of the program. But that solution only remains effective with consistent practice and work that can be pretty difficult at times. These practices work, but they also take time. they’re not immediate salves that erase pain like the lotus plant. It’s tempting to seek out other, easier solutions in limited dopamine hits that promise more immediate relief from whatever lingering or new pain we experience in recovery. These seemingly harmless habits are things we begin doing to fill the void that our alcohol used to fill, things we do almost compulsively, with not much sense of moderation and without really needing to. These harm reduction solutions offer a kind of relief that’s not the same as drinking, but their danger is that they distract us from real recovery in the same way that alcohol does.
In sobriety, the feelings we tried to drown through drinking come back sharper than before; any trauma we suppressed can resurrect at inopportune times; and the shame and guilt we’ve accumulated from time in active addiction doesn’t disappear when we stop drinking. The experience of these feelings without our familiar fix to erase them leaves us lost and vulnerable. Odysseus and his men have survived the Trojan War, but they carry with them the pain of having been absent for so long from their homes and of all the horrors of the war they’ve witnessed. The Lotus Eaters can’t take them away from their internal wars in the same way that the actual war does, but they offer something else that erases that pain in a similar way.
Much later on his journey, Odysseus encounters another distractive obstacle in the form of the goddess Calypso. He washes up on her island after a storm has wrecked his ships and taken the lives of his remaining crew. He is in a low place, and the goddess welcomes him. Even gods honor the code of hospitality, and she could use some company. Plus, he’s somehow still pretty attractive even after the years at war and being shipwrecked. Calypso offers him the kind of relief that someone starved of physical connection and intimacy craves more than anything. Her company, though it detains him from his mission, is the closest thing he’s experienced to the love he’s missed since leaving home, so he accepts it. Odysseus’s prolonged stay on her island is annoying since we know Penelope is waiting loyally for his return, but it’s more than just our hero enjoying the particular hospitality of this sexy deity. Odysseus does want to get back home to Penelope, and he’s not just thinking he can get both with his detour with Calypso. He’s dealing with the compounded pain of the war and his failure as a leader to keep his fellow survivors alive along with him. He may not see Calypso as an obstacle at first, but the connection he thinks he finds with her is based on comfort and solace rather than love. He weeps for Penelope and even tells Calypso of the pain it causes him to be without her, but he can’t leave. He lacks the means to sail away from her island, and only the eventual intercession of the gods convinces Calypso to let him go.
Odysseus’s time on Calypso’s island reflects the distracting and sometimes disruptive nature that sexual or romantic interests and endeavors can have on our recovery. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good romance with a happy ending, and I’ve seen that happen for people in recovery in such a beautiful way. But sometimes we turn to what we think is love for the wrong reasons, and it can get complicated if we’re not careful about prioritizing our recovery and upholding the values essential to that recovery. When we let sexual attraction or a crush based on a narrative of our own making start dictating the patterns of our thoughts and actions, we lose focus on this recovery. In the case of Odysseus, recovery is his return home. When he lets himself be detained by Calypso, he does so either because he doesn’t think it will hurt his recovery or because deep down he doesn’t believe he’ll ever get home and this is the next best thing to it. When we enter into the kind of mindset that characterizes an unhealthy relationship or attraction, we do so for similar reasons, whether we realize it or not. We may not see our thoughts or actions as potentially harmful to our recovery, or we justify them as unrelated to our recovery. We may like someone who sabotages our peace or doesn’t bring out the best in us, but we feel a morsel of relief when we do feel wanted or attractive so we let them stay in our lives. We may settle in a relationship that looks a lot like the ones we had in active addiction, and we convince ourselves that we don’t deserve anything better and it’s fine as long as we just don’t drink. These attractions or relationships, like Calypso, may give us some relief from ourselves, but they threaten to derail or delay our recovery by distracting us from the work we’re doing on ourselves and the connection we’re building with others and with our higher power. We don’t see it, but it happens. When we find love - true love, whether in early recovery or much later than we’re hoping for, it will align with our journey, not hinder it. It will feel like home, not an island in a sea we’ve been trying to navigate on our way home. The island may feel safe and may be beautiful, but it’s not home, and we owe it to ourselves to keep moving.
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This essay is long enough, so saving the rest for later.
