Facing the Fountain of Youth

It has been said that the line between youth and age is the point when you stop yearning to look older and begin to hope you look younger. The search for youth is an old--and timely-- story. It was five hundred years ago this week that the explorer  Ponce de Leon, searching for the fountain of youth, claimed Florida as his discovery.

That makes us laugh today because we may think of Florida as the Fountain of Aging giving its reputation as a retirement destination. Or maybe it’s a fountain of youth denial given the prevalence of plastic surgery. But Ponce de Leon was just one of many who had sought the secret of youth. The ancient story of the search for the Holy Grain was also a search for a way to stay forever young.

Today those with the same desire have an endless bounty of pseudo-miracles to prolong our appearance of youth. We have lasers, Botox and plastic surgery. And many of us know the shock of the mirror and the discrepancy between what we feel like versus what we look like in that reflection.

There is also a cultural disappointment as so many of us age together and the pressure to look young intensifies. Years ago when the middle-aged “Baby Boom” was predicted we imagined that having an older majority would mean more acceptance of aging. We were wrong. Rather than the demographic bump offering us permission to de-babe, it has instead created even more pressure to not go gently into our wrinkles and gray hair.

How does this apply to us as people in recovery? Well, if you’ve been around awhile or you plan to be in recovery a long time –you’ll need to come to terms with your beliefs and choices around aging and appearance. Just as we keep examining our insides we also do have to face our faces and come to terms with our outsides. And yes this does hit woman harder than men. Again, culture.

Sure we can blame media and marketing but the focus on “them” ignores the fact that the search for youth is not really about looking younger. What Ponce de Leon and those who sought the Grail wanted was not a cosmetic fix but immortality. They wanted to not die.

And of course many of us came into recovery because we didn’t want to die—at least not the way we were going to if we kept using. But the truth is that we will die and recovery offers us the chance to relay think that through. Only when we understand that we’re going to die do we ask the crucial questions:  What do you want to do with your life? And with whom do you want to spend your precious time? Maybe accepting death –really accepting it—is the best secret to living young.

As so many of us—and I’m in here too—try to erase our age with lotions and lasers we are trying to change reality. But that may also be magical thinking, just like looking for the fountain of youth. 

The Silver Tsunami

We know about the Boomer Bump. The huge demographic shift that is overtaking our economy and healthcare system is changing our family and social dynamics in many ways.  Our rapidly aging community means more caregivers of all ages and greater longevity but also more disability.

But that also means more drug addiction and more misuse of drugs and alcohol.

The tsunami for older adults who are using and misusing substances is tricky because we have social and cultural blocks to recognizing and addressing the issue. Can’t Gramma enjoy her glass of wine? Why should Grampa be in pain if his doctor is OK with giving him prescriptions? If the doctor says it’s OK, what’s the big deal?

But it is a big deal because we are seeing huge increases in the number of people in their 60’s as first time users of marijuana and cocaine. I know, seems crazy right? But Gramps is not down on the corner scoring the stuff from some kid, he’s buying it at the senior center and in the assisted living center lobby, and it comes right to his door in the senior high-rise.

And the numbers compound when you consider that 10,000 people turn 65 everyday in the United States.

We know that alcohol and drug use increase with stress and this is the group who are facing endless caregiving. Being a family caregiver is no longer a 12 to 18 month task while someone progresses thru a serious illness. Better healthcare means that caregiving will go on and on and on and, well, who would deny someone in that situation some wine, or some Valium or some Ambien or if you are exhausted, a little cocaine?

Most folks over 60 have an average eleven medications prescribed for them by an average of three doctors. The most prescribed medications for seniors are Benzodiazepines: Valium, Zanex, Ambien etc. They are central nervous system depressants. And highly addictive. And they mimic the symptoms of dementia—so family, and even physicians, can be fooled.

Opiates are prescribed for pain. But chronic use can actually lower one’s pain threshold. Chronic opiate use—with prescribed medications—can lead patients to feel more pain—so then it seems natural to ask for and take more and stronger pain meds.

Caregivers of people with chronic illness are living with huge unspoken resentment and grief. It’s not what they imagined retirement to be. Where is the fun? Where is the adventure they worked so hard to afford?

So why not some wine or one of those new drinks? Boomers who may have used pot in their 20’s and gave it up for work and family often romance the idea of being able to use pot again after retirement. But the pot they are buying today is not what they smoked in college. It is much stronger and laced with coke and speed and other drugs.

There are now specialized treatment programs and even inpatient services for new addicts over 60. And we can expect to see many more folks from the Silver Tsunami in our Twelve Step groups as well. 

Women of a Certain Age

There seem to be so many of us.

Last night at our regional theater I looked over the audience before the play began and we were filling the theater. Regional theater is the place where we congregate. Women 55 and up. Women are there with a friend or two. Some are with husbands and you can tell right away they are husbands and not dates. Something flat in the energy or affect signals the difference.

It’s about energy. It is not the wrinkles that give us away. It is our crisp, practical haircuts. Hair that is just one tone too dark for the face it surrounds. Hair too stiff because it is gray being covered with that brown, red or blonde. Some of us just cannot give up hair spray and embrace more pliable products.

It’s also about the “interesting” earrings. And the eyeglasses that are too bright or too big.

We add our all-weather coats with convenient zip off hoods which should be torn off and thrown away at the same time we throw away the price tags.

Our energy wanes so we stop trying. Then we add back some imitation resolve with strong hair and soft shoes.

No wonder libido wanes.

We must resolve to resist this. Revolution begins here.

Shoes I Will Not Wear

I see these shoes all over. They are sold through catalogs like, Modern Maturity and All About You, which are supposed to be celebrating mid-life. But now I’m also seeing these shoes here in the chic shoe shop on the Cape. These shoes have all kinds of euphemistic names like On the Move Comfort Footwear, but ya know what? These are old lady shoes.

A friend brought a catalog to show me a pair of these comfort shoes that she was considering for a special event. “They look so comfortable” she says, “but are they too dowdy?” How to answer? I look at the shoe and I say to my friend, “Maybe go for something a little more strappy; you don’t have to walk in them.” But what I want to say is, “Those are shoes for a woman who has forgotten what her vagina is for.”

Yes, I know that these shoes feel good but it is a slippery slope. One day you allow yourself to wear these “comfort shoes” and within a week you are buying a pink jogging suit decorated with gold embroidery emblems, and thinking, “That looks nice.” Or you buy a pair of these shoes with “manmade breathable uppers” and soft rubbery soles (so you don’t break a hip on the bocce court?) and soon after you are thinking, “Why spend all that money for someone else to put color on my hair; I could just buy a box of that hair dye that Sarah Jessica Parker uses. She always looks so nice.”

Maybe it’s a matter of chemistry: You buy a pair of comfort shoes in a “nice, practical” navy or worse, in ivory, and after a few wearings the chemicals in the shoe enter your brain and you begin to think that pants with an elastic waist make perfect sense. I mean, after all, you gain a little weight now and then so wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t need to buy new pants every time you gain a pound? A little elastic and you are all set. Or you begin to think that you don’t really need new underwear every year. You could buy one of those “bra extenders” and get more life out of the old bras. Did you really ever have to go to the hospital and have someone see your raggedy drawers? No, of course not.

This all begins with the shoes.

Guard yourself and help your friends too. Comfort shoes are a frightening thing. They are the end of sex and the end of independent thought. In these shoes you will give up reading new fiction and listening to public radio. You will claim that you don’t know who Arianna Huffington is and you will think the red string on Madonna’s wrist is to remind her to buy a birthday card for her brother. No, these are truly end-of-life footwear.

But even saying that I have this request: Even if I am to be buried and the law requires that corpses wear shoes, or even if I am going to be cremated, please do not put “comfort shoes” on my feet. Gold sandals, a simple Ferragamo pump if you have to, or rubber thongs. Wherever I go from here, it’s still about best foot forward.