Better than Happiness

‘Are you happy?’

Three small words with the power to evoke big philo­sophical discussions. What is happiness, after all? I was never quite sure, but I can tell you categorically that it was thin on the ground in the house where I grew up. There wasn’t any happiness to be found in the orphanage or the juvenile detention centres of my youth either. Yet, apparently, happi­ness was a very real thing and definitely worth striving for.

It was an intoxicating idea, the notion of a shimmering, gladdening prize at the end of an existential treasure hunt. The promise of these riches caused me to chase an elusive state of mind all over the place for forty-five fairly miser­able years. After I was ejected from State care at nineteen, I searched feverishly for the smallest traces of happiness, even in the most haunted corners of my dark and trauma­tised world.

I’d find it spasmodically, or at least I thought I did, often swirling at the bottom of a schooner glass or smouldering at the end of a joint. Later on I’d get injections of heroin hap­piness. Before long, just the anticipation of escaping into a stoned or drunken state was enough to make me feel a little bit golden. But of course, everything would fade back to black soon enough and off I’d go, in hot pursuit of ‘happy’ once again.

The allure of it sent me on physical wild goose chases as well as the destructive chemical variety. As a young boy I constantly ran away from home, chasing after the flipside of sadness, and by the time I could drive a car these hopeful excursions fanned out all over the map. Once I even tried to drive four thousand kilometres across the continent for the sake of feeling just a smidgen less awful.

It was 1982 and I’d quit my lowly job in Sydney. With a few hundred dollars in my pocket, I pinned my hopes on a happy new life in Perth. After drink-driving my way across the baking Hay Plains, I made it as far as Adelaide before my booze, petrol and optimism ran dry. I’d been homeless for years at that point and was downing four litres of cheap cask wine every day.

After a horrible night sleeping it off in my car, I found a phone booth, flipped through the White Pages and contacted a detox clinic in the City of Churches. For whatever long-forgotten reason, I was desperate for a lifeline. Blessedly, I was admitted as a patient later that day.

The staff prescribed medication in case I experienced delirium tremens – severe and potentially fatal alcohol with­drawal symptoms. The DTs, as they’re known, usually start a few days after the last drink.

I have only fragmented memories of what happened next, but the following morning staff told me I’d gone into the DTs on the first night, before they’d had a chance to medi­cate me. They said I’d screamed and crashed about the room I was sharing with two other patients, overturning beds and diving for cover in a wide-eyed state of terror. Apparently I was fleeing from a phantom attacker who was trying to kill me with a spear. Later on I discovered ‘delirium tremens’ is Latin for ‘trembling madness’.

After three weeks I walked out of detox in Adelaide sober and feeling on top of the world – so good, in fact, that I celebrated with a drink. A few days later I was back in the gutters of Sydney as drunk and as homeless as ever.

Up. Down. Up again. Down again. The pursuit of hap­piness was exhausting: a never-ending roller-coaster ride that 

had long since ceased to be a thrill. After a few more tur­bulent years of trauma and dysfunction, I decided I’d been tossed around enough. Besides, I’d found another way to escape from the anguish of my sorry life: it was in a quiet place far removed from the heartless nation I believed had judged and rejected me.

Around 1990, at the end of another long and pointless trek to nowhere in particular, I wandered into a mountain­top rainforest in Goonengerry, northern New South Wales, and stayed there for the best part of a decade.

During my tenure as a bush-dwelling hermit, I’d stare into my campfire and contemplate why I was so angry, alone, ashamed and so universally unhappy. I may have been a homeless man and a drifter, but I had made repeated attempts to find a meaningful place in society. The promise of each new town and every new job, however, was broken sooner or later. Why did I always fail? How come happiness was always out of my reach?

Although I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I began to wonder if something fundamental – something completely unrelated to my severe and obvious problems – might also be amiss.

‘Is happiness even real? What does being happy actually mean?’

The answers would come, but not until much later.

When I left the forest and re-joined society in 1999, I was dismayed to find all the baggage I’d had before was still there waiting for me: the painful childhood trauma, the alcohol­ism and drug addiction, the loneliness and the contempt of an imperious society. After a remarkable park bench epiph­any, I finally started to unpack it, piece by piece, hour by hour, week by week – a process that has lasted more than twenty-three years and continues today.

It has been a painstaking, beautiful, confronting, fasci­nating, terrifying and ultimately liberating journey. Along the way I have gained the education I was denied as a child. That process eventuated in me gaining a PhD and making a successful career in academia. As a social scientist I have not only developed a greater understanding of the human condition, but I have been gifted the opportunity to share my knowledge and experiences with others.

I have also come to realise something I wish I’d known a long time ago: happiness is completely overrated.

I still wind up in detox clinics from time to time, but nowadays it’s in answer to a call for help, not the other way around. As a lived experience expert in alcoholism, addiction and PTSD, I’m often invited to speak to people who are in the throes of detoxification and rehabilitation. Many have been homeless, too – another tie that binds us.

I don’t preach. People’s problems are varied and com­plex, and a speech from me won’t fix a lifetime of woe. All I can do is tell them how I went about transitioning out of trauma, addiction and chronic long-term homelessness into a rich and fulfilling life surrounded by people I love and who love me.

While you may not be going through anything as extreme as detox or homelessness, the chances are, if you’ve picked up this book, there are things about your life you’d like to change. I’m not going to preach to you either, but the subtext is pretty clear: ‘If I can do it, so can you.’

Usually I speak to people in detox centres in groups. I tell them about my life for forty minutes or so and then do my best to answer their questions. The most common question by far is: ‘Are you happy?’

It’s a sad question when posed in the hallways of heal­ing, and it speaks to the misery of people battling addiction, sadness and a lack of hope. The fact is that happiness is impermanent: it can vanish like smoke in the wind. It is not an answer to life’s problems nor a lasting reward for better choices. I don’t even consider it an ideal state of mind.

So whenever I’m asked the question, I always give the same answer:

‘There’s a realm beyond happiness that very few people inhabit. Follow what I’ve done, and you may one day enter it. It’s a wonderful place called contentment.’

This is the story of how I got there.