PISS POOR LOGIC
Here I am now at sixty two having spent most of my life advocating for universal health care. Not universal health insurance, because that makes this a financial transaction when we should be talking about conditions of life. If you were to call it anything, call it Universal Health Care Assurance.
However, all of this is beside my point. The point is my advocacy; because I have felt that nobody should have to make a choice between eating and treating their heart disease or their diabetes or hypertension. Life is hard enough than to have to make choices between health and a warm place to put your head; or feeding your child rather than seeing a specialist for further diagnostic workup.
Or when you have tried to take care of yourself and you find that there is that just one thing wrong and there are lots of considerations to ponder. So you have a regular check up and because you are older, and male and you piss rather poorly, your doctor, who has been following your prostate, does another PSA and this time finds that it has gone over the limit of normal. What do you do?You go to see the specialist right?
Well not so fast!
First you have to take many things into consideration, not the least of which is whether the chances that this could turn into a diagnosis of cancer is likely. And the person with the greatest degree of denial will think of all kinds of reasons to say, "well there are good scientific reasons in the literature as to whether PSA is even a valid measure or reflection of prostate cancer." I would like to say that I fall into that category but I also fall into the category of "I pee poorly so I should see and should have seen the specialist a while ago regardless of the lab test." So denial should have no play in this decision.
But, then, I am also an alcoholic and I can look for other reasons to avoid that "delicate digitator" (the urologist) as only an alcoholic can. Or like any other person filled with cancer denial I could be just a routine denier and flee from reasonable investigation for any other pretext. But what I should not be doing beside pretending, is to be unconscionably forced to pass up the exam because I do not have the money to go to the doctor.
Yet here I am, after thirty years in medicine myself, short on funds, not being able to see my doc because I am broke and I have to wonder if I am avoiding my decision because I am just being skeptical of a test I have long held to be suspicious of or am I just avoiding more credit card debt?
Now that's a sober thought for one hell of an alcoholic!
© res 3/14/11
Monday, March 14, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
A BIT MORE TIME
A BIT MORE TIME
'Life is an end in itself and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.' Oliver Wendell Homes Jr.
This week I gave a talk to some volunteer counselors on alcoholism and by way of introduction I mentioned my friendship with their boss whom I know for more than forty years, going back to our summer camp days. I mused out loud, how marvelous a friend ship was if I were to evaluate that forty year span in terms of a ‘friendship quotient.’ Time gives us the perspective to appreciate those friends with whom we have developed abidingly close ties, ties that only temporal passage allows such bonds to form. And in thinking about time, and in particular those past forty years which pretty much encompassed the bulk of my working, married and intellectual life, I ruminated what this meant in terms of my emotional growth over that two score period.
This came about initially as I injected the notion of time into the seminar which, was about Alcoholics Anonymous, what it is, what it means to its members, what it does and does not do for its members and perhaps what its members owe the organization itself. And the concept of time became an axis in the discussion about which we orbited. Its centrifugal force kept us returning to time, the epicenter of healing in AA.
Time, I have found, is the key ingredient to almost everything in the program. I remember when I would challenge my sponsor about not being far enough along the steps and he would say 'you’re just where you’re supposed to be'. At first I would find that irritating as hell, grit my teeth , seethe and I would exchange glances that would forever after be referred to as those 'dagger-like looks that we no longer have' as a means of judging my progress in the program.
But now when Big Al says I’m where I am supposed to be, I take great comfort in that at least I have not missed anything that I have to go back for. ' If this is where I should be, in all of this angst, well he’s been here before and this is something I just have to live through.'... Time.
And that has helped me to 'survive' not just soberly, but just to survive at all in this first year of my return to the light. Trite as it might sound, 'time took time'.
I mentioned this in the seminar that this was a basic tenet of AA. We are promised many things in AA, the 'Promises of AA'; but they are promised with the unsaid caveat of 'in good time'. This is one of the hardest lessons to learn in life, let alone in AA and learning it of course is where the success of AA’s life’s promises springs from.
So when I mentioned this concept I didn’t get many perplexed looks in the room of perhaps 25 participants, but I did not get looks of avid understanding either. Either because these were such obvious 'civilians' or because it is just not one of those life lessons that bears any particular significance to a normal person to whom such 'hayseed wisdom' is the stuff of earth shattering moment.
But for one of the participants sitting there I noticed a rather vigorous nod of agreement and a broad smile and laser look at me and instantly knew we were ‘soul mates’. And this made me recall that from the beginning of the seminar I had seen that nodding assent to just about everything I said, practically the only smiling visage in the crowd. And when I looked around the room and compared that soul's face to the others, everyone was so serious, but, (and this was not to minimized the topic), we shared a recognition that this was our life and over time we had learned to live with it and in it; and it wasn’t nearly as bad inside AA as it appeared outside.
'Time heals all wounds'. The process of healing of course is an organic one. It literally requires temporal considerations; things have to happen. Fibrin must be deposited upon platelet clotted substrate. Scar tissue must form from the grosser scabs. Stressors applied to the wound cause remodeling and finally the scab falls away until the smoother, stronger, lighter scar appears to replace that original gaudy gash.
Time repairs the wound, remodels the surface, reworks the substrate, revamps and renovates the original site of the insult.
Alcohol, both metaphorically and actually caused insult to our bodies, souls, personalities, egos and we are in grave requirement of repair. We need time. Time for the insult to be exposed to spirit and God; and time to wash the self in reflection, perhaps to meditate on ourselves as to how God or a higher power can heal us.
And the concept of acceptance of the need for time, for us alcoholics, is even harder than for 'normal' folks, even the most strong willed. Most people balk at having to wait, but will do so because they know that 'all good things come to those who wait'. And somewhere in the most complicated but normal human soul the truth of this adage has singular veracity. It is acknowledged, it is a given. Their lives have demonstrated its certitude.
But drunks are enemies of time and deliberation. 'They want, what they want when they want it'. They think that taking time is an excuse for procrastinators, prevaricators, people who will put off ‘till tomorrow what should be done today’ for nefarious reasons. 'These are not honest people', goes the alcoholic mind. They see normal people as hiding behind the façade of ‘ordered progression’; under the guise of 'don’t rush into things, things need to be done right!'
The drunk parades his reckless, self-centered, egotistical nature in his unwillingness to take time to consider consequences. Impulsivity rules the day and 'sober consideration' is for other people.
No wonder that we talk about sobriety being a state of mind apart from whether we are abstinent or not, inebriated or not! The 'dry drunk' can behave as 'alcoholically' as any inebriated drunk if he hasn’t changed his personality traits and character defects which put his life into turmoil in the first place.
And to do that requires that we become engaged with the program of AA, acknowledge and accept the first three steps and 'turn our will and life over to the care of a higher power' in order to seek recovery from those behavioral and personality defects that drive us to drive others batty and ruin all our relations with the world.
So we must meditate on our defects, ask for the help of a higher power and begin to practice the principles of AA in all of our daily affairs. But when we haven’t done that before, we need a thorough retraining course in life and if it had taken us ten years to get to this point, what gives us the notion to expect to get spiritually sober in half that time?
Time... Time takes time.
It is not a silly mantra. The more you think about the complexity of how you got here in the first place, the easier it is to accept the concept of time as a healing wound. As I illustrated before, after the insult of crazy behavior has seared a wound into the psyche and soul, family and personal community, one has to withdraw and regroup; like the body’s extrinsic coagulation repair system.
But when the acute bleeding is staunched, returning to the scene of the wound , day in and day out by working the steps, doing 90 meetings in 90 days, talking to others in the rooms, going to the meeting before the meeting and the one after the meeting, you gradually begin to decrease the inflammation of the initial assault. Then by avoiding alcohol (people, places and things) taking suggestions, studying the 12 steps, getting a sponsor, you start to begin to understand the common story between you and everyone else in the rooms; and with that, the sense that your pain is uniquely your own and that no one understands you is revealed for the clever lie that it surely is.
When then you look back at the time you came into the rooms after all that work, you begin to see how the wound has begun to be remodeled; but you also start to understand that the work has just begun. Because you have gained a certain perspective on what it takes to start to live a spiritual life and you understand that you are not there yet and need to put in more time.
The fundamental thing to remember in AA is that life is good; a good life requires time. Time is of the essence only if you run out of it...
Otherwise all you need is a bit more of it.
© res 3/3/2011
'Life is an end in itself and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.' Oliver Wendell Homes Jr.
This week I gave a talk to some volunteer counselors on alcoholism and by way of introduction I mentioned my friendship with their boss whom I know for more than forty years, going back to our summer camp days. I mused out loud, how marvelous a friend ship was if I were to evaluate that forty year span in terms of a ‘friendship quotient.’ Time gives us the perspective to appreciate those friends with whom we have developed abidingly close ties, ties that only temporal passage allows such bonds to form. And in thinking about time, and in particular those past forty years which pretty much encompassed the bulk of my working, married and intellectual life, I ruminated what this meant in terms of my emotional growth over that two score period.
This came about initially as I injected the notion of time into the seminar which, was about Alcoholics Anonymous, what it is, what it means to its members, what it does and does not do for its members and perhaps what its members owe the organization itself. And the concept of time became an axis in the discussion about which we orbited. Its centrifugal force kept us returning to time, the epicenter of healing in AA.
Time, I have found, is the key ingredient to almost everything in the program. I remember when I would challenge my sponsor about not being far enough along the steps and he would say 'you’re just where you’re supposed to be'. At first I would find that irritating as hell, grit my teeth , seethe and I would exchange glances that would forever after be referred to as those 'dagger-like looks that we no longer have' as a means of judging my progress in the program.
But now when Big Al says I’m where I am supposed to be, I take great comfort in that at least I have not missed anything that I have to go back for. ' If this is where I should be, in all of this angst, well he’s been here before and this is something I just have to live through.'... Time.
And that has helped me to 'survive' not just soberly, but just to survive at all in this first year of my return to the light. Trite as it might sound, 'time took time'.
I mentioned this in the seminar that this was a basic tenet of AA. We are promised many things in AA, the 'Promises of AA'; but they are promised with the unsaid caveat of 'in good time'. This is one of the hardest lessons to learn in life, let alone in AA and learning it of course is where the success of AA’s life’s promises springs from.
So when I mentioned this concept I didn’t get many perplexed looks in the room of perhaps 25 participants, but I did not get looks of avid understanding either. Either because these were such obvious 'civilians' or because it is just not one of those life lessons that bears any particular significance to a normal person to whom such 'hayseed wisdom' is the stuff of earth shattering moment.
But for one of the participants sitting there I noticed a rather vigorous nod of agreement and a broad smile and laser look at me and instantly knew we were ‘soul mates’. And this made me recall that from the beginning of the seminar I had seen that nodding assent to just about everything I said, practically the only smiling visage in the crowd. And when I looked around the room and compared that soul's face to the others, everyone was so serious, but, (and this was not to minimized the topic), we shared a recognition that this was our life and over time we had learned to live with it and in it; and it wasn’t nearly as bad inside AA as it appeared outside.
'Time heals all wounds'. The process of healing of course is an organic one. It literally requires temporal considerations; things have to happen. Fibrin must be deposited upon platelet clotted substrate. Scar tissue must form from the grosser scabs. Stressors applied to the wound cause remodeling and finally the scab falls away until the smoother, stronger, lighter scar appears to replace that original gaudy gash.
Time repairs the wound, remodels the surface, reworks the substrate, revamps and renovates the original site of the insult.
Alcohol, both metaphorically and actually caused insult to our bodies, souls, personalities, egos and we are in grave requirement of repair. We need time. Time for the insult to be exposed to spirit and God; and time to wash the self in reflection, perhaps to meditate on ourselves as to how God or a higher power can heal us.
And the concept of acceptance of the need for time, for us alcoholics, is even harder than for 'normal' folks, even the most strong willed. Most people balk at having to wait, but will do so because they know that 'all good things come to those who wait'. And somewhere in the most complicated but normal human soul the truth of this adage has singular veracity. It is acknowledged, it is a given. Their lives have demonstrated its certitude.
But drunks are enemies of time and deliberation. 'They want, what they want when they want it'. They think that taking time is an excuse for procrastinators, prevaricators, people who will put off ‘till tomorrow what should be done today’ for nefarious reasons. 'These are not honest people', goes the alcoholic mind. They see normal people as hiding behind the façade of ‘ordered progression’; under the guise of 'don’t rush into things, things need to be done right!'
The drunk parades his reckless, self-centered, egotistical nature in his unwillingness to take time to consider consequences. Impulsivity rules the day and 'sober consideration' is for other people.
No wonder that we talk about sobriety being a state of mind apart from whether we are abstinent or not, inebriated or not! The 'dry drunk' can behave as 'alcoholically' as any inebriated drunk if he hasn’t changed his personality traits and character defects which put his life into turmoil in the first place.
And to do that requires that we become engaged with the program of AA, acknowledge and accept the first three steps and 'turn our will and life over to the care of a higher power' in order to seek recovery from those behavioral and personality defects that drive us to drive others batty and ruin all our relations with the world.
So we must meditate on our defects, ask for the help of a higher power and begin to practice the principles of AA in all of our daily affairs. But when we haven’t done that before, we need a thorough retraining course in life and if it had taken us ten years to get to this point, what gives us the notion to expect to get spiritually sober in half that time?
Time... Time takes time.
It is not a silly mantra. The more you think about the complexity of how you got here in the first place, the easier it is to accept the concept of time as a healing wound. As I illustrated before, after the insult of crazy behavior has seared a wound into the psyche and soul, family and personal community, one has to withdraw and regroup; like the body’s extrinsic coagulation repair system.
But when the acute bleeding is staunched, returning to the scene of the wound , day in and day out by working the steps, doing 90 meetings in 90 days, talking to others in the rooms, going to the meeting before the meeting and the one after the meeting, you gradually begin to decrease the inflammation of the initial assault. Then by avoiding alcohol (people, places and things) taking suggestions, studying the 12 steps, getting a sponsor, you start to begin to understand the common story between you and everyone else in the rooms; and with that, the sense that your pain is uniquely your own and that no one understands you is revealed for the clever lie that it surely is.
When then you look back at the time you came into the rooms after all that work, you begin to see how the wound has begun to be remodeled; but you also start to understand that the work has just begun. Because you have gained a certain perspective on what it takes to start to live a spiritual life and you understand that you are not there yet and need to put in more time.
The fundamental thing to remember in AA is that life is good; a good life requires time. Time is of the essence only if you run out of it...
Otherwise all you need is a bit more of it.
© res 3/3/2011
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