YOUR CHOICE: CARPATHIA OR TITANIC?

YOUR CHOICE: CARPATHIA OR TITANIC?

“Please excuse me if I talk too much. I’ve held lot of this in for so long because I thought that this would not be the right place to share this stuff. But the only thing that that I accomplished by that was that it brought me closer to a drink. And when that happened, I knew that I had to start saying something. Because, (and  I’m I ashamed to say this but I have to get it off my chest), I’m afraid.

“I used to drink gallons of liquor and beer, and shot heroin until I was almost dead. And when my liver began to fail, I finally came around; not right away but gradually over years of drinking, drugging, and getting clean, I’ve finally accumulated twenty or so years of sobriety.  And that wasn’t easy since at first I was just white knuckling it. I didn’t believe in any higher power, I didn’t  think there was a higher power to begin with, even if it was only the rooms or the group. But over the years, I gradually began to see that if I wanted to survive, I needed to believe in something greater than myself, have a reason to live.

“Gradually, my belief in God evolved. That belief is very personal and it may not be the same as yours but it works for me. Mostly.

“But I have to say that that belief has been quite shaken. Because I’m angry and hurt since I believe that I’ve gotten a raw deal.  I mean I saw the light; I changed my ways; I got sober; I got a spiritual life.

“And then I got liver cancer…

“And then I got really scared. And that is why I need to talk and share this with you all today. 

“I have to start chemo soon and although the docs have told me what it is going to be like, it scares me.  I mean, the doctors say there is a 50-50 chance of the treatment working and if I had those odds every time I went to a casino, I’d be a rich guy by now.”

At age forty-five, Tom had finally learned to use the AA meetings as a forum for sharing the most  important information, like that news that would be most likely to drive him to use or to drink. Or if nothing else, plunge him into a deep depression.  Tom’s was profoundly disturbing information. And if it had no other effect than the deep anxiety that it obviously was causing, it was critical for Tom to get it on the table for him to share. Because he was afraid.

Afraid of dying? Perhaps so. He did not say. Of the treatment from the chemotherapy? Surely, somewhat. But in a moment of dispassionate reflection I was wondering why, with all of the near death experiences that he had with his addictions and his alcoholism, did he seem so panicky about a treatment which had such a relatively rosy prognosis?

Tom admitted to close encounters with death  from alcohol poisoning, liver toxicity and heroin over dose. Three separate occasions, in fact.  And the only explanation for this mounting anxiety was that with each successful resuscitation, the fear of another brought the truth of the permanence  of death that much closer to conscious awareness. So that when he finally realized that death was in fact real, everlasting, eternal and irreversible he took pause until fear finally filled that void where common sense had failed to previously register.

He realized that he could actually die, and with death, never return, not having said goodbyes, hellos, or even made an imprint on this world. He would cease to exist and apparently have had a meaningless existence.  And that scared the hell out of him; scared him sober in fact.

So now, in the face of death from a horrible  disease, he was fearful, the way most of us fear the unknown; not unwilling to move forward, but just needing that extra support to help us take those first steps toward the future, whatever it may hold.

I, frankly, was  stunned, and caught up for a moment, lost my place in moving the discussion along when Marie sort of slurred her story-share back into my consciousness.

“I came here to get my meds straightened out. They never get the meds right. After I leave a place like this, the meds always wind up wrong and when that happens I always try to self medicate. I know that is wrong but they never get it right, and then I have to start to using alcohol or drugs.

“They never get the dosage right and I wind right back in a place like this again because I self medicated with alcohol and that really throws things off. I return and they adjust the meds once more and then send me out again and the same thing happens.”

When asked how she planned to use AA to help her make this a different experience, she muttered that she was very shy and had trouble sharing, and so never felt comfortable at AA meetings.  And when told that she could find smaller, more intimate groups, she granted that when she got out she would go to a women’s meeting that she was comfortable with.  

When pressed, she admitted that this was the extent of her plan. Except that she took up the theme of another woman’s share whose goal was to help other people because her sobriety was best when she was engaged in AA service. Marie as an afterthought decided that she should help her father to stop drinking and asked the group how she could do that. He was on the brink of delirium tremens and showed signs of alcohol withdrawal if he went too long without a drink.

When the proffered answer was that she should not do much more than urge him to find a doctor so that her father could get admitted to a detox unit, she got angry . She thought we were not being helpful, that we were undermining her attempts to stay sober.

In point of fact, Marie had no program, had put no other thought into staying sober, had not yet gotten past the notion that her sobriety was anyone else’s fault but her own.  It was always a problem with her medications.  But her first and only solution was to self medicate not to pursue a well outlined program of recovery.

When the share got to Mike, a twenty four year old heroin addict, he readily admitted his abuse, took ownership of his addiction and added that this time he completely detoxed, getting entirely clean, no suboxone or methadone programs, realizing that these were as toxically addicting as the street drugs he used.  And as a result, he fell victim to one of the scourges of  IV drug use, Hepatitis C.  He realized at the age of twenty four, that if he did not want to look back with regret at the age of fifty, (assuming he ever reached it), at those guys who got sober in their twenties, then he would have to give sobriety one hundred per cent of his effort now.

It was also critical if he wanted to get treatment for his Hepatitis C and in order to avoid some of the eventual long term consequences of the infection such as liver  cancer, as Tom so touchingly shared just moments before.

So Mike had his plan.

Mike was followed by Ed (another twenty something) whose share unfortunately had a very Hobbsian portent (an end foretelling a life that would be nasty, brutish and short).  While he admitted that he was definitely an addict, he also admitted that he was powerless over his drugs. But he hadn’t admitted that his life was yet so unmanageable that he would not leave the rehab facility and immediately call his drug dealer and be “out” within two hours of having been discharged. 

I asked why he did not have a plan. And his answer was an unsatisfactory “the urge to use is too great”. 

To which I suggested that his urge to live was not great enough or that his urge to die was too great. And until he got those two priorities reversed he would either wind up missing the recovery boat and die or wind up back again in a detox and rehab facility. It would only be then, when he was finally fed up with being “sick and tired of being sick and tired” that he might finally find his way back to sobriety.

I don’t think I was being too hard on Ed, since he did not rebut these observations, and there was a general agreement that from what had been discussed, only those desirous of life choose to become sober. Only those who want to drop the pretense that only they “know the right way to do things”, that self centered, terminally unique attitude that the world should revolve around them (and that it is the world that is at fault for all their problems); those who want to give that up, will ultimately succeed in the sober game of life.

For the rest who want to argue what the color of the life vest should be before they put it on, well, good luck to them.

© res 6/26/2011