THE TRANSACTION

THE TRANSACTION

I have spent over eleven years trying to get sober and if I have learned anything it has been that staying sober is a constant negotiation with yourself.  At the beginning you are trying to convince yourself that you really are not that bad; that is that you really are not either an alcoholic, or even that you don’t drink that much. Moreover, you try to believe or convince yourself that your behavior is as sane and calm while drinking as when you do not.

But as the truth sinks in, after hours and days are lost in blackouts and you find you can no longer account for the time that you can no longer account for, you have to finally face the fact that your drinking is not normal. So starts the first round of negotiation.

You first start to cut back on the drinking, either in the amount or the volume.  Or in a crazed notion that one alcoholic drink is somehow different from another you substitute wine for beer, and then vodka for the wine, each time believing that the decrease in the volume of the first  will somehow compensate for the fact that the actual alcohol content of the second has been multiplied by a factor of two or three.

You then slowly start to drink more each time you switch and somehow convince yourself that the accumulation of bottles is not a sign of abnormal consumption, until your behavior takes on that furtive character of hiding bottles not in the recyclables bin but goes straight to the garbage where the  recyclable collectors, not to mention the neighbors will not be aware that your bottle count appears to be larger than any of the others on the block.  And whether the collectors or the neighbors even care to notice at all may be just a product of our guilty imaginations, but that is indeed the progression of the sick thinking of this disease and the crazy negotiations that go on in this brain.

At some later point then we find that we no longer feel very well in the mornings and may be late to work; or we may lose work days. Or we may find that we need to take a shot of some liquid “courage” to calm the morning jitters just so that we can function.

And as work attendance begins to suffer, productivity slacks and we may find our jobs in jeopardy. Bosses begin to notice and performance reports are downgraded. When promotions do not materialize, these disappointments are brought home and are added to the already accumulating tribulations that have arisen between spouses and the children. Alienation, loss of physical and sexual intimacy and maybe even physical blows become routine occurrences and marriages approach dissolution.

Negotiations on how to ameliorate these failings may already be in motion at this juncture but acknowledgment of the disease may yet be still one of those recognitions remaining on the back burner. Until the breakup of the household  is either imminent or in the process, steps to face the problem may not have been taken and those steps require the quitting of negotiation as a tactic and an admission of the real problem, that the disease of alcoholism is present and is the culprit in the string of events that led to this sorry outcome.

Unfortunately, recognition of the disease does not release the sufferer from the trap of trying to negotiate his way out of the work in becoming sober.  I remember in particular how it was like pulling teeth for me to say that I was alcoholic. And for years I mouthed the words, at meetings and professional groups, to myself and to the group at large. But until there were real consequences, I would fail to believe that I was truly a drunk.  What price must be paid for self realization to become honest, unembellished and uncorrupted?

It’s different for different folks, but in my case I had to lose most of my wealth, my self-respect, my marriage and the respect of friends and family for me to be able to actually look at myself in the mirror and say honestly that I was an alcoholic.  But even then that wasn’t enough.  How was I then to become and remain sober? And that is the key question for every wannabe recovering alcoholic.

Admitting you are alcoholic may in fact be the easiest part of alcoholism, even, as I have described, it may be a long road to travel to get to that point.  But I think that we  recognize our disease long before we are willing to do anything about it; or more to the point, long before we have either the fear or the courage to do anything about it - courage and fear being two sides of the same coin each requiring the support of the other, without which nothing much worth doing would have any meaning at all.

So after I admitted my alcoholism, what did I need to do? I needed to surrender my self-will; that will to “except” things in my life.  Such as I would do anything to get sober “except”… This is, of course, conditional thinking. There can be no exceptions, because the minute I except a condition to my sobriety, that condition becomes the very risk that will bring that sobriety down in a moment of weakness.

There can be no exceptions.  And to that end I have to be willing to give up that “will”, that self-will, to the care of a higher power, or any power, but my own self-will. It is an admission that my will got me to be a successful alcoholic. Some other power, not of my own will would have to help me to get sober; and I would have to scrupulously follow the suggestions of that other power.

Each time I run a meeting at a rehab center I am reminded of this simple, yet poignant task required at the beginning of each drunk’s journey back to sobriety.  It is only your self-will that is stopping you from staying sober. It is that will that is tempting you to not take the suggestions of the program rather than believe your own worst thinking that the desire to drink is too over- powering to not take that first drink. And this evening’s meeting rudely reminded me of that rutted, raw thinking of the newly detoxed individual.

We were reviewing the suggested methods of staying sober in the first ten chapters of  “Living Sober”.  I try to be patient because, for me, sitting in a room of about ten newly detoxed individuals is like sitting in a carnival hall of mirrors; each person a different distortion of my own story and each with a similarly twisted reason for “excepting” himself from why the suggestions in these chapters would not work for him or her. 

And like me when I was in their situation, arguing like I was in a philosophy class trying to disprove a particularly arcane bit of esoterica, several ready for discharge folks were stating how difficult it would be for them once they were out in the community.  And each time when I would point to a chapter with the suggestions that worked for me and hundreds of thousands like me, there would come back this staggeringly puny argument why in this person’s particular case it might not, would probably not work. Because they were so ‘terminally unique’.

That is also part of this affliction, that the disease that has stricken millions of others and in whose stories you can see your own, you somehow feel that their salvation could not possibly apply to your own situation. What colossal hubris!

But when you dig down and ask the questions, did you go to more than just a few meetings? Did you go to ninety meetings in ninety days? Did you get a sponsor? Did you use the telephone? Did you get a commitment to do service? Did you do something to keep you busy with other alcoholics in the program and working the twelve steps? The answer is invariably and resoundingly a no! To be followed by protestations of “Yes buts…”

Yes but nothing!  The truth is that if you know a system that works, do it and don’t complain that you always fail. But if you know of a system that has worked for millions but you refuse to use it because of pride, sloth and shyness, you are only kidding and fooling yourself. And you have not yet gotten close enough to death to be willing to do anything to get and stay sober.

All else is an excuse.

Because you can recognize that you are an alcoholic. You can say you want to get sober.  But until you can see yourself too frightened to take just one more drink, you may not yet be willing enough to do anything to stay alive. 

Until all those fun house mirrors reflect just another image of your death, you may not find the courage to walk through that mad house to find the true reflection of your salvation.

© res 7/20/2011