AMAZING GRACE

AMAZING GRACE

I approached the detoxification unit with trepidation, as I did each Wednesday, always wondering the same thing. What did I think I had to offer these early recovering alcoholics and drug addicts that they might not have gotten from the institutional sources that they were already attending? What was indeed the point of it all?

Of course, that was not the point at all. What I had to offer was irrelevant. All I served was as a conduit for ideas that flowed in and around the rooms of AA, notions that I channeled with the aid of one of the approved AA literature books called “Living Sober” which I used as a guide for this meeting. 

But I must confess that each week that I enter the ward, I feel I am in a place where ‘raw’ is an adjective that just scratches the surface as a description for the pain that seethes below the emotional surface of the patients here. And when you sit at the ‘head’ of the circle of the group, paradoxically placid faces stare at you which you feel at any moment will metamorphose into the most bizarre masks of emotion the moment you turn away.

And then you begin to read some chapters in the book so that when they finally leave this cocoon, they will have some tools with which to deal with the world they are facing when they step to the other side of the locked doors. And we read “Looking out for over elation” a chapter that seems preposterous on the face of it when looking into these masks of distant reserve.

Yet somehow this strikes a chord; yes, they recognize the incongruity.  One says that he would drink when he was happy, and another, when he was blue. Still another drank when he was angry and another when she was ecstatic. I said I drank when I had a particularly satisfying day at work… or not!

Obviously, we drank over anything or nothing at all. But we drank and it took only just a bit of being “off the beam” over or under the beam, to be off it.  In fact I said that a friend of mine liked to say (sardonically) that “I only drank when he was alone or with somebody”. It is all an excuse, so beware of the circumstances that change feelings for they make us want to drink. Hunger, anger, fatigue, or loneliness, those are the culprits.

And then this was followed by “Easy Does It”, clearly a nice sequel to the previous chapter to remind us not to get upset by situations that could get us “off the beam” either too hi or too low. We should avoid extremes of emotional engagement in most situations and certainly for the first year that we are trying to get sober. It is during this period, when we are most vulnerable to irrational thinking, thinking which is more magical than real, more fanciful than solid, more fancied than well thought out.

“Being Grateful” followed and in it we are reminded to take one day at a time, live in the day and not to worry about tomorrow and project about all of the horrible things that could befall us, or to stew about all that has happened to us in the past. Being grateful for the present’s goodness and serenity should keep you in the moment dealing with the here and now so that the future can take care of itself when it arrives.

And then the big, one “Remembering your Last Drunk”. That got the room talking.  J recalled that his last big drunk was not his last drunk ever but the most memorable one and one that scared him into his current detox/rehab. He was found head down on the marble floor of Penn Station sent to the ICU of NYU with a frontal lobe traumatic brain injury from a contusion to the head. With a .45% blood alcohol level – when found he was nearly dead.

After multiple reversible organ failure, the toxic alcoholic insult to the brainstem  left him unable to walk without an unstable gait, but he was finally discharged to a neuropsychiatric  rehabilitation center and then home for a six month recovery period. 

“And whatever I was thinking when that drunk happened, when I next went out, I never wanted to go back there again; but I tell, you, I’m scared to death that I might yet go there and that’s why I am back here.” 

For J hadn’t just lost much of his physical well being during that last drunk. He lost his job, his car, his house is now in foreclosure as is his marriage.

He figures that he can recoup everything if he reminds himself to stay sober one day at a time-not to get his job back, not to get his car or his house or even his marriage back. But to get his sobriety back.

Because if he strays from attending to his sobriety in the mistaken belief that attending to his marriage, job, finances or family  should somehow  be a priority, he realizes that he will have neither sobriety, family nor the rest.

Which led M to speak about his current reason for being here for this detoxification, as he sighed a weary and breathy sigh of resignation. “I had been taking care of my girlfriend’s sobriety first and not paying attention to my own.  I made sure that she went to her meetings, she had her job taken  care of, she got to the bus station on time, and all of my needs were secondary.

“My support system was to support her and when she went out that left me without a support system. And boy did I lose it all, a car, a bank account, an apartment, everything! Do you know what it meant to me to have a bank account?”

And in truth I could not understand what such a simple and commonplace convenience such as a bank account could mean to this guy but he was clearly upset by the loss of the account. He was more upset by the loss of the account than the money in it! The account meant stability, validation, being someone. It meant that he was reliable and an upright member of the community; and now he had blown that all away for some crack cocaine.

“I can never go back to that woman. I have to get myself sober and take care of myself before anyone else. I am too old to be doing this over and over again. I want to be  normal  again; but I can’t until I am sober. And I can’t get sober unless I put my sobriety above everything else in my life; other people, other things, jobs, family and friends. It has to be me first!”

And then M turned to me and asked me for a copy of the Living Sober book. He needed all of the tools to get it right this time.

Then GC piped up to say how she thought she had understood clearly how to maintain her sobriety. That whenever a drugging situation would present itself, (she used cocaine), she would stop to think about her motivations as to why she wanted to use or why she was even considering using. “That works best for me – if I understand what I am doing. Self knowledge, that really works!”

 And I indicated that it was well and good to be analytical in trying to understand motivations and changing behaviors. But when you need a solution at the moment that the problem hits, analysis is not going to do you much good.  You must be prepared to act in a different mode of behavior first and analyze the situation later.

The time it takes between the presentation for a drink, (such as a hearty greeting of long missed friend), and the opportunity and time to examine the motivations and reasons for not engaging in that behavior, especially for the alcoholic or drug addict in early recovery, may be seconds. And without pre thought out strategies, you may be lulled into the false notion that “oh just one can’t hurt”. Even though you know that it's the first drink that counts,  after that, all bets are off.

As for myself, I can say unequivocally, I never had just one drink. And I can say that in any room of alcoholics they will confirm that too. Which is why we have to do whatever it takes to stay away from that first drink one day at a time.

I find it difficult not to preach to the “young people” in the program. And by “young” I mean those who have tried and failed and then tried and failed  again and again to get sober “their” way.  And "their" way consists of first not admitting that they have a problem at all. We all do that.

Then we think that we can get sober by ourselves and, then we think, by some form  of “self knowledge” discovery,  as if knowing that we are alcoholic will change our behavior,  we go on to believe that we can lick it – by ourselves.

 We have behaved alcoholically for so long that it is automatic and those automatic responses must be interrupted with some strategies to short circuit that conduct with new alternatives for dealing with situations that would ordinarily cause us to partake of a drink.

So to the "young people", the uninitiated, or those who have not yet been willing to adopt the program, I urge that they try to put some new AA arrows in their quiver. Even while on the path to “self exploration” just so that they will have quick and ready options to follow when “their best thinking” leads them to choose  a course that got them into this situation in the first place.

So the purpose of using a book like “Living Sober” is to be able to gain that automaticity of behavior long enough to get past the most dangerous period of early sobriety. It gives us the breathing space to get to that place where we can  discover just what it is about ourselves that makes us drink; to have that clarity of thought to fend off those temptations in early recovery and have the unfettered time and attention to stare at our navels to learn just who we are and how to go about mending our broken selves.

© res 8/8/2011