Pillars of Wisdom

Pillars of Wisdom

“I don’t know how I can stop drinking when I get out of here. I mean I have gone to the meetings but how do you stay sober when you get home and all you do is sit around, maybe watch some TV and then I think about things and before I know it I am running down to the package store to buy some beer or some liquor.”

It was a familiar story, one that I  hear every week that I go to the detox facility and one which I despair of , the answers for which the people who ask this question, however useful they may be for the rest of the world of alcoholics, I might as well be describing the “Five Pillars of Faith” to an infidel. 

Because all I get back in return for my efforts is a look of perplexed bogglement; as if I were trying to explain the concept of  relativity without reference to speed, time, acceleration and movement, let alone the speed of light.

But almost invariably when questioning the effort that the enquirer has put into his quest for the solution to his demonic drive, I find that it remains paltry when compared to those who succeed in the program. And not just a mild or anemic effort, but almost what most any objective observer would rightly judge as no strain or sweat of the brow at all.

But should this surprise us alcoholics at all? After all we are the masters of self deception and denial. For years we have disavowed the degree of our alcohol consumption and when we got into trouble because of its use we minimized the consequences. When we lost jobs, opportunities, money or relationships, we discounted the part that alcohol played in the history of events making  “circumstances” the culprit of the way events turned out rather than our drinking and our part in that drinking as the miscreant.

So Solly’s lament was nothing new and should not have thrown me the curve ball that it did when he pitched it to me last week.  Because when I asked the questions, I could predict the answers -  because they were the same answers that I gave when I “couldn’t” get sober even after going to meetings.

And the questions were, “did you go to more than one meeting? Did you find a sponsor? Did you take a commitment? Did you go to more than one type of meeting? Did you do ninety and ninety? Did you go to the meeting after the meeting? How many friends did you make in the rooms?”

And of course the answers were predictable for the effort had not been made. These queries were greeted with  astonished  and puzzled silence.  For like most people who know nothing about the society of AA, these inquiries reveal their ignorance of the program of recovery; and conversely reveal the lengths to which only the drowning  struggling to live are willing to go to in order to break water for the air to survive.

But Solly also represented a particularly common but profoundly disturbing and difficult syndrome to tackle; that of the dually diagnosed alcoholic or drug addict. And in his case the second diagnosis was particularly knotty. It was schizophrenia – a thought disorder. How to tackle that?

Solly did not appear to be having any trouble being grounded in this reality nor suffering from any delusions.  He was on his medications and whatever the manifestation of his thought disorder was, it was under control.  And although I have not known many psychotic alcoholics in the rooms, I have met a few and my experience with them has been interesting and quite educational.

The group experience of AA has salutary effects on most people, with or without behavioral or thought disorder problems. For the schizophrenic who is controlled, and who might from time to time have issues of reality distinction, having a daily meeting to come to and people to check in with who know his condition and whom he trusts, has got to be better than living an isolated and therefore more separating and tenuous existence.

People with these conditions can have razor thin behavior and having others whose mental apparatus is on more solid ground are of greater help to the schizophrenic than to let that person wander around borderline for days or weeks, most likely using alcohol or drugs to calm the agitation that goes along with the anxiety occurring when the walls of this reality start to crumble.  Having people around to identify when this happens can keep these folks much more even-keeled and balanced before they experience complete psychotic breaks.  And I have seen this work effectively in the rooms that I attend.

But back to the original problem of getting people like Solly past rejection to buying into the program. And my experience, limited as it is, has been that the rejection is born out of ignorance and the fact that, as is said almost too often, “AA is a program of attraction not promotion”, that ignorance is supported by the requirement that the newcomer must want the program. It is not enough to need the program because needs can be assessed by many people but only the people who want the program will accept it and then learn from it.

It would be nice if we could somehow impart some of that knowledge about how it works so that it translates from our recognition of them needing what we have into their recognition of them wanting what we offer.

But sometimes you just have to try the method out in order to see the benefit of the product. Take the three month money back guarantee. Or in this case do the ninety and ninety.

For like the Five Pillars of Faith, the fact of their wisdom often requires a bit of a leap of trust to realize the outcome of a sober life.

© res 9/2/11