WHETHER YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF IT

Dec. 24, 2011

This has been, by some folks' estimates, an extraordinary year. A war that perhaps should not have been engaged so cavalierly is now thankfully at an end. Too many have been maimed or have died. But the war was never used to divert attention away from other problems on the home front as an excuse to avoid discussion. No, unfortunately, we forgot about the war and stared at our navels for the past ten years and seem not to have learned anything from our experience.

Maybe we will finally learn that life is too precious to waste on crusades against bogeymen who we believe are threats to our way of life; and in our fear to root out and destroy these "threats", we impose restraints upon our own freedoms which ultimately do greater damage to the commonweal than ten Osama bin Ladens could possibly have cooked up.

Which leads me to wonder in this season of peace, what have we accomplished after ten years and what should we be grateful for?...

WHETHER YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF IT

"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." When Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote that I am not sure how much he could have appreciated both the evolutionary and the philosophic implications of that statement. The moral and ethical implications are fairly straightforward but some of those, in the alcoholic and drug addled mind can get pretty confused.

But the imperatives implied in the phrase "life is an end in itself.." is a statement of evolutionary fact. Life is an end in itself, for it serves no other purpose than to propagate itself. Evolutionarily speaking, success in life is only to survive to live long enough to propagate, hence its only end is to live.

However, when we assign value ('worth') to life we start to tread the territory of the metaphysical.  Here we add psychological significance to the statement, and when life has value, worth, merit or usefulness, the quantity ('enough of it') must then have some consequence in this equation.

The alcoholic in the first instance is struggling to fulfill the  evolutionary imperative of life. Does his life even have the value worth its own existence.  If so how much? And if how much, why is it worth that much? (Or why, indeed, does it have the value?)

So in the first step "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable," the admission that life cannot be lived if we continue to have alcohol in our lives, becomes an admission that life is worth living because life is an end in itself. But we cannot get past that fact if we continue to be ruled by alcohol.

However, it is only in the second step "came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity" that we place enough value on life to want to view life in a sane manner in order to reap the benefits of a clear vision of life to prove that we have not yet "had enough of it".

I think about things like this during this particular season  which is a peculiar time of the year not only for me but for most alcoholics; and when I come out of my men's meetings I feel like I'm coming out of a sauna. It is as if I have purged myself of all of the noxious humors of the night, cleansed by a hydrating steam. As if some nourishing goodness has entered my soul.

When you have thought you heard everything and  just how far one can go for  one's bottom to hit, someone in the room comes up (or down) with a tale that will make your hair stand on end. And today many guys were complaining how difficult this time of the year is.

I suppose that is because of the difficulty they have in dealing with the parties, the  booze, the relatives and the family tensions, the irritabilities, the resentments the booze and then the booze.  And if they had it their way, they would celebrate their holidays on January 2 in a gratitude circle thanking God that the holidays are finally over.

But Nick loves this time of the year and thinks of the holidays as the season of his salvation. Because he recalls when he was first introduced to his girlfriend many years ago and on his first date to meet her family he, in all his glory, awoke on their lawn, naked, drunk and crazy out of his mind for all the world to see.

And then one Christmas, his last Christmas as a drunk, he was in Hong Kong, with his now wife, and it was one of those mornings that as he says "was one of those one eyed mornings. A morning when you just try to lift an eyelid just so much to sneak a peek out to see how much damage you have done before you have to face the music." And from under his bleary eyelid he spied his then girlfriend "wiping up the 'shit' from off the walls and floors of the apartment, the putrid mess of the evening's debauch. And as she cleaned up the filth she was weeping to herself. And all I could do was just punch myself and cry out in disgust and shame 'What is wrong with me, God, why can't I stop? God save me!' ".

"And He did. He led me to the rooms of AA and I finally found a peace that I had never known before in my life. And all I had to do was stop drinking, come to meetings, read the Big Book and stop making life more complicated than it was. Because one thing I learned from all of you was that if I left things up to myself, I could screw up replacing a light bulb. But if I listened to you and not to me I had a chance to survive and live a life of love, calm, humility and joy.  I learned that not everything that I wanted was good for me and not everything that I needed was something that I wanted. So I learned to live and let live; that this, for me, was a 'simple program for a complicated person'."

Mitch said how it was interesting and sad how he had found sobriety so many years ago and a relative of his whom he admired for not falling victim to the drug business despite him selling the stuff, finally had become the very victim of his own machinations. And today after flush times when he had millions all he has now is his motor cycle and enough money to buy a meal each day at the local Wal-Mart which he polishes off while waiting to pay the cashier.  "Maybe he'll find sobriety one day or maybe he'll die before sobriety finds him. Time may bring the reaper. I hope he is well this Christmas."

Harry, our resident cleric, ran into an old colleague last week from a period in his life when he was more in his cups than not, early in his ministry, and they found themselves discussing "the old days". And the topic of how his disease affected his life experience and thus his ministry came up. The colleague felt sure that Harry was mortified that he had to "suffer" through the disease and that the years of active alcoholism and then struggling sobriety must have been difficult to his pastorate. But Harry said no not at all, at least not in the way that the other minister meant.  Harry was greatly changed by his alcoholism but the quality of his humanity that resulted from his experience in AA had given him a truer sense of spirituality than he had ever known as a minister. And despite all of his study in preparing for being a minister of the cloth, he had initially felt that God had abandoned him. But it wasn't until he became a member of AA that he truly found his higher power, which he called God, and a true freedom to live which his spirituality had given him. And Harry had often expressed his belief that there was more spirituality in the rooms on any given Sunday than he would find in the pews of the church.

But Bert told us a story for the season, one that demonstrates the great heartedness of some people and how they have grown as a result of their personal misfortune. As Bert tells it, Jon, a fiftyish pipefitter who through no fault of his own was laid off two plus years ago and has been living on unemployment since then. He has been scraping by with odd jobs, not enough to even claim to be partially employed. In the old  hard drinking days half of his paycheck would go to the wife to make do for the family and the rest he would spend on his weekend binging.

A close shave with divorce, destitution and dalliance and at his nadir  four years ago he found recovery at the local hospital and the rooms of AA and has remained steadfast since that time. And no matter how hard times have gotten, he remains unconvinced that a drink could make anything better.

And last week when he found himself in possession of the winning  lottery ticket for a new Mercedes sedan at a church bazaar, he was struck by this odd change of  circumstance.  But after some soul searching he thought the best use for that prize was to donate the monetary value of  it to the recovery wing of the hospital for victims of drug and alcohol abuse who could not pay for their hospital stay.

There are members of the top "one per cent" of society who are also generous and have made it a point to donate a portion of their wealth. Ever since Andrew Carnegie, this has been the standard that the wealthy have had to live up to. Not noblesse oblige, but a recognition that in this country, wealth comes from the opportunity to earn wealth in a nation that permits wealth to be earned. It even favors the wealthy in their ability to earn wealth.  Therefore there is an obligation to return that wealth to that very nation for the privilege of it permitting them their good fortunes.

But unlike the "one per cent", I do not know of many who are as  selfless as Jon in this time of dire economic privation, who would donate their entire wealth, particularly when they suffer from such personal economic straits. But there you have it - a true Christmas Carol - except that his nobility came from the humility that he learned in the program of AA.

So here are people who have not even begun "to have too much of life" and in fact are just beginning to live the rest of their lives. And Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. would be among the first to recognize AA for the great motivator in conferring value upon life.

Every now and then when the world is filled with cynical news, promulgated by cynical people doing selfish cynical things, something like this happens. But the really great news of the hour is that most of these generous acts are done by ordinary people, of ordinary means with ordinary expectations.

And that is the truly extraordinary thing about this life.

©  res 12/22/2011

DOING FAITH

DOING FAITH

I found myself this morning in the odd position of talking about faith.  It is a topic that I have had rare experience in and much less affair to expound upon. But within the past two years it is a subject upon which I have had more time to contemplate.

Two years ago I would not have thought there was much hope of me staying sober for more than a month let alone the period of time that has passed since then.  I had little expectation of any of that happening since I had little regard for the notion of faith.

The reading that I was speaking about was the daily reading in the 24 hour/ day book and it spoke about the requirement of faith for sobriety and living a worthwhile life. And whereas I agree mostly with that sentiment in the first instance, I cannot say that it is a requirement for the latter.  That is the sense where dogma comes into play and where one religion, as I suggested, tends to claim superiority  over other religions in the daily lives of men.

I prefer to think of faith as an asset for a worthwhile life but not a necessity for one,  so that in its absence, a worthwhile life cannot be had. And this I reject.  Faith, as I understand it, makes it easier to live a life worth living. It can help me through the rough periods when I may not have any other good reasons to believe that all will turn out well in the end.  But when challenged by life, I know that if (for instance) I avoid drinking, I will realize the adage that no drink made any situation better;  whereas situations certainly do not deteriorate because of a lack of a drink, at least by me.

But when I first came in to the rooms I was not sure what other people meant by faith. Some notions of faith involved  references to god or religious spiritualism. Others made me uncomfortable with assumptions of a piety that I did not feel, even as they failed to have the capacity to communicate their meaning of faith either to me or others.

Pablo indicated that he was sure that everyone in the rooms had faith although it was not always a positive faith.  Some  people had a faith that things were definitely going in to turn out badly. Or  because they thought things would not turn out right they would never try things; so they behaved rather poorly or perhaps ungenerously only because of a fear that all would not turn out well.

Positive or negative faith, Pablo maintains nevertheless, we all have faith. The trick in AA is to turn that certitude of a negative outcome to one of a positivity.  And there were plenty of attestations in the room today to indicate that how positive the outcome was determined by how positive one viewed one's initial outlook on the world. So a positive outlook equals a positive outcome. In other words if I think things will work out, they will have a better chance of indeed working out.  And if I live my life with expectations of good outcomes then life will be satisfying.

And Jack also reminded others just as he had to remind himself all the time that he needs the reality checks that he gets in the rooms of AA.  Because it is very good to have "blind faith" but without a constant grounding in reality, there is a tendency to 'pie in the sky' thinking around here; or worse, taking sordid thinking to its worst ends.  So Jack would have to be reminded by his sponsor regularly not to dwell on things too much such as when he would complain of his fears. When he would complain that he was afraid of being alone, say, if his girlfriend left him, his sponsor would bring him back to the reality of reminding him that if his girlfriend had already left, how much more fear of  loneliness could he have? He was already there, what more loneliness was there to be afraid of?

And similarly, when he would express fears of poverty to him after admitting that he had spent his last dime, his sponsor would remind him to wonder how much more broke could he get to become more distressed and afraid?  Bringing reality into the picture has a chastening effect on us and shines a light into the dark corners of our fears.

And when light shines into the corners where fear lurks, that is called faith. Faith in AA becomes a living working, practicing daily art and technique for daily living.

The rest of the reading went on to distinguish the physical universe from the spiritual universe and that the belief in one does not preclude a belief in the other.  That one could believe in God or a higher power of creation and that He or it could create a perfectly ordered quantum universe without sacrificing a belief in either the ordered or the spiritual universe or God.

In fact, I went on to say, physicists as notable as Freeman Dyson, Albert Einstein, and even Richard Feynman were variously very religious, mildly agnostic and wildly wondering of the universe and all unwilling to believe that faith was a concept that has seen its better days. For them, faith was always good to have around, even if you could not say exactly why you needed it.

The discussion then went to Rick who wanted to make clear that his faith was twofold, secular and religious and that he did not want anyone to feel that his brand of faith was a prerequisite to getting the AA program. And he related how he had been a dry drunk during his first ten years of his "sobriety" and until he had "found" his "faith" in Jesus, he did not finally get the program of AA and truly understand how to practice the 12 steps and practice them in all his affairs.

And Rick granted that nobody had to have a conversion like his in order to get the program but his was necessary because of the hard case that he was. He needed to finally come understand and accept  with  gratitude that he had not truly understood what a lying, cheating and unrepentant thinking alcoholic he had been during all of those years since he had stopped drinking and drugging. And that was what his conversion was all about. And that was what he had come to accept.

Even though Rick had found faith through religion and he was comfortable with that, he was willing to grant that most people would not feel the same as he.

Pat, who hadn't been to our meeting for awhile added that that last week he celebrated his fourth year in AA and he could not imagine back then that things could be this good.  Then he had lost his job, car, money; was on the verge of divorce and practically on the way to jail for DWI infractions. But being forced into AA and being saved from jail first, then getting a new job which led to the restoration of all the rest renewed his faith in life and hope for the future.  His faith is a bit more tangible than the rest of us but with time it is becoming more spiritual as the material rewards of his faith have renewed the security in his life that he thought were gone forever.

But Tom said that today was a moving day for him - literally; finally moving out his last son and his daughter in law and grandson from his house to their new apartment.  The whole family is in recovery, blessed by sobriety and a semblance of sanity in an increasingly insane world.  Last week Tom got decidedly bad news when he was informed, in a 'by the way' manner, by his boss that he no longer had a job.

There were many ways to react, not the least of which was to go to a bar and take a long drink of a beer. But what would that prove? After 22 years of sobriety that would just break up his sober run but it would not bring back his job. And it would not make another job come his way. And if he continued to drink he could kiss any new opportunity for a job away. He does sometimes think of how unfair this situation is because at age sixty-three it is a bad time to lose his job.

So, no, Tom did not drink.  He went to a meeting, spoke to his sponsor. He spoke to us and told us what happened. He used his program and worked the steps.  He helped another alcoholic and by doing so helped himself.  In AA he found a faith that works and in using that faith he looks forward to a brighter more productive tomorrow.  And as Tom says, if nothing turns up, there is always retirement!

But Karen found herself going out to the mall for window shopping with her 22 year old and her sixteen year old daughters who she hasn't lived with for two and a half months now while trying to get sober again.  "It's hard not to be with your kids during the holidays, doubly hard not to be able to give them any presents because you don't have a job, you live in a shelter and have no money.  The only thing I could afford was some ice cream.  But you never know what will come your way if your remain sober. I stay sober and expect nothing except what the gifts of sobriety will bring. And all I can have is faith that I will be together with my three daughters during the holidays.  And wouldn't you know that my sponsor bought me movie tickets to take all of my kids out on Christmas and then gave me three $10 gift cards.

"It's not much, but it's the faith that not drinking will bring joy and love back into my life that is one of the promises of the program.  At this time of the year I  have to remember that things could have been worse if I only had despair instead of faith and hope."

© res 12/18/2011

THE FAMILY AFTERWARD

THE FAMILY AFTERWARD

Ordinarily it would be unusual to find fifteen men being intimate with one another on any particular occasion but on this Wednesday morning in December it was our regular 7:30 men's Big Book meeting.  We had just finished reading a portion of the chapter "The Family Afterward" which cautioned against instantaneous expectations of forgiveness and redemption after having found the blessings of sobriety in AA. Although the newly sober AA may have found true belief in God or a higher power and in his enthusiastic fervor to spread the good word to the family he may also find an unwilling audience in a group of folk who believe they have been more than forbearing in their behavior towards him and less than willing to suffer the outrageous enthusiasm of his newfound "religion" in his sobriety.

Having been required to listen to his old ravings of how the world, (and they)  had done him wrong, they now have to listen to his sermons on how he can bring salvation back into their lives by the light of what he has just been granted, this may then be too much!   

That is the message contained in the reading today, one that all of us have read time and time again over the past year or more depending upon how much sobriety each of us sitting at the table had. So its specific meaning may have been less germane than its more general message which to some contained some pointed references to step nine work (making amends) that we had either not done or had yet to do with our families.

And Martin pointed out a rather plainspoken truth that is overlooked and unstated in the rooms but so evident that we do not talk about it often enough. And that is that the people we hurt first, so deeply and frequently in our long descent into our personal hells are our families. And in our headlong rushes to make amends in order to jump back on the path to sobriety, we often delay our amends for the last to those whom we have hurt the worst, if ever.

And Martin was reminded of this when 'out of the blue' it seemed, he received a phone call from his sister-in-law, blasting him, very non specifically, and subtly uninviting him to the Christmas dinner this year.  And he took this, upon reflection, to mean that his behavior once again was read as outrageous since it resulted in his mouthing off remarks that might have sounded insulting to the family at large. With the result that he was now being banished.

And  he understood just what they were talking about because what they did not understand was that his "mouthings" were just ways for him not to say how jealous at his brother's successes and material gains he was. The fact that his brother  has been very generous to him have made him even more ungrateful and he has not found any way to get past that. Yet when he tries to say something sarcastically clever, it comes out as an outrageously jealous and accusatory statement at his brother's good fortune. Petty and ill natured, ill-humored and cruel.

Nobody knows or understands why he is making the remark, it is just that he has not yet resolved (eighteen years into his sobriety) this envy for his brother's golden touch. And despite that success his brother would share that good fortune, even in the depths of his depraved envy, with Martin. And all Martin could do is spew resentment at him.

But how could he explain that to his sister-in-law?

So after eighteen years Martin had to sit down and write a long amend to his brother, spewing forth all of the pain, the resentment and the anger, fear, jealousy  and now remorse that he feels in having behaved this way for this length of time. And the apology, (yes the apology!), he must say that he is sorry. Unlike other relationships  in AA, how can he make an Amends? In this case an amend without true contrition amounts to the death of a relationship which is not the desired outcome. So we shall see how his brother responds to this eighteen year late missive.

And then Jack said that in this season with the death of his mother, he had just begun making overtures  of reconciliation with his sister who would not speak to him for the past ten years because of his alcoholism. And this is without any rancor for her drug addiction because he can only take his own inventory.

And Darrel, who, with a month sober, is still trying to understand why his mother will not speak with him (although he understands that she is an alcoholic,) and he cannot talk with his father after four PM when he is in his cups and is one ornery son of a gun. It is then that he becomes so accusative that no path to reconciliation seems possible.

Or Ted, who, during his first  ten years of sobriety would attempt to push a meeting book in front of his father between the period when he was just getting sober and just beginning the next drunk. Until finally his father started to go to meetings. And it wasn't for several years after that that they were able to finally meet on a level playing field of understanding to make a mutual amends.

So I am trying to not bring any AA jargon home with me just now. Sometimes I do that with some success and at other times not.  Home for only the past three months, I am not yet  feeling comfortable or even welcome. I do not even feel  I am living in a home of my own anymore, that I am just a sojourner.

I try to make living amends but I do not even know that they are recognized although that is not the point of doing them. I do them for me and am happy to do them.

But as Joe said, he was surprised when his wife said that they were throwing a Christmas party for the whole family. Because sometimes, many times, all the time nowadays, he feels "less than" (a not uncommon feeling among AA's). Because his brother- in- law usually throws the party in their successful home, with their successful lives, in the brightness of their new house among the opulence of their lives.

Whereas this year the family will have to squeeze into their house with the living room with the low cracked ceiling;  to walk on the carpet with the threadbare pathway worn through it and the squeaky floor sounding familiarly mouse-like underneath.

"But I know, that if I run into any trouble at all during the holidays, or any day of the year or any time of the twenty four hours of the day, all I have to do is look at the list of phone numbers in my wallet or in my phone and I can call twenty or thirty men and talk to any one of them about my problems. 

"Who in my family is rich enough to have that!"

© res 12/14/11

AN UNUSUAL TOPIC

AN UNUSUAL TOPIC

It wasn't the typical subject to come up at an AA meeting  but then this wasn't an ordinary gathering.  The questioner was asking himself  "am I being too self centered when I have a patient who is an old time alcoholic that I am admitting for severe decompensation resulting from chronic alcoholism if I ask him if he has tried AA? And when he answers yes  but denies its efficacy and I ask him further if  he has read the big book  is it ok for me to then try to pin him down  if he says "Yes I have read it five times and it doesn't do any good!".  Am I being too into my own program when I am skeptical and say can you then tell me what the first step says? To which he replies warily "you sure know a bit about AA" as if he is getting the third degree?"

This question came from a concerned physician early in his own recovery worried about several things. One he was wondering whether he was being so forward just to primp his own conscience against this failed alcoholic and feel superior to him. And then by delivering the coup de grace, finally prove how superior his program was.   Or was he correctly using his new found knowledge of AA in a constructive manner to help this individual?

This could be a gut wrenching dilemma but it needn't be. First, we as physicians in recovery are well aware that if we are probing in our questions about drinking, it may seem out of the ordinary experience of the professional alcoholic  to receive this unaccustomed and often unwanted attention.  But that does not mean that because we are privy to greater understanding that we should eschew our responsibility in order to protect our anonymity in the fear that our knowledge in and of itself will naturally reveal our true natures and histories.

We still have medical oaths to fulfill not to mention the 12 step work that we undertake as practicing members of AA. And we do not need to divulge our anonymity by revealing  that our special knowledge is the result of our being a practicing alcoholic or a member of AA.  Additionally, we can parry those questions by stating that we as physicians for many personal and professional reasons have found it helpful and prudent to become well versed, in fact much more well versed in addiction medicine than most of our medical colleagues.  We do not owe our patients any other explanation than that except that when we see that they need our help in that area we find we must apply that knowledge to their benefit.

And in a case where an individual who is a chronic alcoholic with many hospital admissions and lots of secondary organ damage as a result of many years of drinking presents and gives a history of having tried AA in order to stop drinking but has failed we then wonder why.  And when asked and told that he has read the instruction book over and over but cannot then name the first tenant of the program we then owe it to the patient to state that he really hasn't tried the program at all so what is it that is getting in the way of admitting that the person has a problem with alcohol and why can't he see that his life is going to hell in a hand basket? Is he denying his alcoholism or is he denying that his life is unmanageable as a result of his alcoholism or both? Does he want to live or does he want to die?

The point here is that this person has had physicians who when receiving that answer have let it slide with an "if that's the way he wants to do it  attitude so I will leave him alone" . He has never had a physician who is confident about calling him out on his self delusionary behavior  because he does not have the insight nor the tools to feel confident about doing so.  But the physician in the program does have the tools.  He can say that this attitude does not make sense. It does not sound like he has tried to work the program at all. And then you can offer any number of ways in which he can work the program successfully. Such as, going to meetings every day, for no doubt this has not been done.  Often the excuse will be that he cannot find a meeting that he likes. Of course the answer is to find one or more that he does like. If queried, the answer will be that this was not even sought.

 Not drinking one day at a time sounds pithy and pie in the sky but it is the only "magic" that every AA uses to succeed in the program.  It works and it is a segment of time that anyone can get his head around. Getting a sponsor. Having a real adult to help you with staying sober while you are acting as a child, really helps.  Using the telephone, calling several alcoholics each day and especially when you feel like taking a drink. Call Before  taking a drink not after.  Changing friends, people places and things that he was used to doing while drinking.

These are life saving suggestions that we can offer our patients.  Of course, he can get all of this information for free at an AA meeting and you can tell your patient that too.  You can tell your patient that what you have just told him is referred to in psychiatric circles as Cognitive psychotherapy.  In AA it is labelled as hard won experience and found in the "Living Sober" book.

The point here is to let the drunk know that he cannot manipulate you so he should not even try.  He doesn't have to listen to you but he should be forewarned that your sympathy is not up for grabs. He cannot pull on your heart strings. You will be giving him tough love. Tough choices. He will be having to make a  life and death decision, not an easy choice. And you will be helping him to get in contact with those people who will get into a group that will help him to stay sober.

Or he can reject the help understanding nonetheless that you've got his number.  But in any case, you will have fulfilled your role as a physician and your twelfth step pledge to help another alcoholic in need.

© 12/10/11

THINGS FALL APART

THINGS FALL APART

All things evolve. Species, organizations and institutions.  We are all familiar with the evolution of weather with two fronts mixing to produce rain or snow. Patterns of weather over time are more or less evolutionary causing periods called Ice Ages or Inter-glacial periods. Similarly, we watched our country evolve from the  thirteen east coast hugging colonies to the bi-oceanic continental  superpower.

 Just so with organizations. They can start small or large and  ebb or flow with their membership or ideas. The reasons for these ebbs and flows may  stem from the same evolutionary pressures  as to  why species and populations evolve. And I find that recent events with my AA groups for instance, have led me to make this comparison with some interesting evolutionary theories.

Classic Darwinian evolution posits that species evolve because there are pressures on the  species which push them to stress and favor certain variations in that population.  So in Darwin's classic Galapagos finch population he described that the radiation the of Galapagos finch population into different habitats was based upon different beak variations. For instance, a long beak favored one variation over another to extract sap from flowers whereas a strong gross triangular beak allowed those birds to exploit a nut cracking habitat. Slow evolutionary forces permitted one genus (type of bird), the finch to inhabit practically all of the available habitats of the Galapagos Islands whereas other similar habitats on the mainland would be filled by many genera from many different originating species. 

There was another theory of adaptation which was promulgated by the late Stephen Jay Gould called "punctuated equilibrium", where some environmental cataclysm  would befall a species (such as a lava flow or the creation of a new river)  and although the result would wipe out most of the members of that species there would be some survivors who would have some adaptations that would allow them to thrive in the suddenly newly created environment.  Or perhaps that environmental change would separate two populations causing radiation of the newly isolated variability in the populations and with time two new species would form. 

During the past two years I have attached myself to a group of AA's so that I could develop a program that would maintain a regular but varied set of meetings. Meetings that would teach me the principles of the group and the ideas of the organization so that I could learn and grow. I could grow to understand myself and learn how to become a more sober individual.

And during the past two years, that group has variously swelled and shrunk for reasons of season, holidays and the natural tendencies that  tend to bring alcoholics into the group more at one time of the year than at others. Now is just such a time of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, "the triple witching hour" are the  time of the year that tend to bring those most at risk into the program either as a preventive or because they have been given their last chances with their families and have been forced into such a position.  

And under this pressure our groups sometimes swell, sometimes they break off and bud and new ones form because of "philosophical" or "irreconcilable differences" or just personality differences among the various members. These are the natural slow expansion types of evolution that cause groups to change, move and morph.

But then there are catastrophes that happen that cause monumental upsets in which the upheaval can cause destruction which can bring down the entire structure of groups.  Like a species, the typical AA group does not have the kind of internal structure like, say a corporate or organizational structure, that can withstand cataclysmic change.  And when disaster strikes there may not be any organizing principal or principals to reassemble the group. 

So in the case of our groups when our church burned down, it was interesting to see how in this demonstration case of punctuated equilibrium the groups surviving  best were those who had the strongest leadership and group cohesion.  Almost from the moment that they found out that there was a fire, they made plans to reconstitute their group in a new church in a new location the next day.

"Our" group, without that level of cohesion, flopped along and continues to flop along, like good alcoholics almost expecting things to get done by itself.  The few who do want to keep the organization going  lack the support since most  of the "former" members abandoned the group for the one with the most demonstrated organization.

The only people remaining, the " last gaspers" trying the keep the group together, hardly seem to want to survive.  They  barely want to make an effort to keep the enterprise going.  And perhaps the few who do make the effort do so only to have the final say in the running of the group.

This too is an evolutionary principle at work. Not just the "survival of the fittest but the survival of the remnants. They can go on for quite a long time and may even reconstitute itself after a while if it can hold out until fresh blood comes in.

I for one have found that in all this confusion and having made whatever attempt to keep the old group going, have decided that it is now time to put some new fresh ideas into my program and to start to go to new meetings.  It is not such a bad decision.  I am no longer alienated from my former men's group which used to suffer from a surfeit of "unbridled optimism". Today I just enjoy the fact that there is plenty of optimism to be unbridled about.  And with all this gloom about the economy and  newly experienced poverty and hardship, it is heartening to listen to stories of how men just like me have learned to rise above these setbacks.  Learning once again how to be gentle, kind, loving and accepting.

For just today, I had to walk out of my old meeting where it has been like pulling teeth to keeping it going. And I wanted to share, hopefully my joy, my insight, my hope . There were only four of us but I felt the meeting had been high jacked by someone who just had to talk about something, it does not matter what, who rambled on for about seven minutes after which she apologized saying "I'm sorry for rambling and going off topic", completely knocking all of what I cared to share out of my head.  And this was the second day in a row that this person did that.  I was so put off by this behavior that I did something I had never done before, I just stood up and walked out mumbling an apology about having to leave.

Whether I am wrong or right in feeling this way I don't know. But I just got up and walked out realizing I no longer can get anything out of this meeting among these same folks; I concluded I needed to be among new blood, and I walked across the parking lot into a meeting of thirty men where I happily spent the next half hour listening to a bunch of men spill their feelings about things I really needed to hear.

I had finally found a place to come home to for now.                                                

 © res 12/9/11

IT CAN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!

IT CAN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!

A splendid sympathy radiated from the men in the room. It was a radiance I had not felt in the ten months since I had quit the men's meetings because of my complaint of their "unbridled optimism". It was an enthusiasm for life and the future which, at one year of sobriety, I had not yet achieved the wisdom nor the serenity to appreciate. And being assaulted with all of this enthusiasm of the good life to come but with no idea of how to achieve it, that was not only unnerving, it was not making my sobriety any easier to maintain.

On the surface of it I should have been uplifted to have been surrounded by the success represented by those glowing drunks, who, having gotten past the lowest of their lows, were so unsparingly generous in sharing their brilliant lives week after week. And Oh! how thankful they were for their lives!

And the subtext that I read into that was "thankful not to be where  you are today stuck in the miserable hole of a life that you have; still tied to your resentments, prejudices, anger, pride and fears". And to have this rubbed into my face on a weekly basis without an obvious remedy was unbearable. This, at least was my perception since I was then at a stage in my sobriety where I felt I had little to be thankful for. As we say, I was "irritable, restless, and discontented" and I did not yet know how to be other than that.

So after a year of this irritability and alienation I moved on to other meetings where the tenor was not so grateful, not so bright nor so splendidly simpatico.

And with a bit more gloom to scaffold the structure of my program and more basics provided in my daily meetings themselves I embarked upon learning how to achieve the wisdom, clarity, serenity and lightness of being that so typified the men of that meeting so that I could finally be as grateful myself for being as alive, well and sober as they.

That was the plan. And it took work, as all things worth anything require. Daily I would apply myself to learning the basics of the AA program, how it worked, how to stay sober, how to find a sponsor, keep in touch with other AA's and study the literature.

And then by attending different meetings with a focus, this made me attend to aspects of the program one important part at a time. This day focusing on the Big Book, the next day studying the Steps in greater detail. The next, listening to members' stories to remind me just how similar and varied our experiences and paths to sobriety are. Finally, attending prayer or spiritual, or meditation groups to discover how others found gratitude and serenity in their recoveries.

The importance of the latter is instructive because the quality of one's serenity and gratitude can be achieved without necessarily regaining  financial wholeness. Some might think that financial security would necessarily be a prerequisite to achieving a sense of serenity, but that is not required, nor is it necessarily desirable.

I have learned that I can be satisfied, grateful and serene even if I have not yet gotten back on my financial feet. The Big Book teaches that we will finally "lose our fear of financial insecurity". Of course that means we will lose our "fear" of that insecurity, not the financial insecurity itself. Nor should we accept that loss of insecurity as an end in itself. Just not be so paralyzed by the fear that we cannot do anything about anything except to drink at the fear. And although most of my life I have had a healthy fear of financial insecurity (and although that fear is a motivator), in my case the fear of insecurity added to my reason to drink and then financial decisions that I came to during my drinking days had disastrous results upon my fiscal well being.

So the unprepared mind cannot appreciate going to a meeting of twenty eight to forty apparently successful sober men, all exclaiming practically "hallelujah" like praises of AA and how it made them sober and happy without giving that man any clue as to how this happened and how he is to achieve this happy end. And except for the hints dropped during shares of how alcoholically they actually did behave, you might not be able to tell the difference between this and a revival meeting, except for the absence of exclamations of salvation from the lord Jesus.

So the newcomer is naturally lost and put off - at least I was. But I, I believe wisely, chose to get a properly grounded AA education before I returned to this meeting as I approached its glow upon this misty and gloomy morning. And after eight or nine men shared on how wonderful life had become since stopping the drinking and ending with phrases like "and all this would not have happened if I did not have AA in my life", Frank, with ten days sober put up his hand to share.

"I'm having a hard time today. The mother of my son needed my help last night to get out of jail and although she has not let me see him for weeks, it felt good to be able to help out and find out that she was grateful for the help. But this morning she calls and says that she is moving to Boston. What is that all about? And I have nothing to say about this? I can only see this sobriety thing getting tougher!" And with that there were a few murmurings for him to hang in there and then the shares continued with testimonials to AA with the same "unbridled enthusiasm" as I watched Frank fold gloomily into himself sitting in the chair next to me.

Looking at him I then recalled that Frank had attended one of my classes that I gave at the drug rehabilitation facility in town. So I caught him after the meeting to suggest to him how I felt after meetings like this when I was in early sobriety; that I felt like I was swimming against an unsympathetic tide when confronted by this wall of optimism that for all I knew did not comprehend just what it was that I was saying. And that was a difficult concept for me to absorb, that chasm between me and their apparent incomprehension.

And that was not just because there was so much joy in the room that it negated all understanding, but because that was all that there was; no structure, no basics, nor formality nothing to hang an AA hat on - a metaphoric life preserver. Some basics? None!  So I guided him and stressed the other meetings which I had sought out not so long ago, so that I could grasp onto something solid until I was ready for the more freewheeling style of meeting; until such time when 'Time' had presented him with enough salved experience to permit him the appreciation of the gratitude that he had achieved.

As for me, I hadn't realized how much I needed to hear a bit more enthusiasm in my daily life. So I have returned to that meeting in order to enjoy spreading that "unendurable news" of having a life suffused with the glow of "unbridled optimism" that only a life that has achieved serenity can bring.

© res 12/6/11