A DISASTER

A DISASTER

A long time sober member of AA once said that a slip isn't just bad, it is a disaster. And by this he meant that it is the culmination of events in one's life that first caused the drunk to veer away from his program of abstinence and then sobriety, and then away from the meetings that kept him sober. He then stops practicing the program and starts to behave in a manner that recalls his early years before he came to AA.

It is this spiraling course that he traces that is the disaster. Because a slip implies that the event was an "accident", that it just happened out of the blue. But as we all know, these things do not just "happen", they are planned, whether consciously or unconsciously, they precede the event by days, weeks and months.

It is an exasperation, an extenuation, an extremity that may drive one to a wit's end decision. We know in our heart of hearts that the course is futile, the action fruitless, the activity unavailing, yet out of sheer frustration and a crying need for release we go ahead and negate all that we may have worked for during the past year, or half year or even nine months or nine years. How do we come to such a consequence?

I'm not sure that I have any answers but let me paint the picture and see if you can understand the predicament. Because what may seem like an option for some people, may be a disaster for another.

Every new year brings a fresh crop of newly sober individuals. After suffering the pains of one last debauch, or during some holiday celebration and causing one final indecency that caused the piled on family resentments to collapse about him, he is left  in the rubble of his own deconstruction, bereft of family, friends, love, honor and self respect.

And like a dog with his tail between his legs he drags his forlorn carcass into the rooms to try to find out why his disease is so incorrigible and how he can tame his wild passion and cravings for his drink of choice. Some come whimpering, others defiant, still others return completely bewildered. But all who make it understand that they are here to try to (re)learn why they are different than the normal garden variety drinker.

And then there are those for whom the holidays were just one straw too many. Just the end of a string of indignities which just happened to culminate at the witching hour on December 31st.

Here is how it happens because life is already difficult for some. Someone, one, in particular, has to contend with treating a malignancy and this is her mission just now. She must concentrate on her treatments, not on the Stürm und Dräng of a ruptured family domicile arrangement, of a sister who will not take her antipsychotic medication who preys upon a mother who in her aging years can barely take care of herself let alone a mentally disturbed adult child; at the same time she can scarcely "tolerate" the prodigal who has returned only to find that she has to be treated for a cancer. You can feel pretty unwanted in this situation - and she did.

And some people do not have the inner resources to help contend with life's exigencies, and fall back upon maladaptive behaviors. And she did. Just one pipeful of crack but there went nine months up in a few puffs of smoke. Why? We seek succor in places we know. Bad  but familiar choices.

And then, what does Casey do with five years of sobriety when your self confidence is whittled down by a husband who constantly shoves what he considers your inadequacies in your face daily? And you can't avoid it because in a housing market such as this you cannot unload this white elephant and so you are forced to live in the same house with your divorced spouse! All the while the ex is dating the old nanny. Would drive anyone to drink, no?

Are we all to have the patience of Job? Yes. We do learn to turn the other cheek but when does this all become so much that you start to believe in the back of your mind the lies that he says to you and about you? Until your will and self restraint and resolve falter. And determination is subtly undermined.

At some point during the holiday you are offered a bottle of fine wine. And because you have been feeling so badly about yourself, you have been slacking off on your meetings, not speaking to your friends, not getting the feedback that you need. You stop calling the people you need to call and your program subtly slides.

All of a sudden a glass of wine does not look like such a tragic thing to have to celebrate the new year. And you forget all that you have learned over the past five years. Ten years if you count your previous attempts at sobriety. And the next thing you know you awake with an empty wine bottle in your hand and fistful of regret in the other and a hangover to remind you that you need to return to the meetings where you will again be safe.

It's hard work staying sober.

Sometimes I can get glib about this and I have to check myself regularly. Vigilance for us it is a full time job; for lest we forget that we are at work twenty-four hours a day, anyone of us can fall prey to our darkest anxieties, angers and fears. And then that worm of the drink, when wrapped as a Christmas or New Years present will hook us as surely as a fish is lured by a tempting bait, lured by the basest of needs and hunger. It is a constant and requires conscious battle.

I cannot blame anyone for "going out". I can empathize, understand and welcome them back if it comes to that. I just have to remember that I cannot go there myself. I have to fight the notion that misery loves company. If I go down that road I will surely have misery, but as for company, that is a chimera; there is no company down that road, just loneliness and desolation.

The good news about the new year and new people coming into the rooms or old people returning to the rooms is that I can appreciate where they have been. I can welcome them back and help them to retrieve some of what they have lost. And in doing so starkly recall what it is that I have to lose.

©  res 1/11/12