IDENTITY

 

 

IDENTITY

 

The longer I remain in the rooms of AA the more that I am comfortable in hearing the stories of people with whom I identify.  Every day I will read or hear a story which, although differing in some substantial details, nevertheless is, at heart, my story and if boiled down to the essentials has me written all over it. Just this morning in fact, we started to read the beginning of the Big Book which is Bill W's Story and it starts with the premonitionary doggerel which he finds chiseled on the gravestone in the graveyard of Winchester Cathedral in England just prior to shipping off to the continent and to the Great War:

 

"Here lies a Hampshire Grenadier

Who caught his death

Drinking cold small beer.

A good soldier is ne'er forgot

Whether he dieth by musket

Or by pot." ¹

 

This event for Bill seems almost to predestine for him the way his life will turn out when he continues to drink, first a lot and then more heavily, until he becomes a daily drinker.

 

I have gotten so used to this story that it is almost welcome each time we come around to it as we do when we repeat the reading of it every several months in our cyclical reading of the Big Book. I used to think  incessant repetition  would bore me to tears but now I find it rather comforting.

 

A personal small sampling of the men in the rooms has given me the impression that this feeling is shared by the majority of the sober people in the rooms. I suspect that this is because we identify heavily with the stories of the Big Book as well as the stories that we hear among our fellow alcoholics.

 

Yesterday I went to see the movie "Flight", the story of an alcoholic airline pilot who gets discovered only because of his miraculous ability to fly his disintegrating aircraft out of a death dive and glide it into an empty field. And although this saves 98 out of 104 passengers and crew he accomplished this while he was legally drunk and high on cocaine; and despite the fact that simulations by stone cold sober pilots failed to reveal anyone who could duplicate the feat he attempts to extricate himself from this situation as due to equipment failure not pilot error.

 

This is not to excuse the pilot but to emphasize that drunks are sometimes extraordinarily talented people and this was one of those people whose skill could not be duplicated by normal folk. But it was because of that skill, that spawned this incredible ego and hubris, making it impossible to have this man face the fact that just because his skill was so great, that he was still a low down stinking alcoholic of the basest kind.

 

Before I went to see the movie I had perused the reviews and it seemed that there were some prevailing opinions that although Denzel Washington was brilliant in carrying the character, the subject of the movie was somewhat lugubrious. The implication was that a whole hour and forty-five minutes of addictive behavior with only one five minute death defying nose dive for the plane ride was too much to sit through. Watching a drunk was boring.  Or people don't really behave that way do they? 

 

People don't drink when they know that their whole careers are on the line and the appearance of sobriety is paramount! Do they? They present a sober front! Don't' they? Well the truth is harder than fiction to portray and the fact of the matter is that the movie did portray the truth and it almost seemed like fiction. People (drunks/addicts) do behave that way. This is what addicted people do!

 

To borrow a phrase from Hannah Arendt, this is the banality of Addiction.  There is nothing evil about it. There is nothing larger than life. It is very pedestrian and every day. It is banal, common place, trite, humdrum - ordinary.  We are ordinary people with an extraordinary propensity for self destruction, self-loathing, self-indulgence and just plain addiction and until we become unaddicted we can do nothing about all of the other things that plague our lives.

 

But every drunk I know who has seen this film has felt an identity with this character and  has seen his story in the story of this pilot.  When we see and hear our stories in the rooms of AA we begin to identify with the plight of others as brothers in arms, fellow sufferers who have what we have and who, if they have found a way of dealing with their addiction, have something that we want. So we listen. We want to learn to know what it is that they did so that we can emulate that.

 

For when we see ourselves in the story of others that is the first step to our own salvation. And when we pass on our own stories it not only helps us to tell them but we also hope that our stories will be a mirror for others; so that when they see the light, they can live again in its reflected glow.

 

© res 11/27/2012

 

 

 

__________________________________________________________________________

^{1 Alcoholics Anonymous p.1, Fourth Edition}

THE EGO HAS LANDED

THE EGO HAS LANDED

My wife once told me of a famous actress she knew who had a one woman cabaret show titled "Songs I learned at my mother's knee and other low places". I have always thought of this title as a metaphor for the serendipitous way challenging things placed in our life's paths  seem to work themselves out  if we are willing to get out of our own ways and allow things to develop  in the absence of our own intrusions.

This principle works well for teachers as well as for the student, and for doctors as well as for the patients. And it is nowhere more an active principle than in the rooms of AA and in the rooms of recovery centers of rehab facilities.

I had been asked to step in as a substitute to run an AA meeting at such a facility and the job was "simple" enough, just talk about how we stay sober once we start going to AA or when we just get discharged from  a rehab facility. And it isn't as if there is no literature on this subject. Modern recovery psychology has a whole discipline devoted to it which is called cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT was developed in the 1980's as a means of helping alcoholics and drug addicts to train themselves to mold behaviors from old patterns to new ones in order to prevent the older patterns from triggering desires into the use of drugs and/or alcohol. And either by avoidance and eventual  behavioral extinction this would allow behaviors to metamorphose into new and more acceptable behavioral pathways.

As neural plasticity became further understood, it was even better appreciated how effective this therapeutic model could be. However, I certainly do not claim to be an ace practitioner of CBT, but I do know another, similar technique which was developed from the experience of alcoholics and was "codified" in the book "Living Sober". This book, published in 1973, presaged CBT by about seven years and had the hallmarks of CBT before it had that psychiatric cache.

At this meeting we were talking about how to modify behaviors once we had stopped drinking and drugging and the model we were using was the chapter in "Living Sober" called  'Changing old routines'. This chapter specifically addresses modifying behaviors through changing our engagement of people, places and things that we interact with so that the mere experience of these interactions will not trigger automatic behaviors associated with these "environmental" familiarities.

However, the language of the chapter was particularly geared to the alcoholic and made pointed references to commuter drinking cars, country clubs, Tom Collins drinks, yacht clubs, pool clubs, summer drinking days by the beach etc.  Parlance not geared to the typical pot head or junkie.

And, in fact, one young man made this a bone of contention when he pointed out that the terminology was such that he felt that the chapter had very little to offer him by way of motivation and I felt I was watching a very poor rendition of a Marlon Brando imitation explicating the importance of "method acting" in order for him to have a really solid recovery, ("what's my motivation here").

"I really don't see how anything that an alcoholic goes through has any relation to what I have experienced as a dope addict.  I have no desire to drink and I doubt that I ever will. How is this information going to help me with getting sober? I know that I'm only a few weeks sober but please tell me how this is going to help?"

And with that comment an alcoholic of many years and several rounds of rehabs chimed in and added that he had little understanding of the lingo and shares of the drug addicts and could not understand how he could possibly glean  from them any value from their experience, strength and hope.

I tried to explain that if one took out the references to alcohol and tried reimagining the actual circumstances of people, places, things that one did in these places and under these conditions, the techniques would be equally applicable. So, for the admonition that one should not keep liquor in one's house  it would be equally applicable to suggest that one would similarly not keep "recreational pot" or "recreational cocaine" around in case some casual friends came around and just happened to want to have a hit.

 

That this was not a good idea was agreed upon by all to be equally applicable to both situations.

Or if one just would consider that the effects of drugs and alcohol were the same when they reached the reward centers of the brain and the results were the same after they acted on these centers.  The resulting behaviors, lying, cheating, drug seeking, drug searching, drug hiding, to the detriment and in place of all other behaviors, was similar whether you used drugs or alcohol.

Yet still there was resistance. So I practically lost my cool and had to growl at the drug addict to let him know in no uncertain terms that I had known dozens of "addicts" like him who had "licked, beaten and conquered" their addictions only to find themselves in extremis at some time in their lives and the most handy potion for them was a bottle of vodka and the next thing they knew they were off to the races and lo and behold they had become raging alcoholics.  What had happened? 

A drug was a drug was a drug.

But the treatment was the same. It was a spiritual path. And that path was through the steps of AA and finding a softer better way to live a sober, cleaner, normal life.

But what had I accomplished by losing my cool. After all, these guys were barely sober?  What did they know and how did it help by me getting angry?  It wasn't all about me.

My getting them to understand what I was talking about  should not have been about me, but about them. And my only purpose for my being there was to be of service. So I instantly had to make my amends and apologize and let them know that I was out of line.

The fact of the matter is that I used to do this kind of service every week for a whole year. I had been used to people in early recovery acting unsober. That's the way they are. They are barely just getting drugs out of their system; and to call them sober is to suggest birds just cleaned up from an oil spill, are clean and healthy and out of the woods as far as their viability is concerned.

But really, they are still highly at risk and perhaps may not make it. Similarly, maybe one tenth to one fifth of those coming out of detox will make it to a sober end. Not a very good statistic but real. So it is a delicate balance that we are dealing with and not a good place for touchy personalities. I cannot force understanding, sobriety, knowledge and desire for recovery on anyone. That is something that has to come from within.

For me, that acceptance came like a film being peeled away from my eyes. Suddenly the fog had been lifted from me and I understood, finally, that I was an alcoholic and I had to stop drinking or I would die.

So in recovery and in understanding my own recovery, I have to put my own self aside. I was being too self centered in worrying that my point was not getting across to these kids. I should have been more concerned that perhaps I was going too fast for the lesson to be absorbed.

The ego must be relinquished for the spirit to be saved.

 

 

© RES 11/13/2012

 

 

 

 

FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

 

Sometimes  the wisdom that I get from people just equals that which I actually need for the day. And this morning I received an email from my friend the minister who passed along this saying of the Rabbi of Brastlav who taught, "If you won't be better tomorrow than you were today, then what do you need tomorrow for?"

There are many ways to take that plea to heart. One is to state plainly that if you can't see a better tomorrow for yourself then you have wasted your energies today. Another is that if you cannot use your experiences today to envision a better future then you are stuck in too much self pity.

So this morning was a pretty bright day and when I attended my dogs today I was pretty pleased that my oldest, which I just started treating for a flare of Lyme Disease, had started to perk up. She was wagging tail and hardly limping and generally a bit more spritely than the rather limp rag that presented to me yesterday morning, glum, listless and just laying around in her bed most of the day.

And the OD (other dog) who is always a bit more morose, was lying on the couch being pretty floppy when I noticed a big fat juicy tick engorged on her right ear. So I have to watch her for the signs of Lyme Disease now, although this was not the typical tick that carries the disease, it is certainly a sign that there are others casting about that may not be as visible. She remains her usual semi happy self still eager to beggar a treat from me at the drop of a hat just as a reward for returning from the back yard.

And after dutiful attentions to the dogs and a skimpy meal I headed to my normal AA meeting with the sun in my eyes and the Rabbi bouncing around in my mind.

As I arrived at the church I noticed Jeremiah, who joined our group about ten months ago upon the recommendation of Casey, and old friend who had been trying to get him to come into the program for years.  Finally, after suffering some medical  problems he was forced to concede that he needed to stop drinking and for health reasons was going to have to face the fact that alcohol was no longer an option in his life. Now was he going to be able to face the fact that he was an alcoholic?

As luck would have it Jerry (Jeremiah) soon was able to accept the fact that he was an alcoholic and his life was unmanageable. And this became pretty clear when he started coming to meetings and listening to the stories of the other men in the rooms, and finding that he had more in common with them than not. He found that yes he would make more time in the day find time to drink than to do anything else. He would spend more time with his bottle than his work. More time looking and thinking about alcohol than reading, watching TV, speaking with others, in fact doing any other activity in his life.

He finally understood that his life had been run by alcohol, the drinking, the thinking, the searching, the hiding, the stocking, the preparing and then doing it all over again. And when he finally came into the rooms, he realized to his relief how much more time he had to and for himself and for his family.

But for him it may have come too late, or so it seemed. For when he walked in the rooms his belly was distended, his skin was sallow, the whites of his eyes were yellow and he had that kind of skin that looked like the "tan of death" as I have often called it.  It is the kind of skin color that looks like the sickly fake tan that "Man Tan" used to give the user when it was first invented in the 1960's. That  skin coloring that was a poor excuse for a real tan.

That is the look of a failing liver and Jerry had it. And for the first five months he had it as he slowly was treated at the VA for his cirrhosis. 

He said then that he had been placed on a transplant list and was waiting. But as his treatment proceeded, he started to perk up, his skin color started to improve, his stomach started to flatten, his energy perked up and the news soon was that perhaps a transplant was not going to have to be imminent.

So we talked about me being available to him in case he needed company for his visits to the VA or to go to the Pittsburgh VA for tissue typing in case he needed to be set up for a transplant in the near future or perhaps later. But with that on hold for the time being we let that ride.

But today even with the sun as bright as it was, it could not animate Jerry's visage this morning. It really looked gaunt and drawn. He looked downright unhappy.

"What's the matter?", I asked.

"I'll tell you after the meeting," and he limped into the room.

The meeting was a step meeting, Step One, "We were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable". 

Our lives had become unmanageable... well that was surely true now as no doubt it had always been and always would be and I fully expected that that would be what would be forthcoming when I spoke with Jerry after the meeting.

And Jerry met me after in the vestibule and told me that his visit to Yale had been rather grim in that the news was not so good. Sonograms had revealed a couple of liver tumors.

To me this was not such an unusual finding. These could be anything from fatty tumors to hepatomas - benign tumors to cancer, both findings in cirrhosis of the liver.

And I mentioned that these were likely findings in cirrhosis and he nodded because he was well aware of this and I was not telling him anything that he had not been told before.

Then Jerry turned and brightened a bit and said with a bit of a grin "You know what this means? This means, of course, that I'm back on the transplant list... And I go to the head of the line...".  He turned on his heels and jaunted off to his car.

 

The Rabbi would have been proud!

 

©  res  11/9/2012

 

 

 

 

OUT OF THE EYE OF THE STORM

              OUT OF THE EYE OF THE STORM

One would think that a hurricane would be an awful time for a drunk.  Perhaps it is... I don't remember now. Except to say that in the past when there were warnings of inclement weather, that never stopped me from preparing to have a well stocked wine cellar for the storm, (that is the storm that there would be if I ever ran out of booze).  And I know, (and every honest drunk that I know of will attest to this fact), that no blizzard, no hail storm, no hurricane ever stayed the course of my (his) search for an open liquor store if I (he) was in need of some shoring up of liquid courage.

But it wasn't alcohol, the fear of it or the lack of it that most of my friends were wary of this morning. Because of the damage that Sandy's wake left in our community, two men's meetings had to merge resulting in a lot of camaraderie among the attendees, most of whom had not seen each other in two years since the groups had originally split.

"I didn't remember that this meeting had such old men in it" chided Mack, himself approaching retirement as both his hoary hair and beard can attest to. Garson poked him with his cane and offered to lend it to him. "All in good fun, I'm just a dirty joke since I haven't had a shower in the past five days. No electricity since the beginning of the storm."

And with that the crowd feigned turned up noses and offered rude noises.

Before the meeting began, and prior to the AA Preamble, offers were made to share accommodations for hot showers, warm beds and food for those still without power now  more than five days since Sandy's passing.

With the meeting starting in earnest, the major complaint was that after the danger was gone, after establishing that life and limb were no longer at risk, after the excitement had died down and the crushing boredom of the perplexity of uncertainty that remained with us day in and day out, it became hard to maintain civility.  Being kind, patient and unflappable stopped being easy. Tempers were hard to contain.

What we had learned through the routine of daily AA practice, (practicing these principles in all our affairs), was becoming worn out because many of us were going without meetings. First many of us initially thought that our families needed us by their sides first and foremost.  Then there was the fact that many churches were as without electricity as we were and were forced to close. Then we became lazy and mistakenly thought that we could do without the meetings because we were needed at home more than at the meetings.

Until a week went by and suddenly we had become noticeably more touchy and  irritable. Not only were we primed by the circumstances of the storm but we are naturally predisposed to be disturbed because we are drunks and we do not handle stress, any stress particularly well. So where did we get this notion that we could go so long without a meeting? 

But there it is. We've set ourselves up for failure. But most of us don't because we try to catch the signs early...hungry, angry, tired and lonely.  And when all of those are present we slowly become fearful.  So we need to reassess, sit back and take stock.

I was ill for two weeks prior to the storm and I could not get up to get to a meeting. And I was too fatigued to get out to a meeting during the days either.  But I thought I could get through without too much harm.  And it seemed that since I had gone about two and a half years straight without missing a day that I had enough time saved up that I could miss a few days. 

And then just as I started to improve and return to my schedule, the storm hit and another four days without a meeting! 

The most amazing thing was I never thought about drinking but until I returned to my schedule I hadn't realized what I had been missing in my daily life.  I had forgotten the rough wisdom. The reminders that there are folks out there who are worse off than I am and when I am alone in my thoughts I tend to really focus on my own personal muddle.

With others I realize the world is much bigger than me; and my problems, although personally daunting, are only larger because they are viewed though my personal magnifiers. Those magnifiers tend toward a grandiosity that is of greater proportions than the rest of the world because it has my peculiar proclivity with which to view them.

But this storm is a sobering reminder of the power of nature and the power of things other than myself. And that's a good thing to remember when my personality gets beyond the capacity of my emotional superstructure to contain it.

 

© res 11/3/2012