CONTENTMENT

 

As I sat down to lead a meeting at the detox unit of the rehab hospital that I volunteer at, I said hello to the people filing into the room - faces dulled by draining drugs and alcohol, fatigue pulling at their limbs but faint hope in the resisting smiles at the corners of their mouths. I had seen these looks before, and one or two of them I had actually seen before, one in a previous incarnation when he had come to the unit about six months ago.

 

To the other man I offered a hearty "hello, how are you doing, I hadn't expected to see you here". To which he replied, " no, you really don't know me".

 

I was a bit nonplussed since I was sure that he was a member of one of my men's groups but I assumed he was claiming the right of anonymity and I was not going to pursue it if he wanted to remain innominate. He had his reasons.

 

When I lead a meeting among people in early recovery it is difficult to determine where to begin. Do I tell my story? Do I tell someone else's? Should I talk about AA, its history or should I discuss what I think AA has done for me and how I believe it helped me stay sober?

 

I never know and at various times I have discussed all of the above but I have recently settled into a routine of talking about the latter, particularly about how AA has taught me spirituality and how that concept is talked around, in and out but never directly about in the rooms.

 

In fact, there is one page in the Appendix of the Big Book that talks about it and it is a pretty confusing bit of verbiage, and as I have found it so wanting, I have taken it upon myself to use it, at least upon these occasions, as a stepping off point; I use its impenetrable density as a contrast to more accessible demonstrations of concepts of spirituality that have helped me to take a grasp at this ineffable subject.

 

Part of the discussion is to learn how people have used AA in their lives prior to coming to the rehab hospital (if indeed they have ever attended it) and to find out why they wound up returning to use drugs and alcohol, if they had had a program to begin with. And in fact, most people who had a program almost to a one will say that while they continued in AA with a regular attendance they had no trouble staying away from drinking and drugging.

 

And almost to a man, (person), their failures were the result of situational anxieties pressuring them to ignore their program and as their attendance dropped and reliance upon sharing their burdens with other people in the program waned, they would start to entertain the notion that drinking might not be such a bad idea, or at least not do as much harm as the dire warnings had been made.

 

And the problem is that the first drink or two or twenty or hundred might not have been disastrous but the cruel reality is that invariably they could not tell the point at which they could not stop drinking after that first or second or twelfth drink. And they would wonder, "When did that happen?"

 

The fellow who I thought I recognized spoke up and said that he had been sober and drug free for twenty-one years. He went to meetings for a long time. He stayed with the program. He was solid. Then about eight months ago he decided that he might try the drug of his choice (he did not say what that was).

 

"How did that feel?", I asked.

 

"I felt like my old self again, and that was a good feeling." he said. The siren song had begun.  And Ted, (I'll call him Ted), said that was the good and the bad of it all. The good because it made him feel like he was "whole" again; and bad because he had not realized that that wholeness that he felt was chimerical, the pipe dream of an age long gone when his acting success had not reached its peak and he had time to puff mystical dreams up in smoke.

 

(And yes, that is why I had recognized him, not realizing that because I had only recently seen him on the screen was why he was so familiar. He looked like any other common drunk in my AA meeting, hence my hail fellow well met greeting.)

 

We get too comfortable in our daily lives. Those lives, even the ones that have remarkable variety to them, are marked by typical quotidian habits and if we do not practice daily exercises in sobriety we get lazy and our sober and spiritual muscles get flabby.

 

So when I wind up introducing the subject of spirituality to newly sobering alcoholics and drug addicts, it is not such a foreign idea to a good quarter of the population who are "return engagements", those who have been sober but who have somehow, somewhere gotten off the sober path and gotten lost. And the topic is just a reminder of where they had been and a tap on the shoulder as to which direction in which they need to be pointed.

 

For those who are new to the program, introducing the concept of spirituality is important because it needs to be distinguished from religion. I readily acknowledge that I have a very poor understanding of a religious understanding of God as a higher power but I do consider that I have a spiritual higher power in the fellowship of AA. I use it every day to stay sober, I speak to other drunks daily and I help other alcoholics and drug addicts both in the rooms and in my practice as a physician.

 

I have found, finally, that my medical calling has required me to incorporate people in recovery into my primary care practice.  And I find it more rewarding than ever. I have finally found my niche in medicine and as a result have become quite content.

 

© res 6/19/2013

   rev:  9/1/2013