There are times when I get crazed at the over-flow of addictions or thoughts of addictions. There are those of us who, once they believe or know that they are addicted to drugs or alcohol, decide it is easy and right to believe that they suffer from an addiction to food, candy, ice cream, coffee, frappaccinos, oregano, pepper etc. Why? Because it is too easy to blame weakness on addiction as the only way to manage weakness. And the only way to manage weakness is to call it an addiction than to manage by any other fashion. And I am not referring to moral turpitude. Just laziness in both thought and action in the behavior of daily living.
Because we addicts have agreed that will power is misapplied when it comes to managing alcoholism. So we believe that will power, or the power over the will, had no place in life whatsoever. And, therefore, running from our responsibility to manage our will has become the past time of the alcoholic in AA.
Some of us would rather pin all of our shortcomings on addictions. We would rather do that than admit that not all of our problems are addictions, cross addictions, cross infatuations etc., and that not all approaches to solving them are by means of AA. It is easier to do that. Otherwise we have to expend more energy in ways that AA has not prepared for us to have us examine ourselves. Which is OK. We just should not expect AA to solve all our problems by means of the 12 steps, because as useful as they are, slavish adherence to those principles will not begin to approach those problems which do not have solutions within their purview.
This is not to say that AA principles cannot be utilized in these instances. I just don’t think that their blanket application should be mistaken for a blanket cure, nor thinking that the use of AA principles in their application has employed a finely honed wit in figuring the treatment of a difficult problem. Administering pablum to solve a difficult problem is as bad as looking to find difficult answers to justify explanations to simple problems.
I am reminded of my psychiatrist friends who often sit back in exasperation at their patients after believing they have provided them with tools for dealing with the vicissitudes of daily living only to find them as ill equipped as ever to deal with their teenager yelling at them for no good reason and then go into a meltdown wanting some grand answer to it all. To which my psychiatrist friends inevitably offer as a nostrum 'Get a life'!
What I am saying, in case this is not very clear is that that we alcoholics tend to over dramatize our shortcomings as addictions to explain why we have trouble handling life, rather than just admitting that we have trouble handling life because we are addicts. One is the fallout from the other, not the reason for everything else.
And yes, I spend too much money. Am I addicted to spending? I think not. Do I have problems in establishing boundaries for myself, yes. Not everything in my life is an addiction but many of my life’s problems have stemmed from me not tending to my alcoholism; and tending to that wreckage takes time. And the cleanup from all that fallout requires time not just another label to pin the mess on.
And the time required to attend to this cleanup may be as long as it took to create the wreckage in the first place. It may not be just a desire to solve the problem with the drunk’s earnest needs summed up by 'I want what I want when I want it', talking and not listening to the body, soul and mind’s need for the time to heal.
So today I don’t blame my physical and mental poverty on a spending addiction. I don’t blame my joblessness on the fates, and I don’t blame anyone about why this is all happening to me because I was the one who brought it on myself. And in acknowledging this I take the first step toward acceptance of my problem and the first steps on the road to my cure.
res 12/12/10
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
DREAM
DREAM. 12/10/10
I had a peculiar shred of a dream. I was just at the edge of sleep when all of a sudden I wondered what if I were not to wake up and if in fact die, what about non existence? What would that feel like? and then I realized I would not even feel that I wouldn't exist anymore and I started to be really depressed and anxious. Why had this happened to me? Was that all there is? We are born from nothing we live and then we die and return to nothingness?
And what of my new found serenity? What about my spirituality where had my belief in a higher power gone? And as soon as I thought about the implications of all of this there was darkness, nothingness, complete homeostatic equilibrium.
I can't even describe the feeling of this non feeling; no anxiety, no joy, no fear, no nothing!
And this caused me to wake up in a blind panic . I hadn't said good bye to my daughter, I hadn't said my adieus to friends and family, and I hadn't filled my wife in about what all the dregs of the 'estate' were. But most of all was the sense of great disappointment that there was no hereafter, just nothing. No better place,no'other world'or other plane of existence. Just an overwhelming sense of disappointment and bland blackness.
Wow.
And then today 12/11/10 Miel says how down and out of sorts he is because he had to put down one of his dogs and I immediately went to that thought that maybe I am one of those dogs and my fate is not really determined by my higher power, and maybe even, my higher power is really someone like Miel.
And 'higher power Miel' will one day think that I need to be put out of my misery and I will, willy nilly, be put down because, (not that I want to be put out of my misery), Miel,my higher power, wants to put me out of my misery so that he can be less miserable about my misery. Wow about that!
And I will go straight to oblivion and he will go on to have an out of sorts week and then have to go to a Saturday men’s meeting to tell them how his dog needed to be put down so that he can give up his misery to his higher power and he will feel oh so much better for sharing that. And…
And I will be dead, and not even know it!...And...
As I said, it was a peculiar shred of a dream.
© res 12/11/10
I had a peculiar shred of a dream. I was just at the edge of sleep when all of a sudden I wondered what if I were not to wake up and if in fact die, what about non existence? What would that feel like? and then I realized I would not even feel that I wouldn't exist anymore and I started to be really depressed and anxious. Why had this happened to me? Was that all there is? We are born from nothing we live and then we die and return to nothingness?
And what of my new found serenity? What about my spirituality where had my belief in a higher power gone? And as soon as I thought about the implications of all of this there was darkness, nothingness, complete homeostatic equilibrium.
I can't even describe the feeling of this non feeling; no anxiety, no joy, no fear, no nothing!
And this caused me to wake up in a blind panic . I hadn't said good bye to my daughter, I hadn't said my adieus to friends and family, and I hadn't filled my wife in about what all the dregs of the 'estate' were. But most of all was the sense of great disappointment that there was no hereafter, just nothing. No better place,no'other world'or other plane of existence. Just an overwhelming sense of disappointment and bland blackness.
Wow.
And then today 12/11/10 Miel says how down and out of sorts he is because he had to put down one of his dogs and I immediately went to that thought that maybe I am one of those dogs and my fate is not really determined by my higher power, and maybe even, my higher power is really someone like Miel.
And 'higher power Miel' will one day think that I need to be put out of my misery and I will, willy nilly, be put down because, (not that I want to be put out of my misery), Miel,my higher power, wants to put me out of my misery so that he can be less miserable about my misery. Wow about that!
And I will go straight to oblivion and he will go on to have an out of sorts week and then have to go to a Saturday men’s meeting to tell them how his dog needed to be put down so that he can give up his misery to his higher power and he will feel oh so much better for sharing that. And…
And I will be dead, and not even know it!...And...
As I said, it was a peculiar shred of a dream.
© res 12/11/10
Saturday, December 4, 2010
BROKEN SHOELACES
One of the recurring themes in the rooms is alcoholic thinking and the many forms it takes. We marvel at our creativity in how we can turn fantastic things into things that are just good, good things to bad, bad things to worse, and worse things turned into impossibilities.
We have even developed code words to describe those circumstances in which we make choices that lead us to that sisyphusian slide toward inevitable disaster, a road that we knew from the start would end in just that manner but because we are who we are, alcoholics, once embarked on that path, we are almost mythically doomed to stay the course until it plays itself out to once again prove to us how alcoholically we think.
One of those code words is the use of the term ‘shoe lace’ or ‘shoe string’ in the context of allowing a broken shoe lace to set the tone of one’s behavior, or not for the rest of any given situation. So if you are at a Christmas party, and a co worker accosts you to regale you with besotted requests to do more sales next year, you can either push him aside and perhaps incur his ire for the rejection or you can stand there and listen to his proposals while he, in his drunken zeal, projects spittle into your face while speaking to you within your comfort zone nose to nose, you reeling from his alcoholic breath but gently accepting him gracefully knowing full well he will not remember any of it in the morning.
Or take Barbara, who because she was put off by the coach of her son’s lacrosse team, could have taken a behavioral obstinacy of her son to heart. But to what end? He didn’t break the ‘shoe lace’, it was his coach; and taking it out on her poor son for whom she has nothing but love would be absolutely the wrong message to send both to him and to the coach. Families are no place for pecking order displacement activities.
So when Mack related his tale of presumed woe it was all the more instructive and illustrated just how far and to what lengths we alcoholics will go to when our “thinking gets stinking.” Mack literally broke his Timberland shoelaces from his boots and decided to go to Wal-Mart to try to find a replacement. After sifting through what he described as about seventy pairs of shoe laces and not finding the correct size his stupid thinking meter went off and he decided to survey the area for stores that might have the proper replacement.
His wife suggested that he call Timberland to find where he might find a replacement, a rather reasonable suggestion, one that was easy, required little running around and also went straight to the heart of the problem with a really good chance of a successful outcome. But Mack “knew” that he had to canvas seven area stores because that was what had to be done, regardless of the chance of success and regardless of whether they were Timberland outlets.
By now he had worked himself up into such a fever that he had to go into NYC to go to a Timberland store and found himself double parking in front of the store illegally, running into the store finding the proper shoelaces and waving them in front of the clerk like a mad man blurting out his story and the illegal parking and the seven stores and 70 pairs of shoelaces at Wal-Mart looking for all the world like a rabid beast, that the clerk just said “Take the shoelaces, don’t get a ticket on their account.”
Frightening isn’t it? How we can bring other people into our maelstroms and if they permit it, they will be dragged down with us; but if they are truly perceptive as this clerk was, they just let it go, recognizing the situation for what it was and understanding that Mack was in greater need of the shoelaces than Timberland was of the five dollars that they might have charged and the thirty cents that they ultimately lost. But think of all that good will that they gained.
But here was Mack three days later warning us of the dangers of going where the broken shoe laces took him and can take us. And I looked around the room and watched as I saw fifty heads nodding. We all had been there.
I cannot say how normal people see this behavior except to say that they have seen us alcoholics perform acts of madness like this time and time again and perhaps have scratched their heads, wondering what all the fuss was about. And truly what was all the fuss about? Except to note that Mack has twenty five years of sobriety and still the need for vigilance is ever present.
So if you ever see perplexing behavior like this and wonder where it is coming from, think back on what I have shared with you today. More people than you realize think like us, but not all acknowledge just what they are and how they got that way. And still fewer stand guard to thwart this behavior before it becomes manifest, not just for our sakes, but for all those around us.
December 4, 2010 res
We have even developed code words to describe those circumstances in which we make choices that lead us to that sisyphusian slide toward inevitable disaster, a road that we knew from the start would end in just that manner but because we are who we are, alcoholics, once embarked on that path, we are almost mythically doomed to stay the course until it plays itself out to once again prove to us how alcoholically we think.
One of those code words is the use of the term ‘shoe lace’ or ‘shoe string’ in the context of allowing a broken shoe lace to set the tone of one’s behavior, or not for the rest of any given situation. So if you are at a Christmas party, and a co worker accosts you to regale you with besotted requests to do more sales next year, you can either push him aside and perhaps incur his ire for the rejection or you can stand there and listen to his proposals while he, in his drunken zeal, projects spittle into your face while speaking to you within your comfort zone nose to nose, you reeling from his alcoholic breath but gently accepting him gracefully knowing full well he will not remember any of it in the morning.
Or take Barbara, who because she was put off by the coach of her son’s lacrosse team, could have taken a behavioral obstinacy of her son to heart. But to what end? He didn’t break the ‘shoe lace’, it was his coach; and taking it out on her poor son for whom she has nothing but love would be absolutely the wrong message to send both to him and to the coach. Families are no place for pecking order displacement activities.
So when Mack related his tale of presumed woe it was all the more instructive and illustrated just how far and to what lengths we alcoholics will go to when our “thinking gets stinking.” Mack literally broke his Timberland shoelaces from his boots and decided to go to Wal-Mart to try to find a replacement. After sifting through what he described as about seventy pairs of shoe laces and not finding the correct size his stupid thinking meter went off and he decided to survey the area for stores that might have the proper replacement.
His wife suggested that he call Timberland to find where he might find a replacement, a rather reasonable suggestion, one that was easy, required little running around and also went straight to the heart of the problem with a really good chance of a successful outcome. But Mack “knew” that he had to canvas seven area stores because that was what had to be done, regardless of the chance of success and regardless of whether they were Timberland outlets.
By now he had worked himself up into such a fever that he had to go into NYC to go to a Timberland store and found himself double parking in front of the store illegally, running into the store finding the proper shoelaces and waving them in front of the clerk like a mad man blurting out his story and the illegal parking and the seven stores and 70 pairs of shoelaces at Wal-Mart looking for all the world like a rabid beast, that the clerk just said “Take the shoelaces, don’t get a ticket on their account.”
Frightening isn’t it? How we can bring other people into our maelstroms and if they permit it, they will be dragged down with us; but if they are truly perceptive as this clerk was, they just let it go, recognizing the situation for what it was and understanding that Mack was in greater need of the shoelaces than Timberland was of the five dollars that they might have charged and the thirty cents that they ultimately lost. But think of all that good will that they gained.
But here was Mack three days later warning us of the dangers of going where the broken shoe laces took him and can take us. And I looked around the room and watched as I saw fifty heads nodding. We all had been there.
I cannot say how normal people see this behavior except to say that they have seen us alcoholics perform acts of madness like this time and time again and perhaps have scratched their heads, wondering what all the fuss was about. And truly what was all the fuss about? Except to note that Mack has twenty five years of sobriety and still the need for vigilance is ever present.
So if you ever see perplexing behavior like this and wonder where it is coming from, think back on what I have shared with you today. More people than you realize think like us, but not all acknowledge just what they are and how they got that way. And still fewer stand guard to thwart this behavior before it becomes manifest, not just for our sakes, but for all those around us.
December 4, 2010 res
Monday, November 15, 2010
Caught In The High Beams
CAUGHT IN THE HIGH BEAMS
The topic of humility came up for discussion today and Joan popped her hand up, immediately going to a place where she always goes when she wants to blame herself. Last night she ran over a faun. And of course she blamed herself for it. She pulled her car over in the rain and just stood in front of the headlights staring at the little dead thing on the road, another driver pulled over and commiserating, said that it had happened to him too and wasn’t it a shame that they just dart out like that. He helped her pull the faun to the side of the road while she awaited the police, all the while replaying the scene, how could she have changed the outcome?, could she have not been going so fast?, was she going too fast?, was it the rain?
And so on, the second guesses kept coming until she was struck with a vicious thought “ where was the mother”, trying to blame it all on an alcoholic Mother Bambi that was in absentia, as she no doubt felt herself to have been at other times in other places. “I always go to that self blame place when things like this happen. I probably couldn’t have avoided this but I went there anyway because that is my default position.”
Humility for her would be realizing that she is not so important or great enough in the grand scheme of things to be able to effectuate the outcome of all events. Humility would mean having been able to accept the outcome of her situation regardless of whether she liked it or not.
Tom then mentioned that he observed a flash of familiar behavior when dealing with his 30 year old adult daughter. She was looking for a pair of sneakers and when she could not immediately find them she burst out in a stream of invective, a torrent of cursing, totally over the top and untoward and unsuitable to the situation. Tom, who had recognized more than a bit of himself in this behavior when he had been drinking, was too embarrassed to say anything and decided not to have a bruhaha just then as he thought it would be non productive. But it bothered him and was more than humbled by the notion that this “bad” acting was “inherited” by his daughter from him, no doubt through his fatherly demonstrations of parenting. Embarrassed, humiliated, and now needing to become humble he decided to take the bull by the horns.
So the next day when he drove his daughter to the station for her to return the NYC where she lived, he asked her to sit by him in the car a bit before she went for her train. And at that point he reminded her that he was in the AA program you remember “yes dad, I know”.
“ 'You know that I faced issues myself like that loss of temper that you had. I deal with the causes for that behavior in AA and the degree that alcohol played in it. I do not know if you believe alcohol played any part in your behavior yesterday but it didn’t have to. The principles are the same. I don’t let that rage let me reach the point of that behavior anymore because it is not fair, it is non productive, it holds others hostage to that rage and it keeps people at arm’s length and they do not know what to do with it so they shut down.' And I thought she was going to get angry but she just sat quietly, nodded and went off to catch the train.
"The next day she called to say that she appreciated the talk and recognized exactly what I had been saying about myself and her own behavior and appreciated the gentle observation; because it was better to get it from dad than from anyone else.” And with that Tom’s voice trailed off ‘humbly’.
James always has something pithy to say and today was no different. “I spend all day with myself and I am always fascinated by my story; All the time. (And then he repeated “…and I am always fascinated by my own story.”) And today I listen to yours and slowly become fascinated by yours. That’s humbling, and something I am not used to experiencing. Humility isn’t thinking LESS about you, it is thinking about you less.
Jock was thinking that playing a round of golf with his son and his daughter was in some instances humiliating, particularly when he would have to referee the fights that inevitably broke out between them around the 5th hole. But he allowed how that paled in comparison to the family situation that obtained three years ago when he had just given up coke, ecstasy, marijuana, and alcohol. He had almost committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning and was certainly near death in other physical ways. He had emotionally checked out from his kids and wife.
So today arguments around the fifth hole with putters raised over shoulders and giggles running rampant on the golf course are a long way from the sealed garage and a humbling reminder of the rough road he and we all have traveled.
Had I not heard the Bambi story I would have identified with Tom and if not for Tom then Jock and if not for him then any number of others who spoke up during the hour. All of us have great stocks of humility stored from the humbling events of our lives; events we no longer try to control, wills we no longer try to bend to ours, and rivers, the courses of which we no longer try to change.
These are losing propositions, as they always were. I just now can finally admit it and it is in that admission that I have found my own humility.
Res 7/14/10
Monday, November 8, 2010
RISK/REWARD RATIO
I was speaking with Nigel apropos of the meeting this morning which was laden with shares regarding how boring and lonely life was after alcoholism and how unstimulating sobriety has become. But everyone agreed that being sober far outweighed the consequences of alcoholism.
Jake shared that he is now going on 2 ½ years of sobriety and he is in a lonely slump. He has no girlfriend, he is at sea as to what to do on a Friday or any other night and the only friend he has is his puppy. And he has the feeling that wherever he goes he feels out of place. The girlfriend is an old story with Jake and nobody has been able to counsel him adequately as to what course he should take.
John is worried about his teen son who wants to experiment with drugs and alcohol but feels hamstrung by his father who while not passing judgment on this desire, has led a life of sobriety for fifteen years and by his very presence takes the “fun” out of the experimenting. It’s a dilemma that many drunks have experienced with their kids. Who wants a parent whose existence screams “don’t experiment or you’ll end up like me”? They would rather have a quiet partner as a parent, one who has no experiences to teach them.
So Nigel and I discussed the nature and origin of all of this ennui among our fellow drunks and we tried to put a face on the causes of these effects. First, having been raging drunks, we were always on the edge of life living a high risk and perhaps high reward lifestyle. As long as we were strung out on alcohol and drugs we were fine with taking risks, in business, in personal style, in driving and all manner of other behaviors most others would deem as anti-social and reckless.
Yet the intermittent reinforcement of high returns for risk taking solidified those acts and since non sobriety was the cause of our risk taking, its role in life was reinforced. This is the same dynamic that drives gambling.
But once we have undertook a sober existence, the associations of this behavior with drunkenness was unavoidable and we decided that risk taking was an unnecessary and unwanted threat to our sobriety so we eliminated these edgy behaviors to avoid the risk of falling back into drunken behaviors. So we developed a keen aversion to risk taking and we avoid risk like the plague. And we then accepted, rightly or wrongly that this existence must be the price to pay for sobriety and we became restless and discontented with our new life as we now know it.
But Nigel pointed out that the fear of becoming a recidivist sucks up the creative juices and clamps down the creative impulses. We want to remain in a psychically comfortable zone where we do not want to risk our sobriety on any behavior that would make us uncomfortable so we chose to remain placid, moderate and bored. But Nigel said that we, a group of very talented guys, should not be consumed by the fear of falling off the wagon because we may yet pursue risky deals if we know the risks and understand how to mitigate them. And if our fear prevents us from acting we must accept the consequence of being bored to death.
But taking the risk bull by the horns in life requires a vigilant eye and deep wellspring of strength of character. And ultimately the reward for taking that risk is the creation of something new, unique or better than things were prior to going creatively ballistic. If only we could coax our fears out of hiding in the closet into the light of a bolder, calmer us.
The truth is that we have become comfortable in our aversion to risk. And that has made us complacent, not wanting to rock our collective boats, our tranquility and serenity for fear of diving into the bottle again. It is a fine line between fear and folly. We have a healthy fear to avoid people, places and things that will expose us to taking up alcohol consumption again. And we are anxious for fear of once having extended ourselves out of our comfort zones that we will fall prey to those anxieties that led us to drink in the first place. But fearing that this will occur is unproductive, for it keeps active minds fallow.
And as our minds rest from planting too many ideas and activities we miss another imperative, to be engaged, aware and living a zestful life. Because the excitement that new ideas and processes provide makes us fully engaged with our families, society and with our own lives.
So the challenge for us, as Nigel counseled, is to strike out in new directions plying our intelligence in the pursuit of novel and interesting pursuits so that we never more have to complain that sobriety can only be manifest as an inevitably dour and dull existence.
Res October 24, 2010
Jake shared that he is now going on 2 ½ years of sobriety and he is in a lonely slump. He has no girlfriend, he is at sea as to what to do on a Friday or any other night and the only friend he has is his puppy. And he has the feeling that wherever he goes he feels out of place. The girlfriend is an old story with Jake and nobody has been able to counsel him adequately as to what course he should take.
John is worried about his teen son who wants to experiment with drugs and alcohol but feels hamstrung by his father who while not passing judgment on this desire, has led a life of sobriety for fifteen years and by his very presence takes the “fun” out of the experimenting. It’s a dilemma that many drunks have experienced with their kids. Who wants a parent whose existence screams “don’t experiment or you’ll end up like me”? They would rather have a quiet partner as a parent, one who has no experiences to teach them.
So Nigel and I discussed the nature and origin of all of this ennui among our fellow drunks and we tried to put a face on the causes of these effects. First, having been raging drunks, we were always on the edge of life living a high risk and perhaps high reward lifestyle. As long as we were strung out on alcohol and drugs we were fine with taking risks, in business, in personal style, in driving and all manner of other behaviors most others would deem as anti-social and reckless.
Yet the intermittent reinforcement of high returns for risk taking solidified those acts and since non sobriety was the cause of our risk taking, its role in life was reinforced. This is the same dynamic that drives gambling.
But once we have undertook a sober existence, the associations of this behavior with drunkenness was unavoidable and we decided that risk taking was an unnecessary and unwanted threat to our sobriety so we eliminated these edgy behaviors to avoid the risk of falling back into drunken behaviors. So we developed a keen aversion to risk taking and we avoid risk like the plague. And we then accepted, rightly or wrongly that this existence must be the price to pay for sobriety and we became restless and discontented with our new life as we now know it.
But Nigel pointed out that the fear of becoming a recidivist sucks up the creative juices and clamps down the creative impulses. We want to remain in a psychically comfortable zone where we do not want to risk our sobriety on any behavior that would make us uncomfortable so we chose to remain placid, moderate and bored. But Nigel said that we, a group of very talented guys, should not be consumed by the fear of falling off the wagon because we may yet pursue risky deals if we know the risks and understand how to mitigate them. And if our fear prevents us from acting we must accept the consequence of being bored to death.
But taking the risk bull by the horns in life requires a vigilant eye and deep wellspring of strength of character. And ultimately the reward for taking that risk is the creation of something new, unique or better than things were prior to going creatively ballistic. If only we could coax our fears out of hiding in the closet into the light of a bolder, calmer us.
The truth is that we have become comfortable in our aversion to risk. And that has made us complacent, not wanting to rock our collective boats, our tranquility and serenity for fear of diving into the bottle again. It is a fine line between fear and folly. We have a healthy fear to avoid people, places and things that will expose us to taking up alcohol consumption again. And we are anxious for fear of once having extended ourselves out of our comfort zones that we will fall prey to those anxieties that led us to drink in the first place. But fearing that this will occur is unproductive, for it keeps active minds fallow.
And as our minds rest from planting too many ideas and activities we miss another imperative, to be engaged, aware and living a zestful life. Because the excitement that new ideas and processes provide makes us fully engaged with our families, society and with our own lives.
So the challenge for us, as Nigel counseled, is to strike out in new directions plying our intelligence in the pursuit of novel and interesting pursuits so that we never more have to complain that sobriety can only be manifest as an inevitably dour and dull existence.
Res October 24, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
In The Time It Takes...
She delivered the news rather matter of factly. When she had gotten sober eight years ago she and her beau had had a hard relationship; hard drinking, hard sex, hard loving and hard knocks.
But she felt that had she not sobered up she would have gradually plunged down the hole of despair, desperate drinking and debauchery, she dragging him down and him returning the favor, pounding down drinks, drugs; using hard and living hard and fast.
So she cleaned up her act eight years ago and never looked back. And every now and then she would try to bring him along, each time tentatively testing the waters and then scurrying away as if bringing the sober word to him were the bogey man of his life.
Eight years passed. Last Friday she invited him to dinner and she made another cautious attempt to bring him into the fold and at last he seemed to finally get it and made a promise to try ever so hard to approach a sober life. Today would be the day.
She went home with some nervous trepidation but hopeful at the possible breakthrough until she heard the message on the answer machine. He had thought it over and he could not see himself honestly in sobriety and was sorry that he could not breach the rift of those years of pain.
And this morning she received a phone call that he was dead.
Just like that. Dead. The rift was too great the Stygian waters too swift and deep. What he was saying was that it was too late for him, for salvation and he was checking out.
She told us this so matter of factly because death, of late in the rooms has become rather matter of fact. But life for her and the rest of us requires these precious daily reminders to keep us coming back; reminders that it takes no time at all for death to claim us - only the time it takes to go out to dinner.
But she felt that had she not sobered up she would have gradually plunged down the hole of despair, desperate drinking and debauchery, she dragging him down and him returning the favor, pounding down drinks, drugs; using hard and living hard and fast.
So she cleaned up her act eight years ago and never looked back. And every now and then she would try to bring him along, each time tentatively testing the waters and then scurrying away as if bringing the sober word to him were the bogey man of his life.
Eight years passed. Last Friday she invited him to dinner and she made another cautious attempt to bring him into the fold and at last he seemed to finally get it and made a promise to try ever so hard to approach a sober life. Today would be the day.
She went home with some nervous trepidation but hopeful at the possible breakthrough until she heard the message on the answer machine. He had thought it over and he could not see himself honestly in sobriety and was sorry that he could not breach the rift of those years of pain.
And this morning she received a phone call that he was dead.
Just like that. Dead. The rift was too great the Stygian waters too swift and deep. What he was saying was that it was too late for him, for salvation and he was checking out.
She told us this so matter of factly because death, of late in the rooms has become rather matter of fact. But life for her and the rest of us requires these precious daily reminders to keep us coming back; reminders that it takes no time at all for death to claim us - only the time it takes to go out to dinner.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Slips, Inevitablity or Part of the Growth?
It is Labor Day here in the United States and if the typical course of events is to play out today, there will be much celebration, family and friend get-togethers and the usual holiday libations. If memory serves well those festivities will tend towards the over zealous and more inebriated and therefore are to be avoided or stood apart from by those of us in AA. And of course this morning's AA meeting, which was attended by at least sixty bright eyed drunks focused on the perils of holidays and the dangers of "slips".
The meeting was a beginners meeting and there were many in their first week of sobriety, some recently returned from 'experimenting' after periods of sobriety ("maybe I can have just one drink"), and others just joining the fellowship in order to achieve a modicum of peace in their lives trying to pick themselves up from the wreckage of some former existence. And the moderator turned the discussion to the topic of trying to avoid slips because, (and he quoted another AA from a few days before, "a drink isn't just a slip, it is a disaster"). And Emit shot his hand up to tell his story how he had after two sober years found himself romancing a drink in the most peculiar set of circumstances.
Emit had been two years sober, tidied up a previously codependent relationship, steadied his financial footing and generally regained years of whittling away of his physical and social life till he was well on the way to recovering a new life. So when he went on a date he felt he had his sobriety under control. She offered some wine and he felt he had this whole thing under control and would be able to take a glass of wine.
Two days later in jail, having committed a crime in a blackout, his fiscal and social equanimity in a shambles he now learned that he cannot trust himself with one glass of wine. Because, he now knows that that led to 4 liters of vodka, blackouts, violent behavior and the lock up.
There are those who maintain that slips are not a requirement for growth in the program and others who warn that there is no guarantee that if you go out you will ever come back in. My experience has led me to believe that for myself, I could not convince myself of the severity of my disease until I "slipped" once, twice, three times, each time the recovery being more difficult, each time the fall even farther, each time hitting bottom even harder. But for me, and for most others sobriety does not come without a spiritual awakening and until that point sobriety only means not drinking and that is just being a dry drunk.
Until I began to see that I needed to cleanse my soul, to look into the center of my being, sobriety meant and would mean very little to and for me. Until this last time when I saw the reason for being sober. Actually I did not "see" any reason at all but rather "felt" the need for sobriety... the "need" to live. And until that happened, I would have never appreciated or understood life without a drink.
So as to whether slipping is the 'organic' way that one achieves sobriety, there are many who will attest to the fact that it is not a requirement.But for those lost souls like myself, if we are lucky enough to find our will and need to live before alcoholism claims us, then slips probably are an organic and inevitable part of the cycle of recovery.
Because one can try to adopt the steps with all one's heart, but actually believing them to the point where you can save yourself is where the promise of AA meets that desperate hope for life.
The meeting was a beginners meeting and there were many in their first week of sobriety, some recently returned from 'experimenting' after periods of sobriety ("maybe I can have just one drink"), and others just joining the fellowship in order to achieve a modicum of peace in their lives trying to pick themselves up from the wreckage of some former existence. And the moderator turned the discussion to the topic of trying to avoid slips because, (and he quoted another AA from a few days before, "a drink isn't just a slip, it is a disaster"). And Emit shot his hand up to tell his story how he had after two sober years found himself romancing a drink in the most peculiar set of circumstances.
Emit had been two years sober, tidied up a previously codependent relationship, steadied his financial footing and generally regained years of whittling away of his physical and social life till he was well on the way to recovering a new life. So when he went on a date he felt he had his sobriety under control. She offered some wine and he felt he had this whole thing under control and would be able to take a glass of wine.
Two days later in jail, having committed a crime in a blackout, his fiscal and social equanimity in a shambles he now learned that he cannot trust himself with one glass of wine. Because, he now knows that that led to 4 liters of vodka, blackouts, violent behavior and the lock up.
There are those who maintain that slips are not a requirement for growth in the program and others who warn that there is no guarantee that if you go out you will ever come back in. My experience has led me to believe that for myself, I could not convince myself of the severity of my disease until I "slipped" once, twice, three times, each time the recovery being more difficult, each time the fall even farther, each time hitting bottom even harder. But for me, and for most others sobriety does not come without a spiritual awakening and until that point sobriety only means not drinking and that is just being a dry drunk.
Until I began to see that I needed to cleanse my soul, to look into the center of my being, sobriety meant and would mean very little to and for me. Until this last time when I saw the reason for being sober. Actually I did not "see" any reason at all but rather "felt" the need for sobriety... the "need" to live. And until that happened, I would have never appreciated or understood life without a drink.
So as to whether slipping is the 'organic' way that one achieves sobriety, there are many who will attest to the fact that it is not a requirement.But for those lost souls like myself, if we are lucky enough to find our will and need to live before alcoholism claims us, then slips probably are an organic and inevitable part of the cycle of recovery.
Because one can try to adopt the steps with all one's heart, but actually believing them to the point where you can save yourself is where the promise of AA meets that desperate hope for life.
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