MY ALCOHOL CURE

Thursday, November 8, 2012

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.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

IN THE BEST OF SEASONS

There is something renewing about having a New Year's celebration in the Fall, something much more rejuvenating than a New Year's celebration in the most insensate part of the year. But with the sky a deep azure with a bit of a nip with a promise of warmth by noon there is still hope in another day.

And yet the trees, green, hinting of the gilt on the leaves and the promise of a harvest, these are the joys of a new year in the autumn.

But for the Jew the new year is a call to hearken back to year gone by to recall if one's deeds are worthy of being called to be written in the Book of Life for another year. Has one been good to one's fellow men, kind to one's family, a worthy Jew, peaceful, supporting the needy and helping the poor and suffering.

These are the requirements of normal people with normal lives. This is a normal life that I should have been living. But today I am leading a meeting, a Twelve and Twelve and at times I feel ill equipped to lead such a meeting because after 32.09 months of sobriety one would have thought that I would have gotten this "sobriety thing" down. This idea of knowing how to deal with guilt, grandiosity, problems with either blaming others or blaming myself too much. Dealing with insecurity, depression, worry, anger, self pity and relationships. And finally coming out the other side and not blaming anyone at all for my life, even myself, but accepting it with the notion that in the end with patience, and time, all things will get better.

Have I yet learned that?

Step four is to take a "fearless moral inventory" of oneself of all one's shortcomings and come to terms with those failings, who they involved and how they involved those folks. And in the end they will require of us that we make amends to those people with whom our inventory is involved. It is only when we come to terms with the baseness of our very beings, our souls, that we will finally be able to face a new and useful and fruitful life moving forward.

Otherwise we will always be reminding ourselves to "abandon hope of a better past" for the future that will be no different.

But somehow I never feel that I have the suasive ability to make myself believe that I can impart that knowledge or wisdom to a group of people who are as eager to understand sobriety as I am. Indeed, who am I to do that at all, I often ask?

And to indicate my confusion I lead the discussion by analogy. Most people, when they do a fourth step, find that they have great difficulty in getting honest with themselves, with others and with the program. And after great personal angst with some literal and figurative cramps, out pops some story of mournful suffering which ultimately ends in a sense of uplifting release.

My story was like a feeling of being in an operating room getting an angioplasty with the surgeon telling me to hold on just a bit longer; the pain was only going to last just a bit longer while I was listening to a whirring sound of the atherectomy blade eating away the plaque in my anterior descending artery. "Just a moment longer" he was urging on as the pain felt like my heart would just rip out of my chest.

And then - - - quiet - - -. No more pain. My heart beat returned to normal. No more whirring. No surgeon's urging insistence on only a few more moments of pain and it would all be over, because it was.

Like my sponsor saying that all I had to do was get through the hard part and it would all be over.

But was that it?

But after another year and a half I know that isn't it. I know there is stuff that I missed. How did that happen? Well I know how that happened! There were some lesions left in there that the surgeon left in there!

We knew that!

So we got to George who was concerned about his sister who is terminal and he rambled about not being available enough, about being too self centered, about not being ready to help.

It's all about us isn't it? Isn't it?

And then Crystal who is fifteen days back wondering if she just did not do her program well enough the first time or was she just fooling herself or just what was she thinking buying that single malt scotch for her cousin at the duty free shop on her only vacation in the past year? Not ready for prime time or what?

We sure do test our sobriety to the limit and don't we know it each and every time?

But there was Norton, who by his own admission has stretched his belief in a higher power to the limit. He doesn't know what to believe and where to turn. Last week was out of the ball park.

On Tuesday his father died. And since he is the only sober one in his family, dealing with the family homestead has become a real strain. But four days ago his friend loaded up on some drugs and OD'ed. Then three days ago his boss went out for a run and ran down a ravine and never came up, cutting his throat at the bottom.

"How should I think about this?" queried Norton to us in the room.

Norton is not religious, but if nothing else, he has a strong tie to his wife and children and if anything is going to keep him going, it will be his connection to his family and his friends in the program.

Drinking or drugging, that is not an option. Too much darkness down that defile. Go to meetings, talk to people, speak his feelings even if he has a very tenuous belief in God. For now he has a higher power in the others in program. Had he not done a step four he would be at sea right now.

These troubled waters could irrigate fertile seed for a bad crop of jitters and woes. Or with the pruning techniques learned through the Steps this could just be another solid harvest for this New Year, a New Year with an indigo sky, tawny soil with a whiff of chanterelle on the air.

Monday, September 10, 2012

SEASONS

I read a blog from someone in recovery on the other side of and underneath the world in South Africa. Right now Spring is beginning to warm some of the days there just as we are feeling the creeping chill of Fall trying to sneak up behind us and catch us unawares. But the Fall can't fool me because Louisey tells me that Spring is there around Capetown and so my guard is up, ever aware that these warm days are just a fool's show trying to put my attention at bay until Winter arrives to astonish me with its sudden arrival.

Louisey likes to share propitious regional or national events that occur in her village and town during these months, what meals and foods are served, flowers that are in bloom, smells that dominate the landscape and most of all the reaction of her Great Dane puppy, the goings on and how many of the people he pushes over in his excitement. And occasionally she will remind me, by way of a quote or two, of what a fantastic musical heritage we in America have, by quoting some composer from the American song book or Bob Dylan or some rock star or other on either side of the Atlantic.

But her blog gives me a firm sense of one person's sense of being in a place, in time, and space. Along the way she shares the highlights of the difficult lives of people in recovery in her corner of Africa, the difficulty of living in general in her corner of Africa which is hard enough for sober people alone but could drive anyone to drink! And it reminds me of how good life is here in the United States and of all the things we have to be grateful about when she describes some of the lawless rampages that happen particularly against women.

She describes in the most poignant terms, the circle of her life that I have been reading about now for more than a year, in the most wonderful prose and poetry. And now, one year after returning to living with my wife, another circle has been completed and I look back and see that many other circles are in the midst of being completed as I observe the various life circles going on about me and among the circle of friends and family who I love.

So when Steve finally reached thirty five years this year working in the postal service as a letter carrier, he had already been thinking of retiring for three years and had filled out the paper work two years ago. But taking that last step, well that was a long way down. It was not so much that he did not have enough money to retire as much as that his life was defined by the daily grind of getting up, getting on the train and going to the city and to work.

It wasn't as if his intellectual capacity wasn't far above his pay grade at the USPS. Steve coulda' been a contenda' for any number of things. And now that he could be at that first step, to stop working, that was hard!

But in July he stopped and suddenly he had re-defined himself. He was suddenly retired. And for a good month it was difficult to get a handle on what that actually meant to his self image.

However, just now, Steve is not so eager to hop back into the work environment. After a month of well deserved rest, he is finally beginning to enjoy the time of leisure and is finally sorting out what it means to have time on his hands. And he is taking his time in figuring out how to use it. Using the AA adage "Time takes time" he is harnessing the time to its best advantage.

As the end of September approaches, Jill will face a hearing to get her pilot's license back. It's been a year. She has done everything by the book; random drug testing, monthly shrink visits, regular AA meetings. And although she was never an alcoholic in the truest sense of the word, we are talking about her livelihood and she is not fooling around with this. So if it means not drinking again, that's OK with her. A small price to pay for the privilege of flying.

Frank is moving into a small apartment after being forced out of his mother's home. That abode houses a schizophrenic brother and elderly mother and she cannot manage having Frank there too since the mentally ill brother does not get along with Frank too well and the mental illness gets worse while he is there.

Frank wanted to help his mom since the brother does not do that, he destroys the maintenance equipment and the house among other things, and then blames Frank for the deeds. So when Frank leaves, these issues will become more acute. Meanwhile during the past year while this was going on Frank had to fight a lymphatic cancer, a really serious and typically terminal form which he appears to have beaten.

So this season, Frank is moving on, starting afresh. And perhaps it is better. He can no longer be accused of instigating the incidents of which he is now being accused, and he no longer has to deal with the constant threat of being thrown out of the house under a court order. Now he can concentrate on his sobriety and leave the Stürm und Dräng to other people and other occasions.

Then there is Jo, who has decided to leave a liaison after ten years. And this is painful because Jo has thought long and hard about this; it has been at least five years since there has been any sex and three years since there has been any acknowledgement of any respect. Just, you clean up this, and cook the food, and wash the clothes and go shopping and...

Jo finally has had enough and is moving out...Moving out from an old stultifying life into a free and oxygen rich new life. A life that celebrate diversity, fun and sobriety.

And in my circle the changes have not been particularly radical. But my daughter, having found a job that she really enjoys, and found an apartment that she loves, in the city that she adores, has moved aided and abetted my me and my wife and a truck and an AA friend. A friend who must have had sardines as close relatives since his packing abilities are second to none.

I am proud of my closer relationship with my daughter and a new found trust that I believe that we have for one another. And I am glad for the affection that we have for each other.

As for cementing marital relations, well at least they are not getting worse. They need work, but then to quote Eleanor of Aquitaine in "The Lion in Winter" "What family doesn't have its ups and downs?" Avanti! More work for the next year.

As the High Holy Days approach and a New Year approaches it is time to take stock of the year gone by and to assess what I can put in the column of good things that I have done, what were the bad things and what do I still have to do. And though I cannot claim spectacular or even small success in any pecuniary fashion, I guess I can say that at least I did no harm. And perhaps I may have done a bit of good.

Maybe even enough to be written in the book of life once again for another year.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

NEW MAN

One of the preliminary formalities of an AA meeting is to ask if there is anyone new to AA or to that particular meeting. Homer raised his hand and admitted that today was his first day sober. This usually brings a hearty round of applause and today was no different; but Homer was no spring chicken and for today's meeting it seemed like a qualification was a minimum age of forty. So the applause was warm, deep felt and sincere. And it was surprising how for the remainder of the meeting this was to set the tone for how people would shape the tenor of their sharing.

We don't always come in on wings of Angels. Kicking and screaming for me was my path as I recall. I was not a happy camper and the first time I came into AA it was under threat of a divorce. So were the second and third times. The final attempt was much more serious and it had to do with health, life and death. I had a craving for life so I had to finally want to give up the fight to have everything my way and compromise with life's exigencies.

Today this was a theme that was repeated over and over again.

Charles, a man I had not seen before, told a story of things that I had seen as a physician but chilled me to the core since he is the only person who I have seen to live to speak about them. All my patients are dead. Of course, I saw them twenty years ago when we did not have the techniques to keep people alive as they do today.

But Charles drank until people stopped wanting to be around him. But that didn't stop him from drinking. He then noticed that his liver was getting large and his doctors said that he had to stop. So he stopped for a few months and slowly the liver recovered; but he returned to drinking - again hard. Still refused AA - not for him - he thought AA was for losers.

Then he noticed that his eyes were getting dark yellow, his skin developed spider angiomas and he bruised easily, his palms got blood blisters, his belly swelled to four times normal size and he had to go into the hospital and get twelve liters of fluid tapped from his abdomen.

His liver was a mess, his doctors told him he would die if he kept up this pace. He said he would stop. He didn't. He just kept drinking until one day he vomited blood and he had to have the esophageal varices sclerosed through an endoscope. But even as the varices were healing Charles was sipping his vodka. Until all hell broke loose and all of the bursting varices almost caused him to bleed out. Twenty units of blood later and there was little change.

Even then that wasn't the end of the descent into this personal hell but it gets dreary even for those of us who have been battle scarred either by profession or by avocation. I got exhausted listening to him and wondered why he wasn't dead and frankly just how long he had to live given what I know about the level of permanent damage he must have caused and yet remains even as he has sobered up.

Yet Charles seemed grateful that he had finally arrived at this meeting on this day to tell his story to this new arrival to let him know about the "yets" that were waiting for him, if he thought that he had not had fallen as badly as some folks in the program and that perhaps he might not be an alcoholic.

Jasper confessed that he was 50 years old and first came into the program at age twenty six. Yet he was today only 15 years sober and that was because he thought he could get sober his way. First he had gone to rehab and read the big book in one and a half days and finished the twelve steps in four days. And it was only 48 hours after leaving that rehab facility before he was making his next score thinking what losers all of us suckers were!

Behind all of this was the haunting specter of his industrialist father, captain of industry who drank most of his life and it never got out of hand. Why couldn't he drink that way? And yet, and yet...

And yet there was Martin whom I have never met before but who shared that he goes to a meeting in another town off and on, and in between the off and the on he was informed that one of the members who had been a struggling chef who had been coming in and out of the program first succeeding and then getting off the beam, had died.

Committed suicide.

Shot himself.

Could not get his act together and in desperation shot himself.

His mother had come to the group to ask to address them for just ten minutes to let them know that he had spoken very highly of the group, that they had kept him as sane and as sober as possible during his struggle. But that he, in his meticulous fashion, had bought a shotgun and rented a room in one of the ritziest hotels in Manhattan and took his life.

His mother took this to mean that she thought that he did not want any of the family to have to clean up after him and he was so fastidious that way.

Mel nodded concurring " Yes, I know that for myself, I'd rather that people know that I died than that they know the person that I was when I was alive."

"Mad, sick"! said Ed, whose army days in the seventies allowed him to see any number of suicides from drugs, alcohol and officer fragging. It was a time of madness and his only solace became the trees, the river and the earth.

"You may call me crazy for speaking to the trees and the river, but no crazier than holing up in the Ritz Carlton or other fancy hotel and shooting myself because I couldn't or wouldn't get sober. When you don't have a higher power to turn to you think you can solve the problem yourself. And that kind of solution does not seem helpful to me!"

Ralph then talked about gentler pleasures, those that are the gifts of the program if you pay attention once you have discarded the detritus of the past. He said that his wife had been complaining that their sons never call, to which Ralph suggested that sons never call parents, sons being naturally wayward with low expectations of continued family connection. But his secret fear was that they did not call because of his early alcoholism and their recollection of it.

But to his surprise about a half hour after the comment, his son did call and the conversation maundered for hours into the night like a normal family discourse about normal familial "palaverables". No hint of any antipathy. He punishes himself in his head more than his children ever can remember to do. Why? Because he is the alcoholic, not them.

So if Homer felt as if in entering the room today he was approaching Hades, the conversation certainly had a stygian tinge to it. But it is better that he should hear the worst now. He knows that what got him his ticket to the room this morning was not his stellar display of citizenship. So what he heard either confirmed his determination that he was in the right place or convinced him that he needed to do some more 'better living through chemistry'.

I hope that he does not have to cross this river before he has witnessed the best things that life has to give.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

AGED THOUGHTS

The morning is gray and my mood matches the day. And as I head out for my daily AA fix I choose to turn left into the church parking lot instead of right, down the street to the "Y". Today I do not have anything to say about God being the solution to alcoholism, and really mean it the way the rest of those in that group truly believe. I, per se, am not a "true believer", at least not as Bill W would have me believe. I need something more basic, more earthy. I need to be reminded of the pain that got me to where I am.

So left it is and I enter the "Servery" (a peculiarity of Episcopal nomenclature I am assured of by my ecclesiastic friend) to attend today's meeting with forty other aging drunks. That wasn't my intention but when I sat down and had time to survey the men in the meeting it was clear that this was no young man's game. This was for mature audiences only.

As I looked around the room it was clear that the faces that I recognized from years ago had more furrowed brows and deeper nasal folds than I remembered. Jowls were fleshier. And even if the eyes flashed just as brightly as before, they could not belie the age that lay behind them. But the things they had to say were what I needed to hear this week, a week that for me was filled with a deep sense of foreboding and depression for the intransigence of the condition of my life and the feeling that it was leading nowhere fast and that I did not know how to move it along or why this was happening to me.

So I listened to how these other withering plants were handling their lives.

Jack, a bit younger than I is having trouble in determining just how he is going to go to a wedding where his girlfriend insists that he will have to stay for the whole proceeding. I couldn't tell if this was his old girlfriend or a new one since his old one would have had a good idea of his history and I would have thought would have been a bit more sensitive to his sober plight. We usually say "go late and leave early", an injunction usually meant not to be abrogated by the whimsy of anyone, regardless of their personal desires, if it puts one's sobriety at risk, and Jack knows better. But that is his dilemma today which he must share.

Mel starts to share that he has a premonitionary sense that there is a move in his future but he does not know when or if but it feels like it is just hanging there like a scimitar over some invisible doorway just waiting for him to enter. His fear is the issue. The fear that somehow that will affect his sobriety, which, for the past thirty years has served him well. His two boys never knew him when he wasn't sober.

"Sobriety gave me a life beyond my wildest dreams, and I don't want that to end. I guess I'm just afraid of change. I don't want to move from here, from my meetings, from where I'm comfortable."

And it is from this sentence that my mind starts to riff, " a life beyond my wildest dreams" because I feel jealous that I have yet to obtain that. Or even approach that - ; A life even like a daydream or a reverie, musing or whimsy perhaps? But since I got sober all I feel my life has been like has been just been a treading of water. I feel that I reached a level of sobriety but my life has not progressed beyond that.

Did I misread the promises?

I know I have to work for my future but at every turn a new roadblock pops up and it becomes difficult to believe that there isn't a world out there hell bent to get me! So I listen some more.

To Alan, who is sober 21 years and is a junior partner in a machine shop but for some reason cannot get along with a senior partner. He has noticed that he has had this trouble more and more since he stopped going to as many meetings. That has occurred since his sponsor died several years ago. "So I am coming clean and telling on myself so that I can get right with me and my program. I need to get another sponsor and start to come to meetings regularly again. I need to work the steps again. I cannot just fly off the handle at my partner because that is not sober behavior.

"And I notice that I behave that way around town too, acting foolishly when complete strangers try to motion to me to slow down. I want to run them down! How do I know that up the road there isn't an accident - why should I take it out on some old codger signaling me to slow down?"

And Clint, quoting Jake who after eight months of sobriety is beginning to appreciate the fact that he could take his daughter to a water park and note the absolute terror on her face at the top of water slide and watch as the sheer terror faded to a true thrill of accomplishment as she reached the bottom. And the feeling of achievement that Jake had having been sober to enjoy that. He has been out of work during this whole time; he could have been out of a marriage also, but things somehow worked out.

When I left the meeting the day was a bit brighter, I even had to put on my sunglasses. The mood brightened enough to think about what I had taken away from this meeting what I would not have taken from the other meeting.

I had to be reminded again that things change slowly; much more slowly than I would like them to be. It's a hard lesson to learn because fiscal time and AA time are not necessarily consonant. Bills have to be paid. Patiences of others in my life are not necessarily without end. I can only hope that understanding will last a bit longer.

What I can say is that the time I have had to reflect upon my life has given me the opportunity to appreciate the family that I have. The pride of family, to appreciate the excellence of my daughter's accomplishments, to watch her grow and move into the world. To see her take charge of her life.

I'm proud to see my wife take charge of her life. I wish I could be more of a help to her and feel like less of a burden.

Sometimes it's important to change venues because the new people have new views from old vantage points. Age makes a difference and I needed a seasoned point of view, a new perspective that has been missing for the past year.

And another thing, I need a new sponsor to take me through the steps once more. I must start all over again. A fresh point of view can never be wrong and, who knows, new light may be shed on an old subject.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

LIVES OF MEN

And Eric started to cry, almost uncontrollably, as he tried to tell us of a dream he had. It was a recurring dream about drinking. Powerful it was, because it was filled with a sense of yearning that he had not felt in years. Frightful it was, not because of the feeling of compulsion to drink but because it took him to places that he could never enjoy again, doing things he could never do again.

The things he could never do had nothing to do with drinking, but had everything to do with a chronic illness that his wife has and that he struggles with along with her every day. Yearning for years and times gone by and for things done and remaining undone. Things promised and because of circumstances cannot be fulfilled.

And these dreams make him profoundly sad. Had he been drinking he would not have to suffer these dreams, these sleeping/waking dreams of conditions he cannot do anything about. Ordinarily and in the past he had been able to shunt these feelings of loss aside. But the grinding years and the grinding condition of his wife bubbled up this morning and overwhelmed him.

Until I joined AA I had never seen another man cry except for a brief moment at a funeral. But never as routine evocations of sadness, guilt, grief or frankly joy. And yet here, tears as an outlet for deep emotional expressions of men are on view daily.

Tearfulness is also more likely to be seen in a room of men than in a mixed meeting. There is a natural disinclination for men to cry in front of women even if the reverse sentiments are not necessarily shared. But that has less to do with a sense of discomfiture than a sense of manly comfort when men are among men, confessing and explaining failures, faults, sins and triumphs among those who will know, almost instinctively the truth of what is being said. And if it does not ring true, the men in the room will let you know by some means that will straighten you out.

Truth, only truth, is condoned in these meetings. Half truths, lying, boasting, those are not likely to be countenanced with any degree of humor. We do not tolerate fools and braggarts.

What do men talk about when they are getting sober?

Initially, we often rail against the forces of circumstance that brought us to the dismal places we find ourselves. We complain how hard it is to stay sober. We gripe and grouse about how unfair our families have been to us, how misunderstood we have been. Often enough, these laments are heard with some tough sympathy, for we have been there, but we are skeptical and we do not hesitate to show and speak our skepticism.

Gentle sympathetic chides are meant to keep the newcomer returning to the meetings but we are trying to get that man past the point where his life is filled with the "poor me isms" to the point beyond when a bit more perspective can be applied to his life's canvas.

But that takes time, and that is not always easy to accumulate with so many years of drinking and drugging. And with that history our man hoods and sense of self as men has been whittled down to a dull nub which seems as if it will never be able to sharpened again. Our selves seem destined for the emotional dispose-all that our drinking has taken our lives to.

But given the time the "poor me's" the "fuckits", the "I don't giveadamns", and the "it was never my fault by hers, (his, my boss, my father's, my sixth cousin four times removed), will gradually decrease. Time will permit some shape to form where only warped and distorted perceptions existed. Then some reality will seep into the darkness of the cave of misconstrued and ill conceived misrepresentations.

How then does our view of ourselves as men change?

For me, the provider, the quiet absorber of anxiety, fear for the future, worry about fiscal security, pay for the house, pay for the kid, pay for the household, pay for the child's education, all of these took a toll and I had no idea where it would take me. Frankly, I was ill prepared for the roll of "Provider, father, husband". I don't know how one gets prepped for such life roles but I certainly went from ill prepared to completely at sea.

And when I did not know what else to do, I drank. I drank to dull the fear of all that responsibility. (Of course, one remembers that I did not always drink to escape but when the need came, it sure was an obvious anesthetic and boy did it work well).

Jack said that when he went away to Viet Nam, he was quite happy to shoot things. The sharp focus of war made the pain of daily life a hazy dreamlike miasma that seemed less real than the blood and guts home and family survival. But the noise in his head, how was he going to quiet that down?

Well, there was heroin, cocaine and that good old standby - vodka. And that worked for about ten years, in and out of jail houses, institutions, psychiatrist offices, treatment for PTSD. But he kept going back to drinking.

Until he found AA and let it all out.

And cried, and cried, and cried.

What do we want to be men about? We want to be fathers to our children, husbands to our wives, and providers to our families. We want to be just like any other normal man who does not have to wake up to these demons every day, running from dreams of regret, from vacations untaken with spouses sound of body and mind who can enjoy the rest of their lives with us. We don't want to be guilty for being absent for so many years when we did have sound bodies and could have spent some times on the top of the Grand Tetons with a glass of a full bodied Shiraz in our hands.

But that time is gone and sometimes we are only left with our memories and the time we have left with the people whom we love. And the best we can do is learn to live the best we can, every day by meeting other men and finding out how it was that they did what it is that we need to do.

And sometimes that means that we need to come to meetings and share about painful things that we did and did not do.

At other times all we may be able to do is cry, cry, cry.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

GETTING IT

When doctors and nurses have become addicted to drugs and alcohol the prescribed remedy is often detoxification followed by rehabilitation in a medical facility. Weeks, perhaps months of slow remediation follows in which modern psychological tools are applied to try to help the 'professional' gently return to a productive life and career. Cognitive behavioral therapy, psychosocial interventions, psychotherapies are techniques that have been shown to be very effective instruments when administered appropriately and for an suitable period of time. Too often, in fact, that interval is cut short long before its has become maximally effective.

Beyond personal therapy, many rehabilitation facilities add medication, meditation, contemplation, yoga, exercise, swim therapy as well as twelve step meetings to this armamentarium. Some rehabilitation institutes have proprietary methods of treatment which may or may not have any proven value while other institutes rely almost exclusively on AA work.

Among the so called support step meetings are the ones called Caduceus meetings, so named for the double snake medical symbol of healing. It is in these meetings that medical professionals can share, without fear of public exposure, worries about their addictive habits and how they are dealing with their difficulties. The freedom from fear of reprisals makes these forums safe places where solutions to personal problems, many of which often have to deal with governmental and legal authorities, can be openly discussed in a congenial atmosphere. Here there is a give and take in which similar experiences, emotional as well as life's, are shared and frustrations can be aired in a friendly and sympathetic environment.

Groups with traditions based solidly in the AA Traditions often are truly meaningful and garner a lot of trust among physicians. I have personally found these to have been very helpful and observed them to be useful to the physician struggling in recovery. It is often good to have a group of peers who are willing to lay it on the line for you, "call you out" as it were, when you appear to be struggling with the program and perhaps are in denial about your addiction.

I you lose your perspective on what is important, what you cannot or should not worry about in your day to day practice among your professionals, when to try to forgive people despite your sense of betrayal, this you won't get in a Medical Staff Meeting or a Morbidity and Mortality Conference, but will find great solace among your fellow Caduceus members. Feeling at sea emotionally is not unusual early in recovery and it may be something only other professionals who had similarly suffered with in early sobriety can empathize.

Early on we all suffered with the delusion that we are smarter and know better than anyone who came before us. We think, perhaps, that we are unique in suffering our cravings for alcohol and drugs and that nobody understands the intensity with which we suffer. And with that superior thinking comes the sense that we can conquer it all alone so that ... "You all might need this program because you all are drunks but I certainly don't belong here!"

This became much clearer the other evening at the Caduceus meeting that is held at a prestigious rehab facility. From time to time, people at the center, professionals who are at the facility from out of state, sit in on our meetings to get a sense of what it will be like to attend a Caduceus meeting. And it was there that I met a physician who was in his third week of hospitalization, having been admitted ostensibly to treat his chronic pain but in reality it turned into a detoxification treatment for his opiate habit.

And it was rough, make no mistake about it, since at five weeks now, he was still having withdrawal symptoms - muscle spasms, mild cravings, vague stomach nausea and sleep problems. But he was finally, with his sixth week coming up, looking forward to returning home then going back to work.

For weeks we had listened patiently to his story which, quite frankly, was like every other addict. I call it the 'banality of addiction' after Hannah Arendt's phrase. That should have been comforting to him. Amad told us his story in its gritty and boring detail and when he got finished Jason, (another doc in recovery) gave his brief, hair raising tour of his addiction, right down to the same gateway drug that they both used and Amad sort of blushed at the fact that he was not so unique after all.

After several meetings and listening to the waning litany of symptoms and with very few spontaneous bursts of cheer and laughter we were inclined, finally, to ask about how he was planning his return to "civilian" life. Jack said "So Amad, what's your program of sobriety going to be like?"

And Amad answered, "Well, I have a good exercise program, I like to run, and especially swim and do a Nordic track. I meditate twice a day... and I decided not to take any more narcotic pills. I also decided not to drink any alcohol at all for the time being. I thought that was a good idea, even though I'm not an alcoholic I feel it might not be a great idea just now. Of course, later, I'm not sure... "

And Jack asked about a sponsor...

"I do have a sponsor, my pharmacist, who used to use drugs also, he agreed to be my sponsor. And I have my general physician who agreed to take me back; I have a psychiatrist, I think the people here will try to coordinate a program with him."

So I chimed in, "but I don't hear anything about meetings. What about AA meetings. Do you have a schedule of meetings? Do you have an "Alcoholics Anonymous" book? Or have you tried the "Living Sober" book, it has some great pointers on how to stay sober without really trying."

"Oh AA meetings, I think I can fit about one a week into my schedule, I guess", Amad said with some finality.

I was going to proffer some advice and I looked at Jack who similarly, mid sentence, stopped himself and muffled a comment. We both just stifled our opinions. This wasn't the first time that Jack or I or others had wanted to proffer some opinions on how Amad might try to structure a more spiritual program. But we were talking to a surgeon here. So I guess we had to take baby steps.

And from listening to Amad, I could also tell that he was still paying more attention to his drugs than to his sobriety. He could probably do with a few more weeks in this place until he could stop worrying about the sensations that he was feeling from the withdrawal of the opiates. Until that happened he was at risk. All the other things we may have been talking about might just be so much air.

Which is not to say that Amad's plan would not work for him eventually. He might find that after a bit his plan would in fact feel sort of empty. That the cravings would not go away without some more soulful fulfilling alternatives to drugs. Then he might ask someone in the program, hopefully, what could be done and he would then get an answer that would work.

The meeting broke up with the Serenity Prayer which Amad had yet to learn and we left the room, the three of us walking down the corridor which forked at the end leading to separate exits. Amad took the one to the left to the hospital campus and Jack and I exited right to the parking lot.

As Jack and I shook hands and parted he shrugged and said, "he just doesn't get it, does he?"

"Not so much", I replied.

And I walked off into the night.