Doctor Paul, First Take

I'm not a huge fan of popular things.  I confess to a tendency to not like stuff that other people like.  I confess to a tendency to swim upstream, against the crowd.  If you tell me to do it then I can almost guarantee I'll do something else, usually the exact opposite.

Which brings me to Dr. Paul's story in the Big Book; originally it was called Doctor, Addict, Alcoholic but has been since changed to Acceptance Is The Answer.  It is very, very popular and oft quoted in meetings.  As I've been reading back through the story section of the Big Book I finally got to this story and I steeled myself against it.  I was prepared to dislike it.  

First of all, the dude is really funny.  Here are some quips that made me laugh out loud.

"I had sent Max (his wife) to four consecutive psychiatrists and not one of them had gotten me sober."

A reminder that it's always me.  It's never them.  No matter how much I want it to be them it's always me.

As his estimation of her mental health got worse and worse he eventually contacted a psychiatric hospital: "So, when it ended up in a psycho ward, I wasn't that surprised.  But then when that steel door slammed shut, and she was the one that went home, I was amazed."

Part of his treatment plan included group activities: "They wanted me to make leather belts, of all things!  Had I gone to school all those years just to sit and make leather belts?  Besides, I couldn't understand the instructions.  The girl had explained them to me four times, and I was too embarrassed to ask her again."

So if anyone ever makes a comment about drugs not being an appropriate topic in Alcoholics Anonymous let's at least remember that one of our most beloved stories had "Addict" in the title and there are a ton of highly descriptive passages about his drug use and they are uniformly hilarious.  Here's a sampling:

"The pep pills affected my hearing.  I couldn't listen fast enough to hear what I was saying.  I'd think, 'I wonder why I'm saying that again  - I've already said it three times.'   Still, I couldn't turn my mouth off."

"I found it hard to practice good medicine while shooting morphine.  At night I would put the  needle in my vein and then try  to figure out exactly how much medication to inject to overcome the pep pills while adding to the sleeping pills while ignoring the tranquilizers, in order to get just enough to be able to pull out the needle, jerk the tourniquet, throw it in the car, slam the car door shut, runs down the hall, and fall in bed before I fell asleep."

Dr. Paul, of course, began to see the light and to be truthful with himself.  For most of us, being honest with ourselves is one of the highest hurdles to overcome.  "I never in my life took a tranquilizer, sedative, or pep pill because I was a pill head.  I always took it because I had the symptom  that only that pill would relieve.  For me, pills don't produce the desire to swallow a pill; they produce the symptoms that require that the pill be taken for relief.  I had a pill for every ill, and I was sick a lot."

His epiphany about his drug use led him to this conclusion:  "Today, I feel I have used up my right to chemical peace of mind."

Not Fitting In

I've been rereading the stories in The Big Book.  Most of them are very familiar.  Some of them really hit home and some of them bore the shit out of me.  There's a lot of emphasis on the drinking part of our stories and not enough on the recovery part in some of the stories.  There are a few written by men and women who sound like pompous assholes or those interested in grandstanding, making their tales more dramatic than they need to be . . .  or probably were.  Most of the people I've met over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous have been functioning - or partially functioning - people trying to deaden the pain of the dissatisfaction they felt in their own lives.

There are also some themes and threads to be gleaned.  One if the tremendous relief and gratitude that we all feel when we find a solution that works for us.  Another is the responsibility we feel towards The Program and we turn this into the service work that sustains us as we bumble through life.  The one similarity that has been surfacing over and over is the feeling that we were lost in the game of life, that we felt different and disconnected and that we didn't know how or why and that we didn't know any other way to make these awful feelings go away except to drink to excess.  What a relief it has been to those of us who have been able to internalize the spiritual approach that manifests in the Twelve Steps.  Not for everyone, for sure, and we don't try to be but what a relief for those of us who find an answer in A.A.

Like, This is a Good One

One of the lessons I learned early on in my career as a Salesguy was that it was much more important to listen than to talk.  An incredibly difficult lesson to take to heart.  Our tendency is to want to convince another person of our point of view.  It is not a natural impulse to listen to their point of view.  I evolved in my profession so that I began to see how many times the other person was waiting for me to finish talking so that they could say what they wanted to say.  I learned that look meant that very little I was saying was sinking in so that my first best technique was to stop talking and start listening.  I also learned that most people are very uncomfortable with silence.  This is why you hear so many ahs and ums and you knows when people talk.  Even that second of silence is a killer so they have to fill it with a noise and if they keep talking they often gave me valuable information that I would have had to extract using some kind of powerful, turbo-charged suction machine. There's a new guy at our meeting who tosses in the nervous filler noise "like" many times when he, like, talks, at a, like, meeting.  He's trying to get his feet back on the ground and it makes him sound intellectually lazy.  He's a smart guy and he sounds, like, dumb.  I may have to say something to him.  I know, I know, I should keep my fucking mouth shut but I have a bit of influence over him and I can't help but think that this, like, might be a helpful bit of advice.

In one of my spiritual books the author was discussing how we can better deal with contentious people or just people with whom we have a differing opinion.  

Here were his suggestions:

1.  Look at the person's body language.

(Crossed arms?  Forget about it.  They're not receptive.  Backing away?  Looking off to the side?  Looking at their phone?  You're toast.  You've lost.  It's over.)

2.  Try to understand where they're coming from.

(I quit trying to explain the technical aspects of an infrared sensor to the purchasing agent.  And I didn't try to explain the cost/benefit analysis to the engineer.)

3.  Listen without planning your reply.

(Epically important!  If I'm thinking about my brilliant retort or quip then I'm not listening!)

4.  Express your opinion only after the person has finished talking, and only if they ask.  

(It goes without saying that they're almost never going to ask.  You'll be lucky if they, like, stop talking for a minute.)

5.  Notice your own attachments.

(Like, dude, if you don't buy a piece of my, like, stuff, I'm never going to make any, like, money.)

6.  Feel your own emotions.  

(If you're ticking me off then I'm tempted to come out swinging.)

Toltecs V A.A.

"I know I can cause real damage if I yield to temptation and give opinions and advice on another's medical, marital, or religious problems.  I can share how I came through similar situations without drinking, and how A.A.'s Steps and Traditions help me in dealing with my life."

The Daily Reflections

Never.  Give.  Advice.  Nobody wants to hear my advice.  Even on the odd occasion when someone asks for my advice they still don't want my advice.  They may think they want my advice, they may believe they want my advice but they don't really want my advice.

"People will often not act the way you want them to, or the way you think they should.  They will not always agree with your ideas or your beliefs."

Toltec Proverb

Uh, yeah, no shit, Sherlock.  I don't need any ancient Toltec wisdom to remind me that most people don't recognize my wisdom and my intelligence and my ability to deftly handle all of life's little ups and downs.  Most people think they're doing just fine without my input.

"Do I remember that I have a right to my opinion but that others don't have to share it?  Am I still trying to change others? Do I remember that my opinions are mine, and yours are yours?  Do I remember that my opinions come from my experience?"

The Daily Reflections

Great.  Now Alcoholics Anonymous is piling on, reminding me that I'm not the All Powerful Wizard.

"Avoiding all conflict is impossible, so when conflicts arise, your job is to look within, see what is true for you in the moment, and find a way to honor your own beliefs while simultaneouosly respecting the choices and beliefs of others."

Toltec Proverb.  Another one.  

Almost as irritating as the first one today.

Fear

"Do I remember that I have a right to my opinion but that others don't have to share it?  Do I remember that my opinions are mine, and yours are yours?  Do I remember that my opinions come from my experience?"

From the Daily Reflections

One time, long ago, when I was working with a man who ended up being a long-time sponsor, and this incident was early in our relationship, I shared about a situation where my family was driving me bonkers and when I was done I asked him what he thought I should do.  He laughed and said: "Oh, no, you don't.  I'm not going to tell you what to do because I don't want to get blamed if it doesn't work out the way you want it to."  I understood at that point the idea was for him to ask probing questions - often questions that made me consider a situation from a novel viewpoint, one I hadn't been considering - to share his experience of how he might have behaved in a similar situation and how that worked out for him, to remind me of the importance of talking to other people - a lot of other people - to get their take on the matter, to probe their experience, strength, and hope, and finally to use our reference literature to see if I could find any pertinent wisdom there, and then to make the best decision I could at the time.  If things worked out to my satisfaction - fine, I could take full credit - and if they didn't work out how I wanted them to - fine, I could take full credit.  In both cases - success and failure - I would have learned a lesson by taking responsibility for my own actions, something I was loathe to do when shit blew up in my face.

"Your mind's first reaction is often to make an assumption of someone's meaning through your projection of their intention.  Every time you fall into a trap and react instead of respond, ask yourself, What am I afraid of?  Once you know this, you can look deeper to find out where the fear comes from."

Man, I'll tell you . . . the wisdom that comes from understanding that most of my problems and conflicts come from a place of fear is so universal as to be almost universal.  It is a Truth, I think.  The above passage was from the Toltecs who thrived when Europe was mired in the Dark Ages.  Here's what Alcoholics Anonymous has to say about the matter:

"All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right.  Self-centered fear is the chief activator of our defects.  Sometimes we think fear should be classed with stealing.  It seems to cause more trouble."

I like that last sentence.  We'd be better off being a thief than being consumed with our own self-centered fears.  Think about that: you can go to prison for stealing so Bill and Bob were really emphasizing how destructive our fears are.

Big Book Stories

I'm reading through the stories section of The Big Book, Third Edition.  I haven't read them from start to finish in a long time.  I think the stories are most helpful to newer people.  The text of the first 164 pages can be somewhat confusing and abstruse but all of us find a story or two or even three that we can really relate to, one where we say: "Wow.  That sounds like me.  That's what I did."  We identify and don't feel so separate.  And this is one of the themes that arises over and over - this sense of apartness, that we were standing off to the side, all by ourselves, while everyone else had some kind of game plan or playbook that they used to figure out the rules to go through the day.

Other themes:

Leave me alone. Get outta my face, I'm not bothering anyone but myself.

A vague sense that we weren't doing ourselves any good.

The relief when we found a group of people that felt like we did, that we weren't a unique freak of nature.

The relief when we understood that we aren't all there is, that Something was bigger than we were, and the immense relief this provided when we saw that we didn't have to run the world any more.

Today's Posting!!!

Am I expressing unconditional love for others today?  Even irritating people?  And, God, there are so MANY irritating people!  Respect comes through my expression of unconditional love.  You are just perfect the way you are.

If I'm coming from a place of awareness then the right words are going to come out of my mouth.  I will make the right decisions.  I'll say the right thing.  I'll take the right action.  I won't even understand why I'm making a decision and it will be the right one!

Remember!  I'm only in control of my own words and my own actions and not for how others perceive my words and my actions.  I only have control over myself.  I was in the hot tub this morning explaining the Hula Hoop theory of peaceful living to an Earth Person.  He nodded slowly.  "You guys came up with that?" he asked.  Yes!  We came up with everything!  This was not Hot Tub Guy by the way.  I avoid that dude like he's radioactive.   He's perfect just the way he is but he can be perfect elsewhere.

Sometimes exiting a situation and not returning to the situation is the best option to avoid further conflict.  He may be perfect just the way he is but I'm sure not perfect and he irritates the hell out of me!  He's irritating as hell!!

If I respect everyone then I have a gambler's chance of coming from a place of unconditional love.  Hot Tub Guy. on the other hand, has no respect where I'm concerned so he is doubling down and really trying to subjugate me to his will.  I will not be subjugated!  I will stand tall and take long strides into the future!  Get outta my way, Hot Tub Guy!

Engaging further with Hot Tub Guy is not going to be helpful to either of us.

I should seek to love rather than be loved.