Coincidently

Coincidence:  An accidental and remarkable occurrence of events, ideas, etc. at the same time, in a way that sometimes suggests a causal relationship.


I spoke on the phone yesterday to a friend in The Program.  This is something I try to do every day because, frankly, I'm not all there and if I don't talk to other people, who may or may not be all there either, then I tend to start living in my own head and  believing my own crap.  It's amazing the stuff that I've been able to convince myself is normal over the years and far, far into sobriety.  My capacity for self-justification is beyond belief.


Anyway, he had gotten some good news and immediately began hypothesizing how the good news could fall apart.  This makes perfect sense to me.  I can find the problem in any situation.  I can create problems where no problems have existed before.  Earth People are amazed at how I can take a wonderful situation and cast the dark pall of disaster right on over it.  They wonder why I would think like that.  I have no idea myself so I can't explain it very clearly to them.  This is why I don't talk to Earth People unless it's absolutely necessary, like to an ambulance driver or physician about to begin emergency surgery on me.  


I took a few minutes to explain my talent in this area to this guy, who is on the new side.  He was amazed.  He was agog.


"That's exactly what I do!" he exclaimed.


Of course it is.  I'm as crazy as I was when I got sober.  It's just that I've had some practice in not acting on the crazy.  Some of the crazy I even recognize.


"OK, this is crazy Stevie," I think.  "Don't touch anything right now."


And I've had the practice of making sure I'm in touch with other drunks.  I can see crazy in you more easily than I can see crazy in me, given my great talent in finding and pointing out defects in other people and denying any flaws or wrongdoing in my own thinking or behavior.


I like it when I hear something that I really need to hear at a meeting or on the phone or at coffee with another alcoholic.  We have nifty little terms for them in The Program, like "god shots."  Coincidences.  I always point out that the more active I am the more coincidences I experience.  Try lying on the couch watching The TV for the next week and see how many god shots you get.  Then go to a meeting every day and tally up those coincidences.  Compare the two numbers.


It's not a fair fight.