More Shall Be Revealed

Forthcoming:  Candid; frank.

So what do I know?  You can't bullshit a bullshitter, right?  Apparently you can.

I visited my friend of the medically-induced coma genre last Sunday.  He was relentlessly upbeat which surprised me somewhat.  I don't think I would be jokey and happy as I was coming out of a coma.  In my book a coma doesn't have the same feel as the experience I get going to a comedy club.  It isn't funny.  It wouldn't make me laugh out loud.  I assume I'd be very grateful, soberly so, but I'm not sure I'd go into an improv bit about the experience.

The next day I took a phone call from a woman that I know from The Fellowship who heard that I was this guy's sponsor from a mutual friend.  She was uncomfortable making the call, aware that she might be violating the standard recovery protocol of sponsor-sponsee confidentiality, but forging ahead because she really believed she was witnessing an acute, dangerous situation.  Because she had known the family for many years - their kids had grown up together - she wanted to pass along some inside information in case I found it helpful.

In a nutshell: my friend had attempted suicide, not overdosed accidentally on a prescribed medication; my friend had a history of suicide in his family and had attempted to kill himself in the past; he had, perhaps, been drinking, on and off, and did not have very much continuous sobriety at all; and his wife, perhaps, was an enabling practicing alcoholic.

I knew none of this.  I am surmising that this guy has not been forthcoming about the ebb and flow of his life.  I am also surmising that I'm seeing a classic case of alcoholic behavior: lying and hiding and misdirection of the most extreme sort.  I'm not getting much in the way of pertinent details that might enable me and others of my general ilk to get this guy going in the right direction, more or less.  I don't think that this is the kind of information that should have been left hidden when we sat down and read The First Step together, the one about OUR LIVES BEING UNMANAGEABLE!!  

I spoke to a few people, trusted advisers and confidantes, seers and gurus, about the situation, and received, more or less, two consistent bits of advice: That this guy doesn't get what we're trying to do, and that the guy doing this writing is powerless over the guy who doesn't get it.  Not complicated stuff.  Not new, exciting, untried advice. 

I found myself more annoyed than sympathetic.  Don't get me wrong - I wish the best for him and I'm not judging anyone on their behavior.  We do what we do and we do it for all kinds of reasons.  Clearly, this is a situation way, way above my pay grade - I don't have the education or qualifications to counsel someone on medicine and severe depression of the suicidal type, and I'm not getting within a hundred yards of all that.  Maybe he thinks I'm going to yell at him or think less of him because he's falling short of an ideal mark.  

God forbid I do that.