A Flimsy Reed

The son of a man who is arguably my best friend in the world is just getting started on the process of recovery.  He asked if I would make myself available to his boy in whatever guise that may take.  It's hard to impress on the non-alcoholic what an honor it is to be asked such a question.  When I was drinking and using no one asked me to help out with anything.  The general request was usually more along the lines of "maybe could you please stay the fuck away from my kid?"

My tendency is to want to tell someone what to do.  On the one hand this is fallacious reasoning  because I'm an idiot like most of the other people walking around.  On the other hand I have managed to stay sober for a long time which makes me something of an expert in . . . keeping myself sober for a long time.  My impulse is to tell someone else to do it like me.  Today my best action is to tell someone else what I've done.  I don't know if that will work for anyone else.  I also throw out a lot of suggestions and possibilities of what I've seen work for others, ask a lot of questions so the other person can hear himself talk, work things out in their own fashion.  I can offer my opinion on what seems to be a successful approach to recovery and what seems dicey.  But, in the end, I don't know what anyone else should do about anything.  I'm not a retired major league baseball player with a .300 lifetime batting average trying to correct the swing of a nine year old fighting for a starting spot on his little league team.  That guy can tell someone what to do.  He's a baseball expert.  I'm not a recovery expert.  I'm not even a Seaweed expert.  I'm an idiot!

But, boy, is it an honor to talk to another alcoholic/drug addict, particularly one in the early throes of recovery.  It is a big part of what keeps us sober, this passing along what we have been freely given.  It still breaks my brain to muse on the idea that giving something away to someone else is such a great measure of my happiness.  I've changed from being an incredible, world-class selfish, oblivious prick to being a . . .  well . . . I'm still pretty self-centered - I'm just not featured this month on the cover of the Journal of Self-Centered Behavior.  I'm the subject of the main article but I think Willie has been on more covers than I have, and I've been on a lot of covers.

I think a lot of the good men and women in Indianapolis and Chicago and Cincinnati who walked hand in hand with me through my early days.  I can't ever remember an unkind word.  I can't remember more than an occasional suggestion that I should get off my ass and do something specific.  I think my forebears were sharing their own experience, strength, and hope.  I think they  were telling me it would be a good idea to hear the experience, strength, and hope of a lot of different people because - if I did that - I'd be sure to learn what was going to work for me.  I think they implied if I sat alone in my apartment it wouldn't be surprising if I lapsed into my past thinking and my past behavior.

The Toltecs: "We only see what we want to see, and hear what we want to hear.  We don't perceive things the way they are.  We have the habit of dreaming with no basis in reality.  We literally dream things up in our imagination."

From an anonymous A.A. member: "How amazing the revelation that the world, and everyone in it, can get along just fine with or without me.  What a relief to know that people, places, and things will  be perfectly okay without my control and direction." 

I love the old saying about a "flimsy reed."  Whenever I talk to a new person I feel like I'm safe onboard the ship and I'm reaching out this reed to someone trying to keep their head above water in an angry sea.  Here . . . here . . . grab on!