Who Are You Again?

In the Doctor's Opinion the good doctor relates an incident where a former patient walked into his office after some sober time in our brand spanking new Twelve Step Program and was so changed that he was virtually unrecognizable.  The doctor sensed that he had known this man but couldn't make the jump from the trembling, destroyed alcoholic who first entered his office to someone full of the joy of life, self-confident and relaxed.  I've looked at the occasional picture of myself at the end of my drinking life.  I don't do it too often because it's an unpleasant experience.  Qualifiers like "Undateable" and "Unemployable" come to mind.  I thought I was fooling people, pulling the wool over their eyes as to the kind of life I was living?  Holy Moly, mother of god I was fooling precisely no one.

I had been sober for a little while and was visiting my family in sincity when I ran into the mother of one of my best friends while walking through a local shopping mall.  I strode over, big smile on my face, happy to see her, a mama who had always been kind to me and a favorite of mine, and was perplexed to see a confused look on her face.  She did not recognize me.  I had to introduce myself.  I'm sure I thought that she was deep into dementia or had cataracts occluding her eyesight because who in the hell could forget me?  I recall being mildly offended.  "Boy, I must have made a big impact on her."  That kind of thinking.  Today I understand that we change as we get healthy.  We look different, so different that people don't recognize us immediately or they don't recognize us at all.

Tension and stress and fear and anxiety are written large on our faces.  The damage caused by smoking and using and drinking and not getting enough sleep and eating like shit show on our faces.  I guess the destruction is so slow-motion that we don't pick up on the changes.  Boy, aren't you glad you're sober?

Here Comes the Crud

I think a lot about gratitude and how surprising a concept it can be.  How often I'm not as grateful as I should be for the mundane, taken-for-granted blessings in my life.  This doesn't make me a bad person.  In fact, I think that it makes me pretty average.  Life is not easy and we're often fending off difficulties and challenges, not contemplating our navels, marveling at how good we have it.  An apt reminder for me is to be grateful that I'm in very good health.  I usually take this blessing as something that I've earned or that is my due.  I'm one of those people who kind of gets whatever crud is circulating through a community.  I get an average number of colds or respiratory illnesses.  I'm not sick all the time but I do get sick.  Many years ago - 2004, to be precise, demonstrating how transformative this experience was - I contracted a stubborn chest cold that hung in there for quite a while.  As I was just rounding back into health I got the flu - I've had the flu twice in my life that I can remember so another transformative experience - and was as sick as a dog for a few weeks.  I believe that because my body was so worn down fighting off crud that in my run-down, weakened  state I was vulnerable enough to get another cold.  I recall getting sick, being sick, and recovering from being sick for a solid two months.  Then, one day, I was shocked to realize I felt healthy.  I was blown away by how healthy I felt. I was immensely grateful that I simply wasn't sick.  I didn't win the lottery or anything - I just wasn't sick.  I was struck by the realization that I express very little gratitude for all of the days and weeks and months that I'm in good health and fine fettle.  I remember saying: "Goddamn I feel good" while realizing that I feel this way almost all of the time and totally take it for granted.

Holes

I believe that there are parts of life that are commonplace and express an importance that we don't  always honor.  We adapt.  We make do.  We have a toothache so we chew on the other side.  The smart thing to do is to get the tooth fixed but some of us don't have the money or we're afraid of dentists or we're too drunk to get off the couch so we compromise and ignore the loss if we're missing something or live with the trauma if we're enduring something less than ideal.

I think of my father in this regard.  Dad was not unusual for a boy/man growing up in the 40s and 50s.  Men didn't express their emotions or admit their problems.  They buckled down and endured.  They went to work and attended a Christian church and provided for their families and that was as common a thing as you could imagine.  He was a friendly, funny guy who had a temper and was an isolator and was quicker to find fault and criticize than he was to praise.  I had an okay relationship  with dad - not close, not intimate, not warm, but not bad.  We didn't talk frequently and when we did it was superficial in nature or I was getting hollered at.  A typical encounter might have been watching a baseball game together, mostly in silence.  I didn't do this as often as I might have and today I realize that I might have shown up  more often for events like this.  It's what he wanted to do, what he was comfortable doing, and I think he just enjoyed my presence.  He didn't want to talk about his feelings with his grown-ass son - he wanted his grown-ass son to come over and watch the baseball game with him.  It didn't occur to him to maybe do what I wanted to do from time to time.  He was pretty fixed in his belief that he should be able to do what he wanted to do and that I should accommodate that.  I don't think he considered this overly selfish.  I think he felt he had done his part and that was that.

So . . . not good, not bad, pretty typical.  Lots of men my age would report the same thing.  There wasn't any electronic way to stay in touch and long-distance calls were expensive which made communication less frequent.  The point is this: when my father died I was flabbergasted at how big a hole it left in my life.  It was profound.  It was, for a while, devastating.  I was sober 25 years when he died so I had some pretty well-developed coping skills at that point but it still hit me like a ton of bricks.  I had adapted to a relationship that was less than ideal . . . or was less than ideal for a needy, attention-sucking, hyper-sensitive problem child like me.

It reminds me of an incident that occurred before they kicked me out of optometry college.  I was attending to a patient who came in complaining of headaches.  Our exam revealed that she had what is commonly called a lazy eye, a condition where the focus of one of the eyes tends to drift off to the side because some of the ocular musculature isn't well developed.  A pretty common condition that can be treated by installing a prism in the patient's glasses - this changes the angle of the incoming light rays so that the gaze naturally and easily shifts back to straight-ahead.  This woman did have the prism in her glasses but it was installed backwards so that the tension in her eye was twice as bad as it should have been.  She was unconsciously straining to get both of her eyes to focus in the same direction.  My recollection is that she put up with this for an extended period of time.  In A.A-speak she was just suffering needlessly and not doing anything about it.

Texts, Books, Friends, Meetings

From our text: "We ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives."

Overheard at a meeting: "When I put God in charge of my thinking, much needless worry is eliminated and I believe God guides me throughout the day."

Read in a book: "Action is about living fully.  Inaction is the way that we deny life.  Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are.  Expressing what you are is taking action.  You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action.  Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward."

Talking to a friend I heard this for the first time: "At first I had fun; then I had fun with problems; then I just had problems."  You'd think after forty years I would have heard every little phrase by now.

Aphorism Number One: "That light you see at the end of the dark tunnel?  Maybe it's a freight train coming the other way."

Aphorism Number Two: "Remember - it's always the darkest right before it goes totally black."

Jesus and Satan and Ozzy Osbourne Walk Into a Bar . . .

We have a vigorous discussion about God and gods and religion and spirituality in Alcoholics Anonymous.  The Higher Power construct has saved more alcoholics than anything else while simultaneously driving away more alcoholics than anything else.  After all, we are polarizing people - confused polarizing people.  We're aware of this so we tread lightly and carefully around the "spiritual angle."  In the Midwest I perceived a much more pronounced religious effect - it was the Lord's Prayer to close the meeting and only the Lord's Prayer - while here in sunny Southern California where the atheists and agnostics have a strong presence - it's the Serenity Prayer and only the Serenity Prayer.

I grew up in a conservative Christian church and I consider myself a Christian.  I think I'm a pretty good Christian but I bet a lot of official Christian preacher types would say "meh."  I don't practice in any organized sense and I pick and choose stuff to believe in or to leave by the wayside.  Organized religion has always seemed kind of rule-sy to me and I'm really, really resistant to rules.  Plus, the rules have a mild odor of pious and sanctimonious hypocrisy.  Who came up with these rules anyway?  The rules police?  People who maintain that God is speaking directly to them?  Sounds pretty arrogant to me.   Plus-plus, there's an emphasis on "if you don't do this you'll burn for all eternity on a  lake of fire."  That doesn't sound very nice.  It certainly doesn't sound like fun. It doesn't sit well with me to be threatened that if I don't behave well I'll get roasted.  Plus-plus-plus,  Religious people often come across as dour and overly serious.  I mean, for all eternity?  That's pretty heavy-handed.  How about "we'll toss you into a lake of fire and then snatch you right back out after a couple of minutes?"  I can't imagine anyone saying "oh, I'm only in the lake of fire for a minute so I'm going to murder the asshole that didn't use his turn signal."  Can you point out a good joke that Jesus told?  I mean . . . if you're a god that can defeat hell and sin and Satan and bring people back from the dead I'd think you'd also have a god-like sense of humor.  If I was a god I'd be bringing down the house.  I'd be so fucking funny my church would be packed on Sunday.  Here's Jesus in the wilderness with 5,000 people and some bread and fish and he's worried about lunch? Nobody brought anything to eat?  No one stuffed a Nutrigrain bar into their man-purse?  That doesn't sound very plausible.  Personally, I'd be working out new material for my stand-up routine and not worrying about lunch.  You know - "Jesus and Satan and Ozzy Osbourne walk into a bar . . . "

I say this: build your own higher power.  What would that look like?  Nice, kind, friendly, patient, tolerant, possessing as previously mentioned a wicked sense of humor.  Do that today and don't worry so much about heaven and hell and good and evil.  Be nice.  Don't be an asshole.  Use your turn signals and let that guy get in front of you on the highway.  I like the big concepts in religious texts but I also think that we intuitively know what good behavior looks like.  Do that.

Into Thinking

"Doing your best, you are going to live your life intensely.  You are going to be productive, you are going to be good to yourself, because you will be giving yourself to your family, to your community, to everything.  But it is the action that is going to make you feel intensely happy.  When you always do your best, you take action.  Doing your  best is taking the action because you love it, not because you're expecting a reward."

I consider the titles of some of the original Alcoholics Anonymous chapters often.  There is a lot of emphasis on doing things: Into Action, How it Works, Working with Others.  There are not a lot of chapters dedicated to thinking.  "Into Thinking" would be very popular with new people who believe that the best thing to do would be to go off alone and think.  Very productive.  We are such clear thinkers.  Everything we think makes perfect sense to the entire world.  And if you don't believe me then share what you're thinking with another alcoholic.  The facial expression you're seeing could best be described as a confused sneer or maybe appalled confusion.  In other words - you are not making any sense at all.  That's why we encourage you to share whatever weird bullshit is richochting around in your brain with another . . .  you know . . .  live, conscious, attentive person.  If you stick with The Program then the looks on whomever you are currently holding captive with your confusion will start to improve.  

I took to heart the suggestion that I should initially concentrate on improving my behavior and a little later adding what words came out of my mouth into the mix.  Along the lines of not taking a swing at the guy I was calling a son of a bitch.  "Sure, if you think it's helpful you can still curse some guy out as long as it doesn't escalate beyond that."  That kind of thinking.  I know, I know, it doesn't sound great but my improvement was incremental.  No one mentioned trying to improve my thinking at the start because they knew that was way, way beyond any self-improvement progress I was going to be making.  In fact, I still do some homicidal thinking from time to time.  I just keep my mouth shut and my hands in my pockets while I'm doing it.

So today go to work and do your best.  If you do this you'll be happier at the end of the day.  If you just put in the time, resentfully, tolerating your job only for the paycheck and waiting for the escape of the weekend, then . . .  whew . . . sounds miserable, doesn't it?  It is work so it's not going to be as pleasant as play but if you're doing your best then it's going to go better.

What's the Big Rush?

I like this Zen reminder: "If you try too hard to do more than your  best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough.  When you overdo, you deplete your body and go against yourself, and it will take you longer to accomplish your goal.  Just do your best because if you do your best there is no way you can judge yourself."

Here's a Buddhist Proverb: A student told a master that he was going to meditate for four hours each day and wondered how long it would take him to reach enlightenment.  "About ten years."  The student - who sounds like an alcoholic if you ask me, or at least he's behaving like one - told the master that he would meditate for eight hours a day, then, goddammit, so now how long would it take to reach enlightenment?  He was in a hurry!  He wanted to rush through meditation and rush into enlightenment and then what would he do?  In a big hurry?

Here's the master's reply: "You  are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life.  You are here to live, to be happy, and to love.  If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won't enjoy your life.  Do your best, and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy."

Another reminder that the theme of our Twelfth Step is the joy of living, that I get sober so that I can have a full and productive life.  I find that I cope better if I stay involved in my recovery but that the whole point is to have some fun and peace of mind.  I'm not a dude who's going to sit in an A.A. clubhouse and go to four meetings a day.  I can barely pay attention for an hour four times a week.

I am not as interesting as I think I am.

No one is thinking about me.  No one is doing anything to me.  I'm not that important.

I went to a doctor for a number of years who was the definition of a curmudgeon.  So I loved him, of course.  I love No Bullshit people.  He had a small sheet of paper on the wall of his exam room that looked like he put it together after an annoying day when he was in a bad mood.  It had things like "You do not get to talk about more than two issues.  I have other patients."  and my personal favorite "No matter how sick you think you are I'm dealing with other patients who are sicker than you."