I'm Better Than You

Today I'm going to allow my annoyance at life run wild.

I'm going to devote all of my energy to finding faults with everyone I come into contact with. You have faults. You know you do, and I'm going to uncover them. I don't care how good you are at hiding these faults behind a sunny smile and pleasant disposition. Deep down inside, you are a mass of writhing snakes and evil intentions. I can tell. You will be unable to resist the power of my X-ray vision.

I do this, of course, because I have no faults of my own. I can devote all of my thinking time to deconstruct where you have gone wrong. It really isn't that hard. I'm very good at it. Hard is looking inside myself to see what is rotten in there. That's scary. I would be happy if all I saw was a bunch of snakes. I have some serious monsters on the prowl in my neighborhood. They eat snakes like they're Pringles.

I Don't Need No Doctor

Overdose: Too large a dose; to dose to excess.

Sometimes I have a tendency to throw Meetings at my problems. The Program has been such a powerful force for good in my life that it's easy to assume that if I don't feel quite right that a Meeting will make me feel better. Luckily for me, this is true a lot of the time. It was especially true when I was starting my recovery and had a lot of free time. Drinking is very time consuming. I was drinking, getting something to drink, recovering from drinking too much, sleeping it off, staring insensate at a TV while I was drunk, etc. etc. It was important for me to go to a lot of Meetings. I have a very active mind. I need to keep it busy.


However, I have been known to overdo it. Imagine that. Sometimes things aren't going to go my way. Sometimes I'm just not going to feel very good. I can get depressed or bitchy. I have stuff happen in my life that is naturally upsetting. I don't get to avoid being a human being. If I break my leg, I don't need to go to a Meeting. I need to go see a doctor. Acceptance is not the answer to this particular problem. The emergency room is a better answer.

Let's be reasonable here.

Relate! Don't Obfuscate.

Last night I listened to a lead given by a man who took a more -- ahem -- colorful route to recovery than I did. My tendency is to concentrate on the differences that I have with other alcoholics. My disease encourages me to feel special. I'm not like that guy; he's an alcoholic; ergo, I'm not. Tricky dude, my alcoholism. Skilled at Wedge Politics. Skilled at getting me alone. My alcoholism is like a pack of wolves trying to separate the sick, elderly, blind, crippled moose from the pack. I'm the sick moose.


One of the things that I can always identify with is the sense of not caring what happens to me or anyone else when I'm drinking. The guy last night talked about sitting in a bar, broke, and deciding to go rob a bank. He didn't want to rob a bank but he needed money to drink. He didn't consider the consequences. To the best of my knowledge I never did that. But I did things all of the time with potentially severe consequences to me, to my loved ones, and to the general public, and I just didn't care as long as I got to drink and take drugs. Most of us can remember sitting in a car, too drunk to walk, and turning the ignition key. We didn't care.


I can also relate to the sense of purpose that comes when I try to pass along the message of recovery. Our founders were really on to something when they foisted that Twelfth Step on us. They perceived that we would stay sober if we tried to help other people stay sober. My friend from last night had spent a number of years in jail. He had just given a talk to a group of law students at a local university, and the professor asked him to come back. I bet he didn't imagine on his last day drinking that he would one day be an instructor at a law school.

Blue is a Color, Too

Depression: in psychology, an emotional condition, either normal or pathological, characterized by discouragement, a feeling of inadequacy, etc.


Boy, does that sound like someone I know. There was a picture of me, in color, with 3-D animation and links to a variety of personal web sites, posted next to the definition. You could push a little virtual button and hear short audio clips of me talking about some of my more memorable episodes of angst and fear. It's all about me. It's definitely all about me.


Depression is my best friend. We're like an old married couple that should have never gotten married. We stay together for the sake of the kids, who wish that we would go ahead and get divorced already, for God's sake. All we do is bitch at each other and bicker about the stupidest things, but we've been together for so long that we don't know how to end it. In fact, we kind of like the fact that we make each other so thoroughly miserable. We're so afraid of the unknown that we endure an incredible amount of misery.


Depression occurs when I want to feel sorry for myself. It happens when I beat myself with the club of anger that I'm too timid to use on my fellow man.

I See A Bad Moon Risin'

Pessimism: The doctrine or belief that the existing world is the worst possible; that the evil in life outweighs the good.



I don't think that things are going to work out very well today. I can feel it in my bones. It's like the arthritis my grandma had -- she could predict rain better than a TV weatherman. I can tell that it's going to be a tough day for me. I don't like the looks of things. I don't have a sunny disposition. Storm cl0uds are gathering on the horizon. Trouble is a-brewin'. A bad wind starts to blow.



I used to believe that I was a born pessimist. As if God decides to just screw some people up right out of the chute. Horseface, you are going to be negative. You have no say in the matter and there is nothing that you can do to change. You are going to look on the dark side of things. You will see how things can go wrong. You won't be able to see the upside, so you will have to bury your dark vision of life under oceans of alcohol and mountains of dope.



Yeah, well, if you line up everyone in the world according to the privileges and blessings they have received, I'd be pretty close to the front of the line. Then if you changed the order so that the most grateful people came first, I'd be about 7 and a half billion people down.



It's all in the attitude, my son.

Writing About Thinking

I: The person speaking or writing: I is the nominative case form, me the objective, my and mine the possessive, and myself the intensive and reflexive, of the first person singular pronoun.


I don't know what any of that definition means but I do love the concept of everything being about me. Starting out with "I," moving quickly to "me," sloshing over into "my" and "mine," and finishing with a big rhetorical flourish: Myself! These are all good topics. I can't find fault with any of them. I would be hard pressed to discover a more powerful definition in my beloved Websters.


I walk around all day thinking about myself. I don't think about anybody else unless I'm mad at someone, which is most of the time, at which point my thoughts turn decidedly malevolent. As if this embarrassing lack of concern for my fellow man isn't bad enough, I am constantly stunned to find out that you aren't thinking about me, too. Not only am I'm obsessed with myself, I think that you should be obsessed with me as well.


I Think, therefore I Am.

I'm a Pinball Wizard

Pinball: A game of chance played on an inclined board, typically containing a number of holes surrounded by numerous pins, springs, etc.

My mind is like a pinball machine. Each thought is a small metal ball. I have an inexhaustible supply of these little balls, which are indestructible. I think I have some control over these balls. This is a laughable mistake on my part. It never bodes well for me when I think I have control over anything.

I pull a lever and one of these thoughts drops into place. So far, so good. No big problems. Everything is nice and calm. I'm a little worried about all of the blinking lights and pictures of half-naked, heavily armed women warriors and hellish motorcycle demons staring at me from the front of the machine, which is blaring frenetic hard rock music, but I try to stay optimistic. I slowly pull back a lever and fire off the first thought of the day. This insignificant thought goes shooting off into space, and all hell breaks loose.


Bells are clanging and sirens are going off. The thought snaps this way and that way. It gets caught in traps and holes. It stops and starts. It's all over the place, moving at high speed, changing direction with violent energy. More thoughts enter the game. The machine starts to smoke and shudder violently.

This is on a good day.

Doing What is in Front of Me

Do the next right thing.

The Fellowship has distilled some of our more difficult challenges in life into simple three or four word slogans. It can be very annoying. One of our slogans encourages us to move through life slowly while also suggesting that we make an attempt to move. It's the gray area between completely stopped and full acceleration. This is not a familiar area for alcoholics.

Some of the time I'm in awe of the breathtaking simplicity of these thoughts. On the days that I am feeling very complicated, however, these trite sayings irritate the shit out of me. It can go either way. It's too early to tell today. I either don't get out of bed or I sprint out the front door in my underwear, right into traffic. The Program suggests a plan of action somewhere in the middle. For instance, my friends recommend a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, at least, and a slight pause before crossing the street.


Sometimes there are rocks in my path. Sometimes there are exciting and delectable treats. I never know what I'm going to find. When I was drinking I didn't stop to consider the somewhat obvious differences between rocks and treats. If I encountered a rock, I tried to walk through it, or I would stop and glare at it menacingly, hoping it would dissolve under my withering disapproval. Or I blew it up with dynamite, frequently destroying a large cache of treats hidden in the bushes, which were also blown up.


I'm a small stream meandering pleasantly through the woods. If I encounter a obstacle I stop and make a pool. Sometimes I go over the obstacle. Sometimes I flow around it. Sometimes it's a big obstacle and I have to hang out for a while to see what is going to happen. For a big, rushing, raging, whitewater river like me, this can be frustrating. I want to skip to the ending of the book.

Charlie and The Chocolate Factory

I don't know what it is about the things that I think are important that makes them so irresistible. My judgement is terrible. Why would I think these things are going to make me happy? I'm never happy when I get what I want. I throw everything away: stuff, jobs, relationships, wives -- well, not wives, anyway, not yet -- and chase after the next empty promise.

I want to live in a big chocolate house where everything is made of chocolate. All the furniture and the dishes, everything. Even the toilet would be made of chocolate. Not crappy Nestles, either, but real Swiss or Belgian chocolate. The kind that makes your knees buckle and your nether regions tingle. I imagine myself eating all of this delicious chocolate whenever I wanted. I'd start with chocolate chip pancakes and Count Chocula and hot cocoa for breakfast, and I'd go from there.

Today I see the irony of such a diet. My teeth hurt just thinking about it. Today I see the things that really matter. I don't appreciate these things, of course, but at least I think about them now. It's not the stuff that's important. It's my relationships and my sense of spiritual purpose. It's the intangibles.

Let Me Tell You About Hard

Difficult: hard to do, make, understand, etc.; involving trouble, effort, or skill.

I don't like to do anything that's difficult. I don't even like reading the definition of the word difficult. It contains terribly upsetting words like trouble and effort. I like things to be easy. I want things to be given to me while I take a nap. God should be like Santa Claus. Comes in the night, doesn't ask for anything in return, leaves nice stuff. Although my parents warned me that if I was bad Santa wouldn't stop by our house, I always got a lot of presents. I was suspicious of the flying reindeer and sliding down a filthy chimney hole story, but I wasn't about to look a gifts-with-no-work gift horse in the mouth.

I figure life should be like that. I want sobriety to be a walk in the park. I want all of the benefits without any of the unpleasantness: amends and right behavior and crap like that. I don't want to work the Steps or pray or call anyone on the phone.

Here's hard. Spending all of my money at a bar, in a blackout so I can't remember any of the "fun" I had, and getting up the next morning remorseful, sick to my stomach, and suffering a blistering headache. Enduring an entire day of physical sickness; suffering the emotional disapproval of my family, friends, and coworkers; worried sick about my finances and precarious legal standing. That's hard.

What is my excuse again for not picking up the phone and making a call?

Genghis and Me

Capitulate: To give up (to an enemy) on prearranged conditions; surrender conditionally; stop resisting.


At the start most of us are able to put up some defense against our alcoholism. We are able to live a marginally normal life, at least on the surface. But it's not a fair fight and it always ends the same way for a real alcoholic. We always go under, swallowing water, gasping for air, dying inside.


I was a starving peasant with a pitchfork, all alone in my battle with Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde. Genghis blew up and swept across Asia and burned and destroyed on a level unparalleled in human history. I got a few Mongols with my pitchfork but they just kept coming and coming. Eventually, my pitchfork broke. The last image you see is me flailing at a sea of heavily armed warriors with part of a stick. And I'm overstating my abilities. My defense wasn't even that good.

The final outcome is predictable for most alcoholics. We fight and fight, and then we throw in the towel. At the end, we don't care any more. We don't care if we get arrested or lose our family or get fired from our jobs. We don't care if we die. We think it would be better if we died. We wish that we would pass out and not wake up ever again.


I was in a tug of war with my alcoholism. I had one end of the rope and my alcoholism had the other. In between was a pit of demon snakes and burning lava and broken glass. Obviously, I didn't want to end up in the pit so I fought back. But I started to get weaker and my opponent never seemed to tire. He just pulled and pulled and never took a fucking break. Eventually I stopped resisting, but I never let go of the rope.

I'm not going back into that pit again.

Give It Up

Give: To turn over the possession or control of to someone without cost or exchange; hand over as a gift.


Giving is not a concept that I am intimately familiar with. Uh oh -- I think I'm lying right out of the chute. I couldn't even make it through my first sentence without lying. I don't mean to do it. My intentions are good. I don't like to be a liar. It's just that it's a wonderful talent of mine. I'm a natural. I'm a prodigy. Tiger Woods was a golf prodigy -- Horseface Steve is a lying prodigy. I was lying at an eighth grade level before I started kindergarten. There is a some very, very powerful piece of my brain that takes over the controls as soon as it sees the slightest opening to advance my agenda of: More Power! More Money!! More Sex!!!


Where was I before I started lying? I was thinking of admitting privately, in a very quiet voice, when no one was around, in an uninhabited corner of the world, that I don't have a passing acquaintance with the concept of giving. First of all, I don't like turning over the possession of any of my stuff to anyone. Even the stuff I have stolen or acquired using questionable tactics. And then to give it up without getting anything in return? I actively seek out people who do this. They are what I call an "easy mark." I get something and don't have to give anything.


I call this Winning at Life.

I Know What You Need to Hear

My goal today is to find someone to save. It doesn't even have to be someone who needs to be saved or someone that is having any problems whatsoever. I feel the need to tell someone -- anyone -- what to do. It isn't important to me whether or not these individuals want to hear my advice. I don't care about that. I'm OK with the fact that they may start running as fast as they can the other way to escape my advice giving. I'm in pretty good shape and very determined in my ability to chase down people whose lives I can change for the better with my uncanny insights and wise counsel. I have, after all, made quite the success with my own life. This is clear to everyone.

I think one of the great linchpins of The Program revolves around the fact that we don't tell people what they have to do, short of advising against armed robbery, pedophilia, and crimes against humanity. I'm the guy who you want running your life? I don't think so. Maybe I can pick up your laundry if you tell me exactly where to go and give me exact change, but I wouldn't put too much stake in my advice about relationships or career changes.

My mentors tell me what they do and allow me to apply this information to my own life, or not, as I see fit. They play the Devil's Advocate and help me think through different scenarios and try to imagine a variety of outcomes. Sometimes they just play the Devil and seem to relish in my discomfort as I sit around and think about myself, totally consumed with what is happening to me to the total exclusion of everyone else in the world.

The Dark Side

Negative: A word, term, or phrase that denies, rejects, or refuses (e.g., no, not, by no means).


Let's go ahead and see if that word applies to me at all, in any area of my life, by any stretch of the imagination. I have a negative attitude. I refuse to look on the bright side of things. I don't want to try anything new. I project disaster into the future. I don't like anybody or anything. My back hurts and I think I'm coming down with something. The whole world is fucked up and things are getting worse.

That sounds like me. I think I qualify.


The guy I visited in the hospital -- the one who had a major surgical procedure -- is an irrepressible optimist. People like that should be wiped off the face of the earth. They are abominations of nature. I made the trip with another old high school friend who is the polar opposite: a natural pessimist. A true soul mate and also someone who should be eliminated from our world. Pessimists are too way depressing to be around. No wonder I didn't have any friends when I was drinking.


It was a weird out of body experience for me. I was torn between my natural state -- the projection of doom, gloom, and utter disaster to every part of the world -- and my fake new persona as someone who trusts in a higher power to keep taking me to a better and better place. Man, is it comfortable to slip back into decay. It's work to be happy.

There Are So Many Things That I Want

Will: The act or process of volition; specifically, wish, desire, longing.


I spend way too much time trying to understand how The Program works, especially the God stuff. I get nervous when I try to figure out what God looks like or how to turn my life and my will over to his care. I don't think I know what the will is. Unfortunately, my modus operandi is that I won't touch a concept with a ten foot pole unless I thoroughly understand it. I want a schematic of how to surrender my will. If I can't visualize it, I'm not going to do it.

God is like the sun. You can't stare right into God. God will burn out your retinas.


The Program is big on action. Do the next right thing and see what happens. Quit thinking about what to do. Just do something. Quit sitting around and thinking about doing something. If something blows up in my face, I don't do it again. It's not that difficult.


Take meetings for instance. While I enjoy most of the meetings I attend and usually hear something that is helpful to me as I clumsily navigate through my little world -- clearly I'm not too big on bringing anything to the meeting befitting my overall status as a Taker -- I'm not often enthusiastic about the whole getting ready and going to the meeting. My attitude is poor but my actions are sound. Thinking is free. I can think all of the murderous thoughts that I want as long as my actions are sound.


Yesterday I visited a friend who was just out of surgery. I didn't want to go to the hospital. There are a lot of sick people in hospitals, which are dismal and depressing places. Spooky, gloomy places. But I went, and I felt better about myself. I'm not sure this was a pleasant experience for my friend, seeing Mr. Antsy dance around his hospital room but he was hooked up to an IV and not able to flee my presence.

There is way too much thinking going on around here.

The Zen of Toast

Right: In accordance with fact, reason, some set standard, etc.; correct in thought, statement, or action.

There are three ways of doing things: the right way; the wrong way; and Horseface Right. Many times the difference between right and wrong is apparent. For instance, when I am operating a motor car and I arrive at a busy intersection, I now obey the traffic signals. Most of the time. Now that I'm sober, at least. If the light is red, the "right" answer is to stop; the "wrong" answer is to ignore the red light and proceed through the intersection without stopping, slowing, hesitating, or looking both left and right. Blowing the horn doesn't make this action "right," although it does make me feel better to give some idiot a piece of my mind. I have learned -- through bitter experience, I can assure you -- that there may be consequences to this action: tickets, accidents, bloodletting and loss of consciousness, and the like. The fact that sometimes I get away with this move does not make this action "right" although it does encourage me to continue acting how I have always acted.

There is some significant ambiguity in other areas. Take buttering a piece of toast, for instance. This is a case where "Horseface Right" becomes much more important. I toast the bread to a perfect shade of brown; I handle the cutlery flawlessly; I put the right amount of butter on the toast. On and on it goes. My wife -- quite a good toast maker in her own right, a woman with many years of successful toast making under her small belt -- isn't quite as talented. She is good, very, very good, but still in need of my advice. I'm pleased to be married to such a skilled toast maker but would like to see a few small improvements.

Maybe I shouldn't have toast today.

Into Thinking

Think: To use the mind for arriving at conclusions, making decisions, drawing inferences, etc.

When I first entered The Program, I was dismayed to see a series of short, almost idiotic slogans that were apparently meant to solve my astonishingly difficult problems. Staying in the moment, keeping my nose out of other people's business, allowing God to run the universe all by himself, without my constant input -- this advice might work for my simple minded colleagues but not for someone with my massive intellect and uncanny insight.

I was overjoyed to see one placard reading "Think, Think, Think." Finally, something I was good at. There was nothing quite as productive as sitting down in front of a TV, with plenty of alcohol and drugs, and thinking. I had the solutions. I solved the problems. I fell asleep with a lit cigarette. I couldn't remember anything that I came up with the night before.

I'm not sure what the fascination with thinking is. Maybe it's my way of demonstrating my superiority to the beasts of the earth, the fowl of the sky, and all of the fishes and things that slither on the ground. Who, by the way, seem to make it through the day without the aid of a case of beer. I'm so engrossed in thought that I'm lucky I don't get walk out into the street and get hit by a truck.

I am still looking for the chapters entitled "Into Thinking" and "How It Works -- By Thinking!"

Horseface -- Superhero!

In my role as Horseface Steve, I exhibit two distinct personalities. My favorite identity is Meeting Horseface. He's a great guy. He says funny things and has profound insights on very serious matters. He listens well. He cares about people, or at least he pretends to. He manages to conceal the fact that he doesn't like anyone and that the world is a great big pain in the ass under a thick veneer of sympathetic caring. While all of his irritability and seething resentments lurk just under the surface, he keeps a smile on his face and a song in his heart. At least he's trying.

Meeting Horseface waves goodbye to all of his friends, wishes everyone a happy and sober week, and walks to his car, where he becomes, in a flash of smoke and light, Real World Horseface. This fellow is a little more problematic. He doesn't attempt to filter his contempt for life and all of mankind. He treats the world like a violent video game. He wants what he wants when he wants it, which is now. Nobody thinks he's funny. They think he's annoying and arrogant.

They're both me, these Horsefaces. They're locked in a Struggle of Death.

Come on, Meeting Horseface!