Hearing The Message

I solicited some advice about the family drinking situation at a meeting last night. This is a men's meeting with a lot of sobriety in attendance. It can get a little over the top from time to time, as men are wont to do, but it's a solid group of guys. Generally, I hesitate bringing up a topic in a lot of meetings because there is a tendency for people to talk at me, to solve my problem, to give me advice. I think that passing along specific recommendations has its part in my recovery, but it should happen before and after the meeting or on the phone, not in the meeting itself. I understand this to be cross-talk, which I hate. If you tell me what to do I'm doing something else. If you tell me what you did, maybe, maybe, I'll listen.


Anyway, the message I heard repeatedly was this: pray for the guy; make yourself available; don't buy into any bullshit. When we're drinking and not interested in stopping there is no solution. I've gotten pretty good over the years detaching from drunks who are drinking: "You want to drink, then drink. You know where to find us." We don't pass this message along with anger or arrogance but as a simple fact. We're like teenagers most of the time. You can't tell us anything. It almost killed me getting sober when I was All In. I didn't have a prayer when I was justifying what I was doing, when I was resisting the message. The guys I hung around with early on didn't waste much time with me, as they shouldn't have. I was still a lost cause at that point; they had people who wanted the help that I was refusing.

The other thing I heard was: Family is hard. It's painful watching someone evaporate, but it hurts in a special way when it's a loved one. And then, to compound the misery, I have codependent family members calling to insist that I drop what I'm doing and Run Over! Right Now! Solve the Problem! I keep giving the same simple message over and over. I feel like I'm talking to a piece of wood; nothing is penetrating. I'm not a woodpecker.


If SuperK is around, I use the speaker phone so that I have a witness to the drama. As a people pleaser, it's not easy delivering blunt advice. Usually she pats me on the shoulder and walks out of the room. There's not a lot to say. It isn't very complicated. I should be the guy who tells people they have fatal diseases or are losing their jobs: "Sit down Mr. Johnson. I have some bad news. . . "

Wouldn't it be GREAT if I could fix everything that is wrong? Boy, would I have a big boat.

Live and Let Live, I Said

Detached: Not involved by emotion, interests, etc.; aloof; impartial.

I've been trying to sort out my impressions about my father's drinking. Not morbid wallowing in the mud kind of thinking, but thinking none the less. I don't know what else to call it. Reflection? Musing? The paralysis of analysis? I have to be careful I don't over think, which I love to do, but sometimes I have to think things through.

Shorty and I usually come up with this conclusion when we talk about any dysfunction that we can detect in our families: "It's painful." I need to embrace that simple concept more often than I do. Sometimes it's just painful watching someone I love go through something that I don't want them to go through. It's even worse when I'm not able to change the behavior that causes the painful circumstances. I don't know why everyone can't see that I know what they should do.

It's delusional for me to think that things would improve if other people would only make the changes that I recommend. Sometimes I can't stop myself from chiming in, usually with negative results. It's even more laughable when I consider that a lot of the time I'm looking at behavior that others have embraced for years and years and decades. Like I have the power to change that.


While I love my father and I know he loves me we don't have much of a relationship. I don't think he was particularly interested in getting married and having a family. When I was growing up he came home from work, ate dinner, and left for his bowling league, poker game, golf league, volleyball league, softball league, The League of Nations, in league with the devil, beleaguered and haggard. He was very active in his church. It's not that things weren't good, it's just that they weren't . . . anything. He wasn't around. He wasn't involved.

I wonder what it was like for him growing up with an alcoholic father. Probably not much different.

I've been able to work through a lot of these feelings over the years. It has been a slow -- sometimes EXCRUTIATINGLY slow -- process but it has produced some results. I can step back from the drama and make informed decisions. Sometimes I feel like a 911 operator when I take calls. I try to calm down the caller and help them handle the crisis. It doesn't feel like a loved one on the other end. I want to help them solve the crisis. I don't feel the obligation to take the entire weight of the crisis on my own shoulders. I don't buy into the drama any more. "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts."

My best friend watched his alcoholic father struggle at the end of his life. He had a lot of regret and a lot of fear about dying. He was adrift spiritually and because he had spent most of his life thinking about himself and neglecting others -- with pretty predictable results in his family -- there wasn't a great rallying around of the troops to help ease his passage. No one was behaving maliciously, they were just doing what they had always done. They were a product of their environment. They were practicing what they had been taught. People can't stop on a dime and change like that.

I have to be very careful when I write about others. It's easy to sit up in my ivory tower and take pot shots at other people. I'm all over your flaws; it's my flaws that I can't see. But I need to sort things out from time to time as well. It's not easy facing some of these problems. Sometimes I feel cold and analytical. Calculating. But I know myself how long and hard a process it was to get to this spot. I didn't decide to stop being involved. I learned how painful it was being involved and how to adapt to manage the pain.

It's not always my fault. The solution is always with me, but it's not always my fault. If you walk up and pop me in the nose, that's not a defect on my part. Letting you do it over and over -- that's the defect.

Live and Let Live

I have an elderly relative who would appear to be drinking a whole hell of a lot of alcohol right now. This guy had an alcoholic father and has exhibited alcoholic tendencies his whole life. Maybe he has been drinking on the sly all along. It's not always easy to tell. Some of us are very good at hiding our drinking; we have a great capacity for alcohol. Personally, I was one of those guys who appeared to gain composure and self-control the more that I drank.

And then a lot of us are high bottom, functioning alcoholics. I'm always amazed when I meet someone who comes into A.A. after having a successful career and raising a family and buying houses and doing all kinds of other adult things that I never got around to doing. I was too busy drinking.

It's difficult to watch someone drink like this. It becomes much harder to process the alcohol as we get older. When we're young we have a lot more stamina and strength and balance. The kidneys and liver are functioning well and purging the poison that is alcohol quickly and efficiently. It's easier to get away with it. We can power through the pain and crisis.

Over the years I've gotten pretty good at detaching from alcoholics that I'm not emotionally involved with. It's not against the law to drink, after all. The cops won't try to stop you if you want to sit in your living room and drain half a gallon of vodka every night. We know the virtual impossibility of trying to stop a drunk who doesn't want to quit drinking. You could have dropped me into the middle of a dry county on Sunday into a Mormon compound surrounded by barbed wire and snarling Dobermans and I'd have a case of something and a bag of something else within the hour. Generally I don't bother with someone who wants to keep drinking. People told me to finish the job and come back when I was ready.

Maybe some day I'll go to Al-Anon. I hear it's a wonderful program. Shorty brings it up all the time when I bitch about my family. In my defense I think that A.A. has done a good job of teaching me how to keep my hands off of the things that I have no control over. I've learned about not taking responsibility for others. It's not my job to tell other people what to do, despite the fact that I am eminently qualified to run the world. I try not to take it personally. I'm not thinking about how I impact someone else when I do something so I assume that they're not thinking about me. People aren't doing things at me, they're just doing things that make sense to them or that they think they need to do.


I don't know.

Tireless Termites

Termite: Any of various pale-colored social insects that are very destructive . .

I took a call from EMC recently. Most of my friends and I have a basic understanding about the phone. If I get voice mail when I call someone I leave a message and a schtickle of information. Most of the time I can say that everything is fine and I'm merely checking in. I touch base with a lot of people to make sure that my awareness of my surroundings is not completely insane. This is not unusual. I'm always checking: "Is this insane? Is this weird? Should I stop doing this?" I have no idea most of the time.

On occasion, the Termites of Fear are ceaselessly devouring the foundations of my sanity and I need to talk to someone sooner rather than later. Being an adult, sort of, I practice adult phone etiquette and indicate this in my message. At that point I expect a phone call as soon as it's convenient for the other person, but I don't sit around and wait: I move down my long list to the next guy. My tolerance for pain is much, much lower than it used to be. And I don't think any of us have the market cornered on right behavior.

EMC was burned up. I could tell right away because normally his cadence is nice and deliberate. He was talking a mile a minute. I don't think that I passed along any profound information; from what I could tell, assuming he wasn't lying too much and exaggerating too ridiculously, he was behaving in a perfectly appropriate manner and responding with hale and good cheer to some stressful information. Mostly I listened, which I've learned is all I really want from my friends most of the time, and dispensed some hackneyed and fairly obvious advice: You're upset so take a deep breath and calm down before you do anything. This isn't philosophical advice worthy of Gandhi or Plato, for god's sake. I'd expect to hear "Look before you leap" from philosophers like Foghorn Leghorn or Bullwinkle.

Good old Foghorn. He always knew what to say.

Don't Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight

"Here's the thing I hate about you most: you are so inconsiderate."

I mulled over this remark. I figured that I had done something inconsiderate. Otherwise I couldn't think of any other reason that she would call me inconsiderate. Probably I was pretending to listen to my wife when, in fact, I was thinking about myself, which is my favorite topic, as I have made abundantly clear. ("That's no fucking secret," SuperK told me when I admitted this once).

"You just said that people like me," I pointed out. I heard that. I hear compliments. It makes me think of my grandfather who was hard of hearing unless he wanted to hear something.

"They don't know you like I know you," she replied, which is pretty true. She knows me quite well.

"That's not true," I defended myself. "Some of them know me pretty well."

"They don't have to live with you," she said. I don't know how she does it, to be honest with you.

I wasn't going to win this argument.

'Night, 'Night, SuperK

A few years ago I had a routine medical procedure that required a general anesthetic. To complete the work, my doctor had to take a long metal probe and . . . well, I can't imagine that anyone is interested in the details. Trust me, the prescribed anesthetic was definitely required. I have an incredible tolerance for pain but would rather die of whatever disease this procedure was trying to detect than be awake during said procedure.

Yesterday I took SuperK to the hospital to have the same test done. Both of us are amped up pretty good as a general rule. We're both highly competitive, highly energized, Type A personalities, which makes for some interesting marital dynamics from time to time. I might have mentioned to her on the way to the hospital just how pleasant a little spritz of Demerol can be. I also think it's interesting that the spelling of "marital" and "martial" is very similar. Just move a couple of letters and voila!

Afterwards, I poured her into the car and listened to her repeat the same things over and over for the next 15 minutes. She said: "Wow. This is a great drug."


"Yeah, tell me about it, " I said.

"I am totally, completely relaxed," she continued.


"Yeah, I told you about this on the way down here, right?" I replied, a little piqued that I didn't get a shot of Demerol so I could tolerate the boredom of a hospital waiting room. "Can we talk about something else?"

"OK, calm down," she giggled. "Why are you in such a bad mood?"

"Because you got a shot of Demerol and I didn't," I pointed out.

She sat out in the backyard and knitted and read for the rest of the afternoon. I remember hanging out in the coffee shop when I had my pop of the Big D. Just sat there and watched the world go by. And this from a dude who is burning energy like a nuclear reactor most of the time. It took the sense of urgency away, the feeling that I wasn't Getting Something Done. For the non-alcoholic/drug addict, it's a big waste of time, sitting there with a stupid grin on your face. For the lover of opiates, it's the whole point of things.

I ran into a friend that night at a meeting who has 40 plus years of sobriety. She inquired about SuperK.


"Oh, yeah, that's a good drug," she laughed.

We talked -- not seriously -- about what a wonderful world it would be if I could get up in the morning and inject a syringe full of Demerol. Maybe half a syringe if the day got tough. And could it hurt to have one more shot to help me get to sleep? I'd be selling my china to buy pounds of the stuff in a week.


"How's my little drug addict?" I asked SuperK this morning.

She looked up. "I hadn't really thought about it," she said.

What a freak. We did talk about how this might increase our empathy and understanding when we run into heroin addicts at our respective institution meetings. We could see how one could quickly get carried away. Then, top it off with a really horrible and long withdrawal.

Horseface of Arabia

Bore: To weary by being dull, uninteresting, or monotonous.

I have been mulling over the difference between comfort and relaxation, and boredom, the curse of the hyperactive personality. This is usually a good indicator that I am contemplating doing something stupid. Most alcoholics have a lot of experience living right on the knife edge of control. We like to push the limits, see what we can get away with. We think: "WTF. I'm going to give it a shot." Or we dispense with the thinking part and just give it a shot. Then later, sitting in the emergency room or the back of a police car or some doghouse or shithouse of one kind or another, we think: " WTF was I thinking?"

Now I'm sober, after a fashion. However, I still like to run out into heavy traffic from time to time, just to see what will happen. I'm not too good at sitting in a comfortable chair in front of the TV. I want to see what's out there. The trick is figuring out where "there" is, exactly. I'm a little better at it today but my tuner is still not hooked up right.

To me it's like going to my favorite restaurant and ordering my favorite meal (tripe stuffed with haggis, at a great Norwood place, in case you're interested). If I try something new, I miss the meal I love so much. But if I get the same meal over and over, it starts to bore me. I don't think this way when I'm retching up the raw oysterettes on a bed of caramelized kelp eggs, but I start out thinking this way.

A few years back I went to Morocco with Thai Stick and we took a long camel or dromedary or whatever TF we were on ride out into the Sahara. Sounded adventurous: Horseface of Arabia. After about 2o minutes of the 3 hour ride my ass was numb, my back was in full spasm, and the animal's funk was overpowering me. We ended up at a tented camp where the heat of the day quickly gave way to freezing weather. I'm in the desert trying to thaw out my frozen hands over a wood fire, eating something that I couldn't clearly see in the dark, thank god. The tent where we slept -- on the ground -- was actually heavy blankets strung between poles. It was not purchased at The North Face outfitter's store as far as I could tell.


By the time we went to bed -- there was nothing on satellite TV that night -- it was so cold that I climbed under the blankets fully dressed: shoes, coat, everything. And if you think that desert sand is soft you're sadly mistaken. I would doze for about an hour before my aching body awakened me, at which point I would contemplate whether or not I should risk losing some of the precious heat my skinny body had managed to generate and ignore the pain, or try to find a more comfortable position. It was definitely Lose -Lose.

The next morning we awakened before dawn and climbed a huge sand dune that we could vaguely sense looming above us the night before. We figured we could quickly scramble to the top but we had definitely lost all perspective of size and distance in the vast open spaces of the desert. So there we were, perched a hundred yards up on the side of this dune, watching the sun come up in the Sahara. There was nothing to catch the eye but rolling sand dunes stretching as far as the eye could see. There was no color other than desert brown. There was no sound except for the wind. The stars that absolutely lit up the sky the night before were winking out.

Wouldn't trade the memory for a million bucks.

An UnQuiet Mind

Dream: A fond hope or aspiration.

I like to dream. I like that the definition has fond in it, which has an air of foolish tenderness or affection. It's nice to be able to imagine a future where interesting and pleasant things might happen, instead of the nightmarish outcomes that I usually project. Now I imagine disaster only on occasion instead of with obsessive regularity. I can also say that what I do today no longer revolves around a:

Hallucination: The apparent perception of sights, sounds, etc. that are not actually present; it may occur in certain mental conditions.

Drugs had their part in my hallucinations, as did long, steady bouts of drinking. I was starting to hear things at the end. I would go downstairs to complain about my neighbor's TV only to find that no one was at home. So there was no actual TV that I was hearing, which definitely gave me the creeps. I try to avoid the hallucination today; at least I'm alarmed, and rightly so, if one pops up. I shouldn't see people where no people exist, or TVs, either, for that matter. I also believe that when I dream today I'm not dabbling too heavily in the realm of:

Fantasy: An unreal mental image; illusion; phantasm; a whim; queer notion.

Queer and unreal, great. That's just great. I tend to associate fantasy with trolls and hobgoblins, or naked, well-endowed starlets. I would classify as fantasy the satisfaction that I imagine I would surely feel choking the last bit of life out of someone who was annoying the shit out of me by driving poorly or drinking the last bit of milk.


All of this is OK as long as I do not allow myself to become a:

Projectile: An object, as a bullet, shell, rocket, etc. designed to be hurled or shot forward.

The future is the future. All I can do is to take steps to move toward something that interests me or away from something that doesn't, and see what happens. I get myself into trouble when I insist that my dreams come to life. I get into trouble when I project outcomes. I should let god do god's work. Unless I want to continue acting like an:

Idiot: the lowest classification of mental deficiency, below imbecile and moron.

I think my work is done here.

Truth or Consequences

Consequent: Following as a result; resulting; following as a logical inference or conclusion; proceeding in logical sequence.

What a shock it was to find out that there were consequences to my actions. I was more comfortable living in a heartless, random universe where great forces and distant powers determined the course of my life. I'm not suggesting that there aren't great forces and powers out there -- I am married, after all, and there's nothing distant about the situation -- but I don't think that they're that they're that involved. I feel that way about god. I don't think god finds me a parking space when I'm running late. I don't think he/she/it is that interested in the excruciating minutia of my daily life.

It makes me think before I do something. My actions affect things. I can't just go spinning off like a top on crank anymore and expect to start from scratch the next day. I can't just say what I want or do what I want to do. I'm not 5 years old. I shouldn't have to be taught something this basic.

I surmise that this isn't surprising information to the vast majority of adults in the world.

It's Not Paranoia If Someone Really Is After You

Paranoia: A mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions.

While I was in Oregon I drove out to the coast for a couple of days. I stopped about halfway to hike in the Tillamook National Forest. The trail head was several hundred yards off the highway, down a creepy gravel lane hemmed in with overgrown vegetation. It was raining steadily when I arrived, the trees cloaked with fog and mist, and parked in a deserted clearing, next to a swollen mountain river. I'm not a guy who would survive very long in the wilderness, so I was a little nervous as I contemplated disappearing into the dripping thicket. I needed a blanket or a wubbie or a big bodyguard dressed in a black turtleneck and mirrored sunglasses, even though it was raining. Those bodyguards can pull off the sunglasses anywhere.

As I started down the narrow trail, the stream thundering by on my right, I started to hallucinate up all kinds of nightmarish scenarios. I started with animals, wild animals, rabid with blood lust, stalking what was clearly a sick and weakened animal. I was watching out of the corner of my eye for the grizzly bear rearing up out of her den, listening for the scream of the mountain lion as it pounced and sank its fangs into my neck.

Because this seemed so implausible I let my imagination begin to work on the crazed mankind scenarios that I generally prefer over the crazed wildlife ones. I worried about stumbling on some backwoods marijuana patch where ten foot high sin semilla plants were guarded by Uzi-toting villains. They would shoot first, ask questions later. My body could easily be buried in a shallow grave in the rotting humus. Or maybe some inbred mountain crackers looking for some fun would toy with me for a while.

The great thing about hiking for a few hours is that my body requires so much attention that it begins to distract me from the wildlife and crackers living in my brain. I walked along the river for about a mile, then climbed steadily for an hour or so. It was hard work. Every now and then I stopped and listened to the rain pattering down. I couldn't hear anything else. About half way I passed another dude and his dog, which reassured me somewhat. I figured the grizzlies would have gotten him first. We chatted for a minute, sharing that weird bond between two guys stupid enough to walk in the woods in the pouring rain all alone.

The 21st Year is the Hardest

Twenty: Two times ten; the cardinal number between 19 (which is a piece of cake) and 21 (which is the hardest).

Today I'm celebrating 20 years of marriage -- continuous marriage -- and the entire experience has been a walk in a meadow on a Spring morning with cute, little birds and butterflies flitting and prancing about. I no longer pay attention to the swarms of stinging horseflies and rain clouds gathering in the distance. I'm sure that they'll go away, or they are an illusion or a hallucination of some kind. Maybe the whole meadow is a hallucination. Maybe the whole marriage is an illusion -- my history with relationships has not been that good and I'm still trying to flush all of the LSD and cannabis residue out of my system.

In the not too distant past I turned 50 -- actually that's been almost 3 years ago so that's getting to be slightly distant -- and I celebrated 20 years of sobriety -- and that's been 2 years ago, now that I think about it, so that's not that recent, either. Where the hell does the time go? Of these 3 milestones I'm most impressed with the marriage anniversary. What did I have to do to achieve 20 years of sobriety? Don't drink and don't die. And 50 years of age? Don't die, which is even simpler. If you're married the key is don't drink, don't die, and don't let your spouse kill you, which can be tricky if you have a murderous mate. I mean, you have to maneuver around with another person in mind, which is hard when you're totally consumed with yourself.

It's funny that if you just take a deep breath and move through your day trying to do the next right thing and paying attention to god that everything seems to work out in the long run. When I'm in a good spot, nothing SuperK can do vexes me, and when I'm lost in a spiritual desert, she can't do anything right. So obviously it's all a function of me and my attitude. The thing with a partner and kids and parents is that they're right there all of the time. Makes them convenient targets. And for an excitement junkie having to deal with the same people or jobs or friends over and over and over can be most annoying.


Low profile, and lots of disguises. That's my secret. And just keeping MY MOUTH SHUT. That has never failed me.

We Are Family

I've had some stuff going on with my family lately that hasn't been to my liking. What makes this particularly galling is that I'm the first person in the history of mankind who has had any trouble with family members. Unfortunately, I have to assume that I'm probably a little bit at fault or mostly at fault or completely at fault, given my tendency to make simple situations complicated and annoy people with my passive-aggressive stance on life, or my aggressive stance, depending on the situation. Passive-aggressive is kind of fun in a sneaky, shitty way but it's also great to just let the old temper out of its cage from time to time.

For the most part, I've learned to keep a lid on my complaints when I'm in the public domain. I am grateful for a few close friends that will listen to me vent, even while I'm patting myself on the back for being understanding and considerate and misunderstood. I try not to gossip but realize that I have to get stuff off of my chest, no matter who's at fault, especially since it's usually me. I conveniently ignore the fact that if I'm totally and completely nice and good for the rest of my life, I'm not going to come close to correcting all the damage that I've done in my life. This falls in the category of inconvenient truths.

The thing with families is that we are privy to all kinds of insider information. We get to see these people at their absolute worst from time to time. I have to be careful that when I share the specifics about what is going on that I'm not just writing a Kiss and Tell novel. That's low journalism. And I'm not sure I would want the details of my life spilled out at my mother's church or my sister's PTA meeting. As if anyone would be interested in what I'm up to.

Aren't you just dying to know what I'm irritated about? Probably not, actually. You're thinking about yourselves. In all honesty, the details are so mundane that it would be more unhealthy to share them than to keep them to myself. Suffice it to say that alcoholics aren't the only people who are driven by out-sized desires for more money, more power, more sex.

"But, Mom, he hit me first!"

What Was That Noise?

Anxiety: A state of being uneasy, apprehensive, or worried about what may happen; misgiving.

There is a psychology study circulating which is investigating why some of us are so susceptible to generalized anxiety. Admittedly, it's not easy to differentiate conclusively the many different factors that make some of us more anxious than others. For instance, it would seem to me that if you grow up with parents who fret about everything that you will be predisposed to worry more than others. I'm using my degree in Someone Who Thinks He Knows A Lot About Everything to make this conclusion.

What this study has determined is that some of us are fearful right out of the womb. Not many of us, but a small percentage. This is a totally anecdotal observation on my part, but a lot of the worriers seem to end up as alcoholics and drug addicts. I've always liked the phrase Free Floating Anxiety. There is actually a medical diagnosis called Generalized Anxiety Syndrome. Wonderful. Apparently some of us just worry about everything.

It was disconcerting to me hearing some of the conclusions. They appeared to be talking about me specifically. It takes some time in the morning and a pretty significant force of will to tamp down my inclination to simply assume that everything is going to turn out badly. For many years, if I heard an ambulance and a family member was out, I worried that something bad had happened. If I get a headache I assume it's cancer of the brain, and not a regular old malignant tumor, either. A bad, aggressive, inoperable tumor. I'm surfing the net, trying to find symptoms that confirm my diagnosis, using my degree in Someone Who Was Kicked Out Of Optometry College and the web site http://www.soyouworryabouteverythingtoo, out of the former republic of Azerbaijan.

It's one thing to worry when there's a reason to worry. I no longer walk down dark alleys in bad sections of town in the middle of the night to buy drugs, and if I did, I'd worry. Good worry. The problem is that I worry about things that may happen and it doesn't always help if I know intellectually, rationally that these things rarely happen. They may not even be real fears: bogeymen and monsters in the closet and weird diseases.

Excuse me for a minute. I think a monster got loose upstairs.

Bipolar or Tripolar?

Bipolar Disorder: Also known as manic depressive disorder, a psychosis characterized by alternating periods of mania and melancholia, or mental depression.

A few weeks back a friend of mine who is bipolar experienced some visual hallucinations and checked himself into the psych ward of a local hospital. I drove down to visit him one afternoon which is something that I wasn't all fired up to do. I'm not motivated to do anything that doesn't directly benefit me in the short term. But you people have taught me to behave as if I give a shit about someone who isn't me, because it's the right thing to do. We're all about doing the next right thing in this program.

A locked psych ward is an interesting place. Someone has to come out and unlock the door to let you in, obviously, because the whole place is locked, being as it's a psych ward. After they let you in, they lock the door again which means now you're locked in, too. Then they usher you into a visiting room, which has to be unlocked, and after you enter they lock you in there. I was really locked in. I was not getting out of there without some serious help.

My buddy was fine. He has an illness which can be controlled with medication and he's aware when things go awry. I asked him about his floor mates. "Lot of attempted suicides," he said. He thought for a minute, then mentioned a man and a woman that I know in A.A. who suffer from a more severe form of bipolar disorder. "People like Dick and Jane, when they're not on their meds," he explained.

I'm never thrilled to see Dick and Jane at meetings. Sometimes they're fine but sometimes they're all over the board. Their thinking isn't clear, or it's uncomfortably weird. Dick and Jane aren't scary or violent; they just dance out on the fringes of normal behavior from time to time.


"I'll tell you something else," my friend said. "I've had people from The Program in here constantly, and I don't think anyone else on the floor has had even one visitor. I didn't think that sounded fair.


I ran into Dick at a meeting recently. I walked by my friends and talked to him. It wasn't an interesting conversation. I don't enjoy my time with Dick. But it felt important to make the effort. I'm going to assume that when I was new and oozing all kinds of toxins that everyone was totally thrilled when I cornered them after a meeting.

I'm going to assume that.

Egocentricity

Egocentric: Viewing everything in relation to oneself.

Yesterday I sat down with my most trusted advisers and agreed with their recommendation that the grass needed to be cut. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to grass-cutting, worrying that the time is Not Yet Right. I'm afraid that I may cause lasting damage to the world ecosystem if I cut the grass Before Its Time Is Due. I'm careful not to rush into anything. The council pointed out that mid-shin was indicative of excessive height.

I took out my trusty lawnmower and headed out to the front yard. I live on a busy street. An extremely busy street. When you are standing on the sidewalk it's hard to hear anything over the steady roar of cars, trucks, emergency equipment with sirens wailing, long convoys of motorcycles, WWII vintage aircraft, and the occasional submarine clanging along. I lowered myself painfully to mower level and primed the engine. I don't know what I was looking at when I did this. Probably nothing. I'm so busy thinking about myself most of the time that I'm not especially aware of my surroundings. Probably I was watching the traffic or some 15 year old jogging by in shorts.

When I started the mower I heard a shriek behind me. I turned around and saw a woman with a dog jogging in place. The woman was jogging in place, not the dog. I don't think dogs can jog. "Oops, sorry," I shouted over the roar of the mower. She moved past me, then turned around and started vigorously jabbing her index finger in my direction, with purpose. "You looked right at me!" she yelled. "You looked right at me!"



I didn't say anything, just kept cutting the grass. I'm in A.A. I'm used to dealing with insane people. Not long ago I would have cut the engine and screamed right back, using some colorful language. That made me feel bad so I tried to reason with these insane people, which never worked. That hurt my feelings so I started ignoring them. But still I couldn't stop internalizing the fear and guilt when someone was mad at me. I would carry it around all day. "Why did that person do that?" I'd think. "She wasn't being very reasonable."


Today I figure that I made a mistake -- and not a bad mistake at that -- and apologized immediately. Maybe that woman had all kinds of bad stuff going on. It's easier on me if I try to bend over backwards when I deal with difficult people. Life can be tough and most of us don't have a spiritual program and lots of friends to rely on.

It made me think about how egocentric I am with the world. I always think that people are doing things at me. I had to laugh at the woman's reaction. It was based around the presumption that I saw her, then deliberately tried to block her progress with a piece of operating machinery. Wow, talk about assuming the worst of a pretty benign situation. The facts were I wasn't thinking about her at all. I was thinking about myself which is, as I have pointed out, far and away my favorite topic.

$2

A few years back I started to give a couple of bucks to any down and out person who asked, and SuperK has followed suit. Maybe it was her idea first, I don't know. I never shy from taking public credit for any good deed, even if it's not mine. Especially when it's not mine. Keeping it to yourself is stupid. What's the use of doing something nice unless everyone knows about it?

I rarely gave money when I was drinking. I was too suspicious of the motives of others. I was afraid that someone was going to take advantage of me. Plus, I couldn't spare any money that could be well spent on drugs and alcohol. This attitude was to be expected -- I spent so much time lying and manipulating others that I couldn't imagine a world where everyone else wasn't doing the same thing. I mean, think about the scam, it's brilliant: dress in dirty clothes and stand in the rain choking on exhaust fumes at a highway off-ramp to collect some change. I'm sure these people are going back to their mansions in the best areas of town to dine on caviar and champagne, all on my nickle.



I don't like the idea that the money might go for drugs and alcohol, either, but today I'm not so sure of that. I figure if you're a drunk and you're using, the best outcome is for you get to the end of your journey as quickly as you can, whether that's making it to A.A. or making it to the graveyard. For me, either of those options was better than slowly strangling to death with my disease.

I learned this in A.A.. I look around my meetings and see people who I have known for years and people who I've seen sober up. And then there's the sliver of folks who are just starting. Not to be blunt about it, but their prospects aren't very good. They probably won't stay sober. I bounced in and out for months before I got any adhesion. The regulars at my meetings would have been perfectly justified in saying: "I'm not going to waste one minute on you, you liar." Instead, they bent over backward, time and time again, to make me feel welcome.


Maybe this time the $2 is bus fare to get that guy to treatment or to his son's house for a clean bed and hot meal. Maybe this time something I say to the new guy makes sense, and he finds a meeting tomorrow night.


You never know.

Johnny Law

I'm really fascinated right now by the concept of The Law. I'm trying to tease out the differences between Johnny Law, The Law of Yahweh, and the good, old clear-cut, common sense Laws of Life. Those Laws that never bend an inch.

I get my hackles up when I'm given a list of Things That I Must Not Do. I'm not crazy about suggestions of how to properly behave, either, but I really don't like to be told No. Take the 10 Commandments, for example. They all make perfect, logical sense but I can't get past the "command" part. How many of us would have gotten sober if Bill and Bob had come up with The 12 Commandments of A.A.? I get all rubbery just thinking about it. We even say that The Steps are "suggested." You don't have to do them. You can come up with something else. Can you imagine "suggesting" that Thou shalt not kill? You can kill if you want to, but it hasn't worked out well for most of us, but, please, go ahead and do whatever you think is best. We don't have all of the answers.

When I was drunk and unhappy, I railed against god, as if he was responsible for my plight. I believe god set up the whole operation, pushed the Start button, then took a smoke break. The Laws of Life are there to follow or ignore as I see fit. I was one of those people screaming at the usher who wouldn't let me into the play I showed up late for, as I stood under the sign reading: "Latecomers seated during first intermission." The usher didn't make the rule. Why was I screaming at the usher? He was handy, that's all.


I like analogies. They make hard concepts simple. They make me relate. I remember my mother telling me not to stick my fork into an electrical outlet. I did it immediately, of course, got shocked on my ass, and was furious at my mother. I ignored the Fourth Commandment of Electricity: Thou Shalt Not Stick Conductive Metal into An Electrical Outlet While Holding on to Same Metal. It wasn't her fault that I got shocked. It was my fault. I spent my drinking years treating people poorly and wallowing in self-centeredness and had no friends. Then I was pissed at god because I was lonely.



Well, no shit, Sherlock

Spiritus Frumenti

Spirit: Real meaning; true intention; a pervading animating principle, essential, or characteristic quality, or prevailing tendency or attitude.


Here's the opening paragraph of an email I received today: "As you are well aware, we have spent this entire year allocating resources where they can provide the best revenue return to the company." First of all, the original note was dated August 28th and today is, I might point out, October 3rd. This would indicate to me that I'm not front and center with this organization. I'm not in the front and I'm not in the center. I believe I'm in the third balcony, obstructed view, next to the men's room.

The letter continues: "In that spirit, I am announcing . . . " followed by some uninteresting gook. What spirit would that be? The spirit of sacrificing people for corporate profits? The spirit of not giving a shit about anything but the bottom line? Look, I understand that business exists to make money but can't we at least pretend that there's a little something more going on? Somebody should teach this guy how to write a letter. He was probably the snotty kid sending a note to Aunt Blanche thanking her for the ugly socks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kon-Tent-Munt

Contentment: The state, quality, or fact of being contented; a satisfying or being satisfied.


I'm in a good spot right now. It's kind of freaking me out. I'm going to have to think up some scheme to wreck everything. I'm more comfortable with chaos and pain. I know how to manage things when I'm going down in a ball of flames, pieces flying off, the whole structure coming apart. Alcoholics, we're good at problems. Contentment is a whole 'nother story.

Every now and then I hang in a place where I'm content with what I have. My stuff seems pretty interesting. I'm happy with my stuff and my circumstances right now. I don't need anything else and I'm not particularly afraid that someone will get in and mess with what I have. This will change, of course. I'm not an idiot. Ironically, I have a couple of big things going on that would have been grounds for murder not long ago. Today it's like: "Eh." I don't have the energy to pound my little fists of rage.

Maybe I'll pick a fight with SuperK. That always spices things up.

Instant Karma

Karma: The totality of a person's actions in one of the successive states of his existence, thought of as determining his fate in the next.

More insanity.

When something bad happens to me I'm sure that I deserve it. I assume that I did something wrong and I'm being punished for my actions. I'm never surprised when things go south. It seems to be in the natural course of life for bad, bad stuff to happen. I expect it. I almost enjoy it, these difficulties. And this is despite the fact that bad things don't happen to me all that often and I exaggerate the bejesus out of them when they do. "Oh, no! Ohmigod! It's raining today and I bought a carton of eggs with a broken egg in it! Why do bad things happen to me!"

Woe, woe, woe.


Even more perplexing, when good things happen I figure I don't deserve them. I feel guilty, like I'm driving a stolen car. I'm afraid that the good things are going to be snatched away by a cruel and vengeful god, toying with me and enjoying it very much. So I'm not very appreciative of the good things I have, preferring to ignore them most of the time and wondering why I don't have more. You can dump a $100 in my lap and I'll bitch that it's not more.

Guilt, guilt, guilt.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that The System isn't set up like that. Good things and bad things are going to happen. It's inevitable. However, there is a karma out there, I believe, which does seem to reward us for right thinking and crack our shins when we're selfish. And the rewards don't often show up as things but with a sense of purpose and belonging, a feeling of contentment and all that crap.

Next time, I'm going to look at the eggs first.