Two, Five, and Ten

 One of the Experience, Strength, and Hope personal anecdotes I share often in meetings is my Two, Five, and Ten theory of recovery: to wit, it took me two years of strenuous Step work before I was able to pull my head at least halfway out of my ass; five years before I had a real, practical working idea of what a Higher Power was; and at ten years I had evolved into the person I am today, more or less.  None of these dates are meant to be firm and will vary from person to person as long as said person is diligent about his/her recovery program.  And this info is meant to be positive - I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about the slow pace of recovery but rather to encourage them to keep at it, especially after the dramatic gains of early sobriety ebb away.  

What has become more and more apparent over the years is that these periods of awakening still happen as I move along in life.  Several years ago I let go of some low level, slow burning resentments at friends in my old towns who didn't make as much of an effort to stay in touch with me as I did to stay in touch with me.  Just quite recently I have managed - thanks, perversely, in part to the political rift I perceive in Alcoholics Anonymous - to come to the realization that it does me no good at all to hold any resentments at all to friends who are going elsewhere or have chosen a different recovery path.  I have no doubt there were people in Cincinnati who thought I was a dick for leaving or people here in SoCal who think I'm an idiot for continuing to attend a meeting that they find lacking.  So I make phone calls when the spirit moves me and I listen to music when it doesn't, which has become a lot more common.  You know what?  I love listening to music - music is one of the greatest joys in my life - and the sense of relief at not having to keep in frequent contact with so many different people is actually a much bigger relief than I would have imagined.

Someday . . .

 Someday I'm going to reread some of this stuff that I've written.  I suspect that I'm going to see themes and attitudes and behaviors repeated over and over and over.  During the pandemic I reread about 20 years of my personal diary.  What I found was that themes and attitudes and behaviors were repeated over and over and over.  I confess to being frustrated a few times, flinging the thing aside, and muttering: "For God's sake you've been talking about this behavior for months and ever years - why don't you do something about it?!"  One of the most profound concepts that has come across my desk in the last few years is the idea that yesterday's behaviors are probably going to be today's behaviors.  And I think this becomes more and more likely the older we get.  Patterns get entrenched.  Behaviors become barnacles on the soul.  You practically have to jackhammer the fuckers to get them off.

To wit: the schism of my favorite A.A. home group pissed me off royally for the longest time and it did so despite the fact that many of the people who left pissed me off just as much.  I would repeatedly write down a list of friends and "friends" that I didn't see any more and I was usually pissed off about this.  This mental behavior lasted and lasted.  At some point I came to the realization that my life was actually improving without these irritants irritating me, although this didn't stop me from continuing my general irritation.  At some point and it was a point that was far too far down the road I lost my irritation.  I concentrated on who I was with and what I was doing instead of how things used to be.  I cannot emphasize how long this took to accomplish.  I don't even think that's the right word - I can't emphasize how long it took for this realization to take hold deep down inside me.

Another thing I've written about repeatedly is my irritation at the lack of effort my friends make to stay in touch with me after I've made the decision to leave a city or town or state.  I'm mad that all the effort to maintain the relationship is coming from me neatly ignoring the fact that I'm the guy who left and it's not their fault that we don't see each other regularly anymore.  Recently I've had some release from this as well; I've winnowed down my list of people to contact to just a few people.  This also has been a great release.  The phone call I had with my pastor friend really affirmed all this - I hadn't talked to him in a few years and we had a wonderful time talking, easily falling into the familiar cadence that has existed between us since high school.  

My friend who called me one of his best friends even though we never talk helped with this release - it allowed me to contemplate the nature of love and friendship.  It allowed me to see that my behavior had a little stale whiff of control in it, doing things on my terms, following my rules.

You'd think after all this time on this earth I'd be better at some of these simple things.  You'd think.

The Seven Year Itch

 I will never stop being amazed at how many people drift away from The Program around the five year mark.  Not saying they get drunk but that they quit attending meetings and - in my opinion - stagnate in their spiritual growth.  The big dramatic early gains are in the past and the deep contentment of long term sobriety is down the road so there's often a slow drift into obscurity.

Some more stuff from my buddy Dr. Gordon Livingston . . . 

"People are by nature risk-adverse.  It is often hard to sell unhappy people on the idea of taking the chances necessary to alter attitudes and behaviors that play a role in their chronic discouragement.  Every decision must be measure against the probability that it will  increase or decrease anxiety.  To the degree that one's choices become constrained by a need for anxiety avoidance, one's life shrinks.  As this happens, the anxiety is reinforced and soon the sufferer becomes fearful, not of anything external, but of anxiety itself."

So give it a whirl, right?  I often ponder a change and battle the feelings of resistance and anxiety by asking myself to imagine the most dire outcomes and to try to calculate how likely they are and what the consequences would be if they came to pass.  Which they almost never do.  It helps me take the leap.

"When we think about the things that alter our lives in a moment, nearly all of them are bad."

Too Rich and Too Smart

 I'm always amused at what comes burbling up when I'm trying to sit quietly before I start my day each morning.  

Here's a couple of tidbits . . . . 

A high school friend that I got reacquainted with when he came into The Rooms many years ago flashed through my brain.  This man wasn't rich - he was rich rich, looking down on people who had to work for a living instead of living off a trust fund rich.  I used to idly wonder how wonderful my life would be if I had that kind of money - not in a jealous way but in a man, would I love to be rich rich kind of way.  Replace my Very Expensive Car with a SuperCar kind of idle thinking.  My friend got addicted to prescription pain killers many years ago and he's still addicted to them.  I understand that his money has enabled him to bypass the almost inevitable descent into heroin/fentanyl addiction that happens to most people when their doctors refuse to right any more Rxs and they're forced into using much cheaper heroin/fentanyl.  His money has insulated him and prevented him from really coming into recovery.

Another flash was a highly educated man that I met when I was back in Cincinnati.  This guy was smart smart, possessing multiple degrees and holding an important position in educational circles.  Tried crack cocaine once and he was off and running.  I've lost track of him and no one I know back home has seen him around.  What do you think?  Jail, dead?  Wouldn't doubt it.  His brainpower got in the way of his embracing the work we have to do to stay sober and prevented him from really coming into recovery.

No one is too dumb or too poor to get sober but plenty of people have the opposite problem.

Pastor Dude

As luck would have it I received a call from my pastor buddy yesterday.  He's another one of those people with whom I lapse into a familiar cadence after a short period of trying to decide what to talk about.  You know the kind - you haven't seen anyone for a couple of years and when you run into them they say: "So . . . what's been going on?"  He has always been very complementary of Alcoholics Anonymous to the point of mentioning it in the occasional sermon as an example of real non-denominational spirituality.  It makes me proud - and lucky, to the point of literally saving my life - to be part of an organization that allow people of very different personality types with an infinite number of beliefs about everything to coexist relatively peacefully in one very dank church basement.

We talked a little at my urging as to why so many churches were struggling with attendance in The States.  He talked about how the angry, confrontational political climate here is driving a wedge between groups in our faith community and he seemed surprised when I mentioned that it has been more of a problem in our recovery community than I can ever remember experiencing.  I guess my point is that, once again, everybody is eager to make sure that everyone else knows what they think about every fucking  thing and that if what you think isn't the same as what I thinks then there's going to be a problem, a BIG problem.  I'm also so pleased to listen to the similarities when People of Faith discuss the particulars of their belief system.  Again, be nice, love your neighbor as you love yourself, dedicate your life to making the world a kinder, sweeter place, don't be an asshole, etc. etc. etc. are not the sole purview of any particular faith or philosophy.

Pastor Dude is another one of those men with whom I speak only rarely but hold in the dearest esteem.  Such a blessing to have wonderful men and women cycle in and out of my life while still occupying a big place in my heart.  And Pastor found a pen and paper so he could write down ver batim on of my favorite aphorisms: "It is very good for me to be around people who annoy the shit out of me from time to time."

Just Don't Be An Asshole

 I have an old high school friend who left a job as an investment banker to become a pastor.  Yeah, I know, what a transition!  And one that I didn't see coming!  This guy is one of the nicest human beings I have had the pleasure to know but I had no inkling that he was a religious Christian.  I was flummoxed when he told me that he was going to divinity school.  Did not see this coming.  Of course!  People that have been touched by a divine spirit don't feel the need to tell everyone about it.

We have stayed in touch over the years in a peripheral way, inconsistently and with long periods of silence.  I am only now beginning to understand the meaning of some of these relationships, slow learner that I am.  Distance and infrequency in contact with someone doesn't mean the relationship is unimportant or has lapsed but rather that life and time has intervened to interrupt the flow of the love.  I am blessed with many, many friends who have made my life unimaginably rich and full.  It's easy for me to focus on those that have lasted the longest and with whom I'm in frequent contact.  A different old friend States unequivocally that I'm one of his best friends even though I haven't seen him in 30 years.  My consciousness was jolted aware when he said this.  Of course!  Why was I unable to see this?

Not long ago I thought of my banker-cum-pastor and felt a wave of good feeling suffuse my day.  I sent him a text to this effect.  "Seaweed, that's what we pastors call the presence of the Holy Spirit," he replied.  Of course!  There it was!  A connection between my snide intellectual musing on God and a Higher Power segueing nicely with an established monotheistic faith.  

It's all the same.  Spirituality is all the same.  Reminds me again of the Chicago guy who explained that my flailing attempts to understand spiritual principles could be boiled down to this: "Just don't be an asshole today."  That made sense.  I know when I'm acting like an asshole.  Just stop doing that and you've made a good start on a spiritual life.