Doctor Paul, First Take

I'm not a huge fan of popular things.  I confess to a tendency to not like stuff that other people like.  I confess to a tendency to swim upstream, against the crowd.  If you tell me to do it then I can almost guarantee I'll do something else, usually the exact opposite.

Which brings me to Dr. Paul's story in the Big Book; originally it was called Doctor, Addict, Alcoholic but has been since changed to Acceptance Is The Answer.  It is very, very popular and oft quoted in meetings.  As I've been reading back through the story section of the Big Book I finally got to this story and I steeled myself against it.  I was prepared to dislike it.  

First of all, the dude is really funny.  Here are some quips that made me laugh out loud.

"I had sent Max (his wife) to four consecutive psychiatrists and not one of them had gotten me sober."

A reminder that it's always me.  It's never them.  No matter how much I want it to be them it's always me.

As his estimation of her mental health got worse and worse he eventually contacted a psychiatric hospital: "So, when it ended up in a psycho ward, I wasn't that surprised.  But then when that steel door slammed shut, and she was the one that went home, I was amazed."

Part of his treatment plan included group activities: "They wanted me to make leather belts, of all things!  Had I gone to school all those years just to sit and make leather belts?  Besides, I couldn't understand the instructions.  The girl had explained them to me four times, and I was too embarrassed to ask her again."

So if anyone ever makes a comment about drugs not being an appropriate topic in Alcoholics Anonymous let's at least remember that one of our most beloved stories had "Addict" in the title and there are a ton of highly descriptive passages about his drug use and they are uniformly hilarious.  Here's a sampling:

"The pep pills affected my hearing.  I couldn't listen fast enough to hear what I was saying.  I'd think, 'I wonder why I'm saying that again  - I've already said it three times.'   Still, I couldn't turn my mouth off."

"I found it hard to practice good medicine while shooting morphine.  At night I would put the  needle in my vein and then try  to figure out exactly how much medication to inject to overcome the pep pills while adding to the sleeping pills while ignoring the tranquilizers, in order to get just enough to be able to pull out the needle, jerk the tourniquet, throw it in the car, slam the car door shut, runs down the hall, and fall in bed before I fell asleep."

Dr. Paul, of course, began to see the light and to be truthful with himself.  For most of us, being honest with ourselves is one of the highest hurdles to overcome.  "I never in my life took a tranquilizer, sedative, or pep pill because I was a pill head.  I always took it because I had the symptom  that only that pill would relieve.  For me, pills don't produce the desire to swallow a pill; they produce the symptoms that require that the pill be taken for relief.  I had a pill for every ill, and I was sick a lot."

His epiphany about his drug use led him to this conclusion:  "Today, I feel I have used up my right to chemical peace of mind."

Not Fitting In

I've been rereading the stories in The Big Book.  Most of them are very familiar.  Some of them really hit home and some of them bore the shit out of me.  There's a lot of emphasis on the drinking part of our stories and not enough on the recovery part in some of the stories.  There are a few written by men and women who sound like pompous assholes or those interested in grandstanding, making their tales more dramatic than they need to be . . .  or probably were.  Most of the people I've met over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous have been functioning - or partially functioning - people trying to deaden the pain of the dissatisfaction they felt in their own lives.

There are also some themes and threads to be gleaned.  One if the tremendous relief and gratitude that we all feel when we find a solution that works for us.  Another is the responsibility we feel towards The Program and we turn this into the service work that sustains us as we bumble through life.  The one similarity that has been surfacing over and over is the feeling that we were lost in the game of life, that we felt different and disconnected and that we didn't know how or why and that we didn't know any other way to make these awful feelings go away except to drink to excess.  What a relief it has been to those of us who have been able to internalize the spiritual approach that manifests in the Twelve Steps.  Not for everyone, for sure, and we don't try to be but what a relief for those of us who find an answer in A.A.

Like, This is a Good One

One of the lessons I learned early on in my career as a Salesguy was that it was much more important to listen than to talk.  An incredibly difficult lesson to take to heart.  Our tendency is to want to convince another person of our point of view.  It is not a natural impulse to listen to their point of view.  I evolved in my profession so that I began to see how many times the other person was waiting for me to finish talking so that they could say what they wanted to say.  I learned that look meant that very little I was saying was sinking in so that my first best technique was to stop talking and start listening.  I also learned that most people are very uncomfortable with silence.  This is why you hear so many ahs and ums and you knows when people talk.  Even that second of silence is a killer so they have to fill it with a noise and if they keep talking they often gave me valuable information that I would have had to extract using some kind of powerful, turbo-charged suction machine. There's a new guy at our meeting who tosses in the nervous filler noise "like" many times when he, like, talks, at a, like, meeting.  He's trying to get his feet back on the ground and it makes him sound intellectually lazy.  He's a smart guy and he sounds, like, dumb.  I may have to say something to him.  I know, I know, I should keep my fucking mouth shut but I have a bit of influence over him and I can't help but think that this, like, might be a helpful bit of advice.

In one of my spiritual books the author was discussing how we can better deal with contentious people or just people with whom we have a differing opinion.  

Here were his suggestions:

1.  Look at the person's body language.

(Crossed arms?  Forget about it.  They're not receptive.  Backing away?  Looking off to the side?  Looking at their phone?  You're toast.  You've lost.  It's over.)

2.  Try to understand where they're coming from.

(I quit trying to explain the technical aspects of an infrared sensor to the purchasing agent.  And I didn't try to explain the cost/benefit analysis to the engineer.)

3.  Listen without planning your reply.

(Epically important!  If I'm thinking about my brilliant retort or quip then I'm not listening!)

4.  Express your opinion only after the person has finished talking, and only if they ask.  

(It goes without saying that they're almost never going to ask.  You'll be lucky if they, like, stop talking for a minute.)

5.  Notice your own attachments.

(Like, dude, if you don't buy a piece of my, like, stuff, I'm never going to make any, like, money.)

6.  Feel your own emotions.  

(If you're ticking me off then I'm tempted to come out swinging.)