This Is What I Did

This is from a pamphlet entitled "A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous" which is reprinted from a talk one of our member's gave concerning the disease of alcoholism to a group of counselors at a large university.  It's a good pamphlet but - boy - can you ever see the gentle sexism and overt Christianity come out.  It's not moderated at all.  There are a lot of Bible passages referenced.  I can't see how this would pass muster today.     

Anyway . . . "Instead of a constant and on-going rat-a-tat-tat of 'This is what you should do,' he heard an instantly recognizable voice saying, 'This is what I did.'  The intuitive understanding the alcoholic receives, while compassionate, is not indulgent.  The new man is not asked what he is thinking.  He is told what he is thinking.  No one waits to trap him in a lie.  He is told what lies he is getting ready to tell.  In the end, he begins to achieve honesty by default.  There's not much point in trying to fool people who may have invented the game you're playing."

Yeah, well, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous, right?  

"The Twelve Steps are so framed and presented that the alcoholic can either ignore them completely, take them cafeteria-style, or embrace them wholeheartedly.  No member is ever told he must perform these Steps.  We change our mantra from 'A.A. is all you need' to 'A.A. is all I need.'  It remains then for each member to discover and to share whatever works for him.  The supreme catalyst seems to be the word 'share.'  The alcoholic's omnipresent, ever-lurking need to withdraw from the mainstream and turn in upon himself.  Learning to substitute a group, no matter how large, for one's own self-centeredness is only partial recovery." 

One Resentful Alcoholic at at Time

Yesterday I received a phone call from a disgruntled member friend in Alcoholics Anonymous and I also received a text from another disgruntled member that had a similar tone and timbre.  I need to reply with some thoughts to both of them.  I'm going to work it out here before I commit to opening my mouth.  Look before you leap.  Measure twice - cut once.

I sent this note to a guy who was full of resentment and grievance that no one in A.A. was staying in touch with him while he's going through some medical issues but that his wife's family - from a Middle Eastern country - are constantly checking in.  Out of kindness I'm at this point not going to mention that I will occasionally send him a note and that he never does the same.  Or that when I sent him some pictures from Antarctica is response was not expansive.  Dismissive wouldn't be an outrageous characterization of his response.  But, my job here is to be positive and not negative.  Most people respond better to kindness than they go to opprobrium.  

"As you know I have lived in five states during my recovery and in two of those states I lived in different cities.  My experience has been: Out of sight, Out of mind.  I've always tried to be proactive in staying in touch with people in A.A.  My experience is that once I'm not present my memory fades quickly.  I found I was doing a lot of work staying in touch with my friends and they weren't doing any work staying in touch with me.  So I began to develop a resentment which I nurtured for the longest time before deciding that I didn't want to be mad at my friends so maybe my staying in touch with them was my way of Being of Service.  My experience is also that No One is Thinking About Me and I say this with only a touch of irony.  I spend all day thinking about myself while getting resentful that everyone else is thinking about themselves and not me.  I say this with absolutely no irony.  It's so stupid and short-sighted that it's not ironic.  It's just selfish.

When I was in Antarctica - which is pretty amazing! - I was gone - for a month!! - and I received precisely . .  . hmmm . . . . add the  first three columns, divide by the square root of twenty-seven and subtract the mean weight of a European swallow . . . and the total is . . .  Zero!!!  Precisely no one checked in to see how I was doing!!!!  And when I sent pictures out to people the responses were brief and perfunctory.  This bothered me not at all.  This is far more common that anything else.  And when I returned some people said: "Welcome back.  How was your trip?" and that was the end of the commentary.

I don't think what you're experiencing in the hustling and bustling United States.  I think what you're experiencing with your Syrian friends is indicative of that culture.  So I'm also asking myself: What am I contributing?  What am I doing to ease the mind of a friend or fellow member?

The Way Out

"As a Master of Self, the way out is to remind yourself that you are perfect in this moment and you don't need to do or achieve anything in order to be complete.  It's absolutely fine to want to accomplish things, to see what your strengths are and see what you are able to do;  but your priority is to love yourself unconditionally throughout the  process of working toward any goal you have set for yourself.  There is no place to go, nothing to do or achieve, because any seeking of perfection outside of yourself is actually a movement away from perfection."

Did you know that the original title for The Big Book was going to be "The Way Out?"  It made me laugh to see that phrase in a Toltec book.  The way out of alcoholism, of guilt and longing and self-flagellation.   The way out!

"Any change you want to make or goal you want to achieve is undertaken because you really want to do it, not because of a feeling of inadequacy or not being enough."

Masters of Manipulation

One of the newer men I talk to after our meeting is in his 40s, recently divorced, and - like most of us when we were new - worried about his future, remorseful over all the mistakes he made while drinking and eager to charge into a new life that he's constructed in his mind.  How often do we see this!  We've made a grand mess of things and we're in a hurry to make up for lost time.  But here's the thing about time: it doesn't really care what you think or what you want.  It's an immutable fact of existence.  It has always been here and it will always be here and it's never going to change.  We can count on time to be reliable.  Sometimes time seems to slow down and sometimes it seems to speed up but that is only our human perception.

My friend is/was in a relationship that he values but things have hit a snag.  His girlfriend has pulled back and he's understandably finding this very frustrating and worrisome.  I see the same behavior over and over in people who want something and are determined to manipulate events so that it works out the way they want it to work out.  Sometimes we behave consciously and sometimes our motives are hidden under thick layers of self-justification.  We're masters of this kind of behavior: we wheedle and whine and try to get our way by making our target feel sorry for us and react out of guilt; we drive forward forcefully and try to overpower our target to get them to do what we want; we practice passive-aggressive behavior, a masterful, subtle, and powerful skill that alcoholics have honed into a razor-sharp technique; we get pissed off and slam doors shut for good, forever, unwilling to wait patiently to see how things play out, to allow our target to work through their issues.  We do all of this stuff.  What we have trouble doing is to act with patience and consideration, to put the needs of the other person ahead of our own.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

And We Change Our Minds

For a variety of reasons holidays can be difficult for people - loneliness for some, pressure to have the "perfect" celebration, the stress of being around family members and friends with whom you don't feel particularly close or even close at all or maybe you don't even like them a little bit and maybe you  can't stand their stinking guts . . .  these are all more common than we like to think.

SuperK and I aren't really wrapped up in the expectations of the Holiday Season.  We just aren't.  Our family histories are part of this as is our natural skepticism of behaving in a conventional, appropriate manner.  So often we travel.  When we aren't gone I poke around in my meeting to see if there are any members at loose ends or alone that might want to do something with someone.  I know a new-ish woman who moved here not long ago from New York and when I asked her if she wanted to join SuperK and me for a Christmas meal she immediately accepted.  I was somewhat surprised, and even more skeptical that she would follow through, so I assured her later that if she changed her mind it would be no problem.

Here's the thing about new people: they are so eager to please that they agree to things without carefully considering the implications of what they're agreeing to.  We're afraid to hurt people's feelings by saying no and this is compounded by the fact we don't even know yet what we like to do or don't like to do.  So I kept checking my messages.  I was skeptical this was going to go off as planned.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Then, half an hour before the meeting, she cancelled, with vague reasoning.  I was not surprised.  Why this young woman would want to go to lunch with some diffuse hipster old enough to be her dad and some woman she doesn't know - strangers are intimidating to new people, just being with folks we don't know - and she doesn't appear to be a morning person and the winter weather wasn't cooperating and she recently moved about a half an hour inland so . . . yeah . . . not surprised this happened.  My rule with new new people is to never make plans to meet them unless it's someplace I'm going to anyway.  That way their understandable and totally predictable unreliability doesn't affect my mood.  Before I walked into the meeting - well attended on Christmas Day - I paused to send her a text assuring her all was well all was well all was well, and she immediately responded with gratitude I could feel infusing the satellite waves and wafting over the miles.  Her guilt was oozing over the mountains from her new home and the last thing I want to do is make someone feel worse.

The Authentic Self

"Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities.  'How can I best serve Thee - Thy will (not mine) be done."  Big Book P 85

Don't you love how we had to add "not mine" in parenthesis?  That we need to be reminded that my will is not God's will?  I wouldn't have been surprised if Bill had added "you idiot" in parenthesis at the end of the sentence to top things off.

I also have to remember that I need to be true to myself while being of maximum service to others.  I'm not going to be helpful if I'm not authentic.  Here's the Toltec's take:  "We often project an image, or an identity, of how we want other people to see us in the world.  We use these images or identities to help us relate to other people while understanding deep down that they are not the real us.  So we can assume these identities to be helpful with the full knowledge that we can discard them when they're no longer needed.  So, for instance, we don't try to fit into our loved ones' ideas of who we should be because when we don't meet these standards, or standards that we've set for ourselves, that are projected onto us then we end up rejecting ourselves."

The power of the Authentic Self.  Man, o man.

Willpower and Such

"No one is responsible for your emotional reactions except you.  When you find yourself in a difficult situation or you're dealing with a difficult person restrain yourself from doing or saying anything at that moment if that is an option.  Then remove yourself from the situation until you have more clarity.  Let no one tell you that being a Master of self does not involve willpower, as in certain situations exercising restraint may require  all the willpower you have."  Toltec Proverb

"No one ought to say the A.A. program requires no willpower; here is one place that may require all you've got."  12 & 12 Step Five

Uh-huh.  Okay.  Looks like the same stuff to me.  One originated in the jungles of Central America ten centuries ago and one originated in Akron and New York a hundred years ago.

When I think about it most of the Gods or god-like figures I'm familiar with are .  .  . nice.  Jesus was nice.  The Buddha was very nice.  I can't imagine Jesus being a dick to the staff at a coffee shop or The Buddha cutting someone off in traffic.  Whenever I become conflicted about the whole god thing I figure if I'm just nice then I'm covering my bases.

Some Advice on Giving Advice

" My serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations.  I ask myself: 'How important is it, really?'  I never just sit and do nothing while waiting for God to tell me what to do.  Rather, I do whatever is in front of me.  When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away."      

"Today, I find that being an alcoholic is the best thing that ever happened to me.  This proves I don't know what's good for me.  And if I don't know what's good for me, then I don't know what's good or bad for you or for anyone.  So I'm better off if I don't give advice . . .  Before A.A., I judged myself by my intentions, while the world was judging me by my actions."     

This idea of not giving advice is found again and again in our literature.  It must be one of those things we keep doing over and over so it has to be repeated again and again.  So the advice is to stop giving advice.

Personally, I'm doing the best I can today with the tools I've been given and with the upbringing I lived through.  I can only hope that when I disappoint or offend someone that they can try to see beyond the actions to the history and experience that underlie them.  That doesn't give me the right to be offensive but to the person with empathy it may lead to a gentle understanding.

I'm a Pretty Big Deal

I need to remember that whatever is upsetting me today is not going to amount to a hill of beans in the long run.

"This is indeed the kind of giving that actually demands nothing.  He does not expect his brother sufferer to pay him, or even to love him.  And then he discovers that by the divine paradox of this kind of giving he has found his own reward, whether his brother has yet received anything or not."

The Big Book p. 109 

Boy, the Theory of Relativity is easier for me to understand than the idea that if I give I get more than I lose.  Really, really weird stuff.

Today I strive for authenticity, for allowing Authentic Seaweed to run amuck.  I hope that I don't behave in a fashion that conforms to your idea of how I should behave.  Don't get me wrong - sometimes I alter my behavior out of kindness or comity.  But if I'm not true to myself, to my own nature and my own beliefs about what is right and what is wrong I'm going to suffer for this self-deception.  No one likes a phony or a liar.  No one likes a shape-shifter.  This isn't a horror movie.  I don't think it's hard to get to know me.  I think what you perceive in the first few minutes is what you're going to see in the future.  I let it rip.

SuperK shared a suggestion about releasing negativity with me a while ago but neither of us can remember the exact expression.  The basic idea is that I should just stop being negative.  Drop the negativity!  It takes more effort to be negative than it does to be positive and it's more exhausting emotionally.

Hot Tub Guy Et Al

There's a dude I see often at the pool.  He's not a bad guy -  he's socially awkward and he's totally self-absorbed which hardly makes him a freak in today's society.  He's one of those people I'd rather not run into; not because he's evil but because I find him quite boring.  Where I have to be careful is with his politics - which run counter to mine - and this is especially true if he's with Hot Tub Guy.  True believers can generate a lot of true beliefs when they're agreeing mightily with each other.   Anyway,  those two were talking loudly in the hot tub the other day where I was trying to decompress after my swim when - against my better instincts - I decided to chime in briefly.  I knew I should have stayed out of it.  They weren't talking to me.  They weren't asking for my opinion.  They didn't have a secret agenda to annoy me.  True, they could have turned down the volume a little bit as their discussion veered into some potentially inflammatory areas.  But, once again and as always, if I had kept inside my own hula hoop I wouldn't have taken some incoming fire from them.  Their comments weren't vicious by any means but they were pointed and the effect was pretty harsh.  I was offended.

I stewed about this during the day.  I didn't want to overreact but I wanted to make sure that I stood up for myself and that they didn't talk to me like that again.  I thought of all kinds of ways to do this.  I thought I might wear some fake ear buds and pretend I was on the phone.  I thought I might turn my back to them and peer into the distance.  Or maybe get out of the hot tub if they walked in.  I considered asking them politely to leave me alone.   Again, the idea is not to make a mountain out of a molehill while still getting to relax in the hot tub.  The books tell me that if I sit quietly with a problem that I'll intuitively understand how to react, that a solution will pop up after a while.  So . . . I'll go swimming a half hour earlier than I normally do!  Brilliant!  Revolutionary!  It's not exactly what I want to do but it's an easy, calm solution that won't hurt anyone and won't inconvenience me too much.

My God has a sense of humor.  My God likes to fuck with me.  As I sat down to meditate at the beach this morning, after the Keep It Complicated meeting, the non-Hot Tub Guy strolled up and basically apologized.  He apologized for the political tag he attached to me yesterday.  He did kind of blame Hot Tub Guy for sparking the confrontation - not without merit, I have to say - but he apologized.  He knew he had been unkind.  He also had a lot of questions about Alcoholics Anonymous, referencing his own past drinking and drug use, intimating he might like to meet me at a meeting one day.  As he walked away I was laughing to myself at how my God rewards me for trying my best to solve a problem by just taking the problem away.  Poof!  Problem?  What problem?

I heard a story long ago in sincity where a member shared that because of some bad blood he had with a next door neighbor he was told by his sponsor to pray for the guy for two weeks.  He did so, gritting his teeth at the start, but eventually coming to a peaceful place with his attitude to his neighbor.  He got up one morning near the end of the two weeks, walked outside to get the paper, and there was a For Sale sign in his neighbor's yard.

True story.  Most of it.  Some of it.

Help Is Not Always What I Want To Give

At the conclusion of my morning meeting the secretary asks for anyone willing to be a sponsor to raise their hand.  Which I do not do.  The ostensible and actually quite plausible excuse I make is that I'm traveling so often I wouldn't be a good fit.  The real reason, more or less, is that I don't want to do it.  This isn't outrageous in its egregiousness but it's pretty self-absorbed.  Be that as it may I do it anyhow and regret it nohow.

Several months ago a guy who clearly wanted to ask me to be his sponsor commented on this and I told him I'd be happy to step in while reminding him I was going to be gone quite a bit.  He brushed this off while continuing to drink, the only reason he could find for stopping was getting arrested for driving while intoxicated.  He has been sober since but I don't think he really works a . . . you know . . . Program of any kind.  If he does it's news to me and I supposed to be his fucking sponsor.  In my estimation some of us are hands-off as we work with new people, preferring to let our actions be the  message and some of us are hands-on, setting up tasks and schedules and the like.  Both are fine and both work with the right messenger and the right message-receiver.

I spoke with this dude this morning.  It went as it always does.  He talked a good deal about himself and his difficulties while implying that his difficulties were mostly illogical and unfair.  If he had expressed even the most remote interest in what I might have to say I might have said something but he clearly wanted to talk and that was that.  I knew this was coming so I made sure I had something productive to take up my time while he was droning on and on, his voice a tinny afterthought in my severely muted earbuds.  My point is that he wanted someone sympathetic to listen to his spiel.  He did want my advice.

Telling It Like It Is

From an A.A. pamphlet called "A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous" I came across these thoughts on how members try to pass along the message to new people . . . 

"The intuitive understanding that an alcoholic receives while compassionate, is not indulgent.  He is not asked what he is thinking.  He is told what he is thinking.  No one waits to trap him in a lie.  He is told what lies he is getting ready to tell.  In the end, he begins to achieve honesty by default.  There's not much point in trying to fool people who may have invented the game you're playing."

In terms a tad more crass: You can't bullshit a bullshitter.  It's not especially hard to spot the people who are doodling along without much conviction in their first tentative actions.  Face it - most people are not going to get sober or they are not going to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous or they are not going to get sober in the meetings I attend.  This, while sad, is neither here nor there, and I say it without judgement.  It simply is.  It's hard to get sober and for this reason most people don't carry through with our Program.  Many of us are committed evangelists for the A.A. way of life at the start.  Many of us learn that trying to convince someone of something when the individual isn't open to the idea is not going to go very far.  Again, this is not a criticism.  It's an indicator of how hard it is to get sober.  And maybe how pigheaded we all are at the beginning.

Pass It On

"There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.  Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit.  But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life."  12&12 p. 98     

I love this reminder.  Synergy - the concept that the combined effect of two or more entities is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

The twelfth month of the year often stimulates a discussion on our Twelfth Step work.  Responsibilities might be a better word as we're reminded time and time again that nothing so much ensures our sobriety as work with another alcoholic.  And Dr. Bob, in his summation of why he continued to go to meetings, listed repayment of his debt to the men who took the time to pilot him through early sobriety.  They didn't ask for this repayment; he understood that the gift they received by helping someone else was one he could also expect to receive . . . so long as he jumped in and began to help new people.  A guy in my meeting recently said that his sponsor told him that "the first year was all about you and after that it's about what you can pass on to someone else."  Good advice.  Great advice.

Alcoholics are not easy to talk to early on.  They are resistant.  One of the benefits of Alcoholics Anonymous is that our members really try to speak as an equal, as a fellow sufferer instead of as an authority who is telling someone what to do, either as a punishment for bad behavior or as an enticement towards good behavior.  Man, do we hate to be told what to do.  Man, does it ring hollow when someone without the alcoholic affliction tries to give advice - advice often given with good intentions and a genuine desire to be helpful.  I never tell anyone "I know what you're going through" unless I know what they're going through.  It's insincere to tell someone who is suffering that I understand when I don't, in fact, understand.

 

Lost in the Fog

I am not my thoughts.  The idea is to be aware of them and watch them arise and subside without judgement or criticism.  The idea is to look at them with curiosity but no attachment.  They're just thoughts!  Electrical impulses between neurons!  Or something!  Am I aware or am I lost in the fog?

Without awareness my attachments and history coerce me into taking actions that conform to the belief systems of other people.  I don't like other people so why would I try to conform to their belief systems!  This isn't free will at all.  What I've done is to give up my personal freedom in order to maintain ideas that others planted in me long ago.  I traded in who I really am for what I think you think I should be. You're probably an idiot!  No offense but most people are idiots!  I'M an idiot!  This transference can be particularly troublesome when I'm dealing with other people because I'm not really seeing who they are today but rather projecting an identity on them that's outdated and based on our shared past.   

Then there's my contrarian nature.  Even when I have good intentions doing the opposite simply for the sake of being different isn't free will.  Here I'm letting the opposite choice create my identity.  To put it bluntly - I'm still allowing you to define who I am.

Instead of being tied to an automatic decision or its opposite, awareness allows me to be conscious of all the possibilities that are available.  The more I practice awareness the less automatic my choices and judgements will be.  The more I will be me.

The simple act of pausing before making a decision or taking an action, thinking about what I really want in a situation versus what may be an automatic choice, is the first step in breaking the cycle of the automatic.

To My Mineral Ancestors

 I like nature.  I find a great deal of peace when I'm connecting with natural things.  Much of the time this is as simple and common as listening - with my eyes closed - to the birds in the orange trees surrounding my little backyard patio or the waves susurring on the beach.  These noises help me relax and connect.  They allow me to focus on something besides my own deranged thoughts.

I was fortunate to be able to take a trip that plopped me in Antarctica.  If you want to feel small and young and transient, a mote of dust in a scirocco, one breath in ten thousand years worth of breaths, go to the Antarctic.  The continent of Antarctica is the driest desert on earth - the Sahara, the Great Outback, the Mojave all get more precipitation than Antarctica.  While this is mind-blogging in its own right what totally blew my mind was seeing ice that was miles thick.  I still cannot intellectually conceptualize how ten miles of ice can form in a frozen desert.  And all of it is atop rock that has been there for millions of years.  Sometimes I felt like the environment was just going to subsume me.  A "You useless speck of organica - get thee away" kind of thing.

There was a scholar on board - an anthropologist - who spoke for a bit about animism, likely the most ancient spiritual pursuit on earth and one found in many disparate indigenous cultures.  This is, as I understand it, the attribution of a life force to all things that exist, not just living things like fauna and flora.  It's less a structured religion and more a fundamental worldview that everything possesses a spiritual essence.  I spoke with him after the talk and he admitted to struggling with the idea that rocks have a life force but he was giving it a go. 

And then there's this: ice is a mineral.

I think I am going to become an animist.  Maybe a Christian animist and my mother is howling from the grave on that one.  It's easier for me to think that a bit of me is going to be absorbed into the natural world - trees and plants and animals - than to imagine that the rocks outside my front window are having a conversation about the weather.  No matter and more to come on that one but the idea that the world, that life, is very, very big and that I am very, very insignificant was presented to me in technicolor down there in Antarctica.  It was so big that the expedition staff would point out that the mountain in front of me was ten thousand feet high and not the few thousand feet that my mind was estimating.  It was so big and the terrain was so featureless that I lost all perspective.

See ya.  I gotta go talk to some rocks.

Dr. Paul, Dr. Paul, Dr. Paul

"In the hospital, I hung on to the idea I'd had most of my life: that if I could just control the external environment, the internal environment would then be comfortable.  Life keeps gettingg simpler as we try to take care of the internal environment via the Twelve Steps, and letting the external environment take care of itself."  

"I was always able to see the flaw in every person, every situation.  A.A. has taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God, and we each have a right to be here.  When I focus on what's good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what's bad, I have a bad day.  If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases."

I don't believe there is many a truth more universal than the tendency of substance abusers to find what's wrong and to ignore what's right.   This is probably a survival mechanism of long-standing efficacy.  The dumb people don't study their environment for threats and they get eaten by velociraptors or bit by pit vipers or they eat poisoned persimmons or they don't find anything to eat at all, poisoned or not.  So, great, I have good survival skills to rely on should I be dropped into an extremely hazardous place but the problem is, as I see it, that these skills have a certain amount of redundancy and are extraneous if I'm sitting in the sun on my porch.

A Tutorial

 How to Be an Alcoholic: A Tutorial

Alcoholics are negative.  If you're a positive person get the fuck outta here.  I've never met a naturally positive alcoholic and I've met a lot of alcoholics.  You need to be careful when talking to alcoholics because even if you are complimentary they will find a way to spin it negatively.

Alcoholics have a need for speed.  Alcoholics are not patient.  They do not drive the speed limit.  They never say: “No rush - take your time.”  They knock you down trying to get to the next thing that they need to do even if they don't even want to do it and especially even if they don't know what the next thing even is.

Alcoholics are terrified of change even though they aren't satisfied with the way things are and they want to change everything all at once and right now!  Not later!  I don't have to fucking think about it!