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.

Drugs, Medication, and Alcoholics Anonymous

I have a few books and pamphlets that I read each morning in my Quiet Time.  They come and go, ebb and flow, I like something until I get bored with it and put it into mothballs for a while, I add something new and it often works but sometimes it doesn't and that's all okay.  I picked up the Bible again - a book I've read a few times and found very comforting - and tried some Old Testament stuff and then right back onto the bookshelf it went.  Too many suggestions that I beg for forgiveness and watch out for eternal damnation and so on and so forth.  Too many pithy little aphorisms in Proverbs: "A wise man is like a tree that grows strong and true."  What the fuck does that mean?  Too much psalming in Psalms.  Not sure why this is surprising.  The definition of a psalm is a sacred song or hymn that, while it can be read, is meant to be sung.  I'm officially banned from any song singing in the Seaweed household because of a really, really awful singing voice and even if this wasn't true I can't see myself singing at 6 AM.  And who among us isn't suspicious of a word that begins with a P and then has an S?  C'mon.  Put some effort into it.

I picked up a couple of Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlets at my meeting and added them into the space left vacant by the Bible rotating out.  It has two sections, more or less: one devoted to stories about people who have a mental illness that no amount of Step work is going to cure and the other to those of us (I'm looking at you, Seaweed) who tried to justify drug use as a habit that wasn't a habit.  In the first case, well, yeah.  A guy who has been coming to our meeting for years - smart dude, seriously, but looking more and more ravaged as time passes - paused one morning and asked in a moment of clarity: "Let me ask you a question: Do you hear voices in your head?"  This guy can work The Steps from now to eternity and he's never going to get better without medication.  Just because you can't isolate definitively 

The second category is a little more insidious.  I think often of my buddy LSD Tom who threw up a fearsome defense when I called him out on his occasional use of hallucinogens and stimulants.  And he was able to back it up with some pretty impressive A.A. dogma; we are, after all, an organization that stays out of anything that isn't alcohol related.  I even called the folks at our N.Y. Central Office and they didn't touch the topic with a ten foot pole: "Not our business, dude."  Who among us defiant alcoholics wants to be told what to do?  Who among us, when told what to do, defiantly does the opposite thing?  We're like feral animals - you can't just sit down and pet us.  You've got to put a bowl of food out so we can get close . .  . but not too close.  All I can do is explain what worked for me; suggest that any troublesome topic be shared with lots of different people; and - the real test of valor - bring it up as a topic at a meeting.  No one ever does this, as you might imagine.

There He Is - There's Seaweed

I heard this at a meeting: "I never pass up a chance to be miserable."  Very wise counsel from an old-timer.

This morning the chair read the part in The Book that compares the alcoholic to the director of a play, the guy in charge of everything, the guy in control, the guy who is not powerless.  You know the sentiment:  "If only everyone would . . . "  If only I could manage things well then everyone would be happy and by "everyone" I mean "me."  If only I didn't have any problems with people, places, and things, then I'd be happy.  If only I wasn't so powerless.

Everyone loves unsolicited advice.  Please, please, tell me how to live my life, unbidden.  Some guy said to me when I was struggling to get sober: "Seaweed, you don't have a job or a car or any money.  Your family can't stand you, you're not in a relationship, and you don't have any friends.  Your furniture is constructed out of cinder blocks and lumber.  I don't know what that thing is that you're driving but I wouldn't get it going faster than  35 MPH.  So maybe, just maybe, you're not in the strongest position to be doling out advice."

I have been going to these 7AM meetings for about 6 weeks.  I didn't like them at first because no one was fawning over me, welcoming me effusively, putting me on a pedestal.  There wasn't any buzz when I walked in the room: "There's Seaweed.  There he is, that's Seaweed."  But now I'm starting to get a few waves and nods of recognition - I wouldn't call it buzz exactly but I don't feel like I'm being ignored, either.

Maybe the meetings really are OK.

Serenity

Serenity -- "The quality or state of being serene; calmness; tranquility; repose."



For this alcoholic, Webster's dictionary might as well define that word in Swahili or electronic beeps and twitters. Maybe they could use cave drawings from before the dawn of time or ancient Egyptian hieroglypics. It might be easier for me to figure out what the word serenity means.



My natural state does not tend to calmness. My life was not characterized by tranquil rest when I was drinking and drugging. I default to chaos. I must like trouble and problems considering all of the energy I expend trying to create them. It has been an amazing revelation to discover that it is easier avoiding a problem in the first place than trying to clean up the mess afterwards.



Thanks for visiting. The idea here is to try to laugh about recovery. Alcoholism can be funny, but only after we begin to extract ourselves from the downward spiral. It is decidedly not funny when we are in the midst of it. Not ha-ha funny; not tee-hee funny; no gentle chuckling or knowing chortling. It is funny to talk about losing track of the location of my car after a long night of drinking. It was not funny trying to explain to the cops what I was doing wandering around a residential neighborhood at 3AM without any shoes on. They wondered why I was trying to locate a car when I didn't have any car keys with me.



I'm a little sarcastic and a little irreverent. I think we can be too pious and too serious and too emotionally overwrought in our recovery. I need to be able to laugh at myself. I spent all my time trying to find other people to laugh at until I reached the bitter end and no one was in worse shape than I was.