Instincts on Rampage

Rampage:  To move about wildly or violently.

I think that "Instincts On Rampage" would be a great name for a movie.

I attend literature meetings regularly as part of my recovery regimen.  Here's a few quotes that have struck my funny bone recently:

"Instincts on rampage balk at investigation."  I enjoy the concept that I need to learn how to live with my instincts.  I can't get rid of 'em and I can't let 'em run the show, but there has to be some balance in there.

The chapter we read was discussing the 4th Step.  It suggests that we do indeed have plenty of defects, our vigorous denials notwithstanding.

"We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking."  Yeah, this is always a popular excuse for the drunk - if I could just slow down my drinking then I'd be a fine chap, and because I'm such a fine chap then there's no need to do any of these bothersome inventories.

"Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people - people who really need a moral inventory."  Nothing better than blaming someone else for my bad behavior.  

"We thought 'conditions' drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand . . . "  It's everybody!  It's everything!  It isn't me!

Oh, brother.

A Firestorm of Dropping Hats

I took a call from a good friend of mine from The Program the other day.  He was mildly agitated.  I can relate - I'm mildly agitated at the drop of a hat and most days it's a veritable shitstorm of dropping hats, pork pies, fedoras, and berets in the Seaweed household.

My friend is going to be returning from a tour to Cuba in a couple of months.  Unfortunately, the plane arrives at the huge Vacation City airport close to midnight - but luckily for him the package also includes a limo ride home, the only caveat being that the receiving address must be within 50 miles of the airport.  His home, unfortunately, is 55 miles from the airport.  And there you have it - the Unfortunatelys have it over the Luckilys,  two to one.

Normally what I try to do is to help agitated people go over options - usually when I'm agitated I'm not thinking clearly and I overlook obvious solutions to my problems.  My friend is smart and wise, two qualities with which I have only a passing knowledge, and I was not able to uncover a solution that he hadn't already considered.

I flashed back to Shorty picking me up at The Old City airport at 2 AM, on short notice, in a driving rainstorm, providing me with a bag of healthy snacks, before delivering me to my sister's house, far, far out of his way.  He offered to do this, graciously, under no obligation and no duress, and I thankfully accepted.  I didn't beg and he didn't offer anything that he wasn't comfortable offering.  I would have bore him no ill will if he hadn't picked up the phone.  It was ridiculously kind, but kind in a way I've come to expect from my Program friends.

"I'll pick you up if you can't figure out a solution," I said to my Cuba friend.

He laughed.  "I didn't call to ask for a ride," he protested.

"You didn't ask for a ride," I pointed out.  "I offered one.  Look - keep trying to find a simpler solution but if nothing works out I've got your back."

I hope what this does is take the stress and the pressure off of the problem.  Maybe this is one of those cases where a solution to the problem is going to present itself eventually, with a little time and patience, and I hope it does, frankly, because I don't want to drive somewhere in the middle of the night to pick this SOB up.  But if not, he's got a solution.

Seek god - serve others.

Huge, Bleeding Wounds

I've had a few more conversations with my Old City sponsor.  It has been a weird experience talking with someone so frankly about death and dying.  I have no experience with this whatsoever.  I had no experience with talking about any problems when I was drinking.   In fact, I was awfully offended when people suggested that some of my problems were . . . you know . . . real.   Don't tell me things aren't going to work out.  You think I want to hear that things aren't going to work out?

I used to pretend that:
Problems didn't exist - "Steve!  You seem to be bleeding from a huge wound on your forehead!" "Naw, I'm good." 

Problems would go away, maybe by praying to god to remove said problems right goddam now - "God, o god, fix this huge bleeding wound on my forehead and I'll never do this ever again."

I was being picked on because I had problems that were usually of my own making - "Why me?  O, god, why me? Why doesn't someone else have a huge bleeding wound on their forehead?"

It's always the man in the mirror looking back at me.  That dude always seems to be around when things aren't going my way.

I hope these talks are helpful for my sponsor.  My experience is that Earth People aren't great in talking about problems.  It does make me feel very grown up, kind of looking the tiger in the mouth.  I still don't like problems.  I still wish they'd go away, maybe infect someone else.

Paranoid Is a Great Song by Black Sabbath

I'm sitting at the coffee shop today - drinking coffee that I bought from that coffee shop . . . and you know what bugs the crap out of me?  There are a bunch of restaurants right around the corner from this multi-national, fantastically wealthy coffee company, and sometimes when it's really busy some of the overflow people come with their restaurant lunches and sit at the coffee shop tables and DON'T BUY A COFFEE!  Really annoys me.  It doesn't seem to annoy any of the coffee shop employees which is kind of annoying.

Paranoid:  Exhibiting extreme and irrational fear or distrust of others.

The point I started to make  - should you care to know the point what that point may be  - is that this scraggly looking kid blows by the table and asks for a buck so he can take the bus.  I fish out four quarters and fork 'em over.   "Thanks, man, you're a lifesaver," says the kid.   Kid disappears, leaving me to wonder did he mean six-bag of cheap beer bus or couple of joints of cheap pot bus?  I'm kind of paranoid that way and kind of not grateful for any of the good things that I have so I immediately assume I'm being taken advantage of and for a buck!  A buck!!  Nearly 1/3 of the cost of my coffee.

I read my paper.  I drink my coffee.  I turn around and look across the street and see scraggly looking kid sitting at the bus stop.  

D'oh!

This is SO Vexing

Frustrate:  To disappoint or defeat; to vex by depriving of something expected or desired.

I have a dear old friend that I've kept in touch with over the years, often having philosophical talks about life and The Big Picture.  I've tried to pass along the tenor of the stuff I've learned in The Program without getting too preachy or self-righteous.  This dude is often frustrated by life - aren't we all? - but doesn't have the spiritual tools to deal with these frustrations like we Program People do.  He's a very disciplined man in most aspects but still, I can't adequately convey the message that spiritual development is all about the practice. There are so many things that don't display progress when I look at them short-term - the very same things I don't want to practice because I can't see the easy progress.  "This is a waste of time," I mutter.

Here is our latest exchange:

Friend: Money is about keeping score, at this point, in the lives of big-time business people, isn't it?  And the more the money, the more the focus.  Like the difference between a penny-ante poker game and the World Series of Poker.  The same with power.  In my career, I got somewhat proximate to Big Power... never to Big Money.  I was very cautious around it.  It seemed to me that it could burn you to a crisp if you miscalculated or misunderstood it.  But there was no denying its fascination.  And, I also learned, that there is nothing easier than appearing modest if you have power or are riding in the sidecar with power.  What is harder is to show dignity and generosity when you are in a lesser position, a position of supplicant, a position of underling.   

I don't think there was anything in the way of my spiritual development when I was working full-tilt.  I have found that retirement offers no opportunity for spiritual development that wasn't available to me when I was working full-tilt.  The one thing that retirement has definitely offered to me, in terms of spiritual development, is unsought, unasked-for, unwanted challenges of trauma, disappointment and confusion.  I am well read enough, of course, to know that many philosophers and Bodhisattvas would respond to that by saying: "Oh, how excellent!  Exactly the signs that your retirement is going to bear fruit."

Me: Ah, yes, the frustration of life.  As I'm sure I mentioned many times before I think The Program has taken the simple, ancient spiritual principles of "Seek god - Serve others" and made them applicable to drunks.  It's certainly not new stuff.  So I ask myself at the end of each day: "Have I attempted to grow spiritually - in a way that makes sense to me - and have I sought to be someone who is thinking about others instead of obsessing about myself?"  I set the bar low - a crappy session of meditation is a good effort.  Did I smile at the clerk at the gas station?  Did I say something welcoming to someone at a meeting that I may or may not like?  Did I make dinner for my wife even though I didn't want to?  Am I putting myself in a position to make life better for others rather than thinking about how they, the world, the cosmos, could make life better for ME?  It's hard, of course - we're all self-centered by nature and looking to satisfy our own instinctual demands.  Each minute that I spend trying to get what I want and trying to avoid what I don't want is a minute that I'm overlooking all the good in my life and failing to appreciate how my difficulties are leading me to someplace I need to be, even though I may not want to be there.  The guys I hung with when I was getting sober would counter my never-ending stream of bitching about the unfairness of life by saying: "You've been running the show for 30 years - how's that been working out for you?"

I probably have shared this section from one of our main books, one that really resonated with me, that put a practical bent on the ancient spiritual principles: "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear - primarily fear that we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.  Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands.  The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone."

I do love these books.

Sullen Seaweed

Sullen:  Having a brooding, ill temper; sulky; gloomy; dismal; foreboding.

So my Vacation City relative - a lovely person - who drives me bonkers about 50% of the time is back in The Old City visiting my family - a group of delightful folks - who drive me absolutely bat-shit about 78% of the time and every one is getting along like they're family.  These folks are all kind of chatty, sentimental, up-beatish folks except when they're telling me I'm going to die from Ebola or a mountain lion is going to eat me or someone got mugged and died in the city I'm going to visit soon.  But they like to do the same things so they get along very well.  Instead, they get me some of the time - an introverted, mildly depressed, somewhat sullen outlier.  Is anyone surprised that the visits don't go that well when I'm involved.

Funny, that.  This is why I don't pretend, ever, that the problems exists anywhere but with me?

Damn Steps, Anyway

Principles: Fundamental assumptions.

SuperK pointed out one of my many shortcomings yesterday, and it's a particularly glaring shortcoming.  As a general rule I keep my mouth clamped shut during these episodes, rare as they are.  A good rule of thumb for me is this: "If someone thinks that you're a fool, open your mouth and remove all doubt."  As another general rule I find that when someone that knows me well and loves me a lot and has my best interests at heart finds something in me lacking that there's usually an element of truth in it, often a big, honking element.  But because I don't like to be criticized and I don't like it when someone ferrets out one of my shortcomings I tend to want to react, and the problem with that is I overreact.  Thus: speaketh not until one has digested the message.

I was asked to lead my 7AM meeting today.  Ain't it amazing that we're asked to share an optimistic message of hope and redemption just when we need to think of things in a hopeful and redemptive fashion?  My early days of sobriety were spent in a city that offered Step meetings, an occasional Big Book meeting, and not one goddam discussion meeting.  I'll tell you what - it made me figure out how to interpret the dreadful minutiae of my sorry existence in a new light.  Nothing like having a self-centered money, sex, and/or power crisis and showing up some place where people are talking about The Steps.

When I lead a meeting I almost always pull out one of our two main texts.  I read from the 8th Step - the section where it talks about my tendency, when confronted on bad behavior, to try to turn the tables around and point out the bad behavior, real or imagined, of my confronter or, just as slimy, to protest that I haven't behaved badly at all, despite shiploads of evidence to the contrary.

Then I read from the 10th Step - the part where it . . . well, here it is: "Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint.  This carries a top priority rating.  (Ed. Note: our founder has a tendency to say the same thing over and over because that's the only way to get anything through our thick skulls.  To wit: the first objective by definition carries a top priority rating - that's why it's first.  It would be 10th if it wasn't a top priority).  When we speak or act hastily or rashly, the ability to be fair-minded and tolerant evaporates on the spot.  Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen.  We must avoid quick-tempered criticism and furious power-driven argument.  The same goes for sulking or silent scorn."

I'll tell you what again - having to work these Steps and practice these Principles can be one huge pain in the ass.

This isn't a huge conflict and it isn't an especially novel one so we'll get through it fine.  Te lesson I've learned is to stay low and tread lightly until the irritation I feel has ebbed and waned somewhat.  I'm an idiot most of the time but I'm an absolute psycho when I'm pissed.