Get Away From Me

I can be a stand-offish guy.  I'm friendly and outgoing but wary of many people.  Frankly, I'm suspicious of every fucking thing on the planet but that's a much larger topic that should be reserved for another day.  Often I'll watch people for a while before wasting my precious time in getting to know them better.  My default position is this: You aren't worth my time until you prove otherwise.  I know this sounds a tad arrogant.  I don't mean it to.  I no longer think I'm either better or worse than anyone else and that used to be the case.  I looked down my nose at you or I resented the advantages you possessed, whether you deserved those advantages or not.  Today I believe we're all little sperm-like creatures floating in a murky soup, swimming like mad trying to get somewhere for some reason.  Mostly we're just flailing about.

I'm especially suspicious of Alpha Dog male types.  They have a swagger and a self-centered aura that rubs me the wrong way.  Part of this, I'm sure, is that I'm kind of a off-center, low-key, semi-conscious Big Personality myself - I certainly don't mind being the center of attention if . . . and this is a big if . . . I'm in control of the circumstances.  And I certainly have no problem speaking my mind in public . . . like right to your face.  But as a general rule I'm not calling attention to myself.

In my morning meeting a man who had recently been released from prison on a murder charge began to attend daily.  I've asked him about his time in prison - over 20 years in prison, to be precise, which is a long, long time to be in prison.  He said when he was young he was involved in a robbery where someone was killed.  I'm not sure of the extent of his involvement and I didn't press him on the matter.  He was a little hesitant and reserved in his explanation.  I get this, too - I'm sure it's one thing to say that you've been in prison and another altogether to expound on the particulars.  I'm guessing the reaction from your average citizen isn't too positive.

 He's calm, peaceful sort of fellow so I surmise that he was wasted or needed money to get wasted and that money was the goal and not violence.  Maybe he'll elaborate someday and maybe he won't.  I don't really care, frankly.  This Program is all about rehabilitation and second chances, and anyone that can get sober in prison - not jail, prison - is okay in my book.

I will say it took a while for the two of us to warm up to each other.  I'm older than he is and he's one of those charismatic drunks who attracts a lot of newer people.  I dunno but I find this off-putting in a way, and that's totally on me.  I'm not jealous but I'm wary about the occasional   Sponsors that I see in A.A.  You know the type - they have a whole raft of sponsees.  I did note, however, and grudgingly, that it was a lot of rougher characters, people who wouldn't normally gravitate to me and my stand-offish brand of antiseptic intellectualized recovery.

He got a job as a firefighter in California and is gone for long stretches of time.  We've been texting back and forth and they have been warm exchanges.  This makes me feel great.  I see where I'm lacking and he's not, and vice versa.  Anyone who is working a good Program is bringing good stuff to the table.  Glad I'm there to scarf some of it down.

Who's Will Be Done Now?

Will:  Mental powers manifested as wishing, choosing, desiring, or intending.

Willpower:  The unwavering strength to carry out one's wishes.

I am confused to this day when the concepts of "will" and "willpower" appear in our literature.  (Here's a fun fact: willpower only appears 6 times but will shows up 560 times.  I realize this is deceptive: most of the references are of the future tense as in "if you share one more time I will scream" but that's still a lot of references.)  To me will means What I Want.  If I turn my life and my will over to God that means I'm not in control of what happens and, more significantly, I think, I should give up all the wanting and wishing and desiring and grasping.  The practical example is waking up to a flat tire on my car.  I wouldn't be very upset about that.  I'd take action to fix it or, more plausibly, get someone else to fix it.  But am I comfortable relinquishing my desire to never have a flat tire ever again?  No, sir, I am not.

It is when we try to make our will conform with God's will that we began to use it rightly.  Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower.  We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God’s intention for us.

At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling him what it ought to be.

The following category is called "Gimme Gimme Gimme." Thou mayst take thy will and stuffeth it where the sun shineth not.

We had not even prayed rightly.  We had always said “Grant me my wishes” instead of “Your will be done.” 

We consider our plans for the day.  Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.

We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only.  We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped.  We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends.

Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.  We relax and take it easy.  We don’t struggle.  We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.

As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.

This, of course, is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual development.

What Alcoholism Is

In rereading some of my old notes I'm impressed by how many references there are in our literature to the insidious nature of the disease of alcoholism.  There is some good, practical information here.  My first sponsor always encouraged new people to read The Doctor's Opinion in the belief that the doc did a good job of explaining what alcoholism is: a weird allergy and an even weirder obsession.  We have a physical reaction and we have a mental over-reaction. 

The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us; first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process.

And we see some warnings about our experience with alcoholism: you're not going to be able to use your smarts and you're not going to be able to use your willpower and if you don't believe us head over to the bar and try to control your drinking. See how that works out for you. Courage? Bullshit. Determination? Fuck it. You don't have the tools to defeat this scourge.

Absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge.

. . . so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence is no good whatever.

He has been convinced that he has more problems than alcohol, and that some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage he can muster.

The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.  Why don’t you try some more controlled drinking?

Finally, we're reminded and re-reminded and over-reminded that we do not have this. We have lost the ability to drink normally. If we drink we're going to have problems and that's compounded by the fact that we don't even know what's going on.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false.

. . . their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly hard to solve.

We Suck At Relationships

But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most.  The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being.

Since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes.

We were having trouble with personal relationships . . . 

We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society.  Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide beneath it.  This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relationship with any one of those about us.  Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension. 

When the words "twisted" and "defective" are used to describe my interpersonal relationships I know I'm in for a tough time of it. When the phrase "total inability" is used to characterize my skills I realize that The Program isn't going to stress my ability to form fine and really good relationships with other people. Apparently "true" brotherhood or "true" partnerships are incomprehensible to us. And in case we haven't been bludgeoned enough The Book offers up that last paragraph which has a slow, steady, relentless cadence to it; just when you think the abuse is over there's another example, another phrase, another twist of the Truth knife.

It's not them - it's you.

There's NOTHING Wrong with Me

Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring.  To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned with.

I like this sentence which is a starting point for our Fourth Step Inventory.  Bill is saying: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it - you're good.  You're squeaky clean.  YOU don't have to do an inventory.  YOU don't have any defects."

Then we are provided with an extensive and seemingly ever-expanding list of "defects" that apparently almost every alcoholic except for us, personally, seems to have.  Take a gander and see if any of these apply to you . .  . while keeping in mind that this is a partial and woefully inadequate list.

Self-righteous:  Piously self-assured and smugly moralistic.  (Whew.  Ouch.)

Self-righteousness, the very thing we had contemptuously condemned in others, became our own besetting evil.  This phony form of respectability . . . 

Defiant:  Bold; insolent; open resistance to or disregard for authority, opposition, or power.

As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. 

Self-centered: Concerned with the self as opposed to the greater good of one's group, community, etc. (Wait a minute, wait a minute - what about me?)

Selfishness - self-centeredness!  That, we think, is the root of our troubles.

Pride: An unreasonable overestimation of one's own importance in terms of one's talents, importance, etc. which manifests itself in lofty airs and contempt for others. (Zing. These are really starting to sting.)

For pride, leading to self-justification and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress.

Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us . . .  (Dammit! Self again!)

Resentment: A feeling of anger or displeasure stemming from belief that one has been wronged by others or betrayed. (I like the addition of "belief." Once again, facts don't matter, facts are trumped by our feelings, real or imagined, no reasonably ridiculous belief refused.)

Resentment is the “number one” offender.  It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.  From it stems all forms of spiritual disease . . . 

Pride slips in to justify our excesses. (Dammit!! Pride, again?!)

And driving the whole unholy mess is fear. Fear that we're not going to get what we want and fear that we're going to have things happen to us that we don't want to have happen to us.

Fear: A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger or threat. (Nice that the danger or threat doesn't even have to be real. This is why some of us think FEAR stands for False [or Future] Events Appearing Real. There's also something somewhere about Fuck Everything And Run, but I'm trying to keep it clean here.)

Unreasonable fears that our instincts will not be satisfied . . . 

Fear.  This short word somehow touches every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread.  The fabric of our existence was shot through with it.  It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn’t deserve.  A soul sickness.

It's Not Them -- It's You

 Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes.  Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person entirely.  The inventory was ours, not the other man's. (This is patently unfair. My ability to spot defects in others is unparalleled and my faults so minor, few, and far in between as to not be worth inspection. What is it that Jeebus says? "So why do you see the piece of sawdust in another believer's eye and not notice the wooden beam in your own eye?"  That kooky Jeebus.)

The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong.  To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. (Sometimes real fucking slowly.)

Our present anxieties and troubles we cry are caused by the behavior of other people. . .   To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time.  We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves. (Again with the other people. Again with the blaming thing. Again with the suggestion that we're a little too quick to find fault in others and a little too slow to see our own.)

Or if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change?  If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are?  It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were. (My heart soared for a moment at the initial suggestion that other people really WERE the cause of my problems. Alas, the euphoria was short-lived. And it's back to me. Back to me working on me.)

The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with another person our emotions go on the defensive. (It's not me - it's them.)

Finally, we begin to see that all people . . . are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.  Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick, too. (

So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.  They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so.

This is such an important part of my recovery that I choose to highlight in blood red ink. I can almost always put my troubles into one of two categories: (a) troubles of my own making and (b) stuff that happens to everyone all the time but really seems unfair when it happens to me which is why I do so much bitching about things that are . . . you know . . . really pretty common and normal.

Narcissist Seaweed

 "Narcissists work very hard to conceal their inner poverty from recognition by others.  They may boast, inflate their reputations, swagger and belittle others, or they may fall apart at the first hint of neglect and criticism, making others feel guilty for the alleged injury done to them.  All of these behaviors are designed to deflect us from the central truth, that their sense of self is predicated upon emptiness, and derives from early childhood neglect or insufficient mirroring.  The will to power of narcissists is, however, a fearsome thing, and wreaks havoc in their psychological domination of their spouse and children or in workplaces where employees are obligated to comply."  James Hollis

We all have this syndrome to a certain degree.  How big a presence in my life am I going to permit it to be today?