Termites!

 From the 12 & 12:

"By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his failure at life.  All these failings generate fear, a soul-searching in it's own right.  Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects.  These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build."

I've always liked the simile of termites.  Ceaseless.  Devouring.  Unseen.  Wow.

"But it has 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.  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.  This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us.  Of true brother hood we had small comprehension."

Primary:  More important than anything else.

I see the word "primary" used a lot.  And we don't come across very well, do we?  We come across as selfish jerks.  Total inability.  There's not a suggestion that we occasionally fall short.  

More Gratitude

 Grateful:  Warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received.

Dude who led the meeting this morning is older and a retread with about a year and a half of sobriety.  It's not hard to see when someone has crossed the line from not drinking to sobriety.  I'm always ruefully shaking my head when I all too often run into those individuals who have a lot of surface sobriety but nothing that has sunk in deep.  I think he's chosen gratitude as the topic the last two times he's led the meeting.  There are always some funny stories when we talk about gratitude.  There are some people who took the elevator down to the basement and then pushed the button for the sub-basement.  I characterized myself as a High Bottom drunk for a while when I was new.  A guy in Chicago pulled me aside one day: "Do you have a wife or a girlfriend or any kids?" (No.)  "Do you have a house or a nice apartment?"  (No.)  "Does anyone in your family like you anymore?" (My MOM likes me, I said defensively.  That doesn't count, he said.)  "Do you have any money?" (Not very much.  Not enough.  Grumble.)  "I've seen the piece of shit car you drive so don't talk to me about your car and all you do in here is complain about your job so I know that isn't going too well."  (Silence.)  "You're not a high bottom drunk.  Why in the hell do you think you're a high bottom drunk?"

There was a guy in Portland who said that in his drinking days he had a Burnside Cadillac.  (Burnside was the main east-west drag there.)  "What's a Burnside Cadillac?" I asked him.   "A shopping cart with all my shit in it," he said.  There was a guy in Cincinnati who talked about living in a condo with a pool.  "I thought you were homeless," I said.  "I lived in a cardboard box on the banks of the Ohio River," he smirked.

A new woman talked about the cop car that often parked outside of the restaurant where she worked about closing time.  Good time to catch an easy drunk, closing time is, and she was grateful  she didn't have to sweat his presence.  I remember when I got my first ticket in sobriety.  I saw those sickening red and blue lights whirring in my rear view mirror and my stomach clenched in fear until I thought: "I'm clean and sober and don't have any drugs or drug residue or open containers in my car and there aren't ten empties rattling around under the passenger seat.  I have a valid registration and I'm not driving on a suspended license and the car's insured and it's really in good working shape."  So I got a ticket for speeding.  The patrolman was quite nice and his radar clocked me at the speed I had my cruise control set for so I could hardly bitch about the ticket.  He took a minute to explain to me that they were targeting this stretch of highway (he even had a sort of cop flyer printed up) because they had had a few bad accidents where cars crossed the median and drove into the opposing traffic at highway speed which seemed reasonable and responsible and more than fair.  I'm not saying I was glad to get a ticket but I was speeding, you know?  I could have driven the speed limit and not gotten a ticket.

Feeling Bad? Take a Pill!

 One of the things that has kept surprising me over the years is how so many of the basic Alcoholics Anonymous principles and habits and practices surface when I read outside, non AA approved literature.  Some of the stuff is religious and some philosophical and medical and it's new and it's old and sometimes ancient but there are some core truths that I see over and over again.  

Here are a few thoughts about we can duck responsibility for bad behavior from time to time by relying on "outside" influences -  written by a psychiatrist by the name of Gordon Livingston - that struck me the other day:

"A currently more common example of a diagnostic fad is adult Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).  Disorganized, day-dreaming procrastinators now have a medical explanation for their inattention AND an effective treatment: stimulant drugs.   People uniformly report that their spirits are better and that they can get more done when taking an amphetamine.  To which I can only reply: 'Me, too.'  We have created a plethora of diagnoses that are really just descriptions of certain patterns of behavior.  The term 'disabled' removes not only any sense of responsibility for overcoming one's problems, it damages irrevocably the self-respect that comes with the sense of being a free person on the earth, able to struggle with and overcome adversity."

I need to point out here that Dr. Livingston goes to great lengths to emphasize that there are plenty of people who suffer from real mental or behavioral problems - some of them caused by events in their past and some by their physiological makeup - who need and are helped by medical intervention.  It's dangerous and to no one's credit to urge a paranoid schizophrenic to stop taking his or her medication.  But there is surely some truth in his contention that it's a lot easier to blame other people, places, and things for our problems and decide that pills are the solution.  I mean, I take pills and they've made a huge difference in my life so this isn't an anti-medication screed.

Some more: "It is our determination to overcome fear and discouragement that constitutes the only effective antidote to the sense of powerlessness over unwanted feelings.  Some people are obviously more genetically predisposed to suffer these discomforts than others.  While medication can provide crucial, sometimes life-saving relief, people also have an obligation to alter their behavior in ways that allow them to exert greater control over their lives.   This is why there is a fine line between expressing empathy and solidarity for those who suffer and endorsing a passive dependency."

It seems to me that this is a wordy way to say: "It's not them - it's you."  I have personally found that my moral fiber and peace of mind increase when I soldier through a difficulty without any outside help.  There's a lot of satisfaction in overcoming something by working hard and smart.  It's how most of us got sober, after all - with help from others but also by buckling down and doing the work.

God . . . .

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.

Serenity:  The state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.                                                                    Courage:  The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc. without fear.                                                                                                                                                     Wisdom:  The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment.

I have to remember that the Serenity Prayer isn't so much about accepting stuff and changing stuff but rather about the serenity and courage that allows me to tolerate some asshole who is on my last nerve or to walk away from said asshole without behaving poorly.  From time to time I'll deal with someone who is on my last nerve in SuperK's presence and when I ask her afterwards if I behaved okay she invariably says something like "You were a dick" or "You know what you did."  I'm usually asking for her opinion when I think I'm being dickish because I don't ask for her opinion unless I'm pretty sure that's the case.  Her Dickish Meter is usually pretty accurate.

I like the definition of serenity.  What could be better than a day where I'm calm, peaceful, and untroubled?  In fact, that's really all I'm asking for in this life.  I also like the definition of courage which doesn't say we charge a Nazi machine gun nest and almost certainly die - it's about the quality of my inner core that allows me to buck up when difficult and painful things happen to me which they most certainly will.  And I don't want to forget that wisdom isn't just about being book smart but rather combining that with the life experiences I've had and the good judgment I've obtained through the hard lessons of really messing up from time to time.  "Intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle me" in other words.

I say this prayer every morning in my Quiet Time.  Then I say it again in a way that's easier for me to understand: "God, if I'm supposed to do something today help me do it and if I'm not supposed to do anything help me wait patiently and give me the wisdom to know which is which."

Cold Turkey

The more time I spend reading the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous the more I become convinced that one of the major thrusts is that we quit blaming other people, places, and things for our problems.  Look inside!  Stop concentrating on the outside which is none of my business.

A new guy showed up at the meeting a few days ago.  One of our members who is about his age and with just a few years of sobriety talked to him for a while after we closed.  This is as it should be - a 30 year old looks at me and sees an old man who has been sober an implausible amount of time.  He did ask for my phone number, however, and not the young guy who spent some time talking to him.  I walked out with the established member after the meeting and he commented on this fact.  He sounded a little put out which I found sort of amusing.  He suggested - actually he insisted - that I text the new guy.  He suggested/insisted that I do this several times.  

As a boy who got sober in the Midwest the mechanics of The Program were a little different.  The general tone and timbre of recovery is the same everywhere, of course, but the process varies.  The men who sponsored me early on never, ever contacted me.  I never, ever had coffee with them.  They did not "read the Book with me."  If I wanted their advice I called them.  If I saw them at meetings I learned that they were taking care of their own sobriety and that if I had a question I could pick up the phone or bring it up as a topic at my next meeting.  I was pleasant to the guy badgering me but I had no intention of calling a dude one day sober.  

I thought about it and after I got down from my self-righteous soapbox I did send New Guy a quick text.  He did not reply which told me all I needed to know.  Finally, after a few days, he replied that he had decided to go "cold turkey" and that he asked his brother and girlfriend to support him and "make sure that I don't drink."  Yeah, well, okay.  I've heard this technique before - the sloughing off of the responsibility for staying sober on someone else.  There's a line in The Big Book that suggests even if we were to try to run and hide from alcohol by escaping to the North Pole that an Indigenous local might show up with a bottle of whiskey and ruin everything.

I do not chase people.  I do not give advice.  I invariably say something along the lines of "I'll be at the morning meeting if you want to talk."  I do not meet people at meetings.  I tell people where I'm going to be; that way I'm not pissed when the individual doesn't show . .  . which is most of the time.

Think he showed up this morning?  Maybe his brother and girlfriend hid the key to his straitjacket well.

For no reason other than it amuses me . . . . 

The most likely origin of “cold turkey” is that it’s an evolution of the expression “talk turkey” or “talk cold turkey,” meaning to tell someone something straight and be completely honest. It could be a classic case of a figurative expression spawning another figurative expression.  There are a couple more literal explanations, too. One suggests that the expression comes from the fact that actual cold turkey, as a dish, requires very little preparation time. The expression, then, was to compare someone’s instant quitting of a habit to the instant readiness of cold, leftover turkey.  Yet another explanation suggests that it’s the withdrawal symptoms experienced by addicts who stop using drugs—goosebumps, chills, and pallid skin—that call to mind a cold, uncooked bird. 

 

There's So Much Wisdom in the World, Stupid

 One of the books I'm reading right now as part of my daily meditation practice was written by a psychiatrist who specializes in the aging process and getting people to release their obsession with the past and what past events, people, places, and things have done to effect their lives, whether these events are real or imagined or some combination of the two.  There are a lot of smart people  in all kinds of disciplines who have a grasp on spiritual solutions to temporal problems, often coming at the same situation from slightly different viewpoints.  An idea might not make sense at first until I hear the solution from a different angle.

Here's a medical take on an old A.A. concept: "We are not what we think, or what we say, or how we feel.  We are what we do.  'When all is said and done, more is said than done.'  We are drowning in words, many of which turn out to be lies we tell ourselves or others."  I believe that this is one reason that we emphasize service so much in The Program.  It's a lot easier to say I care about you than to demonstrate that I care about you.  You care about me?  OK, show up an hour before a meeting to make coffee or sit down with me when I'm new and listen to me drone on and on and on about problems that are largely of my own making.

"We demonstrate courage in the numberless small ways in which we meet our obligations or reach out to try the new things that might improve our lives.  Many of us are afraid of risk and prefer the bland, the predictable, and the repetitive."  This is life.  Life is not an endless roller coaster ride.  Life can be boring.  I don't like to floss my teeth every night.  I don't like to pay taxes or listen to someone talk to me about something I'm not interested in.  Well, tough shit.  And the flip side of this coin, of course, is that our life is going to be richer if we take the plunge and try something new from time to time.  "Change is the essence of life."

"Most of the heartbreak that life contains is a result of ignoring the reality that past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior."  In A.A. we say "if you keep doing what you're doing you're going to keep getting what you've got."  If you got drunk at the neighborhood bar you probably shouldn't go there to drink Cokes and watch Monday Night Football.

Step 4

We read from the 12 & 12 today - Step Four.  It seems to me that the extended riff for the fourth  step can be summed up, more or less, by this phrase: "It's not them - it's you."  We only read three pages a week and these three were jam packed with good stuff.

There were a few paragraphs dedicated to the two personality extremes that we often see: The Depressive and The Power Driver.  They point out that both of these extremes suffer from a look-at-me egotism; the Depressive thinks he's a piece of shit and the Power Driver thinks everyone else is a piece of shit.  Both  of them are drawing attention to themselves.  There are some super-duper lines that have always caught my eye and made me wonder and laugh at the same time; such as this characterization of the Depressive: "We wallow in this messy boy, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it."

There were a few paragraphs that emphasize the lengths to which we go to make sure we blame anyone but ourselves for our problems.  One good defense is to say that all of our character defects are caused by drinking with the implication that all we had to do to release our inner saint was to cork up the bottle.  An even better justification is to say that it's the behavior of others that cause us to drink, the implication being that if everyone else just left us the fuck alone our inner saints would be flying all over the place.  And then the coup de grace: we could find an excuse to drink for any circumstances.  When things were good we celebrated and when they weren't we would drown our sorrows.  As you can see we were good at justifying our drinking.  It was never us.  It was always other people, places, and things. 

My take on this Step is that it's where I needed to start looking at me and I needed to start trying to be honest about it.  Most of us didn't fit neatly into either category and most of us were so loath to shine a light on our rotten interiors that we could only make a start at the kind of rigorous honesty needed to do a good Fourth Step.  Many of us have done more than one; we find that some of our more subtle defects start to burble to the surface and sometimes we're just not capable yet of even looking at the ones that are obvious to everyone else.