Spiritual Growth

One of the complaints that I hear all the time in meetings is that the spiritual angle can be tough to swallow.  Well, no shit, I say, pointing out that about half of the first 164 pages of the Big Book are all about spirituality.  The Founders knew that spirituality was going to stick in the craw of most alcoholics.  I mean in our major religious books we have people rising from the dead and raising other people from the dead and walking on water and parting seas and shit like that.  I mean . . . c'mon.  I'm a scientist and I like things that make sense in a sequential, logical way and walking on water doesn't fit in that category.  In my Quiet Time each morning I bid my very traditionally religious godhead good day and ask for a release from any doubts I have, while mumbling obliquely that this is all some pretty weird shit.  Hearing voices coming from burning bushes where the flames aren't consuming the bush?  Sounds like what happened whenever I took some bad acid in college.

I also hear that the routine of recovery - of life - can get awfully boring from time to time.  But I know that if I don't stick to some kind of routine I might find myself in trouble.  Of course it's irritating to spend so much time on recovery and spiritual growth.  Most of the time I suck it up and power forward, certain that I'll make it back to the point where I'm enjoying both of the above.  Either that or I find myself slipping on a glacier in Greenland.  Can't imagine that every getting boring.  Can imagine that becoming a pain in the ass eventually, though.  "We have to go out on that fucking glacier again today, goddammit?"

One of my friends at the meeting today - where we talked about God and routine, could you guess? - is a woman who's a lot like me: disciplined, controlled, regimented, organized, who attended A.A. as more of a completed task, something to check off her To Do list, than as something she wanted to do.  One day she came in and told me that she was going to start attending more meetings, that she always felt good after she came.  There it is: living proof of the old adage that we attend meetings until we want to attend meetings.

Avoidance is to be Avoided

Avoidance:  Any behaviors people use to escape or distract themselves from difficult thoughts, feelings, and situations. 

And the good doctor sayeth . . .

 "For some people, trapped on a treadmill of obligation, the disadvantages of diminished functioning and physical pain are counterbalanced by the relief of lowered expectations.  This is a dangerous development in that those aspects of our characters that we incorporate into our sense of ourselves are sub-conscious and resistant to change.  And, in the case of a life constricted by anxiety, people need to muster the determination to confront their fears and stop giving in to them.  This approach manifests the cardinal rule of anxiety: Avoidance makes it worse; confrontation gradually improves it."

I was attending a grief group after my dad died and one of the monitors of the group admonished me thusly: "Pay attention to your anxiety.  There's a message there.  What is it trying to tell you?'

Man, I am a master of avoidance.  When something is painful, I just want to get the fuck away from it.  Confront it?  Pay attention to it?  That's crazy shit, man

Shameless, Again

 The Sponsorship brochure again .  .  . "Sponsorship is for helping a newcomer.  It provides the bridge enabling the new person to meet other alcoholics - in a home group and other groups visited.  It's only reasonable to seek a sharing of experience with a member who seems to be using the A.A. program successfully in everyday life.  There are no specific rules, but a good sponsor probably should be a year or more away from the last drink - and should seem to be enjoying sobriety."

There's so much good stuff here I hardly know where to start.  Alcoholics Anonymous is where I learned the simple spiritual fact that makes my humanity tolerable which is that being of service to another person is just about the most satisfying thing I can do.  I also like the emphasis on the responsibility of the sponsor to help a newcomer meet other people and to attend other groups.  My biggest frustration with sponsorship in my home town is that the sponsor seems to have a ridiculous amount of control over the person he's working with.  One of my points of emphasis in recovery is that I have no idea what another person should be doing.  I can share what I've done; I encourage people to read the literature because there's a lot of solution-based stuff in there; and, above all, I suggest that getting advice from a wide range of people is invaluable.  After all, what works for me may very well not work for you.

Finally, let's not forget that the idea is to use the A.A. program successfully in everyday life and, moreover, to be enjoying that everyday life.  We all know members who seem to consider recovery to be a grim and joyless death march.  I, for one, got sober so that I can enjoy all of the blessings of this world, not to sit in the same meeting day after day after day, pointing a judgmental finger at the efforts of someone else.  

Well, I do enjoy the judging other people thing but that's another matter altogether.

Shameless

 I'm a shameless plagiarizer . .  . . . 

Here's a section from an A.A. approved pamphlet called "Questions and Answers on Sponsorship: "In A.A., sponsor and sponsored meet as equals, just as Bill and Dr. Bob did.  Sponsorship is yours for the asking.  We urge you.  Do not delay.  Alcoholics recovered in A.A. want to share what they have learned with other alcoholics.  We know from experience that our own sobriety is greatly strengthened when we give it away."

I do find it interesting that A.A. believes that a sponsor and sponsee meet as equals.  I should remember this the next time I feel the urge to tell someone else what to do.

I also find it interesting that there's an emphasis on how important and helpful it is to "give it away."  The Dead Sea - with no inflow or outflow - is devoid of life.  The Red Sea - with fresh water coming in and flowing away - teems with life.

And here's more from the good doctor: "We live in a fear-promoting society.  It is the business of advertisers to stoke our anxieties about what we have.  Even in good times the public perception of the risk of becoming a crime victim is exaggerated.  Meanwhile, the real risks to our welfare - smoking, overeating, not fastening seat belts, social injustice, and the people we elect to office - provoke little anxiety.  These phobias serve as a distraction from more fundamental and troubling fears.  Rather than be afraid of these real threats to our well-being, we are easily persuaded that our maximum danger resides in some foreign place inhabited by those who wish us ill."

I often visit the web site of a certain news organization that has a strong partisan bias just to see what the other side is talking about.  I shake my head at the crap I see.  Much of it is local news.  Most of the rest shows pictures of people that the site's partisans see as a threat and an enemy and that I see as harmless distractions.  And the final nail in the coffin is how often real events or discussions are magnified and weaponized when they're taken out of context.  We shouldn't walk down dark alleys in dangerous parts of town, sure, but we're also unlikely to be murdered in our bed tonight.

I AM an Alcoholic

 There's a man who attends my morning meeting who is adamant about using the phrase "recovered alcoholic" when he identifies.  He points to a passage early in the Big Book that contains the phrase "almost 100 recovered alcoholics" so he believes that it's harmful to new people to hear someone who no longer drinks say that they're an alcoholic.  He flatly states that he has found a spiritual solution to a spiritual sickness and that he'll never drink again.  I get it.  I agree that the heart of our problem is that we're spiritually adrift and bereft and that we may very well struggle to stay sober unless we find a spiritual center.  After all our drinking was "only a symptom" and not a root cause.  After all the whole purpose in writing the Big Book was to help people find their own spiritual solution.

I've always returned to Dr. Bob's response when asked if he thought he'd die sober: "I believe that if I keep doing what I'm doing then I'll never have to pick up a drink again."  While I don't think I'll ever drink again I also believe that I can indeed drink again.  So am I recovered or recovering?  I know I'm not a drunk anymore but I also am comfortable calling myself an alcoholic.  I've seen too many cocksure people with long term sobriety return to drinking.  I'm not going to get all wrapped up in words one way or the other.  Let's face it - if someone wants to drink again they'll come up with an excuse better than the ommision of the adjective "recovered."  There are too many examples in human history of smart people poring over a text and cherry-picking passages that support whatever position they would like to promote.

An interesting side note: apparently Bill W kept track of everyone who's story appeared in the First Edition of The Big Book and only about half of them managed to stay sober.

Denying My Hypocrisy

 The good doctor again . . . 

"Authenticity is a prized ideal.  We would like to see ourselves as having a relatively stable identity that expresses our core values over time.  There are few human attributes that excite more contempt than hypocrisy.  People whose actions do not accord with their professed beliefs become objects of derision.

Worse than the concealment of embarrassing moral lapses are the interpretations that allow us to continue doing things that erode our sense of ourselves.  We routinely invoke theories of accident, coincidence, and forgetfulness to explain behaviors that we do not wish to examine closely.

Denial is another way people lie to themselves.  Those indulging addictions commonly assert that they do not have a problem and can quit at any time, assertions that fly in the face of a catastrophic decline in their lives.  While no one can deny  the role of chance in human affairs, it is an act of laziness to ascribe to l uck most of what happens to us.  Once again, (Ed. Note: Once Again!!) people are reluctant to take responsibility for themselves, preferring easy excuses to difficult self-examination.

Hypocrisy:  The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's behavior does not conform.

Denial:  The action of declaring something to be untrue.  (Ed. Note: Notice how the definition stresses not that something is untrue but that an individual is claiming it to be untrue.  Crucial difference.)

This book that Dr. Livingston has written strikes the shit out of me in two ways: 1 - He pulls no punches, calling bullshit bullshit and 2 - He leans on a few simple concepts and then repeats them over and over again, using slightly different words.  It's like the Big Book that way, a book that would be a lot shorter if the people who read it paid attention to what they were reading.  I mean . . . how many times can we say that You Are The Problem before it sinks in?  

A lot, apparently.

Religion V Spirituality

 I'm always pondering the difference between religion and spirituality.  It's a tricky subject and one that many people think is crucial to the success of Alcoholics Anonymous.   I hear this all the time: "The whole God thing drives more people away than anything else."  This may be true although in my opinion what drives most people away is the fact that they'd prefer to keep drinking.  If you don't want to quit you'll find a reason and "God" is a big target.  What else are you going to bitch about?  Our dress code?  The decor of whatever church basement you're sitting in?  I drank in some skanky-ass bars, I'll tell you that, and I was wearing yesterday's dirty clothes.

What I like to do is to look at the kind of life the person is living and judge their spiritual make-up by the kind of results they get.  My sponsor was a devoted life-long Catholic who went to mass every day.  I sponsor a guy who is a committed life-long atheist.  Neither of these men have ever tried to convince me that they had all the answers.  Both of these men are good men who are trying to live lives of service and love and devotion.  So . . . I say to everybody keep doing what you're doing.  Find your spiritual center wherever you can.  

Don't be an asshole today.  That's a spiritual axiom that I can get behind.