Not In The Club

 Man, man, man, am I really responsible for my own problems?  That hardly seems fair.

The Great Fact is this: alcohol and drugs really, really, really fixed my problems . . . until they didn't.  When they got inside my brain I felt a switch snap and I felt okay, right with the world.  It wasn't relaxing or fun, it was need.

A famous comedian died recently who had fought addiction for most of his life.  These lines from his memoir really resonated with me:

"I want to tell you something about addiction: No matter who it is or what substance that person is hooked on, loneliness is at its root.  For whatever reason — and I have no theory as to why — there are those of us who feel isolated in this world, as if everyone else had some secret formula for getting along, for fitting in, and no one ever let us in on it.  That loneliness resides deep inside us, at our core, and no matter how many people try to help us, no matter how many friends reach out, support us, show up for us, it never entirely goes away.  It’s vast and shadowy and also part of who we are.  omething happens when we discover a drug or alcohol: Suddenly we have a companion holding our hand, propping us up, making us feel we fit in, we can be part of the club.  It’s there for us in the empty hours when it seems no one else is."

This is from Step Five in the 12 & 12: "Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered from the feeling that we didn't quite belong."  I like the use of the word "quite," which means "to the utmost or most absolute extent or degree; absolutely; completely."  No slop in that definition, dude.

Step Five again: "When we reached A.A. and for the first time in our lives stood among people who seemed to understand, the sense of belonging was tremendously exciting."  Most of us know that feeling of finally having landed someplace where people got us.

To Thine Own Self Be True

 I'm currently fascinated with The Program and how it can/should be worked.  I see a dichotomy: there are groups where people explain what they've done and how that worked out and then leave you alone.  You are free to follow the path they've taken or to ferret out another path or find another mentor whose actions seem to be a better fit.  My preference, natch, because if you tell me what to do I do a one-eighty and head right off in the opposite direction.  Fucking tell me what to do . . .   My hand can be caught in a vice and I won't take it out if you give me specific instructions on how to lessen the pain.  Dude.

And then there are groups that have a very stylized, organized program of recovery.  Do this, don't do that, come every day, call me at this time, or find another sponsor.  That is so not me and it is so not me both in the way I receive The Message and in the way that I deliver it.  While I'm loath to admit this I have come to see that there are some people who need to be cuffed about the neck and head or they'll never get sober.  Some of us grow up in an environment lacking in discipline.  I often wonder how my life would have worked out if my parents had turned me around and pushed me right back out the front door when I limped home in disgrace after being kicked out of college, broke, directionless, selfish.  Would it have hastened my recovery if they had insisted I get a job and pay rent?  Hard to say.

To Thine Own Self Be True.

Another One Bites the Dust

I received word that a high school classmate a year younger than me recently died.  No cause of death was given.  My high school was small: my class had about 50 in it and there have been 3 deaths that I know of; the following class was smaller still and has had 2 deaths.  We're all in our mid-60s now so this is going to start happening more and more frequently.             

When I relive some of my experiences it's easy in retrospect to pick out who had a drinking problem.  Some guys who drank stopped once they got older, surprising me, and I'm sure there are some alcoholics I didn't know about who ran in different circles, but other than that it's not tough for a drunk to pick out a drunk.  I think it's the whole personality change aspect of alcoholism.  My mind was so hyperactive and it quieted down so quickly when I was drinking that I became a different person.  I was so relieved to have some relief from the anxiety and the racing thoughts that I almost went catatonic.  They just stopped.

Sitting In The Dark

 "Call on God, but row away from the rocks."  Indian Proverb

I was the kind of guy who sat in my room with the lights out and complained about how dark it was.  All I had to do was get up and flick a switch.  It reminds me of all the times I asked for help from a spiritual entity but did none of the work myself.  God isn't a servant.  God doesn't clean up for me.  Establishing a relationship with my Higher Power doesn't mean I'm going to build a dependency outside of myself.  This Power doesn't exist for me to make request after request for things I can do for myself.  I can ask for safety and guidance in the midst of difficult situations but it's up to me to take the initiative for my own safety and well-being.

Whenever I need guidance, peace, and strength I can call on my Higher Power as long as I'm making sure I take responsibility when it's warranted.  God works through me, not for me. 

What Should YOU do? Hmmmmm......

 I had a friend ask me why I thought about his interactions with a couple of guys that he's sponsoring.  Like I have a clue what he should do.  I spoke some vague generalities.  I'm out of the advice business.  I told him what I've done in the past and assured him that he would either do the right thing or he'd fuck up and learn something about himself.  He started smiling, tapped me on the arm, and said: "That's what I love about you - you never tell me what to do."  Repeating myself, saying the same thing over and over, being redundant  . . .  I really don't know what you should do.  Tell me how it goes.

In my home group the secretary announces at the conclusion of the meeting for anyone willing to be a sponsor to raise their hand, giving new people a selection to choose from.  I generally don't volunteer mostly because I'm gone so much, partially because I believe that sponsoring a new guy is a helpful task for newer people who have some time under their belt, and marginally because new people are annoying and I hate to waste any of my precious time on - let's face it - an individual who probably isn't going to get sober.  Nonetheless a new guy approached me after the meeting yesterday and asked me if I sponsor people: "I notice you don't raise your hand."  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph . . .  A friend once told me that he always asked what the person wanted to get out of the relationship as this let him gauge whether or not he could be helpful.  I never say no.  Bastards never follow up anyway and I don't chase people.  It's hard enough to get sober if you're really motivated.  If you're approaching this casually you're likely in for a hard ride.

I like this reminder: "The statute of limitations runs out on your family once you hit forty."  Your family is fine or they aren't and if they aren't they aren't going to change after forty years so let's move on, shall we?  SuperK has really been rounding a corner with her very dysfunctional family and it's making a big difference in her happiness quotient.   My family has been much easier to deal with but I, too,  needed to come to a realization long ago that I was the brown sheep of the family - not totally black but trending that way - and that these people pretty much left me alone.  I was never going to fit in.  After I got sober I took to heart the suggestion that I was to strive to love rather than to be loved so I spent some time reaching out to people who rarely reached out to me.  After a while I thought: "I've never been close to my sister.  Why would I think that would change now?"  We get along fine but we're not close.  It's OK.  If I reach out to her less frequently she's not going to be miserable.  She  probably won't notice it.  She'll probably feel less pressure to respond in kind.

Five to Ten To Life

I like to watch people grow and develop as their recovery progresses.  I note that most meetings are comprised of people with under five years of sobriety and those of us who have been sober twenty years or more.  My perception is that we lose a lot of people at the five to seven year mark.  I'm not saying these people drink or that they regress into some prelapsarian state of moral decay but that it gets easier and more boring - once the dramatic gains of the early years are in the past and the obsession to drink isn't a cute any more - to slack off on recovery.  It can seem more like an unnecessary choir than a sanity/sobriety requirement.

This, I think, is a shame.  I love seeing dramatic surges of spiritual growth in members who are over the five year mark; an admittedly arbitrary number but one that holds water in a lot of cases.  There are a handful of members at my home group that I've seen pass through the chore stage and really blossom as individuals.  There is an aura of peace and lightness and good energy and deep seated contentment around them that makes them a joy to be around.  And it doesn't stop there.  I know of a couple of people who came to realizations when they were well over ten years sober that made a huge difference in their lives - one finally decided he was happier single and removed himself from the dating game; the other shifted her meeting schedule from Chore to Privilege, realizing that she just felt better after attending a meeting and started coming more often, on a whim, instead of slotting her attendance into a grim, unbending schedule.

Speed Kills

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."  Mahatma Gandhi

Life isn't a race won by the fastest.  If we set a goal and don't attain it within the time frame we set, we have not failed but must readjust our schedule.  Living to the fullest doesn't mean living in the fast lane.  It means taking the scenic route, stopping often to appreciate the view, and sharing the ride.

The Dali Lama:  "What we usually experience as pleasure is mostly a diminishment of pain.  If good food or drink, for example, really were just pleasurable - if they had an inner nature of pleasure - then no matter how much we ate or drank, we would feel greater and greater happiness in equal measure.  Instead if we partake excessively we begin to suffer in our bodies and our minds."

And here are abbreviated summaries of some of his suggestions for a daily practice geared at increasing our mindfulness:                                                                                                                        1.  Examine your motivation as often as you can.                                                                                         2.   At night examine what you did during the day.                                                                                     3.   Analyze your life closely.                                                                                                                           4.   Adopt a positive attitude in the face of difficulty.                                                                                   5.   Regularly evaluate the negative and positive effects of feelings and action.                                       6.   Continue your analysis.                                                                                                                             7.   Repeated reflection on the disadvantages of selfish behavior will diminish this behavior. 

Man, it's a lot of personal inventories over and over and over.  Buddhists must be difficult students just like alcoholics: repeat the same thing over and over and over.  The Lama doesn't even bother changing his words very much, preferring the same simple declarations.

Do this do this do this do this do this and . . . oh, yeah . . . do this, too.