I'm Better Than You

Today I'm going to allow my annoyance at life run wild.

I'm going to devote all of my energy to finding faults with everyone I come into contact with. You have faults. You know you do, and I'm going to uncover them. I don't care how good you are at hiding these faults behind a sunny smile and pleasant disposition. Deep down inside, you are a mass of writhing snakes and evil intentions. I can tell. You will be unable to resist the power of my X-ray vision.

I do this, of course, because I have no faults of my own. I can devote all of my thinking time to deconstruct where you have gone wrong. It really isn't that hard. I'm very good at it. Hard is looking inside myself to see what is rotten in there. That's scary. I would be happy if all I saw was a bunch of snakes. I have some serious monsters on the prowl in my neighborhood. They eat snakes like they're Pringles.

I Don't Need No Doctor

Overdose: Too large a dose; to dose to excess.

Sometimes I have a tendency to throw Meetings at my problems. The Program has been such a powerful force for good in my life that it's easy to assume that if I don't feel quite right that a Meeting will make me feel better. Luckily for me, this is true a lot of the time. It was especially true when I was starting my recovery and had a lot of free time. Drinking is very time consuming. I was drinking, getting something to drink, recovering from drinking too much, sleeping it off, staring insensate at a TV while I was drunk, etc. etc. It was important for me to go to a lot of Meetings. I have a very active mind. I need to keep it busy.


However, I have been known to overdo it. Imagine that. Sometimes things aren't going to go my way. Sometimes I'm just not going to feel very good. I can get depressed or bitchy. I have stuff happen in my life that is naturally upsetting. I don't get to avoid being a human being. If I break my leg, I don't need to go to a Meeting. I need to go see a doctor. Acceptance is not the answer to this particular problem. The emergency room is a better answer.

Let's be reasonable here.

Relate! Don't Obfuscate.

Last night I listened to a lead given by a man who took a more -- ahem -- colorful route to recovery than I did. My tendency is to concentrate on the differences that I have with other alcoholics. My disease encourages me to feel special. I'm not like that guy; he's an alcoholic; ergo, I'm not. Tricky dude, my alcoholism. Skilled at Wedge Politics. Skilled at getting me alone. My alcoholism is like a pack of wolves trying to separate the sick, elderly, blind, crippled moose from the pack. I'm the sick moose.


One of the things that I can always identify with is the sense of not caring what happens to me or anyone else when I'm drinking. The guy last night talked about sitting in a bar, broke, and deciding to go rob a bank. He didn't want to rob a bank but he needed money to drink. He didn't consider the consequences. To the best of my knowledge I never did that. But I did things all of the time with potentially severe consequences to me, to my loved ones, and to the general public, and I just didn't care as long as I got to drink and take drugs. Most of us can remember sitting in a car, too drunk to walk, and turning the ignition key. We didn't care.


I can also relate to the sense of purpose that comes when I try to pass along the message of recovery. Our founders were really on to something when they foisted that Twelfth Step on us. They perceived that we would stay sober if we tried to help other people stay sober. My friend from last night had spent a number of years in jail. He had just given a talk to a group of law students at a local university, and the professor asked him to come back. I bet he didn't imagine on his last day drinking that he would one day be an instructor at a law school.

Blue is a Color, Too

Depression: in psychology, an emotional condition, either normal or pathological, characterized by discouragement, a feeling of inadequacy, etc.


Boy, does that sound like someone I know. There was a picture of me, in color, with 3-D animation and links to a variety of personal web sites, posted next to the definition. You could push a little virtual button and hear short audio clips of me talking about some of my more memorable episodes of angst and fear. It's all about me. It's definitely all about me.


Depression is my best friend. We're like an old married couple that should have never gotten married. We stay together for the sake of the kids, who wish that we would go ahead and get divorced already, for God's sake. All we do is bitch at each other and bicker about the stupidest things, but we've been together for so long that we don't know how to end it. In fact, we kind of like the fact that we make each other so thoroughly miserable. We're so afraid of the unknown that we endure an incredible amount of misery.


Depression occurs when I want to feel sorry for myself. It happens when I beat myself with the club of anger that I'm too timid to use on my fellow man.

I See A Bad Moon Risin'

Pessimism: The doctrine or belief that the existing world is the worst possible; that the evil in life outweighs the good.



I don't think that things are going to work out very well today. I can feel it in my bones. It's like the arthritis my grandma had -- she could predict rain better than a TV weatherman. I can tell that it's going to be a tough day for me. I don't like the looks of things. I don't have a sunny disposition. Storm cl0uds are gathering on the horizon. Trouble is a-brewin'. A bad wind starts to blow.



I used to believe that I was a born pessimist. As if God decides to just screw some people up right out of the chute. Horseface, you are going to be negative. You have no say in the matter and there is nothing that you can do to change. You are going to look on the dark side of things. You will see how things can go wrong. You won't be able to see the upside, so you will have to bury your dark vision of life under oceans of alcohol and mountains of dope.



Yeah, well, if you line up everyone in the world according to the privileges and blessings they have received, I'd be pretty close to the front of the line. Then if you changed the order so that the most grateful people came first, I'd be about 7 and a half billion people down.



It's all in the attitude, my son.

Writing About Thinking

I: The person speaking or writing: I is the nominative case form, me the objective, my and mine the possessive, and myself the intensive and reflexive, of the first person singular pronoun.


I don't know what any of that definition means but I do love the concept of everything being about me. Starting out with "I," moving quickly to "me," sloshing over into "my" and "mine," and finishing with a big rhetorical flourish: Myself! These are all good topics. I can't find fault with any of them. I would be hard pressed to discover a more powerful definition in my beloved Websters.


I walk around all day thinking about myself. I don't think about anybody else unless I'm mad at someone, which is most of the time, at which point my thoughts turn decidedly malevolent. As if this embarrassing lack of concern for my fellow man isn't bad enough, I am constantly stunned to find out that you aren't thinking about me, too. Not only am I'm obsessed with myself, I think that you should be obsessed with me as well.


I Think, therefore I Am.

I'm a Pinball Wizard

Pinball: A game of chance played on an inclined board, typically containing a number of holes surrounded by numerous pins, springs, etc.

My mind is like a pinball machine. Each thought is a small metal ball. I have an inexhaustible supply of these little balls, which are indestructible. I think I have some control over these balls. This is a laughable mistake on my part. It never bodes well for me when I think I have control over anything.

I pull a lever and one of these thoughts drops into place. So far, so good. No big problems. Everything is nice and calm. I'm a little worried about all of the blinking lights and pictures of half-naked, heavily armed women warriors and hellish motorcycle demons staring at me from the front of the machine, which is blaring frenetic hard rock music, but I try to stay optimistic. I slowly pull back a lever and fire off the first thought of the day. This insignificant thought goes shooting off into space, and all hell breaks loose.


Bells are clanging and sirens are going off. The thought snaps this way and that way. It gets caught in traps and holes. It stops and starts. It's all over the place, moving at high speed, changing direction with violent energy. More thoughts enter the game. The machine starts to smoke and shudder violently.

This is on a good day.