Perry Mason For The Defense

I listened to a guy share his Fourth Step this week.  I forgot how messy this process can be.  I didn't help things in retrospect, suggesting that he could sort of free-associate the inventory instead of using the four columns technique in our  Big Book, the result being that his self-analysis was all over the place.  It was like trying to make heads or tails of the path of a pinball when you're not controlling the flippers.  Say what you want about the four columns but they definitely add a lot of structure to the process.

I mostly listened, tossing in a comment now and then, but mostly listening - he was wound up as most of us are during our first Fourth Step, talking a mile a minute, so it was hard to get a word in edgewise anyway.  We had a short discussion about drug use: my history and beliefs compared to what the central office web site says all stirred up with the variety of opinions you'll get from different members.  He mentioned some recent cocaine use and a few concerts fueled by mushrooms and LSD.  I get it - I liked drugs, too.  Whatever.  We don't use illegal drugs or legal drugs obtained illegally.  We take great pains to make sure our health care providers know we're in recovery.  From time to time we find ourselves in situations where a pain killer is indicated but we take more great pains to suck it up and hurt a little bit before taking anything that might dull our reality.

I guess the point is this: are you trying to escape reality?

When I got home that night and began reflecting on the evening I realized it wasn't clear to me whether this drug use occurred before or after his self-proclaimed sobriety date.  The next day I bounced my suspicions off of a few trusted Program friends - all of them in my camp, the "WTF are you talking about with the LSD and cocaine camp" - and then gave this dude a call.

He's a nice man, a good and decent guy.  He's an adult with children that he takes care of and a business that he runs ethically.  His Fourth Step was frankly a little boring.  As I started to talk to him - he immediately clarified that these drug episodes occurred after his sobriety date - I was expecting some remorse or an impassioned but incoherent argument defending his ridiculous assertion that LSD use is compatible with effective sobriety.  I always stress that I'm not a spokesman for The Fellowship - I'm a dude who has found a path that works for me and - while this is a pretty standard path for people in The Fellowship - it isn't the only one that works.  I always encourage people to read a lot of literature and talk to a lot of folks, soaking up the wisdom, before coming up with a personal recovery plan.  I know good, solid members who won't work with an individual who is taking a medically supervised anti-depressant or even an anti-psychotic.  I think this is excessive but they don't - they direct potential sponsees to a member who is comfortable with this therapy and they do this in a non-judgmental way.

I felt like I was a lawyer who was prosecuting an individual wearing a black mask who had been caught with a gun standing in the foyer of a bank that had just been robbed and who was holding a bag of money clearly marked "Swag," and I was losing the argument.  He really wasn't defensive at all.  He told me that he didn't feel like he had a problem with drugs and that The Fellowship was about not drinking, wasn't it?  Period.  We talked a little about alcohol-free beer - you know the kind: it has a little alcohol in it? - and he confessed to drinking this, too.

At this point I'm sweating profusely.  I felt like the starting quarterback on a team that was four touchdown favorite finding myself down two scores at the two minute warning.

"What the fuck is going on here?" I thought.

I told him I didn't think he was sober.  My default position when working with someone new is to encourage them to talk to a lot of other people.  I also suggest bringing up the conundrum as a topic in a meeting and seeing what kind of feedback the group gives you.  I realized that I didn't know of any specific prohibitions on drug use and sobriety dates.  The Program is careful to point out that we deal with alcohol only and encourage drug addicts to look elsewhere.  We agree that our Twelve Step Program can help people with all kinds of problems - including drugs - but maintain that we are only experts in quitting alcohol.

I wonder if I became this guy's friend and this has hindered my tendency to speak plainly, even if it may sound offensive?  Normally I have my finger on the trigger when someone tries to advocate for casual drug use.

After I got off the phone I took a ramble on the world wide web, including the official web site of our Fellowship, to see what I could see about drug use in sobriety.  I was quite taken aback to find nothing specific from any site I would consider official.  There were a bunch of articles from private recovery programs and from recovery chat rooms and long threads among random individuals that had all kinds of opinions, some sane and some quite crazy, but nothing from the mother ship.  Drugs came up often but only in the context that we don't profess to fix drug addicts and that we don't give medical advice to people who may be taking a medically-prescribed drug that some of us frown on.

Hopefully he's pondering all of this.

I'm not giving him any chips marking recovery milestones, I'll tell you what.

Happy Birth-iversary

Anniversaries marking sober time - or "birthdays" as they incorrectly say here in Vacation City - are an important and sugar-fueled milestone.  Birthday means you get a birthday cake and everyone sings Happy Birthday.  Locally most people "take a cake" on Saturday when the meeting is quite large although you can low-key it during the week on your actual birthday.  I guess the thinking is that if you're going to be the center of attention you might as well do it in front of a big crowd.  I have enough trouble with my ego as it is so I opt for the weekday celebration, but I DO go with the cake - sugar is sugar, just as good at 7AM as any other time.  Frankly, I've never had a problem with 7AM cake - I've never been fooled by sugar being packaged into a round, fried piece of cake called a donut. 

"Wow, Seaweed is getting a monstrous donut instead."

"Donuts.  Is there anything they can't do?"  - Homer J Simpson

However, I don't really like the phrase "take a cake."  That would indicate to me that I would get to take the entire cake home, free to eat big, thick slices at my leisure, not share it with other people who may be fingering it or coughing on it.  We should say "share a cake" or something like that.  Maybe it should be the Birthday Boy's choice.

"Happy Birthday to Seaweed who is exercising his option to take the entire cake home." 

There's also a tradition here of gathering some people together in the kitchen area to actually bring the cake out into the meeting room, with a big flourish, candles burning and everything.  I think the idea is that this is to honor people that have helped you in your sobriety in some significant way.  I don't like this, either - it seems cheesy in a Look At Me kind of way.  I'd be tempted to see how many crews I could be a part of.  

"Man, that Seaweed is helping everyone."

So for my anniversary I took a cake on the actual day, some random weekday that I can't remember any more.  There's a woman at the meeting who has some significant disabilities - she's here without being all there that I've taken the time to talk to her over the years, listening patiently because she also has some significant family problems.  She can't hear very well so I think she can feel isolated.  I should point out that she gets to the meeting early every single day and gets the room ship-shape.  We're buddies at this point - she always talks for a long time and she always effusively thanks me for listening.  I don't mind - anything that stops me from thinking about myself for a couple of minutes is a good thing, and she's not the easiest person to listen to so members aren't generally flocking around her after the meeting.

I asked her and her alone to bring out my cake on my day.  She speaks of the honor to this day.

No Bullshit Angels

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:  A type of psychological therapy which states that thoughts, feelings and behavior are all connected, and that individuals can move toward overcoming difficulties and meeting their goals by identifying and changing unhelpful or inaccurate thinking, problematic behavior, and distressing emotional responses.

Dammit!  Everything I read comes back to a goddam Gratitude List, a goddam Inventory, a goddam personal inventory.  If you think bad shit then you become bad shit.  And who exactly is in charge of my own thinking?  I am what I think.

The obvious question: why think bad thoughts?  It's all me.  It's not you.  Why do I blame you for something I'm doing?  

Guilt:  A feeling of distress or responsibility for some offense, crime, wrong, etc.; an unhappy feeling, whether real or imagined.

There it is: imagined.

Imagine:  To believe in something created in one's own mind.

Isn't god created in one's own mind?  

Our meeting topic yesterday was how to come to an understanding of a power greater than one's self.  I myself, personally, fall into the category of Once Had Faith But Lost It.  I was a pretty religious kid and for the longest time I took a great deal of comfort in my faith.  Of course, I overemphasized the negative parts while giving the positive parts short shrift but it was still an anchor in my life, one I turned to with great frequency over the years.  Growing up can be pretty scary, especially for an overly-sensitive, fearful child, and the idea that some big force has your best interests at heart can be very reassuring.

Alas, as alcohol began to have its way with me, overwhelming the positive messages and lessons from my religion, I became disillusioned.  There are, after all, plenty of priests and pastors with drinking problems, men and women of great faith who cannot stop drinking by dint of their faith alone.  I'm happy to report that, over time, I was able to piece together different parts of religion, philosophy, and theology into a spiritual program that works for me.  It was fun yesterday listening to all the ways that people have accepted a faith that works for them.  Lots of different paths, that's for sure, none of them right and none of them wrong.  This is why The Fellowship is so effective: we encourage everyone to find their own conception of a higher power.

Right now I've picked up this flock of angels.  One of the Old old people in the book I read about aging talked about these angels that took care of him.  It reminded me a lot of The Program; all I had to do was substitute "higher power" for "angel" and his concept sounded identical to mine: do what you can with what you've got, solve problems to the best of your ability, and then step back and let life spin.  He let his angels work on whatever problems he had.

What is the correct term for a group of angels?  You know - like a pride of lions or a murder of crows?

Anyway, my flock can be a sullen, sarcastic crowd.  They look angelish - white robes, wings, leather sandals laced all the way up their calves, the whole get-up.  They sit around me, partially obscured by clouds or mist or fog, on different levels, in a vaguely suspended but not flying airborne way, reading the paper, and do a lot of grumbling and bitching.  They eventually take care of business but not always on my time frame.  They move off to their task mumbling among themselves, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, gesturing my way as they get to work.  My angels definitely don't sing and you almost never see them smiling.  I don't think this is because they aren't happy; they just aren't frivolous.  

These are no-shit, practical, hard-working angels.

The Literature Speaks Some More

"We reviewed our fears thoroughly.  We put them on paper, even though we had no resentment in connection with them."

"The minute I stopped fighting or arguing I could begin to see and feel."

 "We had not even prayed rightly. . . We had always said Grant me my wishes instead of Your will be done.  At no time had we asked what god's will was for us; instead we had been telling him what it ought to be.  It is when we try to make our will conform with god's that we begin 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.

Here are the preconceived notions that I have about life; namely, that it's all about loss and decline, when in reality it's all about acceptance and gratitude.

Some pain acceptance is going to be a good thing.  It's a fact of life that there is going to be decline - I've been experiencing it in a non-catastrophic way over the last twenty years.  Some decline is going to be inevitable.  Something is going to get me.

  
Gratitude
An extensive study was done where a group of people was asked to record their thoughts about gratitude while another group wrote down the stuff that annoyed them.  The results?  The group that kept a Gratitude List began to report a greater sense of optimism and well-being, and the effects actually began to show up in their blood pressure and heart rate and sleep patterns. The longer the gratitude people persisted at this exercise the the more pronounced the results.

One important caveat must be pointed out:  "It was not enough to be conscious of one's advantages; one had to be grateful for them.  Advantages alone - even awareness of them - weren't enough, perhaps because they can be lost.  Gratitude, on the other hand, was an affirmation that the world gave you things, and might continue to do so."

Happiness

Happiness shouldn't require effort on my part, and it should come as a kind of peace.  All I have to do is sit back and let it wash over me.  Life gives me what I need if I'm wise enough to see that.

Here's the strategy: spend my time and energy on the things that give me satisfaction, not lamenting those that I could once do - or experience - but now can't.  "Selective optimization with compensation:" make the most of what I have and compensate for what I've lost.

Happiness is not something to go out and seize.  Happiness is taking satisfaction in what is available right now, not hitching it to the future.  Too often my definition of happiness looks forward.  The future is tricky - the future might not come.

"I don’t understand happiness only as someone just always smiling and laughing.  It’s more like inner happiness, where you feel you have done everything right in your life, you haven’t made anybody unhappy.  You have a certain kind of peace and balance in yourself, and you are not anxious about what will happen the next minute or the next day.  You let it go and you don’t worry, and you lead a balanced life.  If you want the next moment where everything will be better, then you’d better do this moment right.  People often asked him if he was happy, he said, and his response was always the same: of course he was.

Live in the Moment

I won’t think about what I have to do - I'm just going to do it, hoping that’s what my fate is.  If I have any problems that emerge I'm going to try to leave them alone for now, let time work on it.  I shouldn’t dwell on anything that's problematic - I'm going to try to leave it alone and as time goes along see if it straightens out by itself.  I cannot deal with it, so you, god, now it’s your job.  You work on it and I'll do something else.  And usually they do it.  Trust—that’s what I advise if anyone asks.  You have to trust your higher power.”

It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.

Sense of Purpose
Those with a sense of purpose had deteriorated little in their memory scores even when the cellular damage in the brain was identical to those with dementia.

Becca R. Levy, a psychiatrist at Yale, has found striking correlations between people’s attitudes toward old age and how they fare in their later years, with effects starting as early as middle age.  In one study, those who had more positive views of old age, measured by how they answered the question, “When you think of old persons, what are your impressions?" tend to experience more happiness as they age.

Continuous Action V Sustained and Personal Exertion

Here are a few of the nicknames I've acquired over the years: Half-Measures Seaweed; Half-Ass Seaweed; Not-All-There Man; Doesn't Appear To Give A Shit Dude; etc., etc., etc.

I'd like to achieve great success while lying on the couch.  And a one day turnaround would be nice.  Maybe I can achieve great success while sleeping.  That would be really great.  I remember my first sponsor, tired of my incessant bitching, telling me to go home and wash down the kitchen walls.  "Just do something," he said.

I demurred, preferring talking about doing something to actually . . . you know . . . doing something.

Action:  Something done so as to accomplish a purpose; fast-paced activity.
Exertion: An expenditure of physical or mental effort.

Our literature's take on this?  Ah, not so much . . . 

"Like all the remaining Steps, Step 3 calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action, that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God . . . into our lives."

"Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of life can bring the much-desired result."

"More sobriety brought about by the admission of alcoholism and by attendance at a few meetings is very good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from permanent sobriety and a contented, useful life."

"All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will."

Hi Ho Hi Ho it's off to work I go.

Looking Closely

Inventory:  To take stock of the resources or items on hand.

"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."

I tell the story often of a friend of a friend whose sponsor would answer the phone and simply say: "It's not them - it's you" before hanging up.  I'm not sure that truer words were ever spoken.  I don't like to look at myself, preferring to poke and dig and pry at your shortcomings instead of look at my own. If you want to take a minor matter with a loved one and escalate it into something more catastrophic simply go on the offensive when your behavior is questioned: "Yeah, maybe I do that, but you . . . "  Those of us in long-term relationships know how often something big results from something small.

An elephant is a mouse built to an alcoholic's specifications.

The best defense is a big offense.

"The first thing apparent (once the inventory is begun) was that this world and it's people were often quite wrong.  To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got."

"Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not bee 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."

It's Not Them

News Flash: Alcoholics 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."

I'm telling you that is some no-shit straight talking.  It's not possible to misinterpret the intent of the phrase"total inability."  That is a clearly articulated sentiment even for for someone as argumentative and self-satisfied as me.

But wait!  Order now and we'll say the same thing in a slightly different way!

"We have not once (Ed. Note: 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 (Ed. Note: I can hear my dad yelling "You are totally useless!").  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." 

And, of course, nothing is ever my fault . . .   I can spot a defect in someone else at a thousand yards while ignoring a defect the size of a Buick afflicting my own personal self.  It's no wonder I have trouble in my relationships when I'm perpetually finding fault in everyone else.

"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."

And even if someone else is to blame . . . 

"Or if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change?"

Why, indeed.