The Scarlet Letter

July 2, 2009 in Faith, Honesty, Hope, Willingness by Chris | 8 comments

A.

Atheist.

Two and a half years sober and I find myself so fucked off about the conception of god that I got sober with that I can’t live joyfully. In all likelihood I just haven’t given myself enough time to heal or something but at the moment it seems like the “power” that got me sober was an episode of magical thinking from which I have been medically released.

I’m two months out of surgery and I’m still in so much pain that I think I need to go back to the doctor. I’ve tried taking a friend’s Neurontin and it had no effect on the pain.

If there is no god then I must have had the power to get sober all along. I must not have known how to access or use that power but it must have always been there.

My sponsor suggested that I go to as many meetings in a row as I am able to until I believe again and I’ve been doing that – 2 or 3 meetings a day. All I really hear is some really soft thinking and bad logic.

Oddly, none of that means that I think that AA doesn’t work. It obviously worked for me, and I don’t think that not believing in god anymore should be too much of a hindrance. There are all kinds of higher powers I believe in. One of those is that groups can accomplish more than individuals.

I’m just tired of feeling like I’m supposed to believe in god to stay sober and tired of trying to make the magical thinking return.

(I just watched a TV commercial where the governor of Idaho said that meth “leaves a tattoo on your brain.” Seriously. )

Signs and Highways

June 25, 2009 in Willingness by Chris | 2 comments

“You’re out there walking down the highway and all of the signs have been blown away.  Sometimes you wonder if you’re walking in the wrong direction.”  -Patty Griffin

Someone else’s experience and writing are much better than my own this morning so I’m sharing an email.

“did you ever see “planes, trains & automobiles?” the scene where candy & martin are driving down the highway and the woman is screaming “You’re going the wrong way!” and they look at each other and say “How does she know where we’re going?” and laugh – my favorite nearly of all time.

not meaning to make light of your journey. surety is so attractive, eh? not ever having to question anything, totally believe. of course they pulled down all of the signs – you don’t need signs when you have surety.

i grew up in a different version of surety world. no signs, no different, no questions. just lots and lots of answers. unfortunately they were to questions i wasn’t asking. but the surety sure felt safe because we were the ones with THE TRUTH, we were the ones who were RIGHT – i’ve come in contact with so many of those who loved me back then, and when they find out that i no longer think surety is the best answer they drop me like a hot potato. as long as they think they can influence me back into the camp they continue to proselytize me, but once i let them know that surety isn’t my religion of choice anymore they move on to the next.

not meaning to read my story into yours – i just heard the words you wrote in my own story and realized that no, most of those people don’t really know where i’m going either. i don’t want their small angry god or their exclusive club that leaves out so many – even if i can wrap myself in the blanket of their faith again and feel all warm, snugly and like i don’t have to think any more.”

My clan accepts me no matter what.  They share their world with me no matter what, but they would dearly love for me to return to the fold.  The invitations are few and carefully chosen, but the intent is the same.  I’m grateful that they accept me no matter what.  Helps me forget how angry I am with their church.

A Sinner Among the Saints

June 23, 2009 in Acceptance, Faith, Integrity, Resentment, Spirituality by Chris | 6 comments

It is so strange, and so strange that it is comforting to be again in the company of my family and among people who share my religious heritage. The Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons) take a very dim view of homosexuality and of drug addiction. Now that the addiction part is under control, and now that my father and I have both worked very hard to heal our relationship, I’m a part of this gigantic clan again.

I have a cousin, Nicholas, who I’ve hung out with a little bit, who only ever knew my name before, not my face, and he knew that my name was always attached to trouble or heartache. “THAT Cousin Chris” is what he calls me. The younger ones figure out who I am and their eyes widen briefly. The little kids, and there are a dozen of them, all think I’m great. I think I’m just better adapted to talk to little children.

Another cousin of mine, Nate, was 6 years old when I effectively left the family. Now he’s a giant man with several children of his own, a wonderful wife, and a really cool job in Washington D. C. that affords him a ringside view of our government. (He really likes Barney Frank, whom he knows personally, and he also really likes Larry Craig, whom he knows personally, and wishes Larry would “just come out already.”) We are polar opposites, politically, but because he came by his beliefs through work and reason (as opposed to being brainwashed by talk radio and Fox News) we are actually closer than one might imagine, and honestly I think he’s really cool.

Being around these people, being in this environment, is so comfortable, and I’m only slightly ill at ease with that. I have some anger about what the LDS church has done to my tribe. I’m even more angry that members of my own family share the political view that prompted church members in Utah (mostly) to pump $40 million into California to pass Proposition 8. I don’t understand how people who love me, who claim to want the best for me, could possibly believe that a world where inequality is the law is morally right. I don’t want to be married in their temple. I am happy to live in a country where they are permitted to practice the religion of their conscience, and I believe in protecting freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is one of the civil rights that our country is built on. Equal protection under the law is another of the ideas that our country is supposed to be built on and until I am truly offered equal protection I will not really be one of them – one among my own people.

So I’m part of our family – but not a full part. Here, in this place I love, among people I love, I am considered to be an inferior.

I’m no closer to coming to believe that “a power greater than myself” is appropriate to turn my “will and life” over to the care of. I still think that “Higher Power” is an unconscious, impersonal, greater good –indifferent to my personal circumstance–the law of cause and effect if you will; cause and effect in a system too large for me to grasp. Perhaps if I were omniscient I could understand all of what has happened and what continues to happen. At the moment the power, I think, resides with me and within the group, and in my relationship with my sponsor. I refuse to concede that the Higher Power resides with and favors the saints and not the sinners –no matter what they believe.

Reunion

June 18, 2009 in Perseverance, Spirituality by Chris | 4 comments

It’s been almost 2 years since we were all together.  Grandma’s funeral doesn’t count, but 2 years ago my entire clan got together for a reunion (you can read about here) and we’ll be together again in a couple of days.  For the first time in decades I’ll actually get to SEE my father on Father’s Day.

The place we’re going to is right next to (what my sponsor says is) a great rehab, the Cirque Lodge. Considering my current state I’m not sure that my time wouldn’t be better spent there.  I’m sober.  I haven’t relapsed.  But the people that I’ve talked to assure me that it’s okay that I feel fucked up in the head considering what I’ve been through and the medication that was required.  I’m long off the opiates but my brain still isn’t working right.

Then there is the whole God issue. I went on a “mission” to Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of “Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be” and I think I’m gaining a little bit of peace with the whole “why me?” mind-fuck I’ve been trapped in.  Healing physically certainly is helping, too, and even there I’m FAR from back to normal.

My ribs feel squishy.  They ache.  I get shooting pains and flames in my incisions.  Breathing is still hard; deep breaths. I can’t even describe what that’s like, to take in a deep breath and have half my body feel normal and the other half feel like it’s a different size on the inside.

Maybe being reunited with my father will prompt a little more shift in being reunited with my sense of conscious contact with my HP.  Maybe the scenery will help. Maybe the suggestions in Lama Surya Das’s book will help me let the flame back in.  Maybe I’ll return to my spiritual roots and become an active Mormon again.  I doubt it, but it could happen.

All I know is that as long as I stay sober there is hope that things will get better.  For right now that’s good enough.

A Poor Connection

June 9, 2009 in Spirituality by Chris | 10 comments

Since even before I got sick I felt like I was suffering from a poor connection with HP.  Looking back, it appears that I’ve been running on self will for some time, but I’ve been sober so something must be going OK.  I think.  Anyway, illness has left “that which is lacking” in in even worse shape than it was before, leading me to feel like God is unconscious; that God NEEDS us in order to have conscious experience.  Making God unconscious is easier to accept than the idea that I’m “right where I need to be.”  And if I’m right where I need to be does that include questioning the spiritual stuff from scratch?

I talked to a couple of other people about it, people who had profound spiritual awakening and then lost it, and they’ve told me things like “you can’t be enlightened all the time” or “I got my connection back, but it was never the same again.  It never had the same kind of power.”  That frightens me.  I want so much to have that great fire kind of experience return and I fear that it won’t.  I feel disconnected.  I feel apart from God.

When I got to the program I was agnostic.  Today I feel atheistic, and I don’t like it.  Wishing for the end is easy when there isn’t a greater purpose.  I’m not at that place, emotionally, the place of “wishing for the end”, but I can still see it from where I am, and I don’t like that either.

I haven’t been able to persuade myself to pray to a God I don’t know if I believe in, and I still don’t have enough of an attention span to meditate (or write) effectively.  Perhaps the “effectively” part doesn’t matter so much as making the effort matters.  I should be open-minded enough to try, but I don’t, or haven’t yet.

Is this just part and parcel of being ill or did I break something that I’ll never get back?

You do NOT want to see this . . .

June 8, 2009 in Acceptance by Chris | 5 comments

I’m healing – slowly . . . .

I actually went to work today and stayed for almost 4 hours before the edges of my incisions lit on fire and I had to get home and lie down to take the pressure off them.  Even though the big incision is on my back most of the pain is in the front.  On my skin.  The skin on my back is basically numb, like there are dead areas.  I keep over doing things and having to back off again but all in all I guess I’m getting better.  I can drive and I can get myself to meetings so I’m pretty sure things will be OK.

It’ll be just like starting over.

May 28, 2009 in Hope, Humility by Chris | 8 comments

Nobody told me that, and honestly, I’m not sure I would have been able to hear them if they did, but man-o-man it is an important thing to realize.  That’s  my experience anyway.

You see, this isn’t my first rodeo.  I had over 2 years sobriety on another occasion and I suffered a major illness.  I had meningitis.  I spent several days in the hospital on serious painkillers.  I went home with more of them, and when they weren’t really cutting it for me anymore I reached out for the chemical that was always my first love – crystal meth.  I persued that relapse for another 4 years.

This time the pain has been much worse.  The surgery I had was pretty invasive.  It’s been 21 days already and I still can’t drive or lift anything.  One more week they tell me.  And this time coming down from the painkillers was much worse.  I was not prepared in any way for what was going to follow; the feelings of wothlessness, hopelessness, loneliness, and helplessness.

Somehow in this experience I remembered that everything I was feeling was what I was feeling at the very begining of my sobriety.

Never mind the physical pain, that’s how emotionally painful this has been; exactly like the very beginning of my recovery.

This time, except for the fact that I’ve been grounded and couldn’t go out looking for help, I did the same things I did when I first got sober.  I called people and asked for help.  I have made a ton of friends in 12 step recovery, and a very special handful of those people have kept my phone turned on, kept food in my fridge, helped me with laundry, come over to be with me as I relearn to master skills like walking around the block.  I’ve been lucky enough to have a dozen people show up at my house to bring me a meeting because they knew I couldn’t get out to or sit through one.

Little by little and day by day I’ve been getting better and stronger.  Little by little the pain is going away.  But in great and wonderful ways I have regained hope that when I remain willing to do what must be done to recover, that I will continue to recover.  When I am willing to be honest with the people that love me about what is going on with me and humble enough to receive their help, things get better, and they get better fast.

I wish I had known, as I was checking in to the hospital, what the emotional price was going to be.  I wish I had known that it would be just like starting over.  I don’t know.  Maybe someone has said it in a meeting before and I just didn’t hear it or get it.  So that’s what I wanted to share: life can be really hard and there are things that come down the pike that are going to make you feel like you felt right before or right after you got sober.  What has really helped me was remembering the things that I did back then and DOING THAT.  Asking for help and recieving help and talking about my fears and my hopelessness and listening to other people share how grateful they have been for my help in the past and how happy they are to be able to help me has returned me to a state of faith and hope.

What Could I Possibly Be Grateful For?

May 26, 2009 in Gratitude by Chris | 3 comments

Well, I’ll tell you what, I’d better darn well figure it out because the bottomless well of self-pity that life has been as I’ve been detoxing off the days and days I spent on morphine and as I try to heal will kill me unless I change my glasses and look at what I’m grateful for.

  1. Tonight 10 people I know from the program loved me enough to come over to my house and bring a meeting to me.  I haven’t been able to get out to one in like 3 weeks.   I’ve tried recently, but folding chairs kill me and I’m not that strong yet.
  2. My dad came up from Las Vegas for the afternoon and let me cry on his shoulder and helped me regain some perspective, told me that when my brother-in-law, the doctor, first saw the x-ray and I was going into surgery how afraid they were that they were going to lose me and how my family, scattered across the country, cared enough to pray for me.
  3. That I’ve somehow found myself surrounded by people, near and far, who have placed me in their prayers as well, and who are open to seeing opportunities and answers in the world around them (especially you, Bobbie).
  4. I can walk around 3 blocks today and I could only walk around 1 block 4 days ago.
  5. I was reminded how much I am now like the day I came through the doors of the program – and how much being willing to do whatever needs to be done will work for me again.
  6. I will for sure be able to use this experience to show others how my Higher Power carried me through yet another situation I couldn’t have handled on my own.  The last time I had 2 years sober I got meningitis and after a similar time in the hospital on similar painkillers I relapsed into active crystal meth use.  This time I was willing to ask for help.
  7. I do not have cancer.
  8. I do not have emphysema.
  9. I do not have HIV.
  10. I may not have health insurance, and I may be paying off the $40K bill for this for a long time, but I got the care I needed when I needed it.  There are countries where this might have only cost me a few hundred dollars, but there are also countries where I would not have lived through this.
  11. People have cared enough to keep my phone turned on, my car payment made, food in my fridge, and been available to walk around the blocks with me (just in case).
  12. It is taking longer to get better than I would have ever guessed, but I am finally able to tell that I AM getting better.

There – it’s a short list, but it’s a start.

This Too Shall Pass

May 24, 2009 in Willingness by Chris | 4 comments

But until it does I cry myself to sleep every night. (This too shall pass.) In the daytime and around people I pretend everything is okay – that I’m getting better; and I suppose I am, but I did not expect to be this sick for this long. I did not expect that all I could accomplish in a day would be to walk around a couple of blocks and take a shower, take a nap, and watch a movie. I had to give up Stella and I don’t actually miss her but I miss Gracie like I can’t believe.

I’ve managed to avoid the pain-killers entirely for the last couple of days, but that has just meant that I’m in more pain. (This too shall pass.)

Dumb Reason to Stop

May 23, 2009 in early recovery from smoking by Chris | 4 comments

I’ve gone on here this long – why quit now.  I’ve changed my mind.  I do have somewhere anonymous to write now but . . . .  this place still has meaning to me.

Wishing I Was Dead

At 40 days off cigarettes my back and ribs hurt me so much that I couldn’t move and for some reason I decided that I needed to see a chiropractor.  So I went to see one, had an exam, took a ton of x-rays, got an adjustment and was told to ice my ribs and come back the following Monday.

Well, that night I couldn’t get out of a chair I sat down in.  I tried to lie on the floor thinking it might help and instead it made things worse.  I called my mom and asked if she had anything really good for pain and I made it through the weekend with Norco and Valium.  Monday my sponsor took me to a real MD – and a few x-rays later he shot me up with antibiotics, wrote a scrip for others, along with another scrip for Norco, and sent me across the street to a radiology lab where I had a CT scan on my 40 day smoke free lungs.

It was too late in the day to get the darn thing read so I had to return the following morning for the results.  When I did I was given clear instructions that they were waiting for me in Admitting at St. Lukes Regional Medical Center.

At the very least I had pneumonia – and they presumed PCP.  Oddly I’m still HIV-.   I assumed they would wheel me into a room and throw a gown on me and an IV and I’d be done in a few days.  Instead, the next thing I remember I was in recovery from surgery and had tubes sticking out of my side along with some sort of pump that was keeping my lung inflated.  I don’t remember being in any pain as I was attached to a bottle of morphine.

The fluid wasn’t coming out fast enough I suppose, because after 2 days of that I signed something and woke up several hours later in ICU with a 14″ incision across my back and bruising across most of my ribs, front and back, and the information that parts of me had to be removed. I want to sue that fucking chiropractor who looked at chest x-rays of me from 3 days before and didn’t send me to a real doctor.

I am out of the hospital now for several days but I am in so much pain that I can hardly describe it to you.  I’ve also gotten the first hospital bill – not the surgoen or anything else mind you – and it looks like  the hospital stay alone was over $23.000 – and I feel like I want to die.

This doesn’t seem right.

I son’t be able to even drive – like to go to work – for at least 2 more weeks according to the orders.  I live paycheck to paycheck (mostly) and I haven’t had one in 3 weeks now and have had to rely on family and friends for groceries and telephone service . . . .

I’m trying to remind myself that “this too shall pass”.  At the moment though, honestly, I wish I would have died.  The longer ago the better.

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