The Last Chance Texaco

Got up this morning, padded to the kitchen, fired up the coffee maker and laid back down to ‘pray’ (that I’d be able to rouse myself when the pot was brewed). When the best part of waking up was ready to breathe life into me I got up and began to grope out the last pockets of slumber in front of the Early Show. My brain was still mushy and this curious story about how much time Americans spend stuck in traffic each year got stuck in the mushy front side of the diorama of absurdity that is my mind. We Americans, apparently, spend over one work week a year stuck in traffic. The cost of the fuel wasted in those hours each year would more than pay for all of the road repairs that need to be done in every state from sea to shining sea. The lost productivity is in the billions. America is profoundly stuck in traffic.I’ve heard 12 step recovery described as ‘the last house on the block.’ When we get there ‘all our score cards read zero.’ I’ve always thought of it as the Last Chance Texaco. Better gas up while you’re here because, if you’re like me, there is nothing but desolation as far as you can see. The only hope of making it to the other side is to get your tank good and full now! Lucky for us real alcoholics and addicts, the kind that 12 step recovery can actually save, at the Last Chance Texaco the gas is free.

Over and over in meetings you hear that ‘resentment is the number one offender.’ I’d like to be able to call bullshit of that, I suspect for me it is fear, but honestly I don’t know. Either way, we’re given tools for dealing with resentments and fears by doing the steps. We write them down. We look at what has troubled us. We share it with a trusted friend (a sponsor or someone else, a spiritual advisor). We look at our part in the situation. We ask our Creator to help us be willing and we set right our part with everyone that we’ve harmed with those resentments and fears. And somehow by doing that we are set free from the very things that have kept us trapped in hopelessness and helplessness.

Of course it’s not a requirement. It’s simply a suggestion. Those who stay sober permanently are usually men and women who have taken the suggestion and applied it to their lives. But here’s the thing; I’m at the Last Chance Texaco. There is nothing ahead as far as I can see and I don’t even know how to fucking pump gas, but my very life depends on tanking up on all the free fuel I can get. If I make it to the other side of the desert there is a new and wonderful life waiting for me but there is no guarantee that I’ll make it there even under favorable circumstances.

How much time am I willing to be stuck in traffic?