July 2009

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The Age of Epiphany

July 23, 2009 in Brotherly Love, Early Recovery From Crystal Meth Addiction, Gratitude, promises by Chris | 6 comments

I have grown to really love reading Last Chance on the Stairway, a recovery blog written by a cat who’s “experience closely mirrors” my own; not just his experience in his addiction, but especially his experiences in the first part of recovery.  Every new experience is so amazing, and experiencing living again is so clear and so bright.  Over each obstacle lies a new epiphany – the sudden revelation of the Great Reality.  I really loved that time in my recovery, and I really love seeing others go through a similar experience.

“It gets more difficult every day to remember the feeling of how much pain I was in then. I remember the insanity of the actions I was taking at that time—how reclusive I had become, how sad, my fits of rage, crying on the interstate—but it gets more difficult to recall the feelings.,” he writes on the occasion of his 9 month milestone.  He’s right.  With effort, I can still recall the events, but the feelings are much dimmer.  I feel them again when I look back at posts from the first year, so I’m really, really grateful that I had the intuitive thought that I should spill my guts the way I did.  Without having done that I might easily lose many of the most valuable lessons I learned in that time.

In my first year sober I was hardly employable.  I had a really hard time keeping track of time.  To some extent I still do, but having my schedule as clear as it was in those months I had the chance to go to tons of meetings.  Tons of them.  I had the chance to see my sponsor virtually every day.  I had time to read the book and do step work and I was motivated to do this thing and as a result I felt connected to the program and to my HP in a profound way.

As I became able to take care of myself again, as I lost that time to a job and school, that ardent feeling of connection subsided somewhat.  We always say to each other when trouble comes, “this too shall pass.”  The truth is that even the good things pass, too.  The more I’ve missed it and tried to grab on to it again, the more I’ve tried to pull it tightly around me, the more elusive it has become.

Today I find I feel closer to it when I let it go somewhat; when I wear it “like a loose garment.”  I sense it’s power when I feel it brush my skin, and I feel it slip through my fingers when I try to grab onto it.  My sponsor is fond of saying that this isn’t a program of make-make-make, it’s a program of let-let-let.  I stand a better chance of letting myself experience serenity when I let myself shut off the television, let myself breathe, let myself have time, let myself be present.  I’ve realized that I can be as connected as I let myself be.

Today I let myself observe the journey of another addict, much like myself, and it brought me great joy.

Namaste

The Sell Out

July 22, 2009 in Perseverance by Chris | 5 comments

My friend Will says I should have had “representation.”  He says that ” one man’s dishonest and sleezy is another man’s brilliant internet business model.  But when twitter contacted me because TEXACO wanted to use their own name for their twitter account, even though I was not violating the terms of service, the idea of keeping the user name didn’t cross my mind and asking for the kind of money I imagine I could have got seemed, well, dishonest and sleezy.  I did ask for a t-shirt, which twitter tells me they are more than happy to oblige.  Actually, twitter said “they’re happy to send you a shirt and some other stuff (I’m not exactly sure what) since you’re such a big fan :) ”  There is a twitter t-shirt on it’s way, too, so I should have enough free logo wear to get me through the summer, huh?

It has me thinking about the ways that I sell out, though.  My job is the big obvious thing.  In spite of having had my hours cut pretty significantly over what they were prior to my illness and surgery, I’m still making enough to live, and because my hourly rate is so high the likelihood of finding other employment that paid more is virtually zero.  The job wouldn’t be so bad if I had any ability to concentrate on what I’m doing but I’m still so scattered that I find anything that requires me to pay attention almost impossible.  Technically I’m on the clock right now, which, if I practice a more perfect honesty, equates with stealing from my employer.

I sell out in my romantic life by exhibiting a practiced indifference to anyone who lives anywhere near me.  Put them 1000 miles away and they become much more fascinating.  That way I don’t have to lose the weight that I put on since my surgery or the weight I put on when I got sober.  I just have to still be able to get into my fat jeans and I can easily do that on 3300 calories a day.  I deny myself nothing.

Lately, too, I sold out the idea of being a non-smoker.  After 100 days off cigarettes, 60 of them recovering from lung surgery, I picked up cigarettes again and I haven’t found the courage to put them back down.  I allow this to continue by a subtle insanity; telling myself that I don’t need to beat myself up about this right now.  Again, I can see that it is really a strategy to keep myself from doing the hard thing.  I never want to do the hard thing.

There is this show on MTV called “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” where these totally nice girls are dating these total douchbags and I look at these guys and wonder, if they have girlfriends, why I don’t have a boyfriend.  The answer really is that I don’t pursue much and I would never tolerate being treated like these girls tolerate being treated.  I’m not in a relationship because I won’t put up with anything.  I sold out having a relationship so that I wouldn’t have to put up with anything and I wouldn’t have to change.

I am assured by the basic text and by my sponsor that everything is just the way it should be, but that if I want something different I need to change what I am putting in to the equation; I need to not sell out and not sell short.  I need to find more of what is good in me to give; to my employer, to my friendships and to other addicts.  That’s the point where I really melt down though.  What could I possibly have to give?  I’m like nobody.  Nothing.

At this particular moment I’m going to just allow the idea that one doesn’t come back from what I experienced quickly, and while bodily I am much, much better than I was even two weeks ago, perhaps mentally and spiritually I may have a ways to go.

I have to allow that idea.  If I linger too long on the memory of the time in early recovery when everything was new and every experience was revelation, it becomes very easy for me to think that I’ve lost something, that I’ve steered wrong someplace and that I’m irretrievably lost.  I am sober though, I still go to meetings.  I still work with a sponsor, so I don’t think it can be true that I’ve gotten myself someplace from which I cannot return.

twitter

July 20, 2009 in Ephemera by Chris | 6 comments

Crystal Taylor <crystal@twitter.com> to outofgas@thelastchancetexaco.com
6:23pm
Head of User Support
Hello,

We’ve recently been contacted by the trademark owners of Texaco, who’d like to get started with a Twitter account.  Although your account is not violating our TOS, we do state that we like to help businesses reclaim user names when possible.  Would you be willing to give up the user name in exchange for a Twitter shirt?  If so, great!  If not, that’s fine too, just thought it was worth asking.
Thanks!
Crystal
Now, even though I’ve adopted the Star of the American Road as my personal insignia, I really LOVE being bribed.  LOVE IT!!  I hope my reply wasn’t too snotty.
to Crystal Taylor <crystal@twitter.com>

6:37pm
I want a Texaco t shirt, too. Size extra large – mens. I’m a big fan of their logo and their tag line – as a sort of spiritual truth. You can tell them that. You can also tell them that there are woefully few Texaco stations in Idaho, where I live, but one of them, at Mack’s Inn, Idaho, shares a name with my blog and a song by Rikki Lee Jones – thelastchancetexaco.com.

So yeah, if they can send along some cool stuff with red stars on it I’m thrilled to hand the name back.

Best wishes,

Chris

A Speedy Reply

July 17, 2009 in Perseverance, Resentment, Roommates by Chris | 7 comments

Downtown_BoiseTo say that things at home have been tense is something of an understatement.  One of the roommates has some pretty execrable behavior involving other people that I have grown very tired of.  To paraphrase Elvis, a little less drama and a little more action, seem to be in order, yet there is very little hope of that happening.  I got dragged into the drama the other day and I feel I am owed an apology, and there is less hope of that.

My friend Nikki had assured me of the power of prayer and shared a recent experience with asking for divine help and receiving it.  As I sat on my front porch in the morning a couple of days ago I thought of what Nikki told me and thought perhaps I’d try it again.  I thought I’d ask for guidance in this situation.  I came inside, logged on to facebook and there was an email from a friend, sent to a good number of people, looking for a new roommate, fast.

Miss Marie lives in a very charming, newer house, not far away, with her 2 cats, and as she works in Los Angeles for months at a time, she needs someone whom she trusts her home and her cats to. I immediately sent an email.  “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”

I know Miss Marie through a mutual friend who has seen me through the worst of my addiction and through all of my recovery so I know she has had access to the unvarnished truth about me, but to be sure I shared the information that could give a sensible person pause.  Knowing all that, she didn’t hesitate for a moment.  She thought, as did I, that it would do both of us good.

My probation officer didn’t hesitate either, which is good news.  Miss Marie’s job starts back up the first week of August and I’ll be moving in on the 1st.  We’ll have a couple of days together for me to learn the routine and then I’ll have a few weeks of utter peace.  It is an extraordinary balance of accountability to another, which I find very motivating, and solitude, which I also treasure.

And all placed in my path 5 minutes after praying for guidance in the living situation.

Though I have no conception of “Higher Power” beyond “bigger than I can understand,” perhaps I’d do well to pray more.

How to Make a Motorcycle

July 12, 2009 in Faith, Humility, Spirituality by Chris | 6 comments

When I was 12 I lived around the corner from Kris. He was the most naturally athletic kid I’ve ever met. He was fantastic looking.  He had 3 older brothers and they all had ‘toys’ – motorized toys.  Dirt bikes and snowmobiles and ATVs.  He was fearless and he was cool and I was intensely jealous of him, not that I would ever have admitted it.  I was too busy trying to be his friend.

When Kris was finished with it I took over his newspaper route.  When he stopped mowing our neighbor’s lawns to take over mowing the lawn of the church we lived next to, I started mowing them.  He shoveled half the sidewalks in our neighborhood with a snow blower.  I shoveled the rest of them by hand.  I bought HASH jeans and listened to Elton John to be more like him.

The summer between 6th and 7th grades my father rented a rototiller to till our garden and afterward he offered me the use of it, along with the vacant lot he owned next door to our house.  I took it and tilled the hard, dry patch.  I removed huge lava rock.  I turned in compost.  I plowed the patch into rows and I planted corn and squash.  All summer long I hoed and weeded and watered and waited.  Every day I tended my little farm.  By the end of summer I was selling corn, three ears for a dollar, out of a wheelbarrow in my neighborhood.

Honda CB125 SSBy the end of the summer I bought myself my first dirt bike, a little 125cc Honda.  It didn’t really matter that it was Kris’s old dirt bike.  It was new to me.  It was MY motorcycle.  I EARNED it, and I loved it.  The fact that Kris had a brand new bike didn’t even enter into my consciousness.  I have always been, I think justifiably, proud of that accomplishment.

If I am completely honest, though, I have to admit that I did not create that motorcycle on my own.  My effort was absolutely necessary, but my effort alone didn’t put money in the bank to buy that bike.  At the beginning I was given the tools  to accomplish that.  I was given a little patch of land and I was given the use of the tiller.  What I did with it was entirely up to me.

Even beyond my effort and the tools there was an underlying force I had to cooperate with, the force that germinates seeds and produces fruit; a force that can be described, but when examined to it’s origin is mysterious and miraculous.  In the end, while my effort was essential, it had very little to do with what was produced.  My input had less to do with the result than any other input and yet I feel justified in being proud of my input and I enjoyed the product like it was mine alone.  How much more might I have enjoyed it if I had humbly acknowledged that what I got was the product of a gift; if I had been more grateful?

I mention that because with all the difficulty I’ve put myself through over belief and faith, I have really been living in the insane idea that the important ingredient in my recovery is what I have put into it.  I have ignored the tools that were given to me and denied the power that makes it work.  It is as ridiculous of me to believe that I got myself sober and keep myself sober as it is for me to believe that I got that dirt bike on my own.

So, while I still don’t have any kind of “conception” of a Higher Power, I acknowledge that some power seems to exist; I don’t know what it is but I can describe how I experience it.  I also acknowledge that the tools are a gift; that in the final analysis, while my effort is essential, and while I think I am justifiably proud of what I put in to it, there are other forces at work that are also essential to my continued recovery.  My recovery would not be possible without the gift of the program and without whatever power it is that saves addicts like me from the hopeless condition I lived in before I got sober.  I am still proud of the effort I’ve put into it.  But I didn’t do it on my own.

Ignostic

July 6, 2009 in Faith by Chris | 3 comments

What then, brethren, shall we say of God? For if thou hast been able to understand what thou wouldest say, it is not God. If thou hast been able to comprehend it, thou hast comprehended something else instead of God. If thou hast been able to comprehend him as thou thinkest, by so thinking thou hast deceived thyself. This then is not God, if thou hast comprehended it; but if this be God, thou has not comprehended it.

-St. Augustine

The Scarlet Letter

July 2, 2009 in Faith, Honesty, Hope, Willingness by Chris | 19 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. )

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