The Last Chance Texaco

Archive for the ‘Gratitude’ Category

I have been sober now for three years, six months, and thirteen days.  Not very long at all but long enough; long enough to forget.  It’s funny how easy it is to recall my moment of clarity and to recall the early days of my recovery.  I recall the events well enough.  I can recall what I thought.  I can recall the names of the emotions I felt, but honestly it has been so long ago I cannot recall, or rather re-experience those emotions.

Part of the reason I do the particular kinds of service work I do is that it gives me the opportunity to see others in a state similar to mine all those days ago.  It does not replace the gut wrenching pain I was in or the terror I felt when I could finally see that things were never going to be different.  I do not re-feel the hope I suddenly felt.  I get to see it in others though.  I get to see it in others and that helps me remember, at least mentally, what got me here and why I keep doing this.  I realize, intellectualy of course, that the process of taking the steps is an experiential learning process, and having had the experience I tend to re-experience that process intellectually.

There are rare occasions however when I am swept over with a great wave of emotion, by a profound wonder and gratitude that I have been graced with sobriety.  There are very rare times that when sharing in a meeting I have to pause before I regain the ability to speak, and when my eyes well up with tears.  Sometimes, some beautiful and breathtaking times, these feelings are so overwhelming that I weep.

I was thinking just the other day how seldom that happens anymore, twelve-hundred-odd days away from the turning point.  Then without any warning I’m hit with a great tsunami of emotion and I remember with every cell in my body, with every synapse of my nervous system, with every corner of my sometimes dimming spirit, how wondrous and how miraculous it is that I’m sober today.

For whatever reason, Day 1290 is one of those great days.

It’s occurred to me a couple of times recently that as a class, we addicts are often born with an unusual capacity to love and very little facility for it.  ”We couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people,” could well be understood as, “We couldn’t seem to express our love to other people.”  The love I felt, the love I wanted to share with those closest to me, was just another conviction I couldn’t live up to, even though I wanted to.   I knew it was there.  I knew I was trying to share it.  Yet I knew something was wrong because all I ever seemed to get in return was hurt. Read the rest of this entry »

I arrived home Saturday night, slept most of the day on Sunday and I’m still tired.  Overall I had a wonderful time though.  There was a little tension with one of my travel companions who I found to be astonishingly self-centered, but I’m sure I played a part in that.  Managed, in the end, to discuss all that openly and reach some compromise and peace.

I called my sponsor from the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco Read the rest of this entry »

I never would have thought I’d have an opportunity like this again.  The end of my drug use, and even for the most part the first 3 years I’ve been sober, have been pretty uninteresting and I have actually become pretty resistant to change.  Variation kind of freaks me out.  I feel so secure in my little rut.  This week though, I’ve had to travel to the Central Valley of California to a huge farm show for work, something outside of my usual comfort zone, and I’ve been happily expanding my vistas.

It turned out that the city we are staying in is 3 short hours from Yosemite Valley – my favorite place on earth – and somewhere I didn’t think I’d have the opportunity to see in the foreseeable future.  But as I was planning the trip I happened to notice how close it was and that we had an unscheduled 10 hours.  How could I resist.  I also decided that considering how hard we’re working and the fact that I won’t have a real day off at home in well over a week that the least the company could do is buy me lunch.  At one of my favorite restaurants.  At the Ahwahnee Hotel.  Four courses of glorious, glorious food in the most beautiful dining room with the most extraordinary view in America. Read the rest of this entry »

My sobriety anniversary is very important to me and it’s coming up here soon, but it doesn’t quite move me the same way December 13th does.  December 13th, today, happens also to be my birthday, but my God, I’m 44 years old.  My “birthday” is not really a big deal anymore.  No, the anniversary I celebrate tonight, the reason this day is important to me, is that on this night, three years ago, I suddenly saw myself clearly and suddenly had a little hope that recovery would be possible.

The first two years were easy.  This last one has been a bitch.  There have been times recently when I have wished that I had died back in May.  It would have been so much easier.  I’ve even, at times, tried to tell myself that if that illness had killed me that I would be a hero.  I would have died sober.  I would have died doing the things that I was supposed to be doing.  My family and friends would mourn me, sure, but there would be something happy underneath the sorrow; the knowledge that they had known me and that in my last years I had been sober.

Lately things have been much, much harder.  I’ve had to return to being medicated to stop the insanity that has been going through my mind.  The medicines are working, so that is good, but I still have a ton of stuff to face.

Somehow, in spite of everything, I have remained sober.  In fact I’ve been sober longer now than I have ever been since I was 14 years old and I attribute it to that moment at the corner of 6th and Pueblo, under the street lamp, in the snow, when I finally understood that the pain I was in then was the very best that I could hope for, unless I got sober, and when I suddenly believed that it would be possible.

” God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.  Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will.  Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love and Thy Way of Life.  May I do Thy will always.  Amen”

“I wish I was smarter.  I wish I was stronger.”   Patty Griffin

It brings me no comfort knowing I’m in a position I’ve been in before; hopeless, out of answers, hurting and not knowing why.  And I am frightened to find that at nearly three years sober, the longest I have been sober since I was 14 years old, my brain is up to the same old tricks that have always ended every period of sobriety I’ve ever reached for in the past.  I recognized that whatever was wrong was seriously wrong when I was sitting in the airport in Phoenix, coming home from another failed attempt to find love, and I found myself crying, listening to the Carpenters and googling “what’s the best way to kill yourself?“

I don’t need a reason to die, I thought.  I need a reason to live.  I have all the reasons to die I need.  The recovery in me kept arguing, “this isn’t normal.  You need help, kid.  What about your family?  What about your friends?  Do you have any idea what this would do to them?”

“Yeah,” I replied inside my head.  “They’ll get over it.” Read the rest of this entry »

I was thinking about an old post last night, Nothing You Can Find That Cannot Be Found, and about how lucky I was, that early in recovery, to have been protected from the worst of my temptations.  A little space for a little while can be a good thing while you’re getting your sober legs.  I was thinking about it because Daryl, who used to sell me drugs, and who has been in prison as much of his adult life as not, walked in to my home group last night.  It alarmed me a little, I suppose.  He’s not the nicest guy.  I was just thinking though that if he or any number of other people had been around at the beginning or if for some reason I found myself with crystal meth sitting in front of me, how hard it would have been to stay sober.

When I came to work this morning I found a loaded glass pipe on the side of the building.  I wonder at what point in my recovery the obsession and compulsion left me; at what point I became well enough to be confronted with a supply of crystal meth and to respond by throwing it in the trash.

“There’s nothing you can find that cannot be found,” goes the song.  I’ve found crystal meth on the street now.  I also found a way to not have to use it.

I can’t believe it. Day 1000 passed without my noticing it. I was in Las Vegas at the time visiting my mom and dad. I spent the day hanging out with them, my great-uncle and his new wife and daughter, my aunt and two of my cousins. Watched some football. Took a nap. I didn’t even notice that the un-official milestone had passed.

It’s so strange. In the first 90 days there wasn’t a day that passed without me knowing exactly how long it had been. Even as recently as day 500 I would as often as not be aware of the time. It is the addictive process in reverse. Being sober becomes your “normal.” Day by day another little piece of the old way of being falls away.

While I was in Las Vegas I went on one of the “thrill rides” at the top of the Stratosphere Hotel – the Big Shot. When you’re on the ride it seems longer than it really is. Much longer. Especially the falling part. For a good part of the time you are falling at the speed of gravity so you get this eerie weightless feeling; this amazing kind of ‘powerless.’

It’s probably not surprising that the first real using dream I’ve ever had in the last 1005 days was that night. That night and the next I actually had a hard time falling asleep. I couldn’t get past the part at the beginning of falling asleep that feels a little bit like falling. That all seems to have resolved itself though. Anyway – the ride is worth doing. Once. Take that off my bucket list now.