I realize, of course, that talking about gratitude on Thanksgiving Day is, at best, cliché. Oh well. Today is as good a day as any to set aside a bit of time to discuss the idea of gratitude. It is a mistake, I think, to think of gratitude as a state of being, or a feeling. Of course, it is those things, too, but gratitude is really something more than that. Gratitude is a habit of mind that, if cultivated, becomes a part of one’s character. Practicing gratitude helps us stay sober. Read the rest of this entry »
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After my surgery a couple of years ago, when I really didn’t feel like I could go on, my dad flew up from Las Vegas to take me out for lunch and let me know he loves me. I can never tell him too often how much that helped and how much I love him too.
Can you believe its been four years already? Four years from the last time I had the compulsion to use. Before that, in spite of my desire not to, the thought of living without crystal meth was impossible for me to imagine.
Like many others, I tried to get sober on a number of occasions before. I was actually introduced to AA when I was only 18. The longest I ever put together was just under 3 years. I think the only reason I even stayed dry that long was out of sheer terror and will power.
I guess if I am an example of anything it is that chronic relapsers can eventually get sober.
The real hurdle for me was the part that the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” that says we need to “fully concede to our innermost selves” that we are alcoholics and addicts. Those are heavy words. And like Chuck C. says, we are different cats. We can’t see until we can see and we can’t hear till we can hear. I couldn’t fully concede until there was no fight left in me at all.
This has been a hard year. There is no fight left in me at all in more areas of my life all the time, and if the truth is known, sometimes I just want to take a break from all of it; from meetings, from the people in them, from the steps, from service. But that never worked for me. It has taken me 27 years to put together 4 years sober, so obviously all the things I tried before this failed. This way seems to still be working.
Maybe if I keep doing it, someday I’ll actually feel like I have some kind of message to carry or be in better “spiritual condition,” but at the moment, I am simply grateful to still be sober.
Wow. Here we are 4 years after the day I first saw myself clearly enough, and was in enough pain, to do something about my addiction, and my life today bears almost no resemblance to the life I had before. I am still me, obviously, with all the same flaws and all the same quirks. I just don’t have to act on them the way I once did.
It has been close, though. The last week in particular has been difficult beyond my imagining. The climax was getting my mom “exiled to the hinterlands” (getting her on a plane headed for Minnesota to go to Hazelden) the day before I moved into my new house. I don’t remember having stress like I’ve had that week since I still used. My eye was twitching for a week.
After stalling and missing the first plane, mom finally arrived in Minneapolis just in time for the airport to be closed, and I got moved into my home without too much drama. Only the garage door opener broke and the oven stopped working.
I spent Saturday unpacking and when I was done I went to the supermarket to buy milk. In this new store one has to walk down the wine aisle to get to the dairy – and I have never wanted wine (and a cigarette if you please) more in four years than I did at that moment. Fortunately I know what to do now. And there were people there to be with me.
And like everything else, it passed, and it passed quickly.
Its good to be sober. Its really good to be sober.
Peace.
On November 29th, 2007 is was 10 months and some days sober and in training for a job at McDonald’s; a job which, it turns out, I was barely capable of doing, my brain still healing from the years and years of crystal meth I did.
Ultimately I wasn’t even able to keep that job. At nearly a year sober I was still so fried that I could barely do anything but focus on my recovery; pray, meditate, write, work with a sponsor, go to meetings, etc. I imagine that most other people’s stories aren’t like that, even the stories of isolated, gay crystal meth addicts. I fell down the scale much farther than was necessary for me to be able to see that I was an addict. I just didn’t have enough motivation to do anything about it. I had given up and I had no hope that it would ever be better, so why not just stay high.
I imagine that other people’s stories aren’t as extreme as mine, but for me, getting to the place where I could hold down a job was a big deal. After a year sober I was given a scooter, which helped me get to a better job and hold that.
At 2 years, I got a car. A really decent car. Probably the best car I’ve ever had, and certainly the safest and most economical.
That was almost exactly 2 years ago. In between I’ve held down the same job, maintained the same residence (with a roommate who is out of town 8 months a year), keep the same phone number, buy the business I worked for and manage to not drive it into the ground. It hasn’t made any money but it has given a decent living to all of us who work there and in this economy that is a minor miracle in itself.
I’m a little less than 2 months away from my 4th sobriety anniversary and a few days longer that 2 years after the purchase of my car, and I have been given the opportunity to buy a house. Of course I don’t qualify for the home loan on my own, but my parents are very fortunately situated so the financing is taken care of. Still, honestly, I didn’t believe I’d ever get to own a house.
It’s a cute little mid-century (1959) ranch with 3 bedrooms, one bath, oak floors, a fireplace, on a quarter acre with a stone, wood-burning BBQ, apple trees, plum trees, and roses everywhere. There are no repairs the house needs. It has been beautifully maintained.
The only thing I’ve really done perfectly is not drink or use. I have been awake whenever the idea that “this time will be different” would sneek into my mind and vigilantly dismiss the thought as insane. I have done the best I can with what is in front of me – much of the time. I have learned a ton, but never by doing it right the first time. I have made every possible mistake along the way.
I’m not suggesting at all that if you stay sober for 4 years you’ll get a house. I am saying that if you stay sober, if you actually fix your life, everything will change. And even though some things will suck, and some things will hurt, and some things will set you back, your life will change for the better.
I have strung together a few hundred ordinary days together sober now and they all start up pretty much the same, at pretty much the same time. I do pretty much the same things, usually in the same order. I often eat the same thing for breakfast. I feed the cats. On work days I leave the house anywhere between 6:30 and 7:30. I take the garbage out to the street on Friday mornings.
Last night I was out till nearly 12 and had hoped, when I went to bed around 1 that I would sleep in a couple of hours. That wasn’t the case. Just like every other day I found myself awake at 6, wishing today that I could go back to sleep. When I realized that wasn’t going to happen I drove to Starbucks and ordered a Venti sugar-free vanilla soy latte from they man with the beautiful shoulders and kind eyes, the one that hangs out at the drive-thru window to talk to me even when he has work to do. In spite of going to a meeting that is way past my bedtime and socializing far too long afterward, today started in a quietly beautiful and ordinary way.
Days in my old life never began quietly or beautifully. There was one in particular that I was remembering as I drove east into the sunrise from Starbucks to my house. I had a job at the mall and my shift started at 10 AM. I had been high for several consecutive days and was at the point where I was so tired that my body would just shut down even though I was high and trying to get higher. I’m not sure exactly what time I slipped into unconsciousness. When I awoke the clock read 9:30. I panicked. Most mornings began with panic but this one, even for me, was off the chart. I ran through the shower as quickly as I could, pulled on an un-ironed shirt and flew out the door. 9:52. I was going to be late, but not that late. Enough to get in trouble but not enough to get fired. I jumped in my car and went blasting west toward the freeway. I had just gotten on the freeway when I realized that the sun was coming up in the wrong direction.
My panic deepened. Was I half a day early or was I half a day late?
I guess if I got to have my way with it I would have gotten a little more sleep last night, but having things my way is nothing compared with having serenity and peace of mind.
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 »
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