It should have become clear to me a long time ago. Perhaps it was and I simply hadn’t the willingness to do something about it, but it is clear now that I can benefit from therapy. I don’t think I’ll make any significant gains in becoming happy without professional help. So in addition to starting medication, I’ve started counseling. Read the rest of this entry »
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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.
They’re out. They’re back in. They’re out. They’re back in.
It’s exhausting. I’m afraid I have a growing prejudice against those that seem to want it but aren’t willing to ride out the discomfort in order to achieve long term sobriety. Not that I can claim anything like long term sobriety for myself yet, but at 3 months shy of three years clean, I think I may be on the right track. I have definitely endured the first difficult days and not had to go back.
The Cheerleader went out the night I thought he was doing so well. He claims to be back in. I haven’t talked to him. This is the third time he’s done this and I don’t really know how much I want to keep being hopeful for someone, only to be let down. Again.
The Farmer’s Daughter did a tour through a psych hospital after a couple of rounds of vodka and an attempted suicide by insulin. She is now at the Betty Ford Center. Truth be told, I’m jealous. I’d love to go back to treatment for three months. In many ways the 28 days I spent in treatment were the happiest days of my life. You can do an amazing amount of growing in treatment that is very difficult to do when “worldly clamors” distract you from full time healing.
Dr. Silkworth is rightly points out in a Grapevine article from January, 1947, that, “There is nothing “screwy about it at all. The patient didn’t follow directions.” Which makes me wonder if they are the kind of patients that were unable to follow the directions, or did they simply refuse to. And does it matter.
I cannot claim to have followed the directions perfectly, myself, and yet I seem, more or less, to be fine; to have recovered from the hopeless condition I found myself in three years ago. I may have missed the mark, but I’ve come close enough to score, and I intend to keep doing that. We addicts are human beings, just like other human beings, and we can protect ourselves intelligently from relapse.
“We don’t want anybody up here. We just tell people this place is nothing but a bunch of queers and weirdos,” my sponsor told me. There is a kernel of truth in it, of course, but there is a sweetness about the place and the people there that is hard to describe.
I exaggerated about the indoor plumbing/electricity feature of the town. Most of the people have running water. Some of them even have HOT water. And there is electrical service in the town which is serviced by its own small hydro-electric plant, but people don’t use it much. Even so, it is remote. I haven’t heard quiet like that or seen dark like that in a long, long time.
The first night we grilled steaks on a campfire. watched stars shooting through the night sky, and had dessert with some neighbors. During the next day I listened to AA speaker CDs, CDs about the Eightfold Path. I enjoyed the hot springs and the wilderness. We had breakfast with friends and went for walks. I took pictures of dead pickup trucks which are allowed to remain there to deter the Sun Valley people from discovering how wonderful the place it. I read and napped and practiced meditating.
Why did I have such a hard time realizing that having a Higher Power does not mean having a deity? I am more and more convinced that having a Higher Power without having a deity is necessary for me and that my path back to feeling connected to that Power will largely be the byproduct of practice. The small time I devoted to the practice certainly led me to believe that, as the book Alcoholics Anonymous says, “we can but clear the ground a bit” and that clearing the ground through a practice of meditation may be the hinge upon which my progress turns.
I was in a great place to begin a practice, not having the usual distractions of home and office around. Even so, focusing on mere breath is not as easy as it sounds
“Somewhere in the process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and helpless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you have just never noticed.” Bhante Henepola Gunaratana
That’s a relief. If there weren’t passages like this in the guide I was reading I would be sure, as I have always been, that I wasn’t doing it right.
Anyway, I imagine that things are as they should be, and I imagine that I am still on track, even if it does not appear to me that I am. I just know that
I bought a book the other day, right after I vomited my insanity here; Mindfulness in Plain English. And I’m encouraged because I finally found a definition of ‘faith’ that I can work with. No GrandWizardMagicalSantaClaus required. What a relief. I have some nice, plainly written instructions to make a beginning, and then there are retreats, with advanced instructors.
Reading the course application, I wonder if I could even do it at this point, but I believe I could get there.
I am also considering getting rid of my television and limiting my internet time just to help reduce the amount of noise in my head. My sense is that television interferes with my ability to think clearly and hinders my growth.
I’m headed to Atlanta, ID with my sponsor tomorrow afternoon to enjoy 3 days in the mountains without indoor plumbing, electricity, paved roads or telephones.
I appreciate all the feedback I got from my last post. Looking back I can see that this is really an issue that I’ve held on to for decades. The appearance of an old friend from when I lived in Sweden reminded me that there was a time even then that I was desperate for there to be something I could have real faith in, and being surrounded by a religion that made no sense to me at all.
It appears then that it is in my nature to yearn for an understanding of or knowledge of something that I can only understand or know through my own experience. Faith that makes sense to me isn’t belief in something because it is written in some book. It is belief in something because I have observed it within myself. If I’m going to have a relationship with that I have a great deal of observing within myself to do.
For the last year I have worked out of my employer’s house. He had a couple of sales people in the den and I (barely functioning) endured the isolation of the spare bedroom. This week we rented and have been moving into an office. I should work in an office. I should not work in a spare bedroom.
My employer is also an alcoholic and an addict in recovery. Like any two addicts, we have much in common. We share a common language and a common solution to our problem. But like any two people, there are times when we can really get on each other’s nerves. In the past, on the occasions when neither of us were particularly “spiritually fit” I would simply leave. I would go work out of my house, or go out for lunch with my mom. I’d go take a nap.
I haven’t been able to employ any of those tactics for dealing with my reaction to the insanity of others this week because we have been moving; buying and installing computers and key telephone systems, painting walls, buying desks and chairs.
My boss is a visual person, but not particularly spatial, and color blind. I would suggest something for placement of desks and he would do it another way, and another, and finally two days later do it the way I had suggested in the first place. (The RIGHT way!)
My boss isn’t a gifted communicator. (“Hey, did you go over to that place and get those deals on that thing?”) He’s also not particularly fond of or good at listening. He and I get along in large part because I let him interrupt me and don’t insist that he hear or understand what I’m saying. My skill at intuiting the meaning of “that,” “those,” “there” and “them” carries us the rest of the way. In the middle of moving, though, somewhat weakened by the mental and physical stress, I’ve found myself to be somewhat less intuitive and somewhat more–what’s the polite word–bitchy. And while I’ve tried really hard to keep it together at work, I haven’t always been able to contain it outside of work. My boss and I share that trait. We allow our stress to rub off on the people around us.
I’m sure I’ve compounded the problem by stopping smoking. Again. I know, I know. I quit in March or April. After my lung surgery though, the insanity of wanting a cigarette won out. I suffer from cigarette addiction in exactly the same way the book talks about alcoholism. This could be the cigarette, the ONE, that will give me cancer and I will go crazy wanting to smoke it and not wanting to smoke it. Like every other time I tried to quit, after my surgery the insane idea won out and in a short period of time I was smoking as much, if not more, than before. I finally mustered the courage to try again last Friday afternoon. Just like with my posts on getting off crystal meth, I am posting about a day 5 off cigarettes again.
By the time I left the office today I had completed some of my real work, gotten the phone system installed and the phones programmed, had the network installed and the computers set up, found the ink cartridges, placed a change order with the phone company, unpacked a couple of boxes. And now I’m shot.
Now I’ll take a short nap and hope that when I talk to people tonight I’ll be able to treat them with love and tolerance.
For the last month or so I have been in the grips of the insane idea that I have outgrown AA. I say it is an insane idea because 12 step recovery is the only thing that ever got me sober for any length of time. And even though the idea is insane, it may also be true. And while it may be true, there is no way to find that out without risking my recovery. I have to simply trust that my place is in meetings. My place is in meetings.
My place is in meetings.
In the 900-odd days I’ve been sober I’ve attended well over 1800 meetings. I’m well versed in what is available to me there. I feel like I’m in a place where I have to grow beyond what I hear in meetings and I haven’t the first clue about how to do that.
My rational mind knows, of course, that in all likelihood what I’m experiencing is still residual from my surgery. I spent a good amount of time on pain medication. I’m better now, but I’m still in pain. I think I’m probably depressed, too. I took the QIDS-SR and seem to be moderately depressed. I’m not really sure if I need to find a way to kick myself out of it, or if I should actually seek help. Rationally I know that depression would be consistent with my circumstance, but as with the question of spiritual path, I haven’t the first clue about what to do about that.
The thing about meetings, particularly meetings in a town this size, is that it doesn’t take long to hear everyone’s story. It doesn’t take long before you can predict what people will say. You know who works at recovery and you know who pretends to. You speculate about who is going to kill them self and who is going to kill everyone else. And when it happens there is nothing you can do about it.
At some point recently I realized that inside the rooms I am never again going to hear anything new. Sure, the details may be different; an idea may be expressed in a new way, but the idea isn’t new. The story isn’t different.
Rationally — such an elusive quality for me so much of the time, especially with regard to me and my disease and a Higher Power — rationally I know all these things. I know that my place is inside the rooms.
But I can’t seem to shake myself free of the crazy idea that I don’t need to be there.
Just for today, I’m not going to test that idea.
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.
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