A Spiritual Foundation

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of anonymity.  I’m not altogether convinced that there really is such a thing; not in the absolute sense.  It exists in greater and lesser degrees and we see famous people straddle the line all the time.  In 12 step recovery we have secret code words and phrases that one can recognize easily as being part of this particular path, and in interviews those people will give themselves away by saying, “I had to admit I was powerless,” or “It’s just a one day at a time thing.”  Some notable people do it successfully.  Some don’t.  It seems the ones who don’t almost invariably end up being train wrecks again.

I was thinking about it because not all of those who cross, or even push the line, are famous; not in the TMZ or Access Hollywood sense.  Some of us are regular people in extraordinary circumstances.  In my own case I lost some of my anonymity by blogging, and then granting an interview, and then letting people I know that I was doing this.  Even though most of the people I told about this blog were also in recovery, I have found myself withholding things that I probably need to say for fear of them harming someone and fear of it harming me.  The thing that really screwed with my head, though, was the interview.  When, suddenly, you could find my name as a card in the catalog of the Library of Congress, I really began to feel like I should KNOW something about recovery.  I would sometimes be hurt if I wasn’t called on at a meeting.  Even though I swore it wouldn’t, the experience messed with my ego in terrible ways.

The fallout of that experience have largely passed and I came out unscathed and still sober.  I know Chris hesitated to even include me in his book specifically because I hadn’t been sober that long, and I sense that he understood how fragile one can be at that point; and how notoriety, even at it’s fringes, can be a dangerous place.  I was watching some poor kid on Oprah yesterday, a young man named Jason, a survivor of the Columbine High School murders and subject of an episode of “Intervention”.  As he was talking to Oprah, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him; the way he claimed that the reason he used was to cover up the pain and guilt of the murders, though he didn’t know the perpetrators personally, and how he has to struggle every day to stay sober.  He was on television saying all of this to Oprah and her however many million viewers – and he is 11 months sober.

Nic Sheff was about 2 years sober when his book “Tweak” was a best seller, largely as a result of his appearance on Oprah, and he relapsed shortly after.  I believe he’s on the path again, but when he wrote his book, with his own name on it, and when he appeared on Oprah, he placed himself outside of the protective power of anonymity.  I know the show “Intervention” claims that over 70% of their subjects are still sober after one year, and they are only known by their first names, but in their own communities they are differentiated from others on the path by having participated in the media.  I differentiated myself by participating in the media and the result was difficult.

Then I look at the poor people who are on “Celebrity Rehab” – people like Heidi Fleiss, who couldn’t manage to make it through either “Celebrity Rehab” or “Big Brother” for more than a couple of episodes.  I don’t think there is any hope for her to get sober other than to disappear, leave the limelight, change her name and become a nobody, nowhere.  How can one even GET a spiritual foundation when it is so easy to believe their own hype?

I remember wishing Robert Downey Jr. would solve his problems by disappearing from Hollywood and coming here.  He has a close friend and champion here; someone who really loves him.  It would have been easy for him.  All he would have needed was a bad haircut and some dorky clothes.  He’d vanish.  I’m happy that he seems to be maintaining pretty well lately.

I guess what I’m really saying is that, more or less, here I am only Chris M. – an addict and alcoholic in recovery.  What I do and what I have and who I think I am are irrelevant.  I’m just me.  Just like you.  And I’m trying to do the best I can right now, just like you are.  I don’t have any more answers than anyone else.  I just have my own experience, which may or may not be helpful to anyone else when I share it.  I share in hopes that it is helpful – but the outcome isn’t really my business.  I will never go on Oprah and say that I have this licked and that I’m OK now.  But I also don’t struggle with the obsession every day in an effort to stay sober.  Living is the hard part.  Staying sober is relatively easy.

I just want to say also that I have really had it with being spammed with comments about buying Viagra and Cialis.  My spam filter can and does catch all that crap and I’m super happy about that.