One of my great, if not my greatest character traits is intelligence. I’m smart, damn it, and I know it. I was also raised in a family, a community and a culture that all place a high value on intelligence, so I feel valuable. Another trait is perseverance. “Quitters never win,” was an oft repeated admonition in the society of my youth. Taken together these are the kind of qualities that governments and industries are built of. There is little that cannot be achieved with intelligence and perseverance. They are qualities to be admired.
In an addict or an alcoholic they can be fatal. Alcoholics and addicts of my description often die rather than embrace the truth; that “we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.” To finally and completely admit the truth about me, that I was entirely without ability, influence or control with regard to drugs and alcohol and that as a result of my drinking and using the ordinary tasks of living became impossible to deal with was a pill too bitter to swallow. Me, the one who prided himself on his ability to solve even the most difficult problems, the one who never gave up till the obstacle was overcome or the difficulty mastered, admitting that I had been defeated by such a trivial thing.
I saw other people having wine with dinner, going out for drinks with friends or having a beer on a hot summer day. I even saw people who occasionally smoked a joint or did a line of coke or crystal meth without anything terrible happening and I couldn’t understand why I was unable to do the same. I didn’t understand why when I did the same things I saw other people doing I got different results. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that when you take culturally reinforced personality traits like intelligence and perseverance, a hereditary brain defect and a powerfully addictive substance that the result is someone who has to go pretty far down the scale before they cry “Uncle!”
Ultimately I did surrender. After I had tried absolutely everything I could think of to try, I did admit complete defeat, and asked for help. People who understood me and my problem took me to the solution and showed me how to apply a simple set of spiritual principles to my problems. But I didn’t or couldn’t ask for help before I had done some pretty outrageous things in an attempt to satisfy the craving and manage the outcome. I am still paying (dearly) for the consequences of my addiction. Today my head (my disease) is telling me that the price I am paying is too high, that the world is unfair, that the behavior that placed me in the position I am in is the result of a disease, a brain disorder really, and culturally reinforced ‘virtues’; that I am being punished for being biologically defective, smart and persevering.
That insane idea is as much a part of the problem as anything else, and luckily there is a set of simple instructions that I now try to follow to override it. Following those instructions can take me from thinking how upset I am that it will be years and years before I get my passport back and go to Italy, to thinking how grateful I am that I get to be useful to the people around me outside of prison walls today. The problem is still that I don’t always pick up those tools and follow those instructions right away. I seem to have to reach a certain level of misery before I understand that the only effective solution I have today to the problems that trouble me most is the same solution that they showed me how to apply to my drug and alcohol problem.
What I’m saying is that someone showed me how to apply the solution and yet today I am miserable and unwilling to apply that solution to the thing that is troubling me. Today I am miserable. It isn’t something I’m going to drink over. I may just do some extended pouting. Hopefully I won’t wallow in this too long.
Any Texaco Man Will Show You, originally uploaded by nyctreeman.
Recent Comments