12th Step

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Higher Power, Thy Name is Mudd

April 29, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 16 comments

“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure; having this seal,
The Lord knoweth them that are his.”
Timothy 2;19

If the meeting I was at last night was the first AA meeting I had ever been to, I am quite sure I would have ran out the back door and never returned. Perhaps I should lower my expectations since I live deep in the heart of Jesusland. It is one of the essential parts of any real 12 step program that we don’t shove some particular idea of “Higher Power” down the throats of newcomers. It is absolutely essential that we guide them toward a personal relationship with that power by taking a path that begins right where they are.

That’s why, well that along with the fact that I am a contrary, sarcastic, vicious, deeply egotistical mo-fo, when I hear people in meetings talk about the only real Higher Power being Jesus Christ, it is almost all I can do not to start talking about, “My Higher Power, whom I choose to call Lucifer,.” I’m afraid I’m not really that much better than I was when I was actively using. Some defects are only slightly diminished.

Here’s the thing. If you’re a Christian you know that the crime of heresy Jesus was executed for was the heresy of teaching that one’s relationship with God is personal. It didn’t require High Priests. Nobody needed to stand between you and God. So if you’re a Christian and you attend 12 step meetings, for God’s sake (seriously) leave Jesus at the door. He doesn’t mind.

I may end up being a Christian yet, but I’m pretty turned off by it every time someone brings up His name in an AA meeting, particularly when it comes with a warning about how other people in the room are selling false prophets. I got sober and I got sober without Jesus, thank you very much. I got sober believing that Jesus didn’t die for my sins but so that Mel Gibson could become a billionaire. I’ve been sober a few months and never even had the compulsion to place a name on God or feel like I needed an agent or broker to reach Him.

When I was new my prejudice was so powerful that if anyone had told me that I had to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour in order to get sober I would simply have said thank you, I’d rather be high. Ciao. Remember, that in AA, God expresses Himself in our group conscience, and for over 70 years that expression has told us that it is a God of our own understanding. So to all the freaks in Jesusland, Jesus says shut the fuck up. You’re killing alcoholics.

Stark Raving Sober

April 3, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 7 comments

First of all, thank God for the steps! I wouldn’t be able to tell this story without them. I wouldn’t because I would be trapped in the story; sucked in to the familiar familial drama of the tree from which this nut fell.

Last Friday night I had dinner with my sister and her two boys, my brother and his growing family and my aunt and uncle. I don’t remember the last time all of us were together to break bread. I was especially happy to see my sister as she is moving to Iowa City this month where her husband is doing his fellowship. Other times this opportunity has presented itself I have been way too strung out to show up. Seeing me would have been more painful than not seeing me. So to be able to show up for my family, sober, happy and present, was really wonderful for me.

As the sister and children of an alcoholic and her husband, though, the conversation took a dark turn almost from the very beginning and mostly stayed there. My family has been very protective of me and very supportive. Knowing the seriousness of my effort and knowing the gravity of my mother’s condition, they have been vigilant about not disclosing any specifics of my life to my mother. They have never passed along my phone number which she has asked for several times. They only answer her questions about how I am in the most general way. And perhaps more importantly, they spare me the details of the insanity going on in mom’s luxurious little rabbit hole.

I had no difficulty sloughing off the story of her arrest in her own driveway a couple of months ago. The scene that had been described to me was really nothing out of the ordinary – except that there happened to be police at her home at the time. I actually took a little (guilty) pleasure from it, particularly since part of her ranting had been about them harassing her when there were people like me out on the street. At dinner, though, the scene was illuminated more fully and details of the continuing downward spiral were revealed. It was not the police at her home, not in the usual sense, but rather the S.W.A.T. team. More recently there have been public urination accidents, car accidents, accidental falls down escalators resulting in knee replacement surgery, accidental falls at home leaving her husband with his femur broken in two places and passed out on the floor until the maids came in and found him (when he was admitted in the ER his BAC was .38).

By all outside appearances the gates of insanity have swung wide open and my mom and her husband have passed through, sprinted up the walk, gone through the front door, fixed themselves some drinks and gotten comfortable. For three days afterward I hoped that death wouldn’t be far behind. I imagined ways it might happen. I tried to figure out if you could get a wheel chair over the Lido deck and if a life preserver would be visible at night.

This time it only sucked me in for a couple of days. I was spared any direct contact with the dark side. All I had to endure was a 30 hour headache, an evening of plotting a final scene to the tragedy, and a few hours of step work and in return I was given a miracle, a change in perspective and the 4th step promise of being able to view my mother and her husband as spiritually sick and to think of them with compassion. Genuine compassion. I actually discussed with my sponsor ways that I might be able to be helpful to them without placing myself in the eye of the hurricane. On principle he agreed but we both though it would be better to talk to his sponsor and his sponsor’s sponsor who happens to know my parents and had parents like them.

After becoming willing to send people to my mom’s house to see if she needed anyone to go to the store or make dinner or bring in the mail I was given specific direction about cleaning up my part of this insanity in my head and in my mom’s life:

“‘Fuck off’ is an amend.”

I can live with that. I’m grateful that I was given the change in perspective from resentment to compassion. And I’m grateful to know that the most compassionate thing I can do is allow them to be on their own path.

One More Round for Experience

February 27, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 3 comments

Hell’s Fairies How could we make amends?
So it’s one more round for experience
And I’m on the road again
And it’s going to take some time this time.
-Carole King

I am so relieved to finally have this chapter over with. Well, this part anyway. My relationship with the Department of Corrections is far from over, but the big hurdle is – the hurdle where I have no power. From here on out the results are directly related to what I do. Ultimately, all they are really asking for is that I do what I’m doing -stay sober, be accountable. In a way that seems like the true test of addiction and of recovery. In active addiction staying sober was unthinkable and being accountable was impossible. In recovery staying sober and being accountable are both absolutely possible. I have seen (and been seen by) the last of the three judges who had all placed me on probation back in 2001. I have accounted for the fact that I simply vanished for 13 months while I was supposed to be supervised. The State has had three opportunities to show that for the good of the People I need to be placed in a correctional institution and on each of those occasions the Court has disagreed. A year ago the story would have ended differently.

“(H)e had the extraordinary experience, which as we have already told you, made him a free man.” (p. 28)

Going several rounds with these judges gave me the opportunity to become more effective at speaking to that particular type of audience, authority figures, and I’m grateful for the experience. It didn’t take away the tears. I kept them from pouring. I kept my voice in check, mostly, but there was emotion there in me, the kind that I normally associate with deep prayer; the kind I let myself fall in to when I’m in the shower, say, or whenever I can have some uninterrupted time with God. But by the third time I was able to get right to the bottom of the matter and let Her Honor know that I knew the gravity of my error, that I didn’t believe it was the sort of thing that would happen again because of the work I’ve done, that certainly I hoped to not go to prison but that either way I knew that I would be useful. God gave me a message to share and I would be able to share it wherever I was.

“We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, “a design for living “that really works.” (p. 28)

God’s hand-prints are all over this experience of mine. And yet the unrealized, finite and fearful part of me still worries about things; is still ungrateful and selfish. Perhaps I can never be entirely free from worry or self-pity. I recognize that those defects are pretty significantly diminished today and it has occurred to me of late that mindfulness of what I am grateful for might alleviate some of that insane suffering. So, lest you think I’m the most ungrateful son of a bitch that ever lived, here is a quick and dirty of what I am grateful for today:

  • Being ‘on the road again’ on my little gay scooter! Motorized transportation rocks!
  • My friend Robert who agreed that we should start our own club since, because we don’t have bikes with at least 600 cc., the Sober Riders won’t have us. We’ll be Scootin’ Sober. We may even get groovy wind breakers or something.
  • The fact that food stamps are easy to apply for.
  • That I have clear cut directions for finishing probation.
  • That I have probation at all.
  • That I can’t be thrown in prison for thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
  • That I can sometimes recognize that I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
  • That people who love me love me enough to point out when I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts.
  • That I have a purpose, that I can be useful to God wherever I am.
  • That God has allowed me to be useful out here instead of in there, and most of all, that
  • God loves me. Like, A LOT!!!

So, in this particular “round for experience” I have made my amends. The judges have permitted me to do the right thing and supported it. And three times now God has let me know that I am most useful out here doing what I’m doing. I’m “on the road again”; literally and figuratively, and that is fantastic!

HELLS FAIRIES: A GLBT scooter group in Chicago is ready to ride. Photo: Alex Rumsey

Juvie

February 19, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

Zach is intelligent, charming, good looking, cool – and he knows it. Young people from the end of the fabric he’s cut from have these shiny Tyvek exteriors reinforced by all the self confidence and self esteem that money can buy. I’m not really sure how it happened but I recently became “the cool sponsor” to a small group of hipsters that have gotten in trouble and who are trying to keep their parents off their backs. That’s how I met Zach. I agreed to sponsor him last Wednesday. We were supposed to meet with each other on Thursday. He called in sick. To his credit he really did sound sick and since I’ve been recovering from bronchitis myself I allowed it. Friday, at Zach’s request, his mother called to tell me that he’s in the little Big House till at least tomorrow.

Right on! I don’t know how cool a sponsor these kids are going to think I am if they figure out that when their parents call me I’m going to speak honestly with them; or if they find out that I am there to help their family as much as their families ask me to. Mom and I had a nice chat about letting her son pay the consequences for his actions. I told her that everyone who tried to save me from my consequences only prolonged the misery. I told her that I’m there to support her.

I know that with Joe, my first sponsee, that I was blessed beyond measure. Joe came to me entirely willing. Joe has done all of the work. I just gave Joe instructions for his 8th step. Joe was the perfect sponsee for me at the perfect time. I suspect that with some of these other kids, kids like Zach, what I’m really shooting for is to help them to such a thorough understanding of the first step that when they get one they’ll recognize it. Maybe to help them recognize it sooner than later. I guess we’ll see. Part of me is really hopeful that a couple of days locked up will help Zach understand ‘unmanageability’ a little better, maybe make him a little more willing to carry on with the work. I hope he’ll let his cool facade down enough to get a little taste of what recovery has to offer.

Then again, part of me just thinks having a sponsee go to juvie is funny. I get to be young and dangerous and cool vicariously, which for an old nerd like me is . . . sweet.

Shoulder to Shoulder

February 1, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

Shoulder to Shoulder at the Texaco Station - 1930's“You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey. Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life.”
Alcoholics Anonymous, page 152-3

It is very strange to suddenly have a number of sponsees and a couple more men I’m working with in the absence of a sponsor they feel they can work with though we haven’t formalized the relationship in any sort of way. First there was Joe who remains the most willing and wonderful spirit around me. I am seriously blessed to have had such a wonderful experience right out of the gate. Joe was followed in a couple of months by Justin, and two weeks later, Jake. I’ve also taken an interest in Jason but don’t sponsor him because my motivations are not exactly pure. Miss Nikki says the best way to get over crushing on someone is to sponsor them but I don’t want to take any chances. I also don’t want to get over the crush right away, even though respect and good taste require that it remain entirely concealed. I wonder if there isn’t something narcissistic about my attraction the the truly broken ones. And Tyler, sponsored by the IFX and feeling like he’s not getting what he needs there. I have to bite my tongue. It is certainly not my place to judge what is and isn’t good sponsorship for any particular alcoholic. I only know what has been working for me. I’ve learned a couple of lessons pretty quickly about doing this, though. Perhaps the most important, especially in light of the fact that there are suddenly so many requests for my help, is that for my own sanity and wellbeing I should only match their willingness. I don’t help anyone by caring more about their recovery than they do. We commence the journey ‘shoulder to shoulder’. We don’t commence dragging them, kicking and screaming though perhaps, sometimes, I’d like to.

I have also been thinking about sponsorship recently in terms of my experience choosing one. I got sober on January 15th and I didn’t get a sponsor until April sometime. First there was the time in the halfway house while I waited to go to treatment. Then the two rounds of treatment; the one I escaped from and the one that was so incredible as well as a couple of weeks in between. When I got home I almost immediately asked this big dyke to temp sponsor me while I looked for a real sponsor. That lasted 10 minutes because I ran into my old friend John W. at the very next meeting I went to. And then in late July John got drunk.

By then I had been around enough to have met a few people and heard their stories. Even though he intimidated the hell out of me and couldn’t have been a more different man than I, I asked him to sponsor me — I “capitualted entirely” when I “heard the story of some man whose experience closely tallied with” my own (p. 160).

I have reached out for help and reached out to help others and the experience amazes me. If you are reading this you know I reach out in secondary ways as well and I’m adding another project to that avenue. My friend Gary W., who has extensive experience in this field, is producing a multi-media theater piece for the Idaho Meth Project; something to take into schools across the state. He has spent time interviewing a number of us speed-freaks and he’s read most of what I’ve written here and on MethedUp (I need to renew the domain registration – it is down at the moment) and he has decided that my character gets to be the comic relief; the one you can’t help but love in spite of himself. For dramatic impact, because breaking a heart is a great way to drive a point home, he’s going to kill me. I’m delighted. I’ve always wanted to be martyred for show business. To help others recover or to never start I will die for them.

Taken together this is what I pray for. Every day.

God, let me be an instrument of your will,
a demonstration of your power,
a vessel of your grace and
a bearer your love
in the lives of everyone I touch today. Amen.

Two guys in front of Tiger Texico Gas Station, originally uploaded by postscriptedlove.

Fuzzy

January 5, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

I am a creature of habit. I am not as flexible as I imagine myself to be. I am not unique. Sometimes I am able don a guise of pliancy convincing enough to fool everyone, including me, but it is made of denial and pride. Underneath that guise I find myself to be a post-traumatic adolescent in the corner of the room clinging to a threadbare security blanket, crying over the Mayberry childhood that never was.

Part of my disguise is the mien of clarity; the impression that I am willing and able to see things as they really are. I affect a willingness and ability to live life on life’s terms and acuity of God’s will in my life. In fact I still suffer from spiritual blurriness which only improves by applying myself to a spiritual program of change and doing so with those who have gone before me.

I mention this because my sponsor has moved away. I am not yet willing to seek out a new sponsor. There are good reasons to continue working with Jim. He will be here in Boise every six weeks or so (his daughter lives here). We both have unlimited long distance plans and email so it is not access to communication that is the problem. He has taken me successfully through the steps and continues to guide me through the long list of amends I have yet to make. Yet his physical absence has removed some of the spiritual focus that I depend on to live most comfortably in the world.

The power of my Creator trickles through every part of my life. I am able, by taking the steps and by helping others, to nurture that trickle. I am awash in the stream of life. But where I am able to connect with that stream of Life, working with Jim, seeing him on an almost daily basis, was like standing in front of a fire hose. I have faith that that clarity and power will return, that I will soon be back in front of the real power of the God of my own understanding. I have faith that if I continue to seek that I will soon be the one wielding the hose for those around me. I had an expert teacher for that. But I miss him. And I feel a little fuzzy.

Photo credit: BHF February Challenge – 08 Something Old, originally uploaded by TheNixer.

 

There’s a Light in the Darkness

January 3, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 6 comments

We should learn just to stick our hand out and whoever it touches that is alone, engage them, in whatever way is helpful. There is joy to be had, in that.
- Anonymous

gasIt’s not surprising that with the new year there are an unusual number of ‘newcomers’ in the rooms of AA and other programs that offer a spiritual solution to the problems of living. I got sober this time of year. I was in a meeting tonight that was packed with people new to the program and it set me thinking about when I came in.

When I got to AA, life was really not working out. I was at that ‘jumping off point’ that the book talks about. I needed something and I didn’t know what it was. I hoped that I could get it if I found a better shrink or more understanding of myself. I didn’t think I would find the answer to my intolerable situation in Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t want to find the answer in AA. I hated AA. I hated the people in AA. But, I had placed myself in a situation which required me to attend AA meetings.

A friend of mine who was there when I first walked in to that first meeting tells me that my eyes never left the floor. She says I bumped into a post. I don’t remember. I don’t remember much about those first meetings except that I hated being there and the people in those meetings kept saying ridiculuos shit like ‘the newcomer is the most important person in the room’ and ‘let us love you until you can love yourself’. At the time I thought it was the biggest bunch of shit I had ever heard. I heard people say those thing but I’d leave the meeting without anyone even saying hello to me.

I kept coming back partly because I had to, partly because it was the only place I felt safe and partly because it was the only place I heard people tell stories about how they recovered from the kind of pain I was in. Having been through it for just a little while now I can see that there were things I did which made the process harder. If you’re new to recovery I hope you’ll take these suggestions to heart and avoid some of the struggle I had coming in.

For example, the first word in let us love you until you can love yourself is ‘let’. We can’t do that when you bolt for the door the minute the meeting is over. We have no chance of getting to know you and getting to care about you if you won’t let us. Hang out after the meeting. If someone spoke and said something which you identified with, don’t wait for them to talk to you. Go introduce yourself to them. Let them know you’re new. Ask us for phone numbers and use them, even if you don’t have anything to say. We don’t want to be guilty of cramming this down your throat so you have to meet us in the middle. You have to reach out. That means more than simply showing up.

The same thing goes for you being the ‘most important person’ in the room. It is our express purpose to show you what we have done to get better. We can’t do that when you run out of the room at the end of a meeting. You have to be willing to let us in. You have to reach out a little. You will find, though, that when you reach out some extraordinary people will reach back with a message of hope.

We’re not perfect at delivering the message, though. We’re only human. Looking at my own efforts to reach out to those who are new I find that I often fall short of the mark. My motives are rarely pure. I have to really check my impulse to introduce myself to the young and handsome ones and make an effort to introduce myself to those who have clearly had a rougher time. I’m not always successful at restraining myself when I want to tell someone that they are, in so many words, an idiot. I am afraid that I still judge simple people rather harshly. I still have room to grow, to practice the principles more honestly and consistently and to reach out to new people. If you’re new to all this please keep that in mind. There is hope. There is a light in the darkness which will show you the way. There are people who will bend over backwards to help you stay sober. But unless you stick your hand out we may not know you’re there.

Photo credit: gas, originally uploaded by beauludget.

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