2nd Step

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Nausea

April 29, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

“Learn to let your intuition—gut instinct—tell you when the food, the relationship, the job isn’t good for you (and conversely, when what you’re doing is just right).”
-Oprah Winfrey

I can’t.  I can’t do it.  I couldn’t do it so much that I ditched it and went to a noon meeting, and at that meeting (which was a 12×12 study on the 8th tradition) one of the old, old timers said, “If your job turns your guts inside out, get a new job.”  And my job turns my guts inside out.  I simply cannot make cold calls 8 hours a day and still have enough spiritual energy to devote to the things that really matter to me and to my recovery.  I am simply too beaten up at the end of the day.  I dread going to work.  On Saturday mornings I think to myself, “Oh my God.  I have to go to work Monday morning.”

I feel slightly less anxious about it now but not completely OK.  But I have a plan.  Perhaps an imperfect one, but I have a plan.  I’m headed down to campus right now to apply for admission.  I cannot delay any more.  May as well continue being poor for awhile working toward the goal of solving it rather than being poor and working toward the goal of keeping a roof over my head.

There are a couple of things inside this that I need to take a closer look at.  The first one is my resistance to the job I have.  Is it simply that I hate working?  Do I have some internal spring that will always tell me, no matter what job I have, that I hate my job and I cannot face going to work, much like the addict spring in me goes off no matter what situation I’m in that tells me that it would be great to get high?  The ‘get high’ spring hasn’t gone off in a long, long time so I have faith that any ‘I hate my job’ spring can be repaired to, if I’m willing to do the work.

The other thing for me to look at is, “How much better am I willing for my life to become?”  How much ‘conscious, diligent and purposful action’ will I take to improve my circumstance?

Enjoy the Ride

February 29, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 5 comments

Monks on a Roller Coaster“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
-Joseph Campbell

I love this picture. I love it on several different levels. It just this second occurred to me, for example, that I’ve never seen any Benedictines on a roller coaster. There isn’t much “ora et labora” in an amusement park. ‘Letting go’ is a concept that Buddhists ‘get’ immediately, viewing attachment as the source of suffering. I love this picture, too, because it reminds me of what my friend Dana says about faith. Dana has had a really, really hard year. She has had loss compounded upon loss for months. She has come into the rooms and cried on dozens of occasions. She has leaned on the group and on the principles and on the people who love her and she has stayed sober. Things are finally looking up in Dana’s world and the other day Dana said that being sober is like being on a roller coaster. “I’m finally getting back to the fun part where you throw your hands in the air and yell ‘weeeeeee’!”

Life really is like that. It is for me anyway. It’s like I’ve been on this really scary roller coaster for years and I’ve been hanging on to the side of the car. Every time the car starts rolling down again I grip tighter and scream all the way down. When I get to the bottom of that hill I loosen my grip a little and congratulate myself on having hung on so well, having navigated the descent so expertly. Then the whole thing started all over again. If the roller coaster would just stop and I could get off then everything would be fine. It isn’t like that, though. As long as I’m breathing I stay on the ride.

Coming to believe that there is a power greater than myself and making a decision to turn my will and life over to it was like realizing that there is a track beneath the car and a safety bar holding me in. I can see the track. I can feel the safety bar. But haven’t I done very well to hang on to the edge of the car? Couldn’t this flimsy thing collapse under me at any moment? I suppose it could. But isn’t acting in faith acting with the belief in something about which doubt is possible? I’ve slowly been able to stop gripping the side of the car. I’ve realized that if there were a real catastrophe that holding on to the car wouldn’t save me anyway.

Now I pause. I breathe. I pray. I tell people how afraid I am. I try to let go. I try to gain faith by acting in faith. I still scream when the car is barreling down the hill. I do. But more and more I’m screaming with my arms in the air. More and more I try to let myself enjoy the ride. Sometimes I even think about getting on a bigger roller coaster.

Score Cards Read Zero

February 4, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 9 comments

ZeroFew indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves “problem drinkers,” but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill. “Sanity” is defined as “soundness of mind.” Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on the dining-room furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim “soundness of mind” for himself.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (page 33)

Like most of us in recovery, I’m not the only addict member of my family. Someone I am very close to is still suffering. The last several days have been filled with telephone conversations and emails exchanged between the rest of us regarding the current behavior of the ‘sick one’. The other members of my family are ‘normies’, or at least recognize the potential addict latent within them and resolutely follow spiritual paths with admonitions against drug and alcohol use. They have carefully and consciously chosen paths that lead them away from what they have seen happen to the two of us who fell. They are tremendously supportive of my recovery. They are also tremendously disturbed by the most recent developments in the sick one’s trip through the gates of insanity. Being active in recovery affords me such a different view of the situation than normal people have. I find that I am much less twisted up about it than they are. But I have also carefully engineered a protective barrier between me and the sick one that my family vigilantly guards.

The sick one will acknowledge that drinking is a problem, that perhaps she should ‘cut down’, but she refuses to acknowledge the truth staring her painfully in the face; the truth that she is completely out of control and that she is harming more than herself. One of the major barriers to facing the truth is her idea that income and power are the same thing. The only zeros she will recognize come in groups of six in her net worth. A recent incident, the one that has upset my family so, would be sufficient to cause any normal person to step back and reassess life as they have been living it. Unfortunately I don’t think that will be the case with the sick one. I am sure she has already fixed the blame solidly elsewhere. If she were forced to watch a video of her behavior and to listen to what she was saying she would find a way to deny the truth.

My fear is that this is only the beginning of a long string of incidents like it, incidents that will hurt the other members of my family incalculably. I have to remember that whether I understand it or not, God is at work in her life for the greater good of us all. I have to remember to exercise the same love and patience that I would give her if she had cancer or even the flu – she has as much control over her spiritual sickness. And I need to help the rest of my family. They need the support of one who has been there and gotten out, if only for today. No one ever did me any favors by standing in the way of the natural consequences of my use. It took becoming seriously broken for me to ask God for help. Today I can only show my family the value of the tragedy that broke me and support them as they step back from the sick one in hopes that she faces the truth; the truth that all her score cards read zero. If she places 12 steps in front of those zeros, like in the picture on this post, it becomes something great.

dollar twenty, originally uploaded by krstl_blu.

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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