9th Step

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Coming Home

January 8, 2011 in Acceptance, Justice, Perseverance by Chris | 1 comment

My mom completed her treatment and came home from Minnesota last night, and in spite of walking into a month of mail, an imminent divorce, and more, she seemed OK.  It was very late in the evening, and I could see as she went through the mail that she was becoming more and more distressed, her voice tightening and her hands trembling.  In the best situations coming home is a big deal.  She isn’t coming home to an ideal situation.

Home for me is in many ways the kind of emotional sobriety that I usually abide in.  Home is serenity, sanctuary, stability, safety.  Home is the place where I can be myself; where I don’t feel like I have to meet someone else’s expectations.  I haven’t been to my emotional and spiritual home since before my mom left to begin her journey there.  I need to be home and I have been working to get back there with a fervor and I have only just begun to get back there.

Mom coming home hasn’t really caused me to get back here.  Coming home has been the product of step work and prayer and honesty and it has been the product of how a Higher Power works in my life.  In spite all I have been angry about and hurt by, coming home, coming home to that place of acceptance and forgiveness, has helped me see that I’m free now from the noose I alone created.  It has been taken away, root and branch, and even though I occasionally snap back into believing that the memory of it is the thing itself, my conscience is clear.  And I am free now of the intense burden and stress that I have been bearing alone for so many months; I am free of it and yet I have kept my side of the street clean.

It is clear to me, also, that I could not solve this problem on my own, that without some work and some people with whom I am able to be honest, I might yet be trapped in an emotional landscape that is a continent away from where I belong.

Now that she is back in the dangerous location where she lives, I am hopeful that my mom can keep using what she has been shown in her own journey to her real home.

Little Pink Houses – and all I really did, I think, was stay sober

November 20, 2010 in Gratitude, Living in Recovery, promises by Chris | 7 comments

Little Pink Houses - and all I did was stay sober

Little Pink Houses - and all I did was stay soberOn November 29th, 2007 is was 10 months and some days sober and in training for a job at McDonald’s; a job which, it turns out, I was barely capable of doing, my brain still healing from the years and years of crystal meth I did.

Ultimately I wasn’t even able to keep that job.  At nearly a year sober I was still so fried that I could barely do anything but focus on my recovery; pray, meditate, write, work with a sponsor, go to meetings, etc.  I imagine that most other people’s stories aren’t like that, even the stories of isolated, gay crystal meth addicts.  I fell down the scale much farther than was necessary for me to be able to see that I was an addict.  I just didn’t have enough motivation to do anything about it.  I had given up and I had no hope that it would ever be better, so why not just stay high.

I imagine that other people’s stories aren’t as extreme as mine, but for me, getting to the place where I could hold down a job was a big deal.  After a year sober I was given a scooter, which helped me get to a better job and hold that.

At 2 years, I got a car.  A really decent car.  Probably the best car I’ve ever had, and certainly the safest and most economical.

That was almost exactly 2 years ago.  In between I’ve held down the same job, maintained the same residence (with a roommate who is out of town 8 months a year), keep the same phone number, buy the business I worked for and manage to not drive it into the ground.  It hasn’t made any money but it has given a decent living to all of us who work there and in this economy that is a minor miracle in itself.

I’m a little less than 2 months away from my 4th sobriety anniversary and a few days longer that 2 years after the purchase of my car, and I have been given the opportunity to buy a house.  Of course I don’t qualify for the home loan on my own, but my parents are very fortunately situated so the financing is taken care of.  Still, honestly, I didn’t believe I’d ever get to own a house.

It’s a cute little mid-century (1959) ranch with 3 bedrooms, one bath, oak floors, a fireplace, on a quarter acre with a stone, wood-burning BBQ, apple trees, plum trees, and roses everywhere.  There are no repairs the house needs.  It has been beautifully maintained.

The only thing I’ve really done perfectly is not drink or use.  I have been awake whenever the idea that “this time will be different” would sneek into my mind and vigilantly dismiss the thought as insane.  I have done the best I can with what is in front of me – much of the time.  I have learned a ton, but never by doing it right the first time.  I have made every possible mistake along the way.

I’m not suggesting at all that if you stay sober for 4 years you’ll get a house.  I am saying that if you stay sober, if you actually fix your life, everything will change.  And even though some things will suck, and some things will hurt, and some things will set you back, your life will change for the better.

A 9th Step Observation

July 15, 2010 in Justice by Chris | No comments

My credit score must be improving.  I’m getting more and better junk mail.  Here’s to clearing away some wreckage.

Sweeping

November 6, 2009 in Justice by Chris | 9 comments

“Simply tell him that we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past. We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own. If our manner is calm, frank, and open, we will be gratified with the result.”


Picture-6I’ve never gone into any detail about this part of my life but to mention it once here.  It isn’t something that I share, usually.  It has just been too shameful and painful and personal.

And it is complicated enough being a gay man without having to explain your marriage to a woman.  If I’ve left this detail out in the past it is part lie of omission, part simplifying an already complex story.  But there it is.  I was married once.

I met her in 1985.  She was a friend of a boyfriend.  I was leaving him and he was desperate that I shouldn’t completely disappear.  I would come to my senses and come home.  He was sure of it.  He asked her if I couldn’t stay with her awhile; just till our relationship sorted itself out.

Well, that relationship never sorted itself out; probably because MS and I got along great.  We had a perfectly great time together, liked each others company, each had something the other wanted, and we somehow ended up in bed together and were married in 1987.

It seemed like the perfect solution.  If I was married to a woman I would obviously escape the plague that was killing the men in our neighborhood by the dozens.  She had a little bit of money and a good paying job she had to go to for a day every three weeks or so, which freed me to do important things like learn to cook and paint the apartment.  Of course I didn’t have any real skills; nothing marketable.  I was 20 years old.  I dropped out of high school and ran away from home three years earlier.  Like all my other relationships of that period, she met the qualifications to be a rescuer, and I let her rescue me. Read the rest of this entry »

Atonement

October 9, 2008 in Justice by Chris | 1 comment

I’m totally double dipping today. Sorry. I spaced it that today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. I’m not Jewish, but I am fascinated by their faith, their culture, and their traditions. And this day is particularly important in the Jewish faith and it speaks to me in terms that I relate to my recovery.

According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a “book” on Rosh Hashanah and waits until Yom Kippur to “seal” the verdict. During the Ten Days of Repentance, a Jew tries to amend his behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against his fellow man (bein adam lechavero). Read the rest of this entry »

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

Choosing the Difficult

February 25, 2008 in Courage, Faith by Chris | 9 comments

This post was originally published Feb. 10, 2008 and was taken down pending adjudication of another case. Now that has been done and I am restoring the post.

The Man With the StarTo choose what is difficult all one’s days, as if it were easy, that is faith.
W. H. Auden

They tell me I seemed relaxed; that I did not seem bothered or distressed by the situation. On some level they are right. The outcome was in God’s hands. I was there to play the role He meant for me to play. I was meant to be accountable. Accountable is not a role I have played often. In fact, as I was having breakfast with my father yesterday morning I observed that this is probably the first thing in my life that I have taken accountability for without being forced by some external power. Going to court to account for my probation violation was all mine. Accountability – justice – is, after all, the essence of the 9th step and I did say that I am willing to go to any length for victory over addiction.

My violation was significant. They call it absconding from supervision. Of all possible violations this is the one they frown on most. They like those of us who are supervised to stay supervised. Most people who abscond from supervision compound the problem by also picking up new charges against them. Most people who abscond from supervision continue living the way they lived before. Most people who violate their probation and are sent to prison will tell you that the reason they are in prison is “they violated me”.

After the prosecution argued for imposition of the sentence underlying the original criminal conviction for which I am on probation, after my attorney argued on my behalf and after I addressed the court, the judge said very frankly that when he walked in to the courtroom he had intended to impose my sentence.

If anything, anything at all, had been any different, I would be in prison today. If I had not been sober for over a year. If I had been charged with any new crimes. If I hadn’t completed an in-patient treatment program. If I didn’t have the support of friends and family demonstrated by over a dozen letters and the presence in the courtroom of 8 people – 8 people! who took time off work to show that I matter to them (my sponsor, my sponsor’s sponsor, my roommate, a former employer, 2 friends, my aunt and most importantly my dad, who came up from Las Vegas to support me). If I hadn’t been able to demonstrate my commitment to 12 step recovery with attendance cards. If I didn’t have a job (even at McDonald’s). If when I posted bond to get out of jail I had done anything besides go directly to an AA meeting. If I hadn’t taken the 12 steps and if I hadn’t placed this at the top of my 9th step amends work. If I hadn’t been the one to initiate the process. . . if any one of these things had been different -and if I had anything less than a great attorney who believes in me- I would be in prison today.

I shouldn’t be surprised to receive a 9th step promise while making a 9th step amends, but I am dumbfounded by the degree to which God has been taking care of me all year. On my own I am not smart enough to conceive of such a perfect storm of good fortune. The only thing I did -the only thing- was that I became willing to place my trust and reliance upon God, a God of my own understanding, an infinite and loving God of all possibilities and to humbly do as I believe that God would have me do, and God has done for me what I could never do for myself.

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