Addiction

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Grand Illusion

March 23, 2008 in Hope by Chris | 11 comments

swc-index2.jpgThere is a light at the end of the tunnel.
The light is not an illusion.
The tunnel is.
-unknown

I noticed this sign above the door of a meeting I occasionally go to and it just struck me. It seemed profound enough, but it wasn’t till I woke up this morning and read Sweet Pea’s post where she said, “secrets. they thrive in the darkest recesses of my mind and heart,” that I began to see the truth in the idea that the tunnel is an illusion.

I don’t know very many people, even the most spiritual or religious people, who come into the rooms of recovery, that have something resembling a useful and healthy relationship with a power greater than themselves that they understand to be infinite love. That was definitely true for me. I came in with a pretty traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of the Celestial Father, the one I hear some people call the ‘bearded, bean counting, lightning bolt throwing bastard in the sky’. Sure, He was loving and merciful to those who groveled for his forgiveness, but there were things he wouldn’t forgive and I was pretty sure it was me – radical faggot political activist drug addicted rebel that I am. In the difference I perceived between me and everything else I perceived darkness and isolation.

Though it was never said in so many words, I was under the impression that God didn’t like little boys who wanted to grow up to be Mahalia Jackson and to bury their face in Parker Stevenson’s arm pit, which is a shame, really. People like me especially need God. In a world where getting love and acceptance from the closest members of your family is problematic, God can mean the difference between life and death. As a youngster I didn’t understand that my church turning it’s back on me was not the same as God turning His back on me and I responded in kind. I turned my back on God and began to move farther into the illusion of separateness from All that Is.

I realize now that experiencing this separation is part of the human condition; that “our stories align at the core, if not in the sorry details.” The book talks about alcoholics and addicts being extreme examples of living according to this illusion. It talks about self-will run riot, of problems being of our own making and arising in our selves, of a spiritual malady that centers in our minds. It also suggests that people like me reaching out for help need to choose between God being everything or nothing; at a certain point we have to accept spiritual help if we are to recover.

Many forms of spiritual instruction and many forms of religion inform my journey, one of them recently being A Course in Miracles. I am attracted to the course largely because at it’s core it talks about what we talk about in AA and in similar, almost identical, terms. It talks about God being everything. It says that what blocks us from God is a barrier created out of our own mind. It says “a cloud does not put out the sun.”

The tunnel is an illusion.

The light is not.

The tunnel is made out of me. “Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us!”

I found God in AA. I found God when I was finally “beaten into a state of reasonableness”; when I finally got still enough to listen. And that is where I continue to find Him; in the quiet space in between the demands of living a “productive” life in the material world. Demands on my time have increased and finding, or setting aside, enough time to get still has been challenging recently. I experience it as anxiety, frustration, sadness. I experience it as separation; as the tunnel. I wonder what people want from me and I wonder how my needs will be met. I forget that the real question is “what does God expect from me?”

As you already know, I am not particularly Christian. The God I have come to know through AA is described to me most perfectly in Hindu tradition as “the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe.” But the symbolism of Easter is not lost on me. It really is the sacrifice of self that leads to eternal life, freedom from bondage, salvation and enlightenment.

Happy Easter, friends.

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.

From There To Here

January 15, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 10 comments

Thou canst not travel on the path before thou hast become that Path itself.
- Helena Blavatsky

Several years ago, during an especially unmanageable part of my addiction history, I had a dream that I was driving. I was desperately trying to get somewhere and I seemed to have the wrong directions. I was talking to my mom on my cell phone asking for directions and she was describing to me where to turn. I could tell from her description that I was in the place that I was supposed to be, but the road she kept telling me to turn on did not exist. There was only a steep grassy hillside. I tried to find another avenue but there were none. All of the paths only looped me back to the place I started from; the place I was supposed to turn onto a road that was not there.

December 14, 2006, I had reached the end of my looking for the road that was not there. Everything in my life had come to nothing. I’m a stubborn boy. I do not yield easily. Every time I had a negative consequence because of my addiction I quickly pushed it aside in favor of a new strategy that would enable me to keep using. I was “not able to bring into mind with sufficient force the humiliation and suffering” of my present moment. I had prayed for a long time, and that night I prayed in earnest for God to let my life end. I have found that most people in recovery had a similar, profound pain.

People say to be careful what we pray for. I don’t know what they are talking about. I prayed that God would end my life and He did. Just not the way I hoped for. You see, I had hoped that I would simply not wake up one morning, or perhaps I’d get hit by a bus. I hoped that it wouldn’t be to painful. I would have done the job myself but I didn’t have the courage.

Prayers are heard and prayers are answered. I prayed for my life to end and it ended. One year ago, today, I woke up to a new life in a universe that makes sense; a life free of drugs and alcohol. Every morning and every evening for 365 days I have gotten up and gone to bed at night sober. That’s a miracle in my life.

There is no road that gets one from where I was to where I am. No worldly power is sufficient. No treatment program, not doctor, no family member or great love, no willpower, no consequence, no threat of jails or institutions or death was powerful enough to get me sober and keep me that way. It is only the grace of a loving Creator who intends for me a purpose, a meaning, and a destiny to grow, day by day, toward His own likeness and image.

I am only one, but I am one. I can’t do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do. And by the grace of God, I will.
- Edward Everett Hale

Photo credit: Texaco Detail, originally uploaded by aliyan824.

Note: This photograph is a detail of an oversized map of the state of New York made up of 567 mosaic terrazzo panels weighing about 400 lbs. each, covering the floor of Philip Johnson & Richard Foster’s New York State Pavilion at the the 1964 World’s Fair in New York (Queens). The map, now in ruins, once displayed the locations of all Texaco gas stations in the state of New York.

Sideways

January 9, 2008 in Honesty by Chris | 5 comments

“There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”
- Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 58

SidewaysThat pretty much describes me at any given point in my history; emotionally and mentally ‘disordered’, gravely. I have at various times been diagnosed with everything from major depression to bi-polar disorder (type II), attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. One of the things I learned in the process is that you can be well enough medicated to be unwilling to take the steps. Pain is a great motivator. Another thing I’ve learned is that a correct diagnosis helps. So does the right medication. The medication I’m finally on does nothing to re-uptake anything. It doesn’t keep me from experiencing great joy or great sadness. It only keeps me from being insanely manic or suicidally depressed. It allows me to be in enough pain to do the work but not so much pain that I can’t, and not so little pain that I won’t. Nothing I have constitutes the kind of gravity that the book is talking about though. What I know about serious mental illness could fill a thimble.

A young man I sponsor knows about it though. At the cusp of finishing the first part of his 4th step inventory he required hospitalization. He got home today, the voices quieted. And anxious to get back to work; to move on to the next part of the 4th proposal. One of the greatest assets this young man has is his ability to be honest. The only asset greater is his willingness to grow spiritually.

I don’t pretend to know what it’s like when your brain blows you sideways the way his does, but I know something about what it takes to recover from the seemingly hopeless state of body and mind of addiction. And he has that in spades. I’m lucky to know him. I’m grateful to be able to show him what was shown to me. I suspect that he’ll be of great service to others who come in with the same set of challenges one day.

Texaco, originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse.

Turning Points

January 8, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 7 comments

“Every beginning is an ending and every ending a beginning; a turning point. They are passages through which, if we are willing, we may pass into a new and better life.”
- Chris M.

Red Letter DaySome turning points are big, obviously, like the one I came to a year ago when I could not go on. Page 52 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous has a list of ‘bedevilments’ which only begin to scratch the surface of what was wrong with my life. I think the truth is that most of us who seek recovery from addiction or alcoholism only get to the turning point of choosing recovery or choosing to die, either quickly or slowly, when that list has gotten long enough to break us. At least that was the case for me. Some nights I’d pray to be hit by a bus in the morning because I didn’t have the courage to kill myself.

For a long, long time, alcohol and drugs, methamphetamine in particular, was my solution to those ‘bedevilments’. If I could hammer enough dopamine out of my neurotransmitters I’d feel OK enough to face another day. It wasn’t really a solution to the problems but I wasn’t looking for a solution so much as looking for a way to feel better. I didn’t really see the problems as mine and I didn’t really believe there was a solution. I used basically because I liked the effect produced and the effect was that I felt OK inside my skin and OK about the world around me.

You don’t really play a piano with a sledge hammer very long and expect it to still produce music. Drugs and alcohol are like that. Eventually my solution to everything stopped working. I’m a stubborn guy though. I kept trying to make it work long after it had stopped and in doing so managed to pile on new problems, one after the other, till I was pretty sure I’d never be able to solve them. And that was the turning point. That was the point where I could let go of everything I thought I knew about life and God and AA and try something different or find some other way to end the pain, like suicide. That was the passage that I could take into a new and better life. I had to be willing. I had to take action. Or I had to die.

Sometimes turning points are small, like handling frustration at work. I can keep feeling frustrated and superior and be miserable. I can keep finding newer and more humiliating jobs as I allow my ego to drive me out of the one I have. Or I can be honest enough with myself to look at why, with all my intelligence, I am working at McDonald’s. I can hang on to my pride and talk myself right out of that job, or I can be humble enough to do that job well and look for another one. That seems obvious enough when I write it down, but when I’m caught up in the thought that my crew leader is pointless and obtuse it’s difficult to see that I wouldn’t be working there as her subordinate if I was half as smart as I think I am.

Now that I’ve been sober awhile I find that I am less willing to be stubborn about such things. I want to spend less time being frustrated and miserable. I’ve seen that a simple reliance on a God of my own understanding and the willingness to make the effort to live by a few spiritual principles has delivered me from the obsession and compulsion to get loaded. Shouldn’t that same kit of tools be able to solve my insanity about my job? Am I willing to turn at this point?

Someone shared with me recently that his first ‘moment of clarity‘ was the beginning of a series of moments of clarity. That has been my experience, too. The more I practice this way of living the more I see how useful it. Each moment of clarity is a moment when I realize that something has to end and something new must begin. Every beginning is an ending and every ending is a beginning; a turning point. I can keep doing what I’m doing or do something else and walk through the passage to a new and better life if I am willing to turn toward God‘s will for me.

Photo credit: Red Letter Day originally uploaded by Dyxie

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.

 

Extra Credit Karma

January 2, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

“Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.”
- Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 77

Snow

I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging here or to call too much attention to myself. This isn’t something I would say publicly or something I would say to garner any credit or praise from anyone who actually benefited from what I’ve done. Since I’m pretty sure this isn’t read by anyone on my block, or even anyone in my tiny little town for that matter, I’m OK with a little self recognition here.

It has not been above freezing for more that a few minutes in the last six days. That means that every bit of sidewalk that had not been shoveled after the last snowfall is now solid ice. But the 100 yards I shoveled on the two corner houses and my house are perfectly dry and safe. When I noticed that last nigh I was very pleased with myself. It was the absolute right thing of me to do. Sometimes I’m getting this unselfishness thing really right. Sometimes I even think, wow, I’m a pretty nice guy. Freaky!

Other friends have had the opportunity to be much more useful in recent days than I was on that snowy night, but the joy we share in small unselfish acts is exactly what recovery is about and the opportunity to be of service should never be missed.

Photo Credit: Snow, originally uploaded by 01101001 01100001 01101110.

 

Let’s start at the very beginning; a very good place to start.

December 7, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 2 comments

“Let’s see if I can make this easy.” - Maria Kutschera von Trapp

Market StreetHawthorneAveSalemOregon1978.jpgMy experience in recovery and in taking the steps is that what began as a “turning point” or a “moment of clarity” 51 weeks ago was the beginning of a series of points or moments which have each brought me to a keener understanding of my addiction and so have helped me remain willing to continue to seek to know this Higher Power which has done for me what I could not do for myself, namely, keep me sober. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? How could someone not be impressed with such a change of heart, such a psychic rearrangement, especially when it is the result of applying one’s self to learning to live by a set of principles that are so noble that even those with spiritual prejudice can embrace them as ethical and worthy?

In my own experience those moments and points can best be described as ‘rude awakenings.’

I had one today, related closely to my first one.

At 11 months sober and 12 months since that first moment of clarity, nearly a year since my Creator gave me a vital first step, I realized that, um, my life is unmanageable.

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