Addiction

You are currently browsing articles tagged Addiction.

Easy never did it.

December 5, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 8 comments

 

“Easy doesn’t do it. Easy never did it. Nothing worth doing has ever been easy.”
- Unknown

larrymonroe.jpg

That’s one of the mottoes I (pretend to) live by.

There are others, of course, important ones. The more important they are the harder they are to live up to. For example, “Remember who you are and what you stand for.” Like lots of addicts and alcoholics, I have sometimes interpreted that as, “Don’t you know who I am?” I don’t have a perfect track record at that. I’ve been much better at “perfect adherence” to the Great Commandment in my family of origin, “Don’t drink your bathwater.” It’s nice to be able to do something perfectly.

It has been my experience that the great disciplinarians of recovery are tremendous love and tremendous pain. I’ve rarely had any significant growth as a result of love, though. Love kept me in recovery, kept me in the fellowship of other people on the path. It still keeps me in. Tremendous love does help me endure the pain, but there are aspects of my life right now that are so difficult, so frightening and so painful, that I find myself wishing for an easy escape, an easy button, a ‘Take a Ride on the Reading’ card.

I was at a meeting Sunday with a dear friend when she received a phone call from the police that her daughter was in the hospital and had tried to apply that kind of exit strategy. At 15 she decided that washing down a bottle of Vicodin with vodka was the easy way out. Like I said, nothing worth doing has ever been easy.

Great love might keep me in recovery, but great pain drove me to recovery and drove me to doing the work. Pain made me ask for help. Pain made me willing. With hardly an exception, the result of trying something and failing is painful and since I hardly know how to do anything I’m always trying new things. It seems clear to me, though, that God wants me to try. God will allow me to fail. In recovery I get to try all kinds of things and fail. It is how I learn. I rarely learn much from what I do right the first time. Still, I seldom know what or how to do something until I try.

In the ‘Serenity Prayer’ we ask for acceptance, courage and wisdom. Acceptance may be the key to all my problems today, but it is impossible for me to know what I have to accept until I try. And fail. Courage is what is required as I walk day by day through the wreckage of my past and the obstacles of my present. I need to try to change everything that isn’t supporting my happiness and usefulness but I need to try humbly.

I have come to believe that ‘the wisdom to know the difference’ is simply a product of failure and humility as destruction is the product of failure and pride.

Nothing worth doing has ever been easy.

 

Ready. Set.

November 30, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 13 comments

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C. S. Lewis

433282113112003_265014131120032.jpgMy roommate is writing a book.

Not today. Today she’s working on writing exercises, learning the craft, reading a ton of important literature. Early in the morning she can be found in her rocking chair in the corner of the dining room, wrapped in a quilt, pen in hand and coffee nearby, scribbling away at the millet filled lap desk. She has a little sign taped to the end of the table beside her rocker that reads, “Virginia Wolf gives you permission to write nonsense by the ream.”

She also started a 9 month ‘healthy lifestyles’ class at the Y. They set some short term and some long term fitness goals. Her long term goals seem unreachable to me. They are definitely going to require work to get to. I wouldn’t even dream of setting a goal like those she’s set. It seems impossible to me. And she’s 12 years older than me.

I have another friend (like I said, I use that word more and more loosely) who was becoming uninterested in recovery. After talking to his sponsor and grandfather, he realized that all the short term goals he had set had been accomplished and that he needed a new set of goals. He seems to be engaged again. (He’s still a total dick, but – now, just an aside. He was a total dick to me and the compulsive/impulsive me wanted to delete him from my MySpace friends last night because you know what? He’s not my friend. He has only ever shown up to see what he could get from me – in the old days it was drugs – these days he’ll stand me up for a ride home from work and -here’s why i got mad and wanted to erase him – when i see him in a meeting the next day DOESN’T EVEN SAY HELLO let alone apologize – but he’ll show up at my house unannounced because he wants a blow job. seriously. Shouldn’t I apply the same willingness to erase someone from my digital life who I know, because I’m looking at him, bears me no good will as I have applied to people who were the unfortunate targets of my horrible relationship PTSD? Feel free to chime in here, kids. I need guidance on this one.)

Anyway. Back to the goals. My grandfather used to say, “Ya cain’t lead’em where ya’ain’t goin’.” I haven’t had a goal since my parents got divorced. I’ve been running from stuff since then. In recovery I can see that at least I’m running FROM something. When I was talking to my roommate about that this morning I said something about feeling like I’m running in circles and she said that, no, I’m clearly NOT running in circles. I may be running in a zig-zag and not running toward something particular, but I am absolutely headed AWAY from where I was. That was a relief.

But it seems to me that one can expend, that I have expended a great deal of energy not really getting anywhere. I’m growing tired of that. Yet I still can’t see where I’d like to be 1 year from now, 5 years from now. Everything I can think of just seems like an insane wish, like nothing is possible. I haven’t set a goal for myself in 27 years and now I don’t know how. And I have this horrible feeling that if I take something like this to my REAL friends (with the exception of my roommate) or my sponsor that they’ll just tell me I’m right where I need to be and keep working the steps. I guess step work really IS a goal. But if that goal is to learn to live by spiritual principles and then practice them in all my affairs that would imply that there are other affairs in my life than AA. Wouldn’t it?

I don’t especially want to spend the rest of my life wandering in the desert. I’d rather be headed to the Promised Land. But what promise do I want? What is still possible for me? How do I figure out how to get there?

Default Setting

November 25, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 2 comments

kustomkanopies.jpgIt’s amazing to me, I guess it shouldn’t be at this point in recovery, but it’s amazing to me how quickly I return to my default setting; to return to the way of thinking, if not behavior, that always gets me back to where I came from unless I take purposeful action. Like when I turn on my computer after a power outage, extra stress in it’s many forms, seems to erase the growth I’ve had since the last time the machine was shut off. It is just so easy to fall back on the old way of being. It takes so much conscious effort to keep trudging forward.

Since I became aware of this warrant thing and became spiritually ready to face it I’ve had an extra set of challenges that I didn’t have before it came to my attention. I am finally an employable person but with unresolved warrants out in the world I am afraid to go to work, lest I destroy another job by being hauled out by the police. Lest I lose my home and what few artifacts of civilized living that I have accumulated in the last year after losing everything. A power surge of fear and BOOM! I’m back at my default setting. Fear. Perhaps to a lesser degree than at any point before in my life but fear just the same.

Because of that fear and not being economically productive in that last month my finances have gone completely to hell. Completely. Here are the facts of the situation. Yesterday my phone was shut off for nonpayment. I have $15.74 to my name. I don’t have any idea where the next money is coming from. I have mentioned the situation at meeting level and to my sponsor on a few occasions in the last couple of weeks, trying to be make it more clear that I was asking for help and direction and the bottom got nearer. By yesterday, when my phone got shut off, I hit full tilt panic. I have prayed. Ceaselessly(ish). I have been working with others and getting out of myself (regularly). I have attended meetings regularly – with days free now I’ve added a noon meeting to my regular 5:30 and 8:00 schedule so I average 21+ meetings a week. I have done step work.

My friends point me to the book. My friends remind me that “fear of economic insecurity will leave us.” My friends ask me if there is a roof over my head, if my electricity is on, if I have food. While I can only see the day that those things disappear is nearing they remind me that it isn’t that day today and I need to place my reliance on God. I counter with “how far do I have to let this go before I scream for help?” They smile. “You’re right where you need to be.” “Fuck you, asshole” I smile to myself. I go home and cry.

Coinciding with that stress, I have the unprecedented apparition of Mr. Astonishingly Handsome Tall-Smart flirting with dangerous abandon but from the safe door-to-door distance of 1698 miles. Except for wrestling with a handful of boys who weren’t actually interested in me, I have been alone, and by that I mean not even a date with anyone who might be a potential companion, for 14 years. It hurts. I don’t think I’m ugly. I don’t think I’m stupid. I don’t think I’m ‘too picky’. I don’t even think I’m too broken, not for someone with the right stuff, the stuff a life together is made of. I’m pretty sure I have exactly that stuff lying dormant in me. I can say with some certainty that a major contributing component to my justifying relapse in the past is the absolute hopelessness I feel about ever hearing someone I love breathing beside me; how much I miss kissing a man’s neck as he shaves in the morning, the feeling of an arm around my shoulder pulling me toward him, the sleeping weight of a thigh on top of mine.

Here my default setting splits me apart. Run to and run from but run blindly. I want things from it that are quite real and quite reasonable. Know me. Let me know you. Share. Reason. Some of them are the height of selfishness, the most egregious manifestations of my disease. Save me. Love me no matter what. Make me feel loved. Kill the loneliness. Be the Carpenters/Bacharach/Bayer-Sager/Mitchell song in the soundtrack of my life. You be the Professor and I’ll be Eliza. You be the Doctor and I’ll be Tammy. It all looks the same to me. Be my higher power (small caps – big shoes). Just like the relationships I had in the Dances with Junkies part of my life, I am still ill equipped to discern ‘the true from the false’.

My friends keep reminding me that I’m not going to be successful at this as long as I’m not placing my trust and reliance on G*d. They think I’m not placing my trust and reliance on G*d.

That’s silly. Of course I am. I would have been high already. And that’s the thing about recovery and spiritual growth. The default settings improve over time. Mine have. I know they have. I would have been high already. I’m not where I want to be but I’m closer than I was a year ago. A year ago I would have been high already. Of course I’m placing my trust and reliance on G*d. He is obviously doing for me what I could not do for myself though I would have liked to.

Before the grace of G*d, I would have been high already.

“so many problems he despaired of ever solving them” p.XXVII

November 24, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 1 comment

delstexacodesmoins.jpgI am, now, officially freaked out. Between yesterday and today I have accumulated enough ‘Close, But No Cigar’ kind of experience to have convinced myself that I am, like an old boyfriend once said, “a complete failure as a human being.” Intellectually I know that it isn’t true, that my problems are surmountable, that ‘this too,’ like every fuckin’ thing else, will pass. But at this particular point and in the fucked up corner I’ve backed myself in to I can’t see a way out, save to let the paint on the floor DRY first, and I used oil based enamel. It won’t be dry enough to walk on till after it’s too late. I’m depressed. I’m lonely. I actually thought about using today, which is unusual; just a fleeting thought, but enough for me to take notice and take action.

My dad asked me to come to my nephew’s christening yesterday so I got up in the morning and rented a car and drove 350 miles to be there. Since it was being held way out in the country at my sister-in-law’s mother’s home my dad said he’d meet me at a particular corner at a particular time and I could follow him the rest of the way. On the way there I stopped one time to pee and buy a coke, otherwise I drove. And drove. And drove. I arrived at the designated intersection 2 minutes late. No one was there. I waited 3 or 4 minutes and no one came. Already starting to feel like I had completely failed, I backtracked about 5 miles, thinking that perhaps they said the corner where one turns to get on to the particular road where I thought I was supposed to meet them. I found no one. I drove back to the original corner. No one. At this point I am sure I have the directions completely wrong. That I’ve driven 4 ½ hours for nothing. I begin listening to the voice in my head that tells me the same thing Charlie told me in 1992 – “You are a complete failure as a human being.” I am a complete failure as a human being.

I was in the right place at the right time (plus 2 minutes); an extraordinary feat considering the distance traveled and the fact that it was way out in the country in a place I have never been and didn’t have a map to. But still I felt like a failure. And it kept me from asking my dad for some modest financial help that I absolutely need for the short period this this whole warrant thing is cleared up and I am brave enough to get a real job again. I’m not good enough to deserve help. I’m “a complete failure as a human being.”

As a consequence of not asking for that help, my phone is now shut off. I’m “a complete failure as a human being.”

I just went to a meeting where I didn’t share about what’s really going on with me because I can’t say what’s really going on. They have to have already realized that I am “a complete failure as a human being.”

I wouldn’t have said anything at all but someone I like happened, that God, to actually look at me, and loves me enough to do what I can’t do for myself and ask me what’s going on. She had a good suggestion. I believe now there is a path to solving my immediate financial crisis. My friend Joe K., the “God in your gut” Joe, overheard and asked me to join him for lunch, which was a nice break from being inside my head for the last 24 hours.

My problems still seem overwhelming. They still, even now that I’m sober, seem to pile up at an astonishing rate. Kind of like when you spend years drinking beer in a station wagon and throw the empties in the back. Eventually, when you slam on the breaks, you get showered with beer cans. My head is still telling me I am “a total failure as a human being.” And it hurts. My life is complicated and uncomfortable, entirely because I made it that way. But that doesn’t mean I’m “a total failure as a human being.”

I think it means simply that I AM a human being.

You’ve decided you want what I have? Are you sure?

November 18, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 3 comments

Crawfords Texaco.jpgI went to Gooding recently to speak at the treatment center I went to, which in and of itself was really cool. Even cooler is the fact that out of that someone decided that they wanted me to show them how I’ve stayed sober. And even cooler than that, the coolest thing, something lots of people in recovery never get, is someone who wants me to show them how I got and am staying sober that is actually willing to do the work. I have friends with great sobriety, guys who work a great program, who have only had people unwilling to do the work ask to sponsor them. It must be pretty discouraging. Right out of the gate I have a kid who is apparently in enough pain and fear at 52 days clean that he’s been willing to do everything I’ve asked him to do, to do it on time or early, who calls because he has more work done and wants to get to the next thing.

I suddenly became clear last night that if I’m going to take this guy through steps 2 and 3 later tonight and give him instructions for step 4 I’d better get busy and get my sex inventory done. I had good reasons to crank out my fear and resentments and take them through 7 in light of the legal issue I have coming up. I didn’t want to be falling through the air on faith alone with that. It was important that I have conscious contact with God before I started making amends for that particular set of resentments. Having done that though, it’s time for me to proceed with the last part of the 4th step. I don’t want my sponsee to get ahead of me.

Another great thing about working with someone is having the opportunity to go back through the steps again with someone who is fresh, to be reminded of what it is to be on “the morning side of the mountain” as Donny Osmond might say. Reconnecting with that feeling, rather than just to proceed from where I am, with no point of reference but my own memory, is pretty powerful.

When I took that pile of wreckage and defects to God, when I sent up a flare from the scrap heap of humanity and asked Him to come get me and make something out of that mess, I didn’t expect that he’d make any sort of vessel out of me so quickly. When Jim said, “Now you have a message. Go carry it,” I didn’t think I’d be carrying it anywhere but at meeting level in the near term.

When I meet with this young man half an hour from now to take him through 2 and 3 and to give him instructions about step 4 I know that he won’t be able to see the person that I see sitting across the table. He won’t be able for some time to see the kind, decent and wonderful person that I see. Although I’ve told him already I doubt he realized yet that what we’re actually embarking on is a process of outfitting him to be of maximum usefulness to God and the people about him. I know that he doesn’t know what a blessing he is to me or how he’s changing my life. If he stays willing, perhaps one day soon he’ll be doing this same thing with someone else just coming in and even then he may not understand the gift he’s given me.

Our primary purpose

November 15, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 3 comments

texaco_main_neill_1930shelena.jpgis to stay sober and to help other alcoholics (and addicts) achieve sobriety. When you’re first coming in, when you’re on the morning side of the mountain, tradition 5 seems like the dumbest or most obvious thing in the world. Duh.
There is a song by Patty Griffin, I’ve talked about this before, called Up to the Mountain or the MLK song, that was inspired by Dr. King’s last speech, the one known as “I’ve been to the mountaintop.” This song has been especially important to me in recovery. Many mornings that song is my prayer. It embodies the power of my turning point, that moment in time when God showed me the truth about myself and my disease and suggested to me that there was another way He desired me to go and gave me the willingness to go there. The power of that song and its relationship to my first step was married in the coincidence of my first sober breath being drawn on Martin Luther King Day.

I couldn’t see in the moment God gave me my first step that the view changes as you climb. All I could see then was that I’d been called to the mountain. In step 3 I made an agreement with God and climbed that mountain in faith. In step 7 God delivered and gave me consciousness of His presence. As trite as it sounds, the newcomer really is the most important person in the room and helping them up is our primary purpose. After finishing my 5th step with Jim the other day he said, “Now you have a message. Go carry it.” Bring your brother up the mountain.

Before today I had never read the full text of Dr. King’s speech. Perhaps I finally read it because I began working with a young man yesterday, showing him what I have done, how I have stayed sober and how I’ve taken the steps. He got home from the Walker Center the day before where he heard me speak and that night, when he saw me walk into a meeting he came across the room and sat down by me. He looked, and by his own admission was, terrified of going back to the life he had before. Since fear and pain are great motivators I suggested he get to work on the steps, offered to show him what I’ve done, shared with him how I found a sponsor and how that has helped me, and then suggested that while he was looking for the right man to work with we could capitalize on the momentum he had and get busy doing the work, before the willingness wore off.

He actually called yesterday. I was frankly surprised. I suggested we meet at the clubhouse I am a member of and he showed up. On time. We read “The Doctor’s Opinion” together and I showed him what I did for my first sponsor for first step work, showed him that it wasn’t in the book, told him that I didn’t believe it was absolutely necessary but what value I gained from it. I pulled out my notebook and showed him what I did for the sponsor I have now, first where I fucked it up because I complicate shit, and where I returned to the actual directions. I showed him where that is in the book. I shared what I got out of doing it. I wrote the instructions down, as my sponsor had for me. Then we went to a meeting. He still seemed frightened, which encouraged me. I saw him again last night at the second meeting I was at. I suspect I’ll hear from him later today. The view from up the mountain is profoundly different.

I don’t intend to detract from Dr. King’s message regarding the civil rights movement in any way, or from the powerful message of his final speech. There is a universal truth in that speech, though, about knowing God and about working to be delivered from bondage in any form. That universal truth, the message of courage and faith and hope, is the message I hope to carry when I share my experience with the next suffering alcoholic or addict. In the middle of his speech Dr. King talks about taking specific steps to becoming free from the bondage of poverty and inequality for black Americans, the same way we AAs talk about taking specific steps for victory over addiction. The first part and last part of the speech talk about the truth of why we do it. I have significantly edited leaving only the most relevant parts that pertain to my struggle to overcome, but I think it merits sharing here.

“I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee — the cry is always the same: “We want to be free.”

And another reason that I’m happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. We know how it’s coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.

If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school — be there. Be concerned about your brother. [E]ither we go up together, or we go down together. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him? That’s the question before you tonight. The question is not, “If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?” The question is, “If I do not stop to help . . .what will happen to them?” That’s the question.

We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

- Dr. Martin Luther King, delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee

Zero to Crazy

October 24, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 3 comments

ghs1031.jpg in about three days. Sunday I started feeling poor and by Monday morning I was well and truly sick. A trip to the clinic Monday afternoon confirmed what I already knew and put me at home in bed with a fistful of antibiotics to prove it. Since I got home from rehab I have gone to at least one and often more 12 step meetings a day, usually AA though my primary drug of choice was crystal meth. Before the 12 o’clock meeting I went to today, the last meeting I attended was Sunday evening. For and alcoholic and addict like me that is far too long. I simply am not capable of being locked up in my house and staying sane. By this morning I didn’t even feel like I could pray right.

It’s not even like I was ever completely alone, not for long. It was an AA that took me to the doctor and waited hours with me to be seen. I live with another AA but haven’t been much of a roommate, locking myself in my room, afraid of making her sick, too. Looking at my last post, too, I see the early signs of illness. I get a little worn down and my default setting is “why can’t I have a boyfriend? Now?”

Of course all the hours I’ve spent in bed have been filled with all kinds of stuff I want to write about, stuff that seemed brilliant at the time when I was too exhausted to sit up and write, stuff that completely escapes me now. They say ‘meeting makers make it.’ I would add ‘if they do the work.’ Today I’m just grateful to have been able to make it to a meeting, whether I can pick up the work today or not.

Oh, yeah.  In case you weren’t paying attention or didn’t care or whatever, something was wrong with my wordpress installation and the feeds didn’t work.  That’s why I had to reinstall it from scratch on the 16th.  The backup of the database that contains this blog was corrupt, too, so basically the whole fucker was shot – anyway.  Today I recovered (praise be to the merciful and beneficent Google) the last of the lost posts and have restored them.  I have no intention of restoring lost comments.  Those of you who posted them can do that very well yourselves.

Blessings be.

Avant Tard

September 19, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | No comments

I think I may have described here before that I think of 12 step recovery as Spirituality for Complete Idiots. I may also have said ‘total retards’ but that really isn’t correct, politically or any other way. I’ve had cause recently to rethink the moniker. I can’t recall exactly why but for some reason I started exploring other, perhaps more accurate, descriptions. Angry Barcode has done this thing before where she takes a phrase or sentence and deconstructs it, looking at each word individually and carefully, extracting the full essence of meaning from each one and then reconstructing the original sentence. It’s an analytical tool I became rather enamored of and I’ve found that it works quite well on extracting the full meaning of a single word, too. So that having been said;

Retarded is not the word I would pick to describe my own spiritual malady. Retarded implies that, given time, my own power, as marshaled by my will, shall be enough to lift me out of the condition I found myself in last year; that armed with proper knowledge and training I have, of myself, the power to transcend my drug problem.

Yeah, right.

But let’s shake out the pertinent parts of the various definitions of autism, shall we?

It appears to be a lifelong, pervasive, chronic brain disorder with an unknown origin that begins in early childhood and and persists throughout adulthood. Autism is not a mental illness. It affects the functioning of the brain. Some theories suggest that it may be caused by genetics. It manifests itself in marked problems with a person’s ability to communicate, form relationships with others, and respond appropriately to the environment; in which a person is dis-associated from the reality around them. It prevents individuals from properly understanding what they see, hear, and otherwise sense. Some adults with autism function well, earning college degrees and living independently. Others never develop the skills of daily living, and may be incorrectly diagnosed with a variety of psychiatric illnesses. It is actually a morbid, pathological self-absorption marked by lack of awareness of the feelings of others. Autistic people often have little or no social interaction or communications with others. Their subjective, self-centered behavior is not altered by external influences and they withdrawal from contact with people.

That’s it! Exactly. For me anyway that’s exactly right. I was locked into exactly that type of syndrome, with full knowledge that there was something wrong and not being able to see the way out. It was like being locked in a black box and the instructions on how to open the box were printed on the outside. I was stuck in there, screaming, until I was exhausted enough to hear the voice on the outside of the box reading the instructions to me.

The 4th step is really like listening carefully and transcribing the combination to the lock on that box. 5 through 9 seem to be turning the combination and unlocking the box and stepping out of it. Once you’re out you notice there are locked boxes with helpless people inside them everywhere. Steps 10 – 12 are the opportunity to read the instructions to anyone locked in there that’s ready to hear them. You can’t make a spiritually autistic person listen to the answer any more than you can make him follow the instructions on the outside of the box he’s locked in. You just have to wait till they’re worn out from trying to beat their way out on their own.

Which reminds me, I need to buy aspirin.

« Older entries § Newer entries »

get userping