Courage

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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

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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.

 

Humility v. Humiliation II; Dude, I’m working a program here.

November 27, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 6 comments

nixon_tx_texaco.jpgI had an interesting and clarifing conversation with my sponsor regarding humility and humiliation. According to him, and I like this definition, I can work with this definition, humility is thinking of others more than I think of myself. Humiliation is doing something that is beneath me, for whatever reason. He said that McD is perfect right now. If I’m sober and working a program, if I’ve given myself to God, then God’s will is quite simply ‘what happens.’ Whether I understand it or like it or not. He also suggested that as I take this humiliating experience to God that I say something like (his words) “Dude, I’m working a program here. I’m ernestly seeking you. I’m trying to do as I think you would have me do. Now could you kick me down some shit?” You know, basically the last part of the third step prayer.

It just this second occurred to me that perhaps my strategy of taking a job I don’t give a shit about just to keep my nose above water (or rather slow my decent to the bottom of the ocean – let’s face it, this job is not going to pay my bills) and to not have to lose a job I care about because of my unresolved legal bullshit is a demonstration of lack of faith that God will make this all work out somehow rather than a demonstration of faith by doing what seems to me to be the next indicated thing. Maybe I should have been looking for a less humiliating job. Maybe I should have just ignored my fear about losing a job I care about and gone for a job I love.
Oh fuck.

What if that’s not the only area of my life I do that in? I mean, how could it be. You take a principle or a core belief and see how it plays out in one area of life and then reframe the some other area of life in light of the same principle and see if the same thing is happening, right? What if I push away people I care about, what if I place an absolute bar against letting love in, in favor of something worse, something humiliating, like being alone for another 14 years, because I’m afraid of losing them?

See, thats the thing about writing a thing like this. It does something to my brain. I’m all over the map normally and putting a keyboard at my fingertips seems to pull me into a stream. River. Gully in a flash flood. Whatever.

Well then, where do I go from here? I’m already working for a clown. The clown offers medical and dental so apart from the stupid shoes and ugly hair he’s not all bad. I guess I need to be looking for a less humiliating job; something more in line with what I have to offer into the stream of life and not just wresting what I think I need to take from it. I guess I need to stop playing Superman, all locked in my Fortress of Solitude. I guess this is where true humility comes in and where humiliation and the harm I do because of it, stops.

“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

All of Me. Good and Bad.

November 10, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 5 comments

gamma_frankhawks.jpgI have a friend, Joe K. who has been sober something like 38 years. Joe has worked with hundreds of alcoholics and addicts, not just here in Boise, but all over the country and continues to do so. A couple of weeks ago I was in a meeting and met this dynamite guy with years and years of what looks like, on the outside, really solid recovery. This guy works with probably ten men in Los Angeles, where he lives. He flew into Boise to meet his sponsor, Joe K. You get the point. On the topic of recovery, Joe knows what he’s talking about.

I have known Joe for a very long time, through previous vain attempts (if you can call them that) at recovery, and, because Joe is cut from the same eccentric pink cloth as I am, I have always trusted him and maintained a friendship even when I have not been able to get or maintain anything like sobriety. We had a conversation many years ago during a particularly difficult spell, a time when the consequences were accumulating and my desire to avoid them increased, but also a time when I was still in denial about the absence of willingness to do the work. Joe pointed at my head and then my heart. He said, “Chris, you’ve got God here and here.” He pointed at my gut and said, “You need to get God HERE.” I had no idea whatever what he meant and he was unable to describe it in a way that I understood. “You just have to do the work,” he said.

Well at that point I was unable or unwilling to do the work. I mean, really I was just a little drunk and high on crystal meth. It wasn’t MY fault that that really hot guy stole my car (which I recovered in Salt Lake City six weeks later). I was not looking for an answer to the real problem at that point. I was looking to dodge the consequences. Still, what he said stuck with me. Any time I approached willingness to accept spiritual help that conversation would come to mind. In this go at recovery that conversation has never been far from the front of my mind and has troubled me.

When I got here this time however, I was pretty badly broken. I didn’t walk in trying to avoid external consequences. I walked in because I wanted to die and the only people I knew who had been where I was and gotten out were people in recovery. I walked in ready to grasp on to a few tools and follow a few instructions as if my life depended on it. I got here with a first step.

I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity; I got God in my mind. I made a decision to turn my will and life over to that Power; I got God in my heart. Then I began the inventory process. Trudging through all of that was, obviously, painful and scary for me. It showed me over and over just exactly the extent of my condition and where I failed; how my complete inability to produce a desired effect in my life had harmed people I care about and driven me farther from the effect I sought to produce. Yet I got that all out on paper.

Thursday afternoon I sat down with Jim, the man I work with (which btw makes Joe K. my great-grand sponsor) and had a long, long . . . long talk. He sent me home to spend a quiet hour reviewing my work, looking for anything I might have left out. I did, in fact, have to call him and go over some things, things I left out and things I outright lied about. When all of that was done I got on my knees (I know usually that is a metaphor, but I did actually get on my knees) and had another conversation, this one with the God I know but don’t comprehend, and something happened. All of that pain, all of that doubt, all of that fear and the sense of unworthiness vanished. It vanished all at once and all at once the knowledge of God’s presence in my life moved from my heart to my gut.

I can’t say what it feels like or describe how I got there except to say, as Joe said, you just have to do the work.

Prepared for a long talk

November 8, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 3 comments

Market StreetHawthorneAveSalemOregon1978.jpgI finished writing my 4th step today. Resentments and fear anyway. Enough to get started since there is a good reason to get it out of the way. Sex inventory, like sex, can wait till later. Much, much later. But as I was sitting here tonight, answering a couple of emails, I started wondering about the path again. My view gets so distorted. I heard someone today talking about how wonderful hindsight is. Well, if you ask me, that is pure and utter bullshit. Hindsight sucks. I look at shit I was writing in July and it HURTS me to look at it. I really don’t recall it being as bad as it was. And now that I’ve reread it I remember. It really was that bad.

I think I’m somewhat less afflicted today. Who knows though. I may read this a year from now and think I was suicidal. Anyway, back to the step work. I read all the way back to the 6 month mark and that first step is still clear in my mind. It’s the only thing I haven’t minimized or distorted. My first step is crystal clear.

Within months I had become unemployable. The only income I had was from selling which I justified by saying that a.) you don’t expect me to pay retail, do you? and b.) a lot of guys I know would be so much happier if someone like me could take the bumps out of the supply line. I couldn’t keep up with the pace or the pressure. My use increased. The income I was generating quickly vanished as my own use increased. I lost my car (a classic Mercedes). I was evicted from my apartment. The Brooks Brothers shirts and Hermes ties vanished. Inside of six months, December of last year, I was wandering the frozen streets of Boise wondering which old customer would let me have a few days on their sofa and kick me down some mercy dope. On December 13th, my birthday, I knew I was out of answers but I didn’t even know who or how to ask for help

I’m looking forward to sitting down with Jim tomorrow and sharing my story, all the baggage I have carried with me for so long, the shit I tried to hide and the shit I tried to pretend was there instead. It’s been a really painful, long, sad and rude awakening. I don’t know how spiritual it’s been but it has been painful. It has been sad.

And still, I look at all of that and wonder why God should love me. I wonder if I’ll ever love myself. I look at the 4th step and see that all the things that hurt me most, all the things that most broke my heart and hardened me, are all things that I had done to people before they were ever done to me. That’s the rude awakening. I’m the perpetrator of my own heartbreak. And I was not able to evade the crisis. I wasn’t able to postpone the realization of the truth.

I’m believe God loves me. I truly do. I just don’t understand though. I just don’t fucking understand. So it should be good to get this 5th step done. Make a little more room for God to be in. I don’t know why he’d want to, but I understand he does amazing things with guys like me.

Deus absconditus

November 7, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

startexaco1.bmp.jpgI’m terrified of trusting God with anything important. I shouldn’t be. I have an indication or two that He’s at work in my life, yet I struggle with letting go of something so big as what I’ve been facing. And why? Because I don’t have His phone number? He doesn’t have a street address? I don’t see His picture in the Yellow Pages?

Years ago I saw Angels in America at the Mark Taper Forum. There I sat, the Mormon boy, with my Jewish attorney boyfriend, overwhelmed with the surreal fun house mirror image of my life unfolding on the stage in front of me. And of all the things that stood out to me was the idea that God is absent. Prior’s angelic visitor proclaims that man’s erring restlessness: his promiscuous mobility has driven God away from the world and as a result the planet is falling apart.

That idea somehow made it’s way into my consciousness. It somehow stuck. And now, I find the task of learning to trust a God that I had believed to be missing, because of my own inability to reach Him, well, daunting. Sure, I trust the God of Small Things. But capital G God?

This is scary.

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