Moments of Clarity

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Winter Night

December 13, 2009 in Faith, Gratitude, Honesty, Hope by Chris | 8 comments

6th and Pueblo Street, Boise, Idaho My sobriety anniversary is very important to me and it’s coming up here soon, but it doesn’t quite move me the same way December 13th does.  December 13th, today, happens also to be my birthday, but my God, I’m 44 years old.  My “birthday” is not really a big deal anymore.  No, the anniversary I celebrate tonight, the reason this day is important to me, is that on this night, three years ago, I suddenly saw myself clearly and suddenly had a little hope that recovery would be possible.

The first two years were easy.  This last one has been a bitch.  There have been times recently when I have wished that I had died back in May.  It would have been so much easier.  I’ve even, at times, tried to tell myself that if that illness had killed me that I would be a hero.  I would have died sober.  I would have died doing the things that I was supposed to be doing.  My family and friends would mourn me, sure, but there would be something happy underneath the sorrow; the knowledge that they had known me and that in my last years I had been sober.

Lately things have been much, much harder.  I’ve had to return to being medicated to stop the insanity that has been going through my mind.  The medicines are working, so that is good, but I still have a ton of stuff to face.

Somehow, in spite of everything, I have remained sober.  In fact I’ve been sober longer now than I have ever been since I was 14 years old and I attribute it to that moment at the corner of 6th and Pueblo, under the street lamp, in the snow, when I finally understood that the pain I was in then was the very best that I could hope for, unless I got sober, and when I suddenly believed that it would be possible.

” God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.  Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will.  Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love and Thy Way of Life.  May I do Thy will always.  Amen”

Old Ideas

September 26, 2009 in Faith, Spirituality by Chris | 4 comments

“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous, page 58

Some of us have tried to hold on to them without even knowing that is what we’re doing, until it bites us.

I was thinking about my conversation with Chris Lawford a couple of years ago.  The last question he asked was, “What does God look like?”  He asked all of us the same set of questions and you can discern that from a close reading of the chapters in “Moments of Clarity”, and he has included the answers to that question from a few of the people he interviewed.  I remember Susan Cheever’s being particularly moving, though at the moment I can’t remember what it was.  Mine was not included, which killed me because I thought I had been so clever.

In the first place, I thought the question was kind of obtuse.  How, really, can one know what God looks like?  We can’t even agree on a definition of God, let alone agree on God’s existence, so how would I know what God looks like.  And that is what I said.  I said, “I don’t know, but when it is my time to go I hope He holds me in his arms and whispers something funny.”

It is a good thing it was not included, actually, because it is  not even an original line.  I stole it from William Finn; a line from the song “You’ve Got to Die Sometime” from Falsettoland. (None of my material is original.  Go ahead and check.  That’s not entirely true.  I did coin the term Googlyize, meaning to glue googly eyes on to something, but I digress.)

The thing is, at that time and though I wasn’t even conscious of it, I was still in the grips of an old idea about what God is, and though intellectually I professed something more abstract, my spiritual experience in the early parts of my recovery had never been inconsistent with the ideas of God which I had been given as a child.  I was taught to believe in God at approximately the same time I was taught about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and he was given a personality and a face, the same way those other fairy tales had.  (When my parents told me the truth about the Easter Bunny I proudly walked into class the following Monday and announced to everyone that, “My daddy is the Easter Bunny!”)

I guess this incredibly painful four month experience in letting go of that old idea, and the amazing relief I have at the moment having come through that and feeling again a spiritual wholeness, has me curious about what other old ideas I may be hanging on to that are standing in the way of my growth.

I suspect they will make themselves known when the time is right.

Almost Forgotten

January 2, 2009 in Gratitude, Service by Chris | 12 comments

I started writing to save my life.  Even today, but most especially in the earliest days of my recovery the act of writing helped me maintain perspective and focus.  I wrote in a medium that was publicly accessible because I was so profoundly alone. The feedback I got really encouraged me and helped motivate me.

All I’d ever really been was fucked up, and somehow in the act of writing about trying to recover from that I attracted the attention of Christopher Kennedy Lawford, who asked if I would agree to be interviewed for a book about the moment that led me to recovery; the moment I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  I remember at the time being so flattered that I almost didn’t grant the interview. Seriously, if your fucked-upness has attracted the attention of a member of the Kennedy clan, you’ve reached your zenith. Read the rest of this entry »

Your Image of Me Is What I Hope to Be

January 22, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 3 comments

Blocking the Sunlight of the Spirit“[H]e had been using crystal meth constantly for several weeks, and was suffering from severe paranoia as a result, when he visited MyOutSpirit.com and saw the photo contest slogan, “Remember who you want to be.” He says that was the trigger that helped him quit using and start getting his life back together.”
- Ko Imani

Here I withhold many of the specifics of my own moment of clarity. Something so intimate and powerful is not well served by my shouting from the rooftops. I do well enough to shout in a general way that there is hope for the hopeless, help for the helpless and a solution to an unsolvable problem. I assume that Ko omitted details of the conversation above for much the same reason. I was struck, though, by the similarity of his friend’s experience to my own; something struck my soul at the perfect moment and kicked me into action. After many years in darkness I suddenly saw light.

Where our moments differ is only this: the image of what I wanted to be was profoundly warped. My experience was the realization (the miracle of healing really) that I had been created in the image of my Creator and I was not reflecting that image. Too much of my stubbornness and pride, my resentments, my faithlessness, hopelessness and fear stood in the way of being a reflection of God. My thoughts and actions had placed me too far away to reflect the “sunlight of the Spirit”. I did not suddenly remember what I wanted to be . I saw God’s image of me and I was compelled to act.

That is an experience I wish I could give away. I wish I could give it to the sponsee who called me today after spending last night slamming Dilaudid. I wish I could make him see the Light.

Texaco, originally uploaded by domit.

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

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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