Resentment

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It’s just like riding a bicycle

March 25, 2011 in Fear, Perseverance, Resentment by Chris | No comments

Twelve miles southeast of Boise is a dam on the Boise River called the Lucky Peak Dam.  In addition to providing we Boiseans with recreational opportunities, the dam also produces a modest amount of electrical power and helps control flooding in our city.  Riding a bicycle home from the dam is a really beautiful journey along our greenbelt. Over the course of 12 miles one drops in elevation by 96 feet.  Not much really.  Enough so that when you turn around and go back you really notice, but on the ride away from the dam the grade is almost imperceptible.

My heart failure is like that.  I didn’t really notice what was happening because it all seemed like a slow progression uphill as I was healing from my lung surgery two years ago.  It just seemed like I never quite got better but in truth, looking back I can see that my heart has been getting gradually worse for at least 4 years.  So I’m taking a beta-blocker and my cardiologist wants to do a catheterization procedure because he’s found out all he can from the outside and all that is that something is wrong, both with the amount of blood my heart pumps (left bundle branch block) and with my heart rhythm (supraventricular bigemini).  Needless to say, even with my precious health insurance, there is a cost and it will be painful.  But unless I have that surgery the most I can hope to do is cover up the symptoms.  Only surgery can correct it if it even can be corrected.

And recovery has been like that lately.  Well honestly I’ve been noticing the slow but steady progression for a long time.  I have noticed that the staying sober part has been relatively easy but that gradually, over time, the living has gotten more complicated; that placing my “trust and reliance on a power greater than ourselves” has become a distant, somewhat quaint idea.  I can buy into the small “h” higher power of the program or of reality, but the God “personal to me?”

The last three months in particular the living part has been almost more than I can bear, and I can’t talk about most of it because it will all likely end up in court.  I can say that my life is permeated with fear and resentment.  I don’t even believe in that Higher Power that everyone talks about and yet I have found myself in the last couple of weeks praying that it would reveal itself to me in a way that I could understand again.  I’m terrified of having the Mother Theresa variety of spiritual experience and not getting an answer until just before I die.  I am afraid that, like with the heart surgery, I don’t have what is required for me to get what I need.  I’m afraid I lack the faith required to have a vital spiritual experience.  I suppose all of this puts me solidly back in step 2, doesn’t it.

In my condition, it really would be a miracle if I stayed sober.  My sponsor told me that everything I needed to stay sober I learned in the first 30 days; that staying sober after that is like riding a bicycle.  I just have to keep peddling.

Nothing That Three Million Dollars Won’t Fix

February 5, 2010 in Brotherly Love, Resentment, Shortcomings by Chris | 5 comments

I think I hate being in therapy.  I mean, they make you look at yourself!  And who wants to do that?  I thought I’d done well enough having gotten through the 4th step and, after all, I’m still sober.  I guess that isn’t entirely true.  After an hour and a half with Anita yesterday I realized that I still have a bunch of work to do on a resentment I didn’t think I harbored any longer.  A resentment toward my  mother.   Oh my God!  Can’t we just put that behind us already?  It’s bad enough that I feel like I’ve lost all the passion in my life, and lost it long ago, but to have this still be the thing that is blocking me is beyond the pale. Read the rest of this entry »

I Don’t Want to Pray for Him.

December 28, 2009 in Courage, Resentment by Chris | 10 comments

I am beyond furious and my sponsor is out of town.  It happened again.  I finally got last week’s paycheck cashed on Wednesday and today this week’s check bounced.  Obviously, in spite of what my employer says, I need to find a new job. Read the rest of this entry »

I Hate Confrontation

December 21, 2009 in Fear, Resentment, Shortcomings by Chris | 4 comments

Crystal Meth

A fight breaks out in a slum after a heavy session of whisky, gambling and Ya Ba. The effects of this rather potent form of Methamphetamine are increased aggression, paranoia and then total melt down. Week after week Thai TV channels and the newspapers were showing pictures of drug crazed adults, often with a knife to someones throats. I one instance a man slashed a babies throat killing the child all on TV. Something needed doing until so the Thaksin Government declared a "War On Drugs". Then things got really nasty. (Ya Ba translates from Thai to English as Mad Medicine).

I hate confrontation, but I’m afraid I find myself in a position where I have to have one.  With my boss.

My paycheck bounced.

I’m trying to save up some money so that I can declare bankruptcy and my paycheck is bouncing.  I can’t stand it.  My student loan and my car payments are due as is the bill for the attorney that kept me out of jail two years ago and my “Cost of Supervision” – the surtax I pay for being a dangerous criminal.  It’s Christmas.  And I’m barely getting by.  And my paycheck bounced.  I’m so mad I could spit.

This happened about this time last year, too.

You don’t bounce payroll.  I mean it’s just not done.  It’s probably time for me to be looking for a new job but with unemployment in my area at 3 times what it was 2 years ago, and not having graduated from college and being a felon, the chances of me getting another job at the wage  I currently make are very slim.  It might be a good time to think about going back to school, too, but it’s too late to get financial aid for the spring semester.  Without financial aid it will be impossible for me to go to school.  I already have $10K in student loan debt – what’s another 20 more, right?  If I end up with a decent job that has health insurance? Seriously, I don’t think that will ever happen.  I think I’m stuck where I am.

I’m stuck where I am and I have to talk to my boss about getting paid and worry about when this is going to happen again.  I just hate that.

You know, the whole last year of my recovery I’ve been in the grips of the thought that I should be weller than this by now.  I should be more comfortable in my own skin and the world should somehow be more manageable.  Or if I’m feeling anxious or depressed or fearful or angry there ought to be something I can take to make it go away.  The Big Book is rife with claims that as recovering people we should be happy and I guess the fact that I’m not, or that I haven’t been, makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong; that I am failing at the program.  It doesn’t really register that life is sometimes difficult for everyone.

I’ve been reading an old Grapevine interview with Dr. Paul, the author of “Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict” – the story that spawned the Cult of Page 449 (acceptance is the answer) and I really like what he has to say about overcoming stuff like this:

“I grew up thinking that I had to perfect my personality, then I got into AA, and AA said, no, that isn’t the way we do it: only G-d can remove our defects. I was amazed to find that I couldn’t be a better person simply by trying harder! Read the rest of this entry »

Any Texaco Man Will Show You

February 14, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 1 comment

Texaco ManOne of my great, if not my greatest character traits is intelligence. I’m smart, damn it, and I know it. I was also raised in a family, a community and a culture that all place a high value on intelligence, so I feel valuable. Another trait is perseverance. “Quitters never win,” was an oft repeated admonition in the society of my youth. Taken together these are the kind of qualities that governments and industries are built of. There is little that cannot be achieved with intelligence and perseverance. They are qualities to be admired.

In an addict or an alcoholic they can be fatal. Alcoholics and addicts of my description often die rather than embrace the truth; that “we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable.” To finally and completely admit the truth about me, that I was entirely without ability, influence or control with regard to drugs and alcohol and that as a result of my drinking and using the ordinary tasks of living became impossible to deal with was a pill too bitter to swallow. Me, the one who prided himself on his ability to solve even the most difficult problems, the one who never gave up till the obstacle was overcome or the difficulty mastered, admitting that I had been defeated by such a trivial thing.

I saw other people having wine with dinner, going out for drinks with friends or having a beer on a hot summer day.  I even saw people who occasionally smoked a joint or did a line of coke or crystal meth without anything terrible happening and I couldn’t understand why I was unable to do the same.  I didn’t understand why when I did the same things I saw other people doing I got different results. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that when you take culturally reinforced personality traits like intelligence and perseverance, a hereditary brain defect and a powerfully addictive substance that the result is someone who has to go pretty far down the scale before they cry “Uncle!”

Ultimately I did surrender.  After I had tried absolutely everything I could think of to try, I did admit complete defeat, and asked for help.  People who understood me and my problem took me to the solution and showed me how to apply a simple set of spiritual principles to my problems.  But I didn’t or couldn’t  ask for help before I had done some pretty outrageous things in an attempt to satisfy the craving and manage the outcome.  I am still paying (dearly) for the consequences of my addiction.  Today my head (my disease) is telling me that the price I am paying is too high, that the world is unfair, that the behavior that placed me in the position I am in is the result of a disease, a brain disorder really, and culturally reinforced ‘virtues’; that I am being punished for being biologically defective, smart and persevering.

That insane idea is as much a part of the problem as anything else, and luckily there is a set of simple instructions that I now try to follow to override it.  Following those instructions can take me from thinking how upset I am that it will be years and years before I get my passport back and go to Italy, to thinking how grateful I am that I get to be useful to the people around me outside of prison walls today.  The problem is still that I don’t always pick up those tools and follow those instructions right away.  I seem to have to reach a certain level of misery before I understand that the only effective solution I have today to the problems that trouble me most is the same solution that they showed me how to apply to my drug and alcohol problem.

What I’m saying is that someone showed me how to apply the solution and yet today I am miserable and unwilling to apply that solution to the thing that is troubling me.  Today I am miserable.  It isn’t something I’m going to drink over.  I may just do some extended pouting.  Hopefully I won’t wallow in this too long.

Any Texaco Man Will Show You, originally uploaded by nyctreeman.

 

Lexical Semantics

September 16, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | No comments

Not that it’s relevant or apropos of anything and not that I am particularly well today and not that I’ve done ANYTHING related to doing the work that I talk here so feverishly about doing, BUT -

I was thinking just now on my walk home from a meeting (yes you know who was there) about the difference between a hustler and a whore. How could I fault anyone for being a whore if I’ve been one too, right? So I looked them up.

A whore is someone who engages in sexual activity for payment or who misuses their talents or who sacrifices their self-respect for the sake of personal or financial gain.

A hustler is someone who aggressively and dishonestly takes advantage of others for personal gain.

There is something more honest, it would seem, about being a whore.

The Faith that Grows

September 14, 2007 in Living in Recovery by Chris | No comments

But sometimes, in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, the discussion of finding a relationship with a Higher Power that can support and sustain one in the certain low spots that lie ahead, is not only frowned upon, but actively discouraged. As AA has grown, more and more people pass into (and back out of) ‘the rooms’ who have not yet or, perhaps, will not reach the level of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization that is nearly always required for one to grasp on to the program with the desperation of a drowning man. It is hard for me not to fault certain members of AA who, having found some relief in simply not drinking (or using), have elected to forgo the work required by anyone who is truly an alcoholic or an addict. I have long observed and it has been my experience that one can gain a certain relief from the suffering that living an unexamined and purposeless life imparts simply by hanging around AA long enough and by accumulating a few days of abstinence. It is even possible gain merciful relief by propinquity, the filial calculus of entering a room filled with a brothers and sisters who have been pulled from the jaws of death virtually guarantees it. Even the founders were aware that what the program offers is something almost anyone can benefit from. In the forward to the first edition of the book they say as much.

When this type of ‘alcoholic/addict’ enters a 12 step meeting and shares ‘their’ program they deprive others who, like me, need THE program, of hearing the solution to the hopeless state of body and mind from which we ‘real’ alcoholics and addicts suffer. And like many of us who are relatively new to this, to doing the work and seeking God and working with others, I do not suffer fools gladly.

I have been absent from writing both my blog and my inventory lately because I have been angry with many of the members of (what I used to consider) my home group. I chaired a meeting there a couple of weeks ago. When one of the members there, someone with a couple of years clean, ’shared’ about his struggles with schizophrenia and sex addiction but never mentioned alcohol I ‘thanked’ him and let someone else have a chance to speak. I believe that it was my responsibility to the group to do that. It is none of my business if he went to his sponsor’s house later that night and cried about how mean I am. Making sure that the message of AA is delivered in an AA meeting is my responsibility. Seeking out and working with newcomers is my responsibility. If I am looking at the last drop in my cup it is my responsibility to be looking for a chance to help someone without a cup.

I was severely criticized for asking that guy to stop and moving on to the next person. Then I made the mistake of opening my mouth in that same meeting a week later and talked for seven minutes; a full two minutes over the customary five, compounding the criticism I endured after Sunday’s meeting.

The same way gay people in Boise, Idaho, don’t want to be politically involved (we’ve known Larry Craig is a big fat gay homosexual faggot for decades and never did anything about it) they also don’t want to know about or share the solution that is supposed to be available in their own AA meeting. Perhaps that’s why there are so few gay members of AA here. That’s not really true. There are plenty of gay AA members, just very few who go the the gay AA meeting here.

So that’s it. I dumped my home group. And I’m trying to get over being angry about how it happened; not something I, as an addict, am capable of doing or have any power over. But I believe that in recovery, as one seeks a relationship with their Creator, one’s faith grows. It grows into certainty. It grows into reliance. God willing I’ll learn to deliver that message more effectively and find the right place for me to share it.

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