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I don’t want to make this about religion . . .

May 5, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 12 comments

Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?
Hedwig: No, but I… I love his work.

John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch

I don’t want to make this about religion because it isn’t about religion. It’s about the same thing everything else here is about. Me. It’s what it was like, what happened (and what’s happening), and what it’s like now. For me. It is my experience, my strength and my hope. It is also a place where I can sit down, slow down, cool down and give the loving Creator of my own understanding room to go to work. It is part inventory, part meditation, all reaching out.

My story is not unique by any stretch. Young men from my home town have gone down similar, almost identical paths. I don’t know all the specifics of Troy’s story but I know he grew up in a similar environment, one fought with pressure to conform to the dominant culture. I can only hope that there was more tollerance in 2006 than in the 70′s and 80′s, when I was his age. In my own case, by the time I was 14 years old I had developed a concrete intellectual bias against every system of thinking which claimed to be the only truth. I carried that bias into every part of my life, judging things which I had never examined.

In my own experience, gaining hope in the second step that a “Power greater than myself” could restore me to sanity, and then gaining enough faith to turn my will and life over to the care of that power, as I understood it, was only possible because the message was delivered to me in a way that I could hear. The men who guided me left the specifics of their own conception of a Higher Power at the door, and instead shared what happened that made them willing to seek that relationship and what that relationship had done for them. At no point did they ever tell me that they had the one truth. They carried the message by strictly adhering to the instructions on page 93 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous which says, among other things, that I could choose any conception of a Higher Power I liked, as long as it made sense to me, and that there was no use arousing any prejudice I may have against theological terms. I was willing to believe in something, so long as you didn’t tell me what to believe.

The meetings I attend most regularly have now been completely invaded by a group of not very Christlike Jesus people who call on themselves to share at meeting level to watch out in the rooms of AA. “There are forces of darkness in these rooms that are marking Christians and taking them out of here.” If you point out to them that there is a way we do things in AA and a reason that we do it they just say, “Then we’ll disagree.” If you call attention to the fact that when they share the way they share, that newcomers and young people get up and leave the meeting, visibly upset; that the way they are sharing does not help to carry the message, they say that they are merely sharing the truth as they understand it.

The program, however, has nothing to do with looking at them, with judging them, and everything to do with looking at me. What part of me is so prideful that I need to be ‘right’ on this point? What within me makes me refuse to accept these people as they are? What is the origin of the blind spot in my faith that makes me think that as a group, the 2nd Tradition won’t see us through this or that the people being driven from the rooms won’t find their way back when the time is right? What am I so afraid of that I cannot seem to find it within myself to treat these people with the same pity, patience and tolerance with which I treat people who can’t stay sober or people to only identify as addicts or people who talk about taking steps they have never taken. Why do I only see that they are not helping the program rather than seeing that the program could help them?

In my 5th step my sponsor pointed out that he though I had a lot more work to do in the area of God and religion. I actually blew him off. “No. Really. I’m so completely OK with all that,” I told him.

No. Really I’m not.

So Spank Me

May 3, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 10 comments

As much as I hate cross talk in a meeting there are times when sharing what needs to be shared and not cross talking seems almost impossible. Side conversations are annoying, too, but often less so. I’m afraid I participated in both yesterday. Actually I managed the cross-talk thing more successfully. The side conversation thing was to point out something to a sponsee. Since I frequently judge myself too harshly about many things I’m going to absolve myself of this particular sin.

I’m not as eager to absolve the woman who was the target of my cross talk. In fact I just got off the phone with my friend Owen who was also disturbed by this chick who was aparently there not for recovery, but rather to promote her business and spewed a version of the message on AA based on a poor understanding of both the program and the English language. I guess it’s OK for her to think that because the 1st step says “we WERE alcoholic” and that our lives “WERE unmanagable” that it means that she now has power over alcohol. She is, after all, a “nationally certified Christian counselor”. We were all invited to take one of her cards which were pinned up by the stack on the announcements bulletin board.

Correct me if I’m wrong, I said, but doesn’t the book say that no real alcoholic ever recovers control? My understanding is that lack of power and an inability to control is exactly what the problem is and that my only hope of being delivered from the problem is to seek and align myself with a greater power by taking certain, simple, clear-cut steps. I believe it says that what I get isn’t control, but rather a “daily repreive based on my spiritual condition”. I think it also says that at some point there will be nothing standing in between me and picking up except that Higher Power. My experience is that I “recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body”, not that I have regained power over drugs and alcohol. I have not been given the power to control drugs and alcohol. The problem of desiring to control them was simply removed. And that is what I shared.

I am impressed that she is “nationally certified” but wonder if she is state licensed. And since the message I heard from her was not THE message of AA, I threw her cards in the garbage after the meeting. Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to do.

So spank me.

School and Work are Fine

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

“School and work are fine – and that is what we do between meetings”
Karl M., Covina, CA

“Why do we have to listen to the same people tell the same stories at every meeting?”  Norman leaned over and asked me that at a meeting last night.  He’s right, of course.  We hear the same people share the same stories day after day after day.  Particularly in a small city like mine where the fixtures at the meeting don’t really change.  It is actually one of the things I like best about blogging.  It gives me the opportunity to take a look at today and apply the lens of the solution offered in 12 step programs.  It helps me see the present more clearly.  It gives me new stories; new experience, new strength and new hope.  It gives me a constant source of new stuff to share at meetings; stuff that is already developed and grounded in the solution.  Sometimes, but not very often, it works the other way around; I find information about what I’m living by listening in meetings.

The collective experience, strength and hope shared by sober members of 12 step recovery is much bigger than I can avail myself of in local meetings, though, and my own answer to the problem at the root of Norman’s question has led me not only to the blogs my colleagues write, but to podcasts of AA speaker tapes.  (You’ll find a link on the sidebar, or you can search for “AA speaker tapes” in the search field of iTunes.”  I load my iPod up with these.  At some point every day I’m listening to the experience, strength and hope of other people on this path; other people that I am unlikely to ever meet or hear otherwise.

The problem and the solution are the same, of course, so I’m probably simply hearing new information because the voice is different, and that is a great thing.  Everything that I can add to my recovery is a great thing, and I’m grateful today to have been shown an answer to a couple of my questions about my recovery by Karl M. of Covina, CA in a speech he gave at the Denali Workshop.  I’ve listened to that podcast three times in succession now.

I’ve decided I am absolutely returning to school and that I’m returning to learn a trade, rather than a profession.  I just don’t think I have it in me at the moment to remain in a job that takes up all the psychic and emotional energy I have that I would rather commit to recovery.  I need to double my income fast and I need it to leave my mind and spirit free to give to AA.  Karl talks about how grateful he was that he visited AA before he visited the counselor at the school he was going to attend.  “School and work are fine, but we live in Alcoholics Anonymous and we visit the world.  We don’t live in the world and visit AA.”  I felt that.  I suspected that.  But I didn’t have an adequate way of stating that so clearly and I didn’t have any validation of that in the recovery community around me, at least not so that I could understand.

The other thing I gleaned form this particular tape was the answer to a question that I didn’t even know I had.  How do you know that you’ve given your will and your life over to the care of God.  I’m not going to repeat the explanation Karl gave.  You can learn that well enough on your own, and I would encourage you to, but the answer is absolutely yes.  I have definitely turned my will and my life over to the care of God.  That answer struck me to my core and validated everything that I am doing today for my recovery.  Like finding a landmark on a seldom traveled path at the point you’re sure you’re lost, this bit of information, delivered clearly and specifically and in a way that I could understand, has given me a much needed dose of faith and hope.

It’s fantastic to be sober.  It’s fantastic to have been given a life and a purpose, and it’s fantastic to be able to share it.

Higher Power, Thy Name is Mudd

April 29, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 16 comments

“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure; having this seal,
The Lord knoweth them that are his.”
Timothy 2;19

If the meeting I was at last night was the first AA meeting I had ever been to, I am quite sure I would have ran out the back door and never returned. Perhaps I should lower my expectations since I live deep in the heart of Jesusland. It is one of the essential parts of any real 12 step program that we don’t shove some particular idea of “Higher Power” down the throats of newcomers. It is absolutely essential that we guide them toward a personal relationship with that power by taking a path that begins right where they are.

That’s why, well that along with the fact that I am a contrary, sarcastic, vicious, deeply egotistical mo-fo, when I hear people in meetings talk about the only real Higher Power being Jesus Christ, it is almost all I can do not to start talking about, “My Higher Power, whom I choose to call Lucifer,.” I’m afraid I’m not really that much better than I was when I was actively using. Some defects are only slightly diminished.

Here’s the thing. If you’re a Christian you know that the crime of heresy Jesus was executed for was the heresy of teaching that one’s relationship with God is personal. It didn’t require High Priests. Nobody needed to stand between you and God. So if you’re a Christian and you attend 12 step meetings, for God’s sake (seriously) leave Jesus at the door. He doesn’t mind.

I may end up being a Christian yet, but I’m pretty turned off by it every time someone brings up His name in an AA meeting, particularly when it comes with a warning about how other people in the room are selling false prophets. I got sober and I got sober without Jesus, thank you very much. I got sober believing that Jesus didn’t die for my sins but so that Mel Gibson could become a billionaire. I’ve been sober a few months and never even had the compulsion to place a name on God or feel like I needed an agent or broker to reach Him.

When I was new my prejudice was so powerful that if anyone had told me that I had to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour in order to get sober I would simply have said thank you, I’d rather be high. Ciao. Remember, that in AA, God expresses Himself in our group conscience, and for over 70 years that expression has told us that it is a God of our own understanding. So to all the freaks in Jesusland, Jesus says shut the fuck up. You’re killing alcoholics.

One More Round for Experience

February 27, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 3 comments

Hell’s Fairies How could we make amends?
So it’s one more round for experience
And I’m on the road again
And it’s going to take some time this time.
-Carole King

I am so relieved to finally have this chapter over with. Well, this part anyway. My relationship with the Department of Corrections is far from over, but the big hurdle is – the hurdle where I have no power. From here on out the results are directly related to what I do. Ultimately, all they are really asking for is that I do what I’m doing -stay sober, be accountable. In a way that seems like the true test of addiction and of recovery. In active addiction staying sober was unthinkable and being accountable was impossible. In recovery staying sober and being accountable are both absolutely possible. I have seen (and been seen by) the last of the three judges who had all placed me on probation back in 2001. I have accounted for the fact that I simply vanished for 13 months while I was supposed to be supervised. The State has had three opportunities to show that for the good of the People I need to be placed in a correctional institution and on each of those occasions the Court has disagreed. A year ago the story would have ended differently.

“(H)e had the extraordinary experience, which as we have already told you, made him a free man.” (p. 28)

Going several rounds with these judges gave me the opportunity to become more effective at speaking to that particular type of audience, authority figures, and I’m grateful for the experience. It didn’t take away the tears. I kept them from pouring. I kept my voice in check, mostly, but there was emotion there in me, the kind that I normally associate with deep prayer; the kind I let myself fall in to when I’m in the shower, say, or whenever I can have some uninterrupted time with God. But by the third time I was able to get right to the bottom of the matter and let Her Honor know that I knew the gravity of my error, that I didn’t believe it was the sort of thing that would happen again because of the work I’ve done, that certainly I hoped to not go to prison but that either way I knew that I would be useful. God gave me a message to share and I would be able to share it wherever I was.

“We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, “a design for living “that really works.” (p. 28)

God’s hand-prints are all over this experience of mine. And yet the unrealized, finite and fearful part of me still worries about things; is still ungrateful and selfish. Perhaps I can never be entirely free from worry or self-pity. I recognize that those defects are pretty significantly diminished today and it has occurred to me of late that mindfulness of what I am grateful for might alleviate some of that insane suffering. So, lest you think I’m the most ungrateful son of a bitch that ever lived, here is a quick and dirty of what I am grateful for today:

  • Being ‘on the road again’ on my little gay scooter! Motorized transportation rocks!
  • My friend Robert who agreed that we should start our own club since, because we don’t have bikes with at least 600 cc., the Sober Riders won’t have us. We’ll be Scootin’ Sober. We may even get groovy wind breakers or something.
  • The fact that food stamps are easy to apply for.
  • That I have clear cut directions for finishing probation.
  • That I have probation at all.
  • That I can’t be thrown in prison for thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
  • That I can sometimes recognize that I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
  • That people who love me love me enough to point out when I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts.
  • That I have a purpose, that I can be useful to God wherever I am.
  • That God has allowed me to be useful out here instead of in there, and most of all, that
  • God loves me. Like, A LOT!!!

So, in this particular “round for experience” I have made my amends. The judges have permitted me to do the right thing and supported it. And three times now God has let me know that I am most useful out here doing what I’m doing. I’m “on the road again”; literally and figuratively, and that is fantastic!

HELLS FAIRIES: A GLBT scooter group in Chicago is ready to ride. Photo: Alex Rumsey

Juvie

February 19, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

Zach is intelligent, charming, good looking, cool – and he knows it. Young people from the end of the fabric he’s cut from have these shiny Tyvek exteriors reinforced by all the self confidence and self esteem that money can buy. I’m not really sure how it happened but I recently became “the cool sponsor” to a small group of hipsters that have gotten in trouble and who are trying to keep their parents off their backs. That’s how I met Zach. I agreed to sponsor him last Wednesday. We were supposed to meet with each other on Thursday. He called in sick. To his credit he really did sound sick and since I’ve been recovering from bronchitis myself I allowed it. Friday, at Zach’s request, his mother called to tell me that he’s in the little Big House till at least tomorrow.

Right on! I don’t know how cool a sponsor these kids are going to think I am if they figure out that when their parents call me I’m going to speak honestly with them; or if they find out that I am there to help their family as much as their families ask me to. Mom and I had a nice chat about letting her son pay the consequences for his actions. I told her that everyone who tried to save me from my consequences only prolonged the misery. I told her that I’m there to support her.

I know that with Joe, my first sponsee, that I was blessed beyond measure. Joe came to me entirely willing. Joe has done all of the work. I just gave Joe instructions for his 8th step. Joe was the perfect sponsee for me at the perfect time. I suspect that with some of these other kids, kids like Zach, what I’m really shooting for is to help them to such a thorough understanding of the first step that when they get one they’ll recognize it. Maybe to help them recognize it sooner than later. I guess we’ll see. Part of me is really hopeful that a couple of days locked up will help Zach understand ‘unmanageability’ a little better, maybe make him a little more willing to carry on with the work. I hope he’ll let his cool facade down enough to get a little taste of what recovery has to offer.

Then again, part of me just thinks having a sponsee go to juvie is funny. I get to be young and dangerous and cool vicariously, which for an old nerd like me is . . . sweet.

Shoulder to Shoulder

February 1, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

Shoulder to Shoulder at the Texaco Station - 1930's“You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey. Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life.”
Alcoholics Anonymous, page 152-3

It is very strange to suddenly have a number of sponsees and a couple more men I’m working with in the absence of a sponsor they feel they can work with though we haven’t formalized the relationship in any sort of way. First there was Joe who remains the most willing and wonderful spirit around me. I am seriously blessed to have had such a wonderful experience right out of the gate. Joe was followed in a couple of months by Justin, and two weeks later, Jake. I’ve also taken an interest in Jason but don’t sponsor him because my motivations are not exactly pure. Miss Nikki says the best way to get over crushing on someone is to sponsor them but I don’t want to take any chances. I also don’t want to get over the crush right away, even though respect and good taste require that it remain entirely concealed. I wonder if there isn’t something narcissistic about my attraction the the truly broken ones. And Tyler, sponsored by the IFX and feeling like he’s not getting what he needs there. I have to bite my tongue. It is certainly not my place to judge what is and isn’t good sponsorship for any particular alcoholic. I only know what has been working for me. I’ve learned a couple of lessons pretty quickly about doing this, though. Perhaps the most important, especially in light of the fact that there are suddenly so many requests for my help, is that for my own sanity and wellbeing I should only match their willingness. I don’t help anyone by caring more about their recovery than they do. We commence the journey ‘shoulder to shoulder’. We don’t commence dragging them, kicking and screaming though perhaps, sometimes, I’d like to.

I have also been thinking about sponsorship recently in terms of my experience choosing one. I got sober on January 15th and I didn’t get a sponsor until April sometime. First there was the time in the halfway house while I waited to go to treatment. Then the two rounds of treatment; the one I escaped from and the one that was so incredible as well as a couple of weeks in between. When I got home I almost immediately asked this big dyke to temp sponsor me while I looked for a real sponsor. That lasted 10 minutes because I ran into my old friend John W. at the very next meeting I went to. And then in late July John got drunk.

By then I had been around enough to have met a few people and heard their stories. Even though he intimidated the hell out of me and couldn’t have been a more different man than I, I asked him to sponsor me — I “capitualted entirely” when I “heard the story of some man whose experience closely tallied with” my own (p. 160).

I have reached out for help and reached out to help others and the experience amazes me. If you are reading this you know I reach out in secondary ways as well and I’m adding another project to that avenue. My friend Gary W., who has extensive experience in this field, is producing a multi-media theater piece for the Idaho Meth Project; something to take into schools across the state. He has spent time interviewing a number of us speed-freaks and he’s read most of what I’ve written here and on MethedUp (I need to renew the domain registration – it is down at the moment) and he has decided that my character gets to be the comic relief; the one you can’t help but love in spite of himself. For dramatic impact, because breaking a heart is a great way to drive a point home, he’s going to kill me. I’m delighted. I’ve always wanted to be martyred for show business. To help others recover or to never start I will die for them.

Taken together this is what I pray for. Every day.

God, let me be an instrument of your will,
a demonstration of your power,
a vessel of your grace and
a bearer your love
in the lives of everyone I touch today. Amen.

Two guys in front of Tiger Texico Gas Station, originally uploaded by postscriptedlove.

The Tao of Texaco

January 13, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 5 comments

Yield and overcome; bend and be straight; empty and be full; wear out and be new; have little and gain; have much and be confused. Therefore wise men embrace the one and set an example to all. Not putting on a display, they shine forth. Not justifying themselves, they are distinguished. Not boasting, they receive recognition. Not bragging, they never falter. They do not quarrel so no one quarrels with them. Therefore the ancients say, “Yield and overcome.” Is that an empty saying? Be really whole and all things will come to you. (verse 22. tr. Gia Fu Feng)

Clearly (clearly) there remains much for me to overcome and much for me to yield to; much to harmonize my personal will with the natural harmony and justice of Nature, what I refer to as God. ‘The World is ruled by letting things take their natural course. It cannot be ruled by going against nature or arrogance.’ (Tao Te Ching; Verse 48).

As an alcoholic and addict, even in recovery, I find myself forever in opposition the the natural order of things. I am “almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though [my] motives [are] good.” I have the delusion that [I] can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if [I] only manage well.” “[E]ven in [my] best moments (I am) a producer of confusion rather than harmony.”

Not all of the character defects of a lifetime of addiction are gone yet, but I “have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. To show other alcoholics (and addicts, especially crystal meth addicts) precisely how [I] have recovered is the main purpose of this [blog].” I share my experience, strength and hope with readers here to aid me in the path of my own recovery and hopefully to help other addicts find or improve theirs. It is plain to anyone who read me one year ago today that I am hardly recognizable as the same person. That change came about by taking simple steps, which embody simple, specific, spiritual principles. I took those steps in specific order. I learned to practice those principles in sequence. I do it in the loving guidance of someone who did exactly the same thing before me as he was taught by someone before him.

In the process many of my major character defects have lessened if not been removed entirely, just as the obsession to get loaded was removed. “There is a long period of reconstruction ahead.” I was struck sober, not perfect. I still suffer from a compulsion to be ‘right’. I still become hopeless. I still fear change. I still seek recognition and fear discovery. I am still judgmental, unkind, faithless; just not as much today. I lack perfect ability to at all times put into practice the principles I have been taught. But when these things do crop up I have tools to handle them.

The path I follow, the Tao of the Texaco if you will, are the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and the principles (or virtues, as they are sometimes called) they teach. There are various interpretations of the steps and lists of their underlying principles. The one I use is the one that was taught to me by my sponsor, who’s sponsor taught him, and so on, all the way back to someone I personally know who has been sober 37 years and who received it from someone before him. Corresponding with each step, those principles are:

  1. Honesty
  2. Hope
  3. Faith
  4. Courage
  5. Integrity
  6. Willingness
  7. Humility
  8. Brotherly Love
  9. Justice
  10. Perseverance
  11. Spirituality
  12. Service

And I don’t know about any other serious addict but the thing that set me on this path, most honest thing I ever told my self and could no longer deny was, “I’m fucked.”

The Tao of Texaco, originally uploaded by Todd Robert Petersen.

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