Perhaps the best thing I’ve done for my recovery in a long time is to start to sponsor a practicing Buddhist. It has added a sense of urgency for me to revisit all that 2nd & 3rd step stuff that I’ve struggled with ever since my surgery.
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I was just looking at a friend’s Facebook page, admiring a picture of her and someone’s baby, when I noticed a quote on the sidebar; something about love from Dostoevsky’s, “The Brothers Karamazov”. Having just come from a meeting where the topic was Love and knowing how way leads to way I followed the trail of that quote as it has been used in several sermons.
The Dostoevsky story is the story of Father Zossima, the wise, self-effacing, good-humored orthodox monk that many people come to for spiritual direction. One day, a woman comes to talk with him. She has a big problem, she says. She has lost her faith and therefore her reason to live. If Zossima cannot give her a reason to believe again, she says, she will kill herself.
The monk tells her to go home, and every day, do something concrete to love the people around her. If she does this, he assures her, she will find, slowly but surely, that she won’t be able to help but believe. Love in action, he says, will change the way she sees the world.
The old woman isn’t especially impressed. Basically she says, “That’s it? That’s all you have? I’m supposed to love the people around me? I already do that.”
And to this Zossima responds with a line which has become famous: “Ah”, he says, “love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. It may very well kill you”
Doing what is good for another can be really hard. Sometimes, it’s hard to know what would be good for someone as distinct from what would make us feel good. And actually doing it is often very hard. In recovery we know that to love other people until they can love themselves requires “work and self sacrifice” – and it is a requirement. It is the foundation stone of recovery. Read the rest of this entry »
and yet so stupid in others. I sometimes wonder if it isn’t actually a function of intelligence to be able to block out information when we choose to; if you don’t actually have to be really smart to have a really effective denial mechanism. A certain amount of mental power must be involved in forcing oneself to Read the rest of this entry »
First of all, what the fuck happened to my wigits? They’re just gone. Erased. Blank. Vanished. I have to reconstruct every last custom setting that was in them which is a giant pain in the butt.
Tatum O’Neil is on crack? Are you kidding me? Tatum O’Neil allegedly smokes crack cocaine. And did I hear this correctly? She’s being charged with misdemeanor possession? Misdemeanor possession of crack cocaine? Who ever heard of such a thing? And this chick has kids. Lovely, lovely children.
When I was caught with methamphetamine it was a felony and when I dove headlong into my methamphetamine addiction I had no relationship with my family, no significant (or insignificant) other, and no children. I’ve always wondered if I would have traveled as far down the scale as I did if I had the ties of important relationships, particularly the ties of children. I think children would have taken up too much time to have ever been in a position to even be introduced to the stuff.
That’s almost an academic exercise though. I had an addictive mind and I would almost certainly have been a big pot head. I don’t think that would have had the same kind of destructive effects. I’m sure I could have gone on a long, long time being stoned without any serious consequences, but I would have been baked almost all the time. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
“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.
“There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”
- Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 58
That pretty much describes me at any given point in my history; emotionally and mentally ‘disordered’, gravely. I have at various times been diagnosed with everything from major depression to bi-polar disorder (type II), attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. One of the things I learned in the process is that you can be well enough medicated to be unwilling to take the steps. Pain is a great motivator. Another thing I’ve learned is that a correct diagnosis helps. So does the right medication. The medication I’m finally on does nothing to re-uptake anything. It doesn’t keep me from experiencing great joy or great sadness. It only keeps me from being insanely manic or suicidally depressed. It allows me to be in enough pain to do the work but not so much pain that I can’t, and not so little pain that I won’t. Nothing I have constitutes the kind of gravity that the book is talking about though. What I know about serious mental illness could fill a thimble.
A young man I sponsor knows about it though. At the cusp of finishing the first part of his 4th step inventory he required hospitalization. He got home today, the voices quieted. And anxious to get back to work; to move on to the next part of the 4th proposal. One of the greatest assets this young man has is his ability to be honest. The only asset greater is his willingness to grow spiritually.
I don’t pretend to know what it’s like when your brain blows you sideways the way his does, but I know something about what it takes to recover from the seemingly hopeless state of body and mind of addiction. And he has that in spades. I’m lucky to know him. I’m grateful to be able to show him what was shown to me. I suspect that he’ll be of great service to others who come in with the same set of challenges one day.
Texaco, originally uploaded by an0nym0usmuse.
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