Answer Addiction

Tag: guilt

  • One Simple Decision: Gratitude and Sorrow

    One Simple Decision: Gratitude and Sorrow

    My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

    It’s eight o’clock in the morning and I am sitting at the desk in my office. I’m not at work officially yet, won’t be for another hour or so. Then the race will start. Kara had asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting this morning, to pick up my 15 year coin. I didn’t.

    She said, “The day can look however you want. I have a babysitter, so if you want to go out after work and celebrate, then we can do that…or nothing.”

    I said that I thought that this year I just wanted it to be a day, just to be a day like any other day. Sometimes I really want the celebration, but this year, this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to come in here and sit and think and spend some time alone. So, I woke up early, my daughter’s warm, tiny body next to me through the night sleeping heavily after a late evening of trick-or-treating excitement, costumes, candy, and other children running wildly through the streets. Kara, still exhausted, is next to her, a new puppy sleeping soundly at her shoulder. There is a cat at her feet curled up contentedly as all cats sleep. Last night we went to bed laughing about this — the animals, our child, about the busy place that our bed has become. I pointed out that nine years ago this would have been an absolute dream come true.

    Kara said, “Nine years ago this couldn’t have even been imagined!” and we laughed together at our own amazement.

    Today is the 15th anniversary of my sobriety. It is a date that is perpetually entwined with gratitude and sorrow. This is a date that I will always celebrate and mourn. My sobriety cost too much; I have always believed this and now, after 15 consecutive years, I am sure that I always will believe this.

    Sobriety always comes at a cost. I’ve been around enough 12-step rooms and other sober support communities to know this.

    It is veritably impossible to hear a person’s recovery story without being very often stunned and amazed by the levels of grief and despair that their recovery has cost. The cost of my own sobriety was lives. I still shake my head 15 years later even as I write those words. It just doesn’t seem possible still. I can just never make it better. Not ever.

    I am Sysiphus, eternally condemned to pushing a boulder to the top of this mountain.

    But it is also great, which is an odd dissonance. It’s a perpetual mourning, but also an absolute celebration, and discovery, and adventure.

    I work with people daily in very early recovery. They sit in my office and cry and are angry and are desperate and scared. They sit across from me and I see myself. It would be impossible not to. The words they use, the language they use, is a close memory hermetically sealed forever in my mind. I listen to them and I hear myself. I feel sad for them, and grateful that for me that the chaos has ended. It has finally ended. I remember how it felt to have the heavy fog of eternal delusion lift and what it felt like to start to see for what felt like the first time ever. And I am so grateful for the utter simplicity of today’s problems.

    But again, I question the cost.

    One simple decision.

    One very simple, very wrong, decision.

    And some poor soul never gets to see their child again, their parent again, someone they love ever again, and there is no way to ever make that better. That can never be made better again.

    After taking Story trick-or-treating last night, she climbs excitedly into her car seat and asks for her bounty, her new treasures, her bucket of goods scored on a lively Hallows Eve. Kara tells her that she doesn’t want Story to eat all of that candy and make herself sick. Story insists that she won’t. We relent and let her have her reserve. On the way home we are absolutely charged. What a great night! We tell Story what a good kid she was and how much we appreciated her saying “thank-you” to all of the people that gave her candy. And because I never want her to forget it, I remind her of all of the great things we did leading up to this night. I ask her to join in with me, and we laugh about corn mazes and hot apple cider. We talk about apple picking and candy corn. We revel in her having been read the entire first Harry Potter book not once, but twice! We remember carving pumpkins and roasting pumpkin seeds.

    Occasionally, Story asks if she can turn the light on in the van so that she can carefully pick her next treat. Kara says she can do it as long as she does it quickly, and I can hear the crinkling of tiny brown wrappers behind me and I am filled to the brim with love and joy and just Life!

    And then I wonder…

    Was this what it was like for them?

    Fifteen years later this is what I have to offer not just my own victims, but the world. This is what I owe:

    My boundless gratitude.

    My eternal apologies.

    My diligence and determination.

    My thankfulness.

    My joy.

    My promise.

    My sobriety.

    Thank you to everyone, friends, and families, my victims, just everyone, who has made this incredibly magical, and far too meaningful journey possible. Thank you all. And please don’t drink and drive. Please. Just don’t.

    Peace.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • When the Obsession Isn’t Lifted

    When the Obsession Isn’t Lifted

    Before, when someone with 20 years would say “it’s still a day at a time,” I couldn’t really hear them. I do now.

    I was a typical low-bottom case. I was drunk most days, and a car wreck, an arrest, and a liver enzyme problem couldn’t pry me from my favorite thing to do. What would be the point of a life without alcohol? Now over five years sober, though, one thing astounds me even more than my abstinence. I don’t miss drinking. I hardly think about it. How can this be? Drinking was at the center of my existence. Surely sobriety would be a lifetime of longing for what I couldn’t have anymore, of feeling terribly excluded from the magical things I associated with its effects: wildness, fun, escape, adventure. Now it’s like, drinking? Oh right, that…

    In AA-speak, I had an “obsession” with alcohol, and that obsession has been “lifted.” The totality of this transformation was enough to make me, an atheist before this, feel a bit mystical indeed.

    Over the years I have come to realize that unfortunately this freedom from obsession does not characterize everyone’s recovery experience. I first noticed this when I was out to dinner with a friend from the program. Both of us had over a year sober. Our server began listing drink specials, as servers do, and my friend cut him off and demanded that he remove the cocktail menu from our table immediately. I felt embarrassed and confused. These were not the vibes of someone “placed in a position of neutrality.” Instead she was coming across as anxious and aggressive and she seemed to be feeling unsafe. We talked, and she said, “Yeah, for me, the obsession has not been lifted.” I was stunned. I thought, really?

    Keeping her anonymous, I brought this interaction up to other friends who had been sober for decades. They knew. They reminded me that Dr. Bob’s obsession lasted well into his third year. Bob wrote in the Big Book, “Unlike most of our crowd, I did not get over my craving for liquor much during the first two and one-half years of abstinence. It was almost always with me.” He notes in this passage that it used to make him “terribly upset” to see his friends drink when he “could not.”

    I have become attuned to this. While there are as many experiences of recovery as there are people in recovery–it’s a deeply personal path after all–perhaps two broad types emerge, one in which the obsession all but disappears, and another in which it remains even while abstinence is achieved and maintained. How can these not be vastly different?

    This seems like a big deal, yet the issue gets scant air time in shares. I suspect we don’t hear about this more in meetings owing to our strong unity, per the triangle of recovery, unity, and service. We are at our best when we are united, identifying with each other rather than comparing. On this matter of the obsession, perhaps we are divided. (Of course there may be many people in the middle, whose obsession has weakened but has not “been lifted” or “removed,” or whose obsession comes and goes. I don’t know.) Out of the thousands of meetings I’ve attended, this issue has emerged just a few times as a share theme. In those shares, people whose obsessions have remained have expressed gratitude for others’ honesty who shared this ahead of them, and relief at the permission they felt it granted them to share similarly. They shared not wanting to drag anyone down, not wanting to be an unattractive example to newcomers, and not wanting to be seen as a “bad AA.” They wondered if they were doing the program wrong.

    I imagine that, on the contrary, it must take an especially strong program to maintain sobriety in the circumstance of an obsession that endures. When I share about its being lifted, including writing this now, I feel a sense of survivor’s guilt. I worked the same 12 steps as everyone else, and my active disease was plenty strong. Just for me, abstinence was a prerequisite for the freedom from obsession that followed, but after that, the freedom from obsession made ongoing abstinence feel easy. Life can be hard. Last spring, my sibling got a life-threatening illness, and that was very hard. But I don’t find not drinking to be hard anymore. When I use the slogan “getting sober is a lot harder than staying sober,” that is what I mean.

    Olivia Pennelle’s recent article in The Fix, “Is there Life after AA?” caught my attention. She wrote about wanting to leave AA and being tired of the “fear-based conditioning” that if she left, she wouldn’t stay sober. I identified with her experience, not because I wanted to leave AA (I didn’t), but because I too faced dire predictions when I wanted to reduce my time commitment to the fellowship. In my first four years sober I had been attending meetings almost every other day; making daily calls to sponsors (something like 1,500 total to my two consecutive sponsors); hundreds more calls to friends, acquaintances, and newcomers; taking around half a dozen sponsees through some stepwork (not all at the same time!); and fulfilling service commitments ranging from greeter to meeting chair to speaking in prisons and psych wards and what seemed like half the groups in my large metro area. My recovery felt solid, and I’d learned the difference between the program, which I could apply in my daily life, and the fellowship.

    I’d returned to grad school to become a psychotherapist. (Incidentally, while there I discovered that mental health professionals have studies and theories about why the obsession leaves some people more easily than others, having to do with particular co-occurring mental health issues. In the future, I hope to write about this too.) With more focus and energy, I felt ready to pursue the new career and other life goals including getting non-alcoholic friends and dating outside the fellowship. I found myself needing more time. Trust me, I did ask myself and a higher power within: Am I “drifting?” Am I “resting on my laurels?” Then as now, I relied heavily on meditation. In my depths, I knew this was not the case.

    Pennelle quoted someone who wrote to her, “I know lots of people who have left 12-step recovery. They are all drunk or dead.” When I reduced my involvement, some people made it clear how extremely dangerous they thought this was, and how worried they were. When I told a friend I was down to 1 to 2 meetings per week, she looked at me like I was out of my mind. My sponsor was distraught to be working with me in my new approach, and she couldn’t seem to talk about anything other than how my disease must be “tricking” me. I had affectionate feelings and a lot of gratitude towards her, but we couldn’t seem to see eye to eye on this. Eventually I referenced my obsession’s being lifted as part of my rationale for feeling safe cutting down on the time commitment. She then used almost the same words my friend used years before and said that for her “the obsession has not been lifted.” She added, “for some people, it never does.”

    Many considerations likely play into people’s decisions regarding how much or how little time they spend in the fellowship, but it stands to reason that the persistence or disappearance of the obsession factors into it. I have no wish to take chances. Sobriety is the most precious, important thing in my life. It is my life. This disease has killed at least five members of my extended family, and it’s got one immediate family member in prison. I have never once questioned that if I take so much as a sip, I take my life into my own hands, and I don’t want to die. I try never to take my recovery for granted. AA is still a part of my life, but it is “a bridge back to life,” and life was pulling me in another direction. I couldn’t be true to myself and continue at the same level of time commitment I had in my first few years. I didn’t want to let anything get between me and my recovery, including my program.

    “A day at a time” has become a spiritual way of life for me, a reminder to live in the present. In early sobriety it was “a day-at-a-time” quite literally. I struggled hard not to drink through the first 90 days and then some, thinking about drinking almost nonstop. As I remember it, the obsession only began to falter for brief spans in months four and five, when I would have these amazing moments of realizing, hey wait! It’s been a whole afternoon and I haven’t been missing it. What freedom! Though I was desperate, exhausted from sleeplessness, grieving the loss of the only coping mechanism I’d ever known and coming to see the wreckage and trauma for the devastation that it was, these gaps in the obsession spurred me on. Even beyond my first anniversary I was still a little shaky (figuratively that is, my actual shakes were long gone). Now there are just moments when a liquor ad will catch my eye, or I’ll have a twinge of nostalgia for my old life. I’m still an alcoholic, but these come very rarely and never amount to a craving. Not even close.

    Before, when someone with 20 years would say “it’s still a day at a time,” I couldn’t really hear them. I do now. Taking sobriety “a day at a time” can remain literal, for life. For some cutting back on involvement in the AA fellowship may indeed be a death wish. We share a common problem and a common solution, but we are different people with different lives and recoveries. However well-intentioned, using fear or guilt to coerce people into a level of time commitment that for them is no longer authentic or wanted may only alienate them and take them away from a level of commitment that is working well, or inhibit them from re-engaging should a need arise in the future. Accepting this doesn’t require being dismissive or doubtful of other people’s need for continuous, intensive involvement. Compassion, as always, is best. We must do what is right for our own selves, and, unto our own selves, be true.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Don't Blame Ariana Grande for Mac Miller's Death

    Don't Blame Ariana Grande for Mac Miller's Death

    The idea that someone holds another person’s very life in their hands and has the power to determine whether that person lives or dies is a painful and damaging misconception.

    I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know very much about Mac Miller. I’ve never listened to his music or attended one of his concerts. My knowledge of him has mostly been in the headlines I’ve seen about his relationship with Ariana Grande and their subsequent breakup earlier this year.

    And yet, the second that news broke of Miller’s death Friday, I instinctively knew what was coming. I knew that following the shock over his untimely death, the shame and blame would begin.

    I knew because I’ve been there. I’ve lived it. And I’m here to tell you that casting blame is just about the most unhelpful thing you can do for someone following the death of a loved one.

    Sadly, I was right. Just a few hours after it was reported that Miller died of a suspected overdose, people began hurling blame on social media. Their target: Grande, who first fended off trolls after their May split when fans blamed her for her ex’s DUI. She even took to Twitter to explain their relationship.

    Now, four months later, Grande is battling trolls yet again. Trolls who are blaming her for Miller’s death and leaving hateful comments on her Instagram like “His spirit will forever haunt you,” “There’s a special place in hell for people like u [sic],” “You could’ve done something,” and “You should have helped him.”

    Grande has since disabled comments on her Instagram and fans quickly came to her defense on Twitter, but unfortunately, what happened to her is nothing new. It’s reflective of a pattern we’ve seen before, most notably with Asia Argento following Anthony Bourdain’s suicide in June. Argento was cyberbullied and blamed for the celebrity chef’s death, which prompted those in Hollywood to rally around the actress in the form of an open letter published in the Los Angeles Times.

    When someone dies suddenly and traumatically, it’s typically their loved ones who are caught in the crosshairs of other people’s grief and the struggle to understand the death. But what about those who don’t have an army of support like Grande or Argento? How are they supposed to traverse the minefield of grief following a traumatic death when they have so many questions and those around them are saying things that are more harmful than healing?

    It’s human nature to want to make sense of death because a part of us will always resist the idea that death is natural. And when the death is unexpected, like Miller’s, we rail against death even more, looking for any explanation we can find that will help us make sense of everything. Even if it’s misguided, sometimes those explanations come in the form of lashing out and assigning blame to those closest to the deceased.

    However, trying to place all the blame in the world isn’t going to magically bring the person back to life. Death isn’t something that we can wrap up neatly like a half-hour sitcom where everything is solved by the end. Just like life, death doesn’t work like that.

    When I was 21, my father suddenly and unexpectedly died from suicide. Although the day he died was the most traumatic day of my life, I wrestled with feelings of guilt and shame for years. I was the last one to see my father alive, and the questions swirled around my head in a never-ending loop. What if I’d woken up just 15 minutes earlier? What if I’d seen the signs that he was struggling? What if he said something on the last day of his life, something significant that I just casually brushed aside?

    What it? What if? What if?

    Those are the questions that plagued me, and I’m sure those are the types of questions on Grande’s mind as she mourns the loss of Miller. The best thing we can do for her — and everyone grieving the loss of a loved one — is to let the grieving process take place. Let people mourn in peace without hurling vindictive words at them. Those words are incredibly hurtful, not to mention cruel and damaging. The idea that someone holds another person’s very life in their hands and has the power to determine whether that person lives or dies is a misconception that has no place in the journey following someone’s death.

    As much as we’d like to think otherwise, we’re not superheroes who can swoop in and rescue someone. We can do everything to help them, of course, but we don’t have the all-knowing power to save them. And maybe even more importantly, it’s not our job to cure them. We can offer love, hope and compassion, but in the end, everyone on this planet is responsible for their own life.

    I can only hope that those trolls who are blaming Grande have never lost a loved one to a traumatic death like Miller’s. Trust me, people who lose someone to an overdose or suicide struggle enough with self-blame. They don’t need the world shaming and blaming them too. What they need is love and compassion. And space to grieve without shame.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Walk

    The Walk

    I can effectively express two emotions, anger and rage, and if someone fucked with my little girl, they would be getting a double load of both.

    I hadn’t been back in the free world a month, but I was rolling. This time I was flat, no parole, no PO to fuck with, no fines, nothing. Things were back on track and it happened quickly. I had established an entirely new set of contacts on the inside who were in need of a man with my skill set. They helped me get up and running so I made sure I made good on their initial investment. After that, I carved out a deal to set myself up. My supply was steady and demand was… Well, demand in the drug game is something you never have to worry about.

    I got a text on my phone, not the prepaid burner phone that goes off non-stop, but my actual, personal phone. Only three people have this number and two of them are my children, so of course, I opened it immediately. It was my daughter, the one person who can melt my heart with a single word, touch, or look. She is 19 and a thing of pure beauty. She is the best of her mother and very little of me (I pray).

    “Daddy, I need you.”

    I can’t describe what went through me when I saw these words on the backlit screen of my phone. I’ve spent literally thousands of sleepless nights wishing I could do something, anything, to make up for the pain I’ve caused this sweet girl. This might be my chance.

    “what wrong” “u ok” my archaic thumbs desperately trying to type the letters and press send.

    “I’m fine Daddy just need to talk to you.”

    “where are you now”

    “at home.”

    “I’ll brite there”

    “??????”

    God damned mother fucking phone. “I’ll be right there”

    “Okay Daddy cu soon”

    I look around the house and think about what I would need. I dusted off a thousand dollars and stuffed it into an envelope. That’s not enough, I thought, and got fifteen hundred more. My phone… my keys… my gun… No, not the gun. Not around my baby, at least not until I know more. I lit a cigarette and got in my car.

    The drive was over too soon. I was consumed by anticipation. I was so happy to be going to see my girl, at her request, and to be wanted by her, or at least needed if not exactly wanted. That’s almost just as good. For a moment, I came close to letting myself be happy, but before the happiness set in, the worry of why she might be needing me kicked in. Happiness is something I have never quite been able to handle. I don’t think it’s meant for me. Of all the people she could have called, she called me. Her mother always handles the emotional stuff. Her stepdad is a good man, he makes decent money, but she called me. I am not a good man. I can effectively express two emotions, anger and rage, and if someone fucked with my little girl, they would be getting a double load of both.

    When I saw her standing there in her driveway, I forgot all about that.

    I got out of my car and walked up to her. She welcomed me in with a hug. Not the sideways kind either, but with her head turned, cheek against my chest, full embrace. The sweet smell of her hair filled my nostrils and transported me back to a time almost forgotten. My God this feels good, I thought to myself.

    “When did you grow up, baby girl?”

    “It happens fast, Daddy”

    Before I could ask her what was happening, she took me by the hand and started walking. It was a late spring day that was made for being outside. Her neighborhood wasn’t fancy, a bit run down, older, filled with young couples just starting out and old couples just finishing up. It was quiet today though, or perhaps I just wasn’t hearing anything around me. I was so intently focused on her, I realized, we were long past sight of my car or even her driveway.

    Just walking.

    She talked and I listened. She gave me the short hand version of the last 13 years of her life, the years I had wasted in prison. This remarkably strong, independent, young woman was five when she watched me get beaten until I was unrecognizable, handcuffed, and dragged out of our living room. She then watched as her home was completely torn to pieces for every dollar I had tucked away.

    But here we were today, walking.

    Stories of relationships, achievements, disappointments, highs, lows and everything in between went into my ears and swirled through my brain like an F5 tornado. I had no fucking clue whatsoever to say about any of it.

    So we walked, and she talked, and I listened.

    I listened to the struggles of a young woman, desperate to make her way in a hard, unforgiving world. I could hear the desperation and determination in her voice. Still, I had nothing to offer, no advice, no words at all.

    Before I knew it, we were back at my car hugging again. We were about to part ways and I had done nothing for her. Not one damn thing!

    “Wait! I brought you something!”

    I handed her the envelope that I brought and had forgotten until just then. She opened it a little, peeked inside, closed it, and pressed it against my chest.

    “That’s not why I called, Daddy. I just needed to talk to you. Thank you so much for walking with me, I hope we can do this more. I love you.”

    I was barely able to mumble “I love you too, baby girl,” before I got into the car. I drove on autopilot for a few minutes.

    “What the fuck just happened?” I felt the guilt of my life pile on so heavily I could hardly breathe. It was like a guy I heard about who had been hit by an avalanche. He said it was like the snow was all around him, squeezing him from every possible angle, and he had to make room around his body to get any air.

    This was a feeling I could not deal with. I did not possess any knowledge or skill that would allow me to work through this. The only thing I knew for sure was that I could make it go away. It would only be a temporary fix, but gone for right now was good enough for me. I knew what I had to do and getting home to do it as quickly as possible was my only objective. I had to get high.

    When I arrived, I went straight inside. I bypassed my personal stash and took out what I needed from my supply. I prepared a larger amount than usual and loaded it into a syringe. I considered that it may be too much and that I may overdose, but the way I felt, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. I pressed the plunger of the rig until I saw a tiny drop hanging on the bevel of the needle. I tightened the belt around my bicep and with a familiar prick of the skin, the anticipation building, breath holding, a ribbon of red flashed in the barrel and .. .. .. .. gone.

    View the original article at thefix.com