Tag: The Big Book

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

25 September 2018
Enabling, Self-Seeking, and Recovery
Every moment there’s the possibility of falling back into self-seeking after having recovered much of our spiritual, financial, and physical health.

Recently, I was accused on a community website of being an enabler. The article and discussions that followed were regarding a proposed affordable housing project in our community and how some members of the local city council were concerned that if fed and housed, the persons in poverty would become dependent. After I participated in a recent homelessness count that provided the government and other organizations with information on the population of homeless people, I felt I was informed enough about the topic to comment on my recent experiences. I wondered about the label someone attached to me and how valid it was. The question I ask myself is, “how do I know if I’m an enabler?”

As an addict, I am going through a set of steps with a sponsor, which is a big part of the success of the 12-step program. Currently I’m on step 6, which states: “We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” It seemed an appropriate time to look at this behavior—and to find out if in fact it is a “defect of character.” What is an enabler?

en·a·bler (From Wikipedia)

noun
1. a person or thing that makes something possible.
“the people who run these workshops are crime enablers”
1. a person who encourages or enables negative or self-destructive behavior in another.
“he criticized her role as an enabler in her husband’s pathological womanizing”

I liked “A person that makes something possible,” but then the definition erodes into some negative rhetoric. Could I be attaching my own definitions to justify my behaviors? I also wondered about alternatives to enabling.

What is the opposite of enabler? From Word Hippo:

Noun antonyms include: deterrent, hindrance, impediment, inhibitor, preventer, and prohibitor.

I don’t particularly like those words either. It almost seems like a lose/lose scenario. I can attempt to clarify both sides of an argument and chose to either “make something possible” or be a “preventer” of a possible catastrophe. These implied absolutes can place people on opposite sides of the fence of their own making and create polarity and strife.

Before I started down the path of recovery, choices were a lot easier. I was just concerned with myself—because at its core, addiction is about being self-obsessed. If something benefited me, made me feel better or allowed me to avoid uncomfortable feelings or just looked fun, I could justify the choices and my actions.

Today, through the recovery process, I choose a new way of living:

I invite a higher power into my life and my decisions. It is a manner of living that involves more than my own self-seeking ways. I know some people do not agree with terms like “God” or “Higher Power” or even the concept of a spiritual existence. I struggled with the concept too when I first started in recovery. At some point, those who live a life based on the principles learned in 12-step recovery must decide what concept is working for them today. The idea is that a higher power, whether it is “God” or my support group, it is a greater power than myself. As the saying goes, “it was my best thinking that got me here.”

I try not to complicate things too much these days, but difficult choices are inevitable. The fact that I have difficult choices to make is a choice…but that train of thought gives me a headache and might be overthinking things – another seemingly common trait among addicts. I often wonder if life would be easier if I was less concerned about those around me and more concerned about myself- as that is also a common trait among those in active addiction. After all, addicts without recovery really only think about themselves and how to satisfy their compulsion to use.

It makes sense that the early successes of living free from active addiction re-opens the door to self-seeking behaviors. Every moment there’s the possibility of falling back into self-seeking after having recovered much of our spiritual, financial, and physical health. In fact, all those healthy options are affected by the choices we make and are part of what molds us into who we are and what the fellowship of recovering addicts around us looks like. The literature in Narcotics Anonymous even warns about the dangers of self-seeking, but some people fall back into that habit:

“…However, many will become the role models for the newcomers. The self‐seekers soon find that they are on the outside, causing dissension and eventually disaster for themselves. Many of them change; they learn that we can only be governed by a loving God as expressed in our group conscience.”

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they have The Promises: “Self-seeking will slip away.”

If you are no longer self-seeking, then the choice of what, if anything, to seek becomes apparent. I remember very clearly in early recovery when my wife suffered a life-threatening incident. After an invasive surgery to correct a serious defect in her foot and ankle bone structures, she developed a blood clot. A piece broke off and went through her heart and damaged her left lung. She was in the hospital for quite some time as they dissolved the clot with drugs and dealt with the damage to her body.

I tried to balance work, looking after our two small daughters, recovery meetings, and support for my wife. I thought often of praying to this new “God” I was developing a relationship with. I questioned what I should pray for. Save my wife’s life? There are many people who deserve to live but their lives end. A prayer came to mind: “Please don’t leave me a single father who is barely capable of looking after himself.” This seemed to be a desire for my own selfish needs. In the end I prayed for knowledge that I should be at the right places, doing the right things, and to find the strength for myself and others, including for my wife, regardless of what happens. Also, “Please don’t leave me alone” – and I wasn’t. Friends stepped up and many offered support.

In time, my wife recovered. The point to this story and how it relates to enabling is that at no time did anyone criticize the choices I made. People did what they could to support me and let me live with the consequences of my choices.

Mother Theresa dedicated her life to easing the suffering of the poor and destitute in India. Did she spend her entire life simply enabling people, with little or nothing to show for her work? Possibly she could have become a motivational speaker and had a far greater effect by inspiring those same people to change their lives. Not that my actions are comparable to Mother Theresa, but the choice I make today is that rather than accomplishing 100 tasks to benefit myself, I would rather accomplish 100 tasks to benefit others, even if a few lives are changed as a result. Even if only a single life is affected, or no lives at all, I would still rather spend the time for the benefit of others. In early recovery it was explained to me that I needed to separate my “needies from my greedies.” What I do after my needs are met is the basis of my recovery. Recovery from addiction and the 12 steps are based on a single premise- which is explained in the 12^th step:

“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

I don’t always have answers to life’s questions. I might not be doing the right things at the right moment. I always try to be grateful for the life I lead. Gratitude isn’t a feeling, it’s a virtue. Gratitude is a manner of living that expresses our love for what we have by sharing and not hoarding. Sharing is best when it’s unconditional, as is love, and if that looks like enabling, well, I guess I’m okay with that.

In the end what I share is freely given and my needs are met. I’m not looking for platitudes, but an appreciative “thank you” is always welcome since that can be your gratitude. What you receive and what effect that has is all on you. You choose how to apply the help someone gives you. I can be free of the burden of expectation or false hope. In the end did I enable you? That’s not for me to judge, is it?

View the original article at thefix.com
5 September 2018
My Journey from AA to NA, with Stops Along the Way

While making my own transition from one fellowship to another, I interviewed people with experience in both AA and NA to find out what’s working for them, and what’s not.

For a long time, I considered myself an alcoholic with drug addict tendencies. This is why, for the most part, I was a member of AA exclusively for the first six years of my sobriety. Besides, where I lived in Connecticut at the time, Narcotics Anonymous meetings were too far and few in between – as is often the case in more rural areas of the country.

Also, while in AA I’d heard things about that other fellowship.

Yes, I was fine right where I was, thank you very much. Like my mother and my uncles and my grandfather before me, AA would remain my easier, softer way til death do us part.

And then I relapsed: a year and a half bender in which my disease had progressed to include cocaine and prescription pills and after which I was detoxing from alcohol and benzos.

That’s when the rooms of recovery turned strangely uncomfortable.

I can’t say it was because I was no longer welcome. No, my mutual friends of Bill were there with open arms when I came back from the relapse… As long as I didn’t share openly about the drug problem.

“I came to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,” an old-timer quickly informed me, “because this is where I come to hear about alcohol – not pills!”

This got me to thinking. (Not about the chapter in AA’s Big Book entitled Acceptance Was the Answer in which an alcoholic physician describes in painstaking detail his struggles with prescription pills. No, why would I think of that? The old-timer certainly wasn’t.)

No, I was thinking I ought to give Narcotics Anonymous a try for a while. Not only would I be able to share more candidly about my relapse but I’d have some time to work through the little resentment I’d suddenly copped against AA and its old timers.

So, I began asking around. I knew the best way to transition between fellowships was to look to the rooms themselves for advice and guidance. I found four people in recovery, each of them knowledgeable about both AA and NA, who were willing to share their experience not only with me – but with you as well.

About the Personalities:

“I had been in AA for 11 years and just kept relapsing,” recalled Christy, 45, from the San Francisco Bay Area. Hers was a vicious cycle of diet pills and wine, always using one to offset the other. “I was sure that people were sick of hearing me talk about how I just couldn’t get it. Well I was sick of talking about it, anyway, at least to the same people again and again. It was embarrassing.”

Taking the advice of her husband – a former amphetamine addict of 15 years – Christy decided to give NA a try.

The kinship she felt was immediate, not only because she felt able to share more freely in a room full of new faces, but also because “NA’s a little bit ‘roughie-toughie’ and I liked that. NA had more people with missing teeth,” she joked. “There were so many people just totally out of their minds – exactly like me – and everyone seemed ok with it.”

Three years later, Christy’s bond with NA is stronger than ever.

“I find myself spiritually connected to that craziness,” she said. “There’s stories of abuse, there’s sharing about the prison time. It helps keep my recovery feel fresh. NA reminds me of how bad it can get out there.”

For Johnny L., 39, from New England, the NA group in his area had a more adverse effect.

“Well there I was, a newly clean and sober gay white man in a heavily black, heterosexual, inner city NA meeting,” he laughed. “I really gave it a shot, too, but after about three or four meetings I still wasn’t relating at all.”

Thankfully Johnny found himself having to move for work to a more rural area within that first year of recovery and along with the change of geography came a new atmosphere within his meetings. Though he considered himself dually addicted (meth and drinking), Johnny ultimately settled into the rooms of AA, finding the comfort of a home group he’s still part of to this day.

Back in California, Trey S., a 22-year-old addict, compared the members of fellowships like this: “NA is definitely more of a mixed crowd. There’s a lot of diversity, incorporating more experiences with much heavier drugs, and I think there could be stronger personalities in the rooms because of that. This means a lot more opportunities for conflict.”

As is so often the case with young people with substance use disorders, Trey was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous through a rehabilitation center at the age of 16. He eventually gravitated towards NA, identifying more strongly with those rooms, particularly young people’s meetings.

“At the time AA felt more rigorous and less free-flowing. And I think in general NA attracts a younger recovery crowd, which makes sense because of the pill problem these days. I mean, I was on Adderall at 5 years old and I think that’s fairly common for my generation.”

As for the old-timers, like Red from the West Coast who has been a member of AA for over three decades, it’s often their job to remind us of that tried-and-true adage, principles before personalities, regardless of the fellowship.

“Whether it’s AA or NA, as long as you’re living your life according to a program of spiritual principles you’ll do okay,” he told me. “It doesn’t matter what gets you into the rooms, but what you do with yourself once you get here.”

About the Literature

Of course, changing recovery programs also means a change in the accompanying literature. After six years of study groups, sponsor assignments, and constant references to the Big Book, I had developed a deep appreciation for AA’s “bible” and was hesitant about NA’s basic text as well as the rest of the program’s literary canon.

“So many people claim that all the answers are in the Big Book,” said Christy. “But Living Clean – it seems like every time I pick it up, whatever I read feels like it was written just for me.”

Living Clean is NA’s version of AA’s book, Living Sober, and both address the nitty gritty of living in recovery. Like instruction manuals for the soul and mind of an addict, both publications offer insights on topics such as relationships, aging, failure, and isolation.

I quickly learned that my AA books had NA counterparts that were just as valuable and respected.

According to Trey, “Even though AA’s literature has more program history, it has more character. It actually feels more playful to me – while NA’s stuff strikes me as much more serious.”

But when Trey does his step work, he combines the books of both fellowships, studying all the information each program has to offer. “They each bring their own material to the table and all of it is important.”

“But the NA basic text is so much more international,” Johnny told me. “It feels all-inclusive. Through it I get an idea of what it’s like to be an addict in Iran, in Africa, all around the world. It makes the Big Book feel very old. Like an older language.”

When it comes to step work, Johnny also works with the writings of both fellowships, first reading what the Big Book and Twelve and Twelve lay out and then hitting the NA’s Step Working Guide afterwards.

This workbook is the most significant difference in program offerings.

“That thing makes you feel like you’re in a Master Class for sobriety,” Johnny claimed. “It challenges you to think things through more deeply.”

Finding that the Guide has become such a big part of his recovery, Johnny has begun searching for a new AA sponsor who would be willing to integrate the book and its myriad of intensely provoking questions into his program; a sort of AA/NA fusion.

Christy felt just as strongly about the Step Working Guide:

“Going through it reminds me of the kind of effort I put into my recovery at the very beginning,” she said. “My self-awareness is much higher because of it. And I’m sure my recovery is evolving more strongly as well.”

Like Johnny, Christy found that mixing and matching materials gave her a more balanced and satisfying program. In fact, while Christy’s primary fellowship was NA, she continued to go to one weekly AA meeting.

As for Johnny, his six meetings a week were equally split between AA and NA (Crystal Meth Anonymous, more specifically).

Trey was the purist of those I’d talked to, attending only NA meetings.

At this point in the conversations, I felt ready to start altering my own meeting schedule. Thoroughly advised on what to expect, I was excited to head over to NA and start sharing from the heart again.

But first I would have to learn how to talk.

About the Language

“We are presented with a dilemma; when NA members identify themselves as addicts and alcoholics or talk about living clean and sober, the clarity of the NA message is blurred.”

From NA’s Clarity Statement, read out loud at a meeting’s start. The gist of the announcement, from what I could gather, was that I was to no longer call myself an alcoholic because: “Our identification as addicts is all-inclusive.”

And all I could think was, Here I go again.

“I was stopped mid-sentence at an NA meeting when I tried talking about the Promises,” said Johnny, referring to AA’s 9th step list of spiritual and material rewards. “I was disappointed in that. It was embarrassing and awkward. I wound up never going back to that particular meeting.”

Of course, censorship within the rooms goes both ways:

“I once saw someone completely shut down in AA when he mentioned his struggle with crystal meth,” Trey told me. “The chairperson interrupted him, saying, ‘Sorry, we don’t talk about that here.’”

That chairperson had been acting in accordance with the Singleness of Purpose, AA’s version of the Clarity Statement: “We ask that when discussing our problems, we confine ourselves to those problems as they relate to alcohol and alcoholism.” Remember the scolding I’d received from the old-timer when talking about the pills?

“In my first year of sobriety I was going to all the A’s – AA, NA, CA (Cocaine Anonymous),” joked old-timer Red. “I found out real quick that I couldn’t say this or I couldn’t say that, depending on where I went. In NA I couldn’t claim I was an alcoholic, and vice versa in AA and on and on and on. I don’t know about you but in the beginning I just wanted to say what I needed to say in order to get better!”

Trey agreed. “Sometimes you can feel negativity in the air when the Clarity Statement is read. I worry it stops people from speaking from the heart. I mean, as long as they’re sharing about appropriate behaviors and it’s coming from a loving and caring place, that’s great.”

About Recovery

As I compiled all my notes, the quotes and information, I was relieved to find an absence of what I’d feared most. Nowhere in my talks with these four fellow people in recovery did I find any negativity or slander from one fellowship against the other.

“I’ve always been aware of the contention between AA and NA,” Johnny had told me, “but I’ve been lucky to stay out of it. The groups I go to are small and intimate and I don’t have to hide whatever I may be struggling with, alcohol or drugs. They’re very supportive regardless.”

Christy agrees: “I can say that both AA and NA are responsible for saving my life and I gladly still participate in both.”

With Trey, one of the things he’d always admired most about NA is how the program openly acknowledged its roots. “Right on the first page of the introduction of the basic text, Narcotics Anonymous expresses gratitude towards AA for‘showing us the way to a new life.’”

Yes, by the end of my inquiries it was clear that the fellowships of AA and NA can work together well, with a combined effort and goal of unity, service, and recovery.

View the original article at thefix.com

30 August 2018
Dating While (Newly) Sober

When my sponsor told me about the suggestion to not date for a year, that I should just concentrate on getting sober, I said: “I’m a really good multi-tasker.”

I thought that when I got sober, I’d get into the best shape of my life, start going to the gym all the time, train for a triathlon, become super successful and meet the man of my dreams. Basically, my version of what advertising says is the perfect life. I wasn’t thinking along the lines of what some people say: the gift of sobriety IS sobriety. Boring. I mean, I was and I wasn’t; I mostly just wanted to stop being miserable. I did a 90 and 90, got a sponsor, joined a gym, took a class in my career of choice, slept a lot, and met a guy.

When my sponsor told me about the suggestion to not date for a year, that I should just concentrate on getting sober, I said: “I’m a really good multi-tasker,” and “I can get sober and date at the same time.” Luckily for me, she didn’t say it was a rule, because there are no rules in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Nowhere in the Big Book does it say: “no dating allowed in the first year.” It just talked about some people prefer a little more pepper in their sex life or whatever (page 69) and who are we to tell people what spices to proverbially cook with?

So thank god for that because in my first 90 days, I met a guy. He was a friend of a friend and when we met, he told me that he was going through a big transition in his life.

“What kind of a transition?” I asked, while thinking Oh my God! We have so much in common! We’re both going through transitions! As if a relationship could be built on that alone. Or even a marriage, because I thought that now that I had opened the book of sobriety, everything would change in the blink of an eye. It would be like I just woke up to a new life. That’s how it happens, right? I mean, don’t you kinda hear that all the time? The person’s life was shit and then they got sober and now they’re in this awesome marriage/job/house/car/babies and it all like happened in a year or maybe two? I’m smart and attractive. That shit should happen for me too! I can make that happen. I. CAN. MAKE. THAT. HAPPEN. Higher power who?

So, when I asked the guy what kind of transition, he said poetically, “It’s like my house was taken away so now I have no house, but at least I can see the moon.” And I was like “Wow, coooooool. I totally love the moon.”

For our first date, we went on a bike ride along the river, had lunch where I did not order a glass of wine (the first time that has ever happened) and ordered a coffee instead. I didn’t tell him that I was newly sober. I just told him I didn’t drink, and he said that was cool and he’s thought that maybe he should quite drinking too (uh oh); that he meditates and when he meditates, he feels super clear and drinking gets in the way of that (uh yeah). Then he walked me home and I remember feeling very sensitive and insecure. It was like I was eight years old again with a crush on a boy at school and I forgot how to walk my bike. Or talk. I felt awkward. Which is why, at 16, drinking and boys went hand in hand. Less feeling. More yay.

When I got home, I realized there was no way I could date right now. I knew that if I was rejected or even felt rejected, it would probably cause me to drink. I didn’t have the emotional tools. I talked to my sponsor about it and then called him up and said, “I really like you, but I’m going through something right now where I need to take a year off of dating. I hope you understand.” And he said, “Wow. I should probably do that, too.” Turns out he was going through a divorce and was in no place to be in a relationship or be the man of my dreams/dysfunction right now.

For the rest of the year, I concentrated on going to meetings, fellowship, making new AA friends, eating cookies and milk, binge watching Netflix at night, and it was the most awesome/horrible year of my life. I highly recommend it. I gained 10 or 20 pounds which was weird. Dudes can go through a rough time and get fat and grow a beard and still be considered likeable — but as a woman, it’s harder to hide behind a beard and 50 pounds and be cool. But a girl can dream.

So, a year later, guess who I ran into? No-house-moon dude. And yay! I was like a year sober so totally awesome and fixed, right? It. Was. On. We went on a few dates, and I honestly can’t remember if we had sex. It was only seven years ago and I know we did sexy things but I cannot for the life of me remember. I don’t think we did, because we would have needed to have the talk and well, let’s just say that the time I chose to have the talk was not a good time to have it. Take it from me when I say DO NOT ATTEMPT TO HAVE THE TALK WHEN HIS HEAD IS BETWEEN YOUR LEGS. That should be in the Big Book. It’s a real buzz kill for one and all. And our relationship (if you can call it that) ended shortly thereafter which was okay because he was seriously still mourning the loss of his ten-year marriage.

So that’s my take on dating in the first year. I do know a couple people who hooked up in their first year of sobriety and 30 years later are still married. That might happen to you. I knew that wasn’t going to happen for me. It wasn’t until year two that I met the man of my dreams AKA qualifier who really brought me to my knees (not in a good way) and into Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous which is like the nicest thing a guy can do. Kidding. But not in a way because Girrrrrrrl, I needed some of that SLAA in my life. Since then, I’ve moved to a place that I am happy to call home, am “healthy” dating and more will be revealed. But the best thing is that I like myself – dare I say love myself? I love my friends, my career, and my life and I don’t expect a man or any person or thing to save me. Because I don’t need saving any more. Thank god. Thank HP. Thank program. And thank you.

View the original article at thefix.com

17 July 2018
Do AA's Promises Come True?
After completing the 12 steps, a long-time member of AA shares his experience of the 9th step promises.

Russell Brand recently released his own creative interpretation of AA’s Twelve Steps. As a recovering alcoholic myself (since 12/30/1983), I admire how he captures the essence of the program, while still more or less respecting its tradition of anonymity. I’ve decided to respond to Brand’s piece by writing a bit about the Twelve Promises—which are less known outside of AA than the Twelve Steps or Twelve Traditions. We call these the Ninth Step Promises, because they’re linked with the Ninth Step on page 83 of the Big Book. They’re the pot of gold awaiting us—trite as that might seem—and we read them aloud at the ends of meetings. On the eve of 34 years of continuous sobriety, I’m in a good position to comment on these Promises . . . Do they actually come true?
1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through.
I sobered up in my home town of Columbia, Missouri. I followed suggestions, and spent much of my first year on working with a sponsor. I was poorer then than I’d ever been, living in a halfway house, but it was a happy time. Working on the Eighth and Ninth Steps, I acknowledged the harm I’d done to others, and prepared to make amends. The first one I owed was to Jerry, my former employer, co-owner of a traditional pool hall that still serves the finest cheeseburgers I’ve ever eaten. I’d worked there for two years, during my heaviest drinking. Because of my increasingly disheveled behavior, Jerry had let me go, and we hadn’t spoken since. I still owed him a considerable debt, mostly for booze and food. After writing down all of this, to the best of my recollection, I called Jerry for an appointment. One afternoon, in early 1984, we sat down together over coffee in the back of Booche’s. I took a deep breath, then began to lay my cards on the table. I explained what I thought I owed, apologized for my dishonesty, and asked how I could make restitution. There was a long silence. Something within him—caution or suspicion—visibly melted at my offer. Then he shook his head.

“I don’t want your money,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But I’d like to pay my debt.”

Jerry left for a moment, and went and spoke quietly with a co-owner in the front. After a minute, he returned and said firmly: “Just your business. We just want your business, Mike.”

I nodded. Jerry had made his decision. We looked each other straight in the eye and shook on it. And I still eat at Booche’s when I’m back in Missouri, and have through all these years. Jerry and I are still friends to this day. And each amend since then has only brought relief and freedom.
1. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
Early recovery is a little like those movies in which an angel or alien falls to earth, then falls in love with it. Sensations are intense, especially the strange, new feeling of belonging in the rooms. As a result of “our common bond,” AA is like Switzerland: it’s the one place where the differences between people don’t pertain. Some use the word “God”; some don’t. Meetings veer from tears to sidesplitting laughter. There’s a characteristic zaniness (not unlike Russell Brand’s), along with immediate connection. AA is virtually everywhere, and I usually take in a meeting whenever I’m away. As soon as I am settled in my seat, the self’s deceptions drift away like dandelion floaties—along with whatever weight I carried with me into the room.
1. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
Many of us call ourselves “grateful alcoholics”—which might not be an easy concept to grasp unless you are one. We’re grateful for life itself, for sobriety’s staggering, unexpected gifts, and for every step of the path that has led us here. Shutting the door on the past is not what we’re about. For one thing, it’s our experience, strength, and hope—rather than wisdom or knowledge—that makes us valuable to newcomers.
1. We will comprehend the word serenity, and we will know peace.
AA is a plan for creating integration out of disintegration. Serenity is simply a by-product. I didn’t know this when I came in, and frankly, I couldn’t have cared less. I just wanted the pain to stop. But once I was actually sober—and trying to face the character issues I’d chronically masked with alcohol—I craved it. I said the Serenity Prayer to myself 50 times a day. Sometimes I still do. The Fourth Promise doesn’t claim we will have peace; only that we will know it.
1. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
Straight out of treatment in Missouri, I lucked into finding a solid, hard-core sponsor. I did most of my step work sitting in Gene’s Chevy pickup, and everything went as well as could be hoped. But when I got to my Fourth Step inventories, I couldn’t figure out why he seemed so unimpressed with my writing. I was a creative writing major, after all!

But an AA sponsor is not a writing professor, and a sponsor is also nothing like the judges and shrinks and counselors I’d been bullshitting for years. Gene scanned my first inventory with a leathery grimace, then abruptly turned and spat a long stream of tobacco juice through the open window.

At first, it cut me to the quick how easily he saw through me. That night I thought: fine. I’ll show you, and I’ll show AA! I wrote out my darkest secrets (except for one, which I’d carry for 30 years), in rough list form. A couple of days later, at our regular meeting, I showed him my list. By then, my anger had given way to anxiety, and I expected the worst. I sat in silence and tried not to watch as he was reading.

Gene showed no emotion. Not one flicker. After a minute, he rolled down the window, spat, and then drawled: “that it?” Then he just smiled through his ravaged face. Suddenly, I saw that neither of us was better nor worse than the other. In all the years since then, whenever I serve as a sponsor, Gene is my template.
1. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
2. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
3. Self-seeking will slip away.
Here are some suggestions: 90 meetings in 90 days; find a sponsor; join a home group; get a service position; read and meditate and pray; work the steps; and help others. Here are some results: we stay sober; character defects lose their hold; self-centeredness no longer defines us; we don’t feel useless anymore, because we aren’t; and the Promises come true.
1. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
2. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
One of Gene’s favorite sayings was: “sober up a horse thief, and what have you got? A sober horse thief!” Then he’d guffaw. I loved him for that, even though I didn’t really get his humor at the time . . . But it does seem impossible at first for an alcoholic to change enough, through such simple and wholesome means, to make much of a difference in our lives. What practicing alcoholics need—not only to survive but to flourish—is a complete and profound psychic transformation. Lucky for us, that’s exactly what the Twelve Steps are designed to do for us, and not only once but every day, as long as we live in the solution.
1. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
2. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
We typically finish upbeat, but I’m ending with two tragic losses. The first was that of Tom McAfee, my undergraduate poetry professor at the University of Missouri. Tom was a brilliant, charismatic writer—and late-stage alcoholic—who died in 1982, at the age of 54. I’d been Tom’s bartender and best friend at the old downtown hotel where he lived much of his life, and also later at Booche’s. Tom was always shaky and frail, but overnight, his health tanked. It took weeks before a couple of us were able to move him to the hospital, and then it was revealed that he had lung cancer. I looked after Tom as best I could through this whole period. But his terror and delirium at the end—as he lay dying of cancer while going through alcoholic seizures—was more than I could bear. One afternoon on a three-day bender, I stumbled into the hotel bar. Someone remarked to me that Tom had died. When had I last seen him? I couldn’t quite remember. That’s when my drinking began in earnest. I’d failed my friend when he needed me most. I couldn’t forgive myself.

The second loss was that of Jackie, my first wife. (Although we didn’t formally marry for many years.) In 1988, Jackie and I were both midway through our PhD’s at the University of Utah, when she discovered the lump. We both took leave, and went back to Missouri for surgeries, reconstruction, and many rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We kept our hopes up, and after a year the cancer seemed to be in remission. I went back to resume my studies at Utah. Jackie, slightly ahead of me, was back at it, and managed to land a great job at the University of Texas. She was happily teaching there the following year when the cancer came back. I took leave again, and moved to Austin. Shortly afterward, I proposed—and a few days later, we got married at the courthouse. It was exquisite. And through the next year and a half, I never left her side. Jackie endured treatments first in Austin, and then back home in Missouri, where our strategy shifted from cure to comfort. Paradoxically, in the weeks leading to her final struggle in 1991, there were many hours of intense joy. Spontaneous, childish, connected-at-the-hip gleefulness . . . Often, the exact same thought appeared simultaneously in both minds. It was the deepest intimacy I’ve ever known.

Jackie’s last words were: “I love you.”

As devastating as it was to see such a beautiful soul taken before she’d hit her stride, her death was triumphant, too. Even through her worst days, death never got the best of her.

I went back to Utah, finished my PhD in 1993, and started my professional life—steady then, resolved.

Just after the founding of AA in 1939, many sober alcoholics were sent into battle in WW2. As related in the Big Book, this was AA’s “first major test.” Would they stay sober far from their meetings? Against all expectations, they did. They had fewer lapses “than A.A.’s safe at home did . . . Whether in Alaska or on the Salerno beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power worked.” I had a related revelation after Jackie died. I realized that I could go through anything sober. That now I was spiritually fit enough to show up for “life on life’s terms.”

Along with the Promises, there’s a playful call-and-response that we include. It seems to be a rhetorical question: “Are these extravagant promises?”

And the entire group answers: “We think not!”

And on that note, the reading concludes: “They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”

There’s usually then a closing prayer. And after that, we fold our chairs, and return to the lives that AA has given us.

View the original article at thefix.com
11 July 2018
True North and the Geographical Cure

What it was like then: misery that had me researching the methods and means of suicide in the middle of the night on my cell phone, back turned to my husband, who was fast asleep, and to my children, asleep between us.

The geographical cure: false hope that a change in circumstance might transform us. Always seductive, isn’t it? But as I have learned from Alcoholics Anonymous, a change in external position on the map doesn’t reset the compass and point us to true north because we always meet up with the self we are, no matter where we are, by chance, by collision, by invitation. Bill Wilson writes in AA’s Big Book, “We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind: there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything! Ask any woman who has sent her husband to distant places on the theory he would escape the alcohol problem.”

Each time I believed a vacation, a temporary reprieve from present conditions, would be the cure, the fix I needed: Jamaica, Mexico, Greece, Romania, Italy, France, Wisconsin, California, etc., etc.? Each time I was sent off to “recover” from my eating disorder, self-injury, alcoholism, and bipolar depression, to distant, inpatient programs: Arizona, Maryland, Texas, and Pittsburgh? I’d get on a plane, 30 pounds underweight, spend a month or two bullshitting my way to well, not starving, eating thousands of calories (but only because I was forced), not drinking (but only because no access to booze), not cutting (but only because no access to sharps), and claiming to feel mostly content (Ha!) with my restored (Too BIG!) body, but not too content because such rapid reversal of position would seem disingenuous to doctors and therapists (I know I still have so much work to do but gosh, I am optimistic this time!).

Each time, I returned home and within weeks was back to restricting, purging, over-exercising, drinking, cutting, and lying. Nothing had changed at home (that is, within myself), so I kept traveling an insane circular route though a dark, abandoned, haunted house.

Samuel Johnson, in his 1750 essay, “The Rambler,” might as well have been giving the lead for a 12-step meeting when he wrote, “The general remedy of those, who are uneasy without knowing the cause, is change of place; they are willing to imagine that their pain is the consequence of some local inconvenience, and endeavor to fly from it, as children from their shadows; always hoping for more satisfactory delight from every new scene, and always returning home with disappointments and complaints.”

Eventually, with honesty and a commitment to working my program, I found my way home. I did not disappear nor die, though for many years I tried to do just that. Difficult to remember that life from here: my now eight years stable life, my now divorced and independent life with a teaching job in Georgia; my own home with HoneyBea, my rescue dog; and purpose restored.

But also from exactly here: on an artist’s residency in Ireland, where I have just had morning tea with writers and painters and composers around a kitchen table — warm scones with butter and blackcurrant jam; where the night before, we gathered around a long, candle-lit dining table for fish, roasted potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and coconut custard topped with a purple-black pansy, and afterwards, in the drawing room where we shared our paintings, writing, and music; where Bernadette, at 93, stood before us in her long red dress, her cane left by her chair, and recited, from memory, poems from her latest, and sixth book—“think of when/ the end will come/and then”; where I believe that I, too, might live to 93, still creating more and forward; where, prefacing my reading, draft pages from a book-in-progress, I told my new friends, “I am not supposed to be here. I was given up for dead. And yet.”

At dinner, on the very first night of my stay, I noticed a fellow artist who had declined the kind offers of wine, and then the raspberry trifle spiked with sherry. So I said to him, as we were cleaning up dishes in the kitchen, “I don’t drink either,” because I am always searching for my tribe when I am not at home.

“Are you a friend of Bill W.?” he asked.

The next night he took me to the local 12-step meeting in the town of Cootehill and I was asked, for the next meeting, to give the “Lead,” which, in 12-step terms, means recounting in ten minutes’ time the story of what my life was like when I was drinking, what happened—the transformation to sobriety—and what my life was like now that I was free.

“It’s easy to get lost,” I said. “Easier to stay lost so far from home. This meeting is an anchor—while you might be strangers, you know me and I know you.” As I was talking about my desperate drinking days, giving the drunkalog, it was as if I was telling the story of another Kerry—that is, the story of a fear-full woman, intent on wrecking herself in despair’s ditch, and who would be dead by 40 by active or passive suicide.

What was my life like then? Locked in a room under 24/7 video surveillance with a thin mattress on the floor, eating bland spaghetti with a plastic spoon, though not really eating since I’d stopped that, too (a spoon and in isolation because I kept sawing my wrists with the tines of a fork in the hospital cafeteria). I kept trying to disappear and doctors kept locking me away. “We need to stop you from killing yourself,” they said. What it was like then: misery that had me researching the methods and means of suicide in the middle of the night on my cell phone, back turned to my husband, who was fast asleep, and to my children, who were curled up and asleep between us both. Plans, plans, plans. Misery that dogged me. What it was like then: impossible to ever be inside joy, to be part of the living, the loving, the longing for now and tomorrow and more of this life, and so I ruminated over the plans, plans, plans.

And so, my recounting of that Kerry at the meeting in Cootehill? She seemed a remote wraith, no longer dogging me, with her doomsday threats: “Just wait. You’ll fall again.” What she now says? “Thank you for saving me.” I honor her and have compassion for her: she didn’t know how to love herself, how to use her voice, how to take risks in this world.

But, too, what it is like now: years after my last dive into bipolar’s dark well and seven years sober, my thoughts can still wander off path and I can get momentarily lost, particularly when traveling away from home, alone, in distant places where I might not know anyone, might wonder if the geographical cure could work: maybe I can have a Guinness in Ireland? So I look for my tribe and go to meetings when far from home. In recovery, you seek fellowship no matter where you are. Because you are always HERE, NOW: one day at a time, even in the Irish countryside.

But, too, what it is like now: I am in right alignment to myself, which means often at an odd angle to the universe, which means sometimes wobbly on that off-kilter axis, but mostly truly good. Such a simple word: good. An alleged root of “good” is the Indo-Eurpoean “ghedh”—to unite, to fit. I am united with myself and fit into my own part of this world. That is, with my ragtag tribe of survivors who know what it was like, what happened, and what it is like now—but a “Now” that only is possible if I remained committed to honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to find fellowship at home and abroad.

View the original article at thefix.com

19 June 2018