Freedom: the Gift of Recovery

Got a few resentments in AA?  Certain personalities in meetings annoying you?   Big Book thumpers causing internal eye-rolling?  Somewhere inside, are you thinking you may be able to manage your alcoholism yourself – that it’s really not such a big deal?

Maybe it’s time for a little ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT with the help of this visual aid I lifted from the Wikipedia page on alcoholism.  It’s an engraving from the mid-1800s called “King Alcohol and his Prime Minister.”  Check it.  (It’s enlargeable. )

CLICK to zoom: King Alcohol & his Prime Minister, engraving by John Warner Barber (1820-1880) .

In the background on the left, we’ve got the normies drinking with impunity.  A little closer we’ve got the socialites making cocktails look 19th Century glamorous.  But once we get to the Dram Shop, which is the old term for bar or tavern, things ain’t lookin’ so good.  Sure, there’s a pretty barmaid serving, but one patron is looking pretty disheveled, two are brawling on the floor, and another is passed out.  In the foreground the Virgin Mary is seen bumming about it all (at least, I think it’s she).  The anchor could refer to maritime alcoholism?

On the right we see some consequences listed: Poverty, misery, crime, and death.  There’s the jail, the poorhouse to which with someone is escorting a drunk, a cop with his nightstick dealing with another. We see a home gone to shit, a dad passed out while his wife and kids stand by, and closest to us, a rich guy all dressed up but still on his face.  Closer still are the graves, one of them immediately outside the home.  Jails, institutions, and death – as we often hear in the rooms.  The only thing I don’t see is an asylum.

Lastly, check out King Alcohol and his sidekick Death, themselves.  Death’s bottle is corked: he doesn’t touch the stuff, only offers it to recruits.  The King himself looks confused and miserable in spite of his lavish banner.  His face has marks all over it, his brow is furrowed, his hair and beard a mess.  Around his neck what seems an amulet is actually a locked chain, and chains run down his robe in place of royal ermine.  He holds aloft a large goblet, almost like a chalice, but encircled by a snake.  Above it hovers a reference to Proverbs 23, line 32:

³¹ Do not gaze at wine when it is red,
    when it sparkles in the cup,
    when it goes down smoothly!
³² In the end it bites like a snake
    and poisons like a viper.

Whoa.

If you lived in the 1800s, that would be the full extent of your program:  “Do not….”  Don’t look at booze, don’t drink booze.  Just don’t.  Just stop.  Look at the facts.  Use your willpower.

“Do not…”  If I’d been born during that time, I’d be a perma-drunk or dead.  Because I tried “do not” for 14 years and ended up bombed every night, like my father before me, because the “wine” I would “gaze at” lived in my mind.  As soon as enough of the poison had cleared from the night before, I’d think, “Yes!  I’m talking about just one pretty, perfect cocktail/ beer/ glass of wine!”  Next thing I knew, I was reaching for that snake-entwined goblet, oblivious to the bite and poison.

And I did that again.

And again.

And again…

It cracks me up that at the top of King Alcohol’s barrel list is “strong beer” – as if “weak beer” might be okay.  In other words, even in his desire to capture the entirety of alcoholism, Barber lacked a basic understanding of addiction: the allergy in me – which makes me break out in endless “more!” – can be triggered by as little as a single dose of cough medicine.

What Barber did understand, though, was that we die.  We’ve been dying for millennia, at least throughout the 10,000 years that humans have been brewing alcohol.  Slowly, century by century, those of us with alcoholic genes have been winnowed from those European cultures where alcohol has long been a staple – a fact highlighted by rampant alcoholism among Native American populations where alcohol has been introduced only in modern history.  Why do 10% of Native Americans die of alcoholism, compared to 0.2% of Italians?  Because most Italian alcoholics are already dead!  They died centuries ago leaving fewer descendents.  Still, around the world, how many of us are killing ourselves slowly, blurring our thinking, drowning our love of life?

You might wonder, why did Barber choose to depict alcohol as a king, rather than a slave driver or a warlord?  The answer is in addiction.  Alcohol rules our lives, but at the same time, we venerate it as our savior.  Left to our own human powers, there is no way out.

BUT HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS!  I’m sober!  You’re sober!

In June of 1935, the world of the alcoholic changed forever.  Fifteen minutes is how long alcoholic Bob Smith agreed to talk with that sober guy, Bill Wilson.  Three months is how long they ended up hanging out before Wilson even went home. They had discovered something amazing: the connection between one alcoholic and another when speaking the truth of our condition.  They also put together the physical allergy piece Bill knew with the spiritual malady piece Bob knew and – SHAZAM!!!  For the first time in human history, alcoholics had a way out!

Never again will we as a class of afflicted people have no solution.  Shivering denizens no more, we’ve found a way to overthrow the tyrant with a far greater power – one of love, of life, of goodness.  Whether you live near a slew of AA meetings or it’s just you with your Big Book and computer, you possess two insights that Barber and the dying drunks throughout history never had:  1) That your body reacts differently to alcohol than a normal body does, and 2) that alcoholism can be treated via a 12 Step program of spiritual growth, usually (but not always) in connection with fellow alcoholics.

What I know is this: Living sober has brought me and countless other hopelessly doomed alcoholics a joy of living beyond our wildest dreams.  We are free.

Doing the Opposite: A Christmas Story

Night before last I was in the dumps – just tired of frickin’ everything.  So I threw a party.  I shit you not.

This is the principle we hear of a lot in the rooms – to do the opposite of what we feel like doing.  I’ve been around long enough to know it pays off, and to understand that the loudest voice in my head is usually not the wisest.

Take day before yesterday, I was sitting in my empty house in the same old chair where I always frickin’ sit, looking out the same damn window at that same damn tree.  I was also looking at the weeks ahead – the darkest of the year (in Seattle, dusk begins to fall around 3:30).  I don’t do well in the dark.  My brain’s amygdala gets its mitts on a little fear-powered megaphone, so it was broadcasting loud and clear like this:

“What is my life, really?  Work.  Pay the damn mortgage – house falling apart.  More work.  Buy groceries, eat ’em, pay the damn sewage bill.  Clean my ever-dirty house.  Exercise to fight getting old.  Get old.  Ach! – how much longer do I have to do this shit?!  I’m 54, so… like… 35 years, and then maybe I’ll get put in a home.  God, I hope I don’t Facebook there!  I am SO sick of EVERYTHING.”

At that point, some little alarm light tripped in a different part of my brain.  It said, as god often does, “BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! Re-examine!  Spot inventory!”

Scanning myself, I realized I was angry – unconsciously hurt and angry.  I’d been planning a weekend with my boyfriend on the beautiful island where he lives, even rearranged clients so I could catch an early ferry, then he texted that he was being sent to Copenhagen.  Boom.  Empty weekend.  My son would be at his other mom’s.  I’d be alone.

Somehow, the part of my brain that’s been paying attention in Al-Anon kicked in, saying: “Let it begin with me!  Your happiness does not depend on what Grayson does.  Your life is rich and you are loved by many.  Be grateful!  Spend time with friends!”

Jesus, what bunch of goodie two-shoes platitudes!

Here, dear reader, is where one has to have eaten one’s spiritual Wheaties.  Because it takes a huge surge of faith to hoist yourself out from that dark groove fear has carved, turn away, and begin to do the thing you least feel like doing.  I know that loving other alcoholics helps me.  I know my house is very near my homegroup.  So I reached for my phone.  The dark voice threw everything in arm’s reach at my head as I texted a homegroup friend.

ME: If I have a game night tomorrow after the meeting will you bring games?  I don’t have any fucking games.

ROB: Sounds great.

ME: Should I do it?  I’m depressed so it seems like a huge deal.  I just want to sleep.

ROB: Me every day.

ME:  But will you come over even if nobody else does?  We can just play hangman or tic tac toe.

ROB: I’ll bring Suspend.

I took that as a Yes.  That’s all I needed – just one friend who understood.  Forcing myself, and with the dreariest look on my face, I created an Event entitled, “Post-Meeting Games and Shit” in our local Facebook AA group, which promptly invited all 97 members.  By the next day, my best friend, a sponsee, and one other person had accepted.  The dark voice gloated about my pathetic neediness, how I should just watch TV alone like normal people.  It buzzed in the background like a big zizzy fly while I cleaned my house and bought four jugs of spiced apple cider.  Just getting the dining room table cleared of clutter for games took literally hours!

After the meeting I checked in with some non-Facebook friends, who had other plans.  A few said they might be over.  So I went home and plugged in the Christmas tree.  I turned on Pandora carols and set a big pot of cider on the stove.  My dog looked at me.  I got down a bunch of cups while the voice warned, “You’re going to feel so stupid putting these away again!”  No one came.  I added a bunch of wood to the fire.  The carols played on.  My dog scratched himself.

Then, finally, he barked.  The doorbell.  One or two at a time, a dozen homegroup friends plus two newcomers climbed those freshly swept steps with food in their arms and light in their eyes, and they brought… god.  That’s the only way I can say it.  Because I loved them!  All ages; all walks of life; all sober.  Each had overcome their own dark voice to show up.  Rob unpacked Suspend on the shining wood table where people gathered talking about how Bing Crosby beat his kids or how expensive that bakery up the street is, and, wait, what are the rules again?  Before long we were ooing and ah-ing at daring Suspend feats.

Human voices, their teasing, their laughter filled up my lonely house – and I remembered what life is, saw it like a forgiven lover.  I am so in love with my life!  We went through the cider.  We ate the food.  My sponsee’s gift was an updated Trivial Pursuit that a bunch of us played in the living room, awarding pie slices that people hadn’t even won because fuck it!  That question was dumb!  I saw the goodness, the vulnerability of the new people joining in, and the beauty of my friends in ever-more subtle colors.

The dark voice shriveled, its megaphone dead.

Last night rekindled something in me – Love – enough to carry me through the darkest days ahead.  Once again I remember that all my difficulties – my loneliness, my endless bills, my sorrow at getting older, and stings of life’s disappointments – are not mine.  They’re ours.  We do this thing together.

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“We know what you are thinking.  You are saying to yourself, ‘I’m jittery and alone.  I couldn’t do that.’ But you can.  You forget that you have just now tapped a source of power much greater than yourself.” (A Vision for You, 163)

Life is yours.  Go n’ git it!

Left by one of the smokers on my front step. To me it reads, “I love love”

 

Authenticity in the Rooms: Striking a Sober Balance

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
——————————————— Polonius – ass-kisser & schemer (Shakespeare)

“The paradox of self-honesty is that I need the help of others to achieve it.”
———————————————(Courage to Change, 296)

Inscribed on many AA coins is the wisdom byte, “To thine own self be true,” which was probably already time-worn when Shakespeare put it in Polonius’ advice speech in Hamlet. Whoever Shakespeare was, I’m sure he was crafting irony by doing so: Polonius is false to everyone, including himself.  Shakespeare’s message, as I see it, is that being true to oneself is far more easily said than done.  In fact, striving for personal authenticity is the work of a lifetime.

Many of us believe we’re being true to ourselves when we regurgitate whatever the dominant culture – or our faction thereof – has inculcated in us.  Oprah said it.  Parenting magazine.  Dad and the NRA.  For that matter, individualism itself is an ideal of Western culture.  Because we’re all an amalgamation of the belief systems we’ve been raised with, spouting what these systems maintain in the face of other systems feels like authenticity, even if it doesn’t come from our spirit.

As James Fowler outlines in his book, Stages of Faith*, the search for deeper levels of meaning requires an ability to stand back from our beliefs and evaluate them critically, changing what no longer rings true – even if it requires a break from our past or our clan.  Otherwise, our faith remains childlike.  He identifies Stage 1 faith, for example, in a Catholic woman he interviewed who, interpreting every symbol of her religion literally, staked an almost monetary worth in telling her beads (points “in the bank”) and worried about pissing off various saints by neglecting to pray to them.  At the other end of the spectrum, Fowler places visionaries like Gandhi or King who staked their lives on a faith in love beyond the norms of their society, valuing good for humanity over good for self.

It’s the difference between obedient adherence to mere form versus courageous application of import. The more we develop toward the latter, Fowler says, the deeper our faith, and the more meaningful our lives.

When I came to AA, my belief system was a mess of contradictions.  Most of what I’d cobbled together to live by had to be straight up chucked in favor of love & respect for people from all walks of life and an ethic of usefulness – values that proved their worth as they lifted me from despair to vitality.  AA sponsors, friends, and sometimes strangers who spoke in meetings – these people taught me how to live.  It’s a process that continues to this day.  Listening, I’m transported outside my own experience into the perspectives of women and men who differ from me in countless ways, yet share my diseased alcoholic mind.  My fellows in AA and Al-Anon have become a sounding board for my tentative thoughts as I navigate the unknowns of today.  Their feedback pushes me beyond what I want to see, pressing me to be ever more honest with myself.

Even so, I need to examine AA meetings with some critical distance, as well.  AA is amorphous, because meetings are only as constructive as the alcoholics attending them.  A group of sick people makes a sick meeting.

Dry Drunk** Meetings, for example, have cast aside the Big Book in favor of some kind of open-season group therapy.  Shares focus solely on “checking in,” usually venting frustrations or confessing destructive behavior, all of which is swept aside with the phrase, “but at least I didn’t drink!”  Here plug-in-the-jug abstinence is touted as an asset, even if I’m still an asshole tortured by the fear and self-loathing I once treated with alcohol.  I myself spent the first two years of my sobriety in such meetings, which brought on a debilitating depression.

At the opposite extreme are Competitive Sobriety Meetings, which feature the same schtick over and over: My life sucked, but now I work the 12 Steps constantly, and everything is wonderful!  Yes, dammit, wonderful, because I have 7 sponsees, 5 service positions, 3 home groups, write a 10th step every fucking night and read 86-88 every morning, etc. – so my sobriety is way better than yours!  Here the search for authenticity has been abandoned.  In fear of relapse, I cling to the RIGHT ANSWER.  The second two years of my sobriety were spent developing resentments in such meetings.  The solution was there – yes – a solution that saved my life.  Still, much like Fowler’s Stage 1 woman with her virtual Ken and Barbie saint collection, such meetings tend to make a golden calf of the AA program and its history.

Where is balance to be found?  What rings true?  That’s up to… thine own self, baby!  Today, I have a home group that feels like home.  For me, the most important growth guide is based, not in set rules or standards, but rather in my ways of being, my modes of consciousness – in my awareness of my awareness.  To what degree am I willing to be vulnerable and loving, to admit that I don’t know, but to keep trying regardless? At a dry drunk meeting, can I offer the solution to those who want it, without judging those who don’t?  In competitive sobriety meetings, do I have the courage to speak of my continuing human struggles?

J.K. Rowling may seem a questionable sage, but as I’ve been reading Harry Potter to my son, I’ve noticed how frequently she has Dumbledore preface statements with “I think…”  Unlike Polonius, Dumbledore understands that he is fallible, mourns past mistakes, and acknowledges that he cannot trust himself with power.  His wisdom shows itself as recurring acknowledgement that he may be wrong.

In sum, we’re always trying, never done.  Sobriety and spiritual growth are, like life itself, forever touch and go, a muscle that begins to atrophy as soon as we rest it, a puzzle we work on daily even as pieces constantly vanish and reappear.

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* Much of this book deals in depth with developmental psychology, but it’s still an interesting layman’s read.

**For more on Dry Drunk syndrome, see this great article by Liberty Ranch recovery.