Well, as the year has jumped to a start, Brian and I have been asked to once again, go to high schools and speak to students about our life – The kids at these schools are always positive when we get there because we never tell them to ‘not do drugs, don’t drink’ – instead we speak about our story, we tell the gory details and they laugh at the fun ones. And we are honest with them and they ask us a million questions.
It’s interesting because our visits are gaining in popularity, when we started, we spoke to one class a day, and it was only to those students who wanted to hear us speak. Tomorrow, when we go, we will be speaking to four different full groups, lasting the entire day. In April, we will be going to Estes Park to speak to another large congregation as well, and I am really honored that I am able to share some of this with so many people, impressionable people.
The kids always ask us what there is to do in rehab. When that question was first asked to me back in October, I immediately said, ‘We don’t do a whole lot,’ and then I continued…
“This summer I went to like 5 Rockies games, I went white water rafting, hiked in Rocky Mountain National Forest like 6 or 7 times. I learned how to ride a horse and the basics of mule training. I skied twice and learned how to snow shoe. I went to the Art Museum, the History Museum twice, and saw the Ghengis Khan exhibit. I helped deliver a baby cow, I bottle fed baby goats, I was an announcer at some pig races (where one was named after me!), I learned how to cook a kick ass lasagna. On warm days, there’s nothing to do, so we play kick ball, volleyball or horse shoes. I weight train, and ride my bike. I’ve been training for a marathon. I’ve cliff dived at Horsetooth reservoir but am afraid of heights so I only did it once. I was baptized in a real river with 30 other people. I painted a youth retreat in Wyoming and the pastor liked our work, he invited Lane and me up to paint the chapel. I fed the homeless in Cheyenne and sat through the worlds longest night time winter parade. I was on TV several times, interviewed by a major daily newspaper and began speaking to people all across Northern Colorado about the life transforming journey to sobriety. I quit drinking.”
And when I began to ramble, it dawned on me, the year as it began last May was viewed as a detour from my real life, the year I was ‘going to take off’ from life… but it was hardly that at all! Instead of taking off from life, my life has taken off! And completely sober. This is how my life is supposed to be. And I am detailing this because I want to illustrate the full life I am living because I am sober – and I am illustrating it for those of you who are apprehensive about quitting with your drug of choice. It’s a cool way to live.
This week, something shocking has happened and I am still unsure of how I feel about it, so as I tell about it, whatever emotions may seem lacking are only because I am still dealing with them.
I have a friend in Denver, who I will call Aaron, and this past Saturday he decided to drink a half gallon of Jack Daniels and swallow a lethal dose of muscle relaxers. When he was discovered 11 hours later, he was barely breathing, his blood pressure so low his heart was considered almost dormant – and he barely survived the ordeal – as of this writing, no one knows the brain damage he may have suffered. I spoke to him when he woke up yesterday, he was hardly coherent, and muttered about nonsense.
I know my family and friends who remember when I suffered from aspiration pneumonia and was in the hospital for several weeks can relate to this wait and worry portion of what I am experiencing. Is it some kind of divine retribution that I have to feel everything I may have made other people feel throughout my illustrious drinking career? What the hell is this all about. I’m a little mad about it, I suppose.
I mean, it gets pretty taxing on my nervous system to always be remembering, to always be recalling, to always be feeling…. It gets a little stale to be so ‘raw’ all the damn time. Remorse is a powerful emotion and I do feel remorseful about so much, but for chrissake, there’s a limit. At some point I am going to have to close the book on the past, and hope that the cosmos kindly does the same. I’m getting sick of all the ‘lessons’ I am learning – OK, OK, OK, fine, I may not have been the greatest person on the planet but it seems cosmically unfair to unload a bunch of experiences on me all at once.
And when I feel like I have reached my limit, which I feel, mechanisms which would have at one time forced me to retreat from this and go get drunk are engaged in a different way. In addictions class I have learned how to change perspectives, to change my belief window, to manage my stresses by tracing them backwards until I get to the source, identify the source, then change the belief. There is an immediate sense of release at the other end and life is, again, manageable.
But it gets exhausting. I wonder, sometimes, if this is sustainable. I suppose there are people with much more stressful lives who don’t have drinking problems, so somehow it must be sustainable. But its damn exhausting to always be on some sort of course correction. Not because I fear relapse, but because I like the person I am now and I don’t want that person to change for the worse. Whether I drink or I don’t, I can’t lose touch with the guy I’ve been building. That’s also stressful.
I’m getting sick of it.
So, this morning as I settled in to the coffee shop where I sometimes write this blog, frustrated and a little angry, and really tired, I didn’t even know what I would write about – I just knew that I am exhausted at maintaining sobriety. I started writing and began to ramble. At the table next to me, a woman came in with her kids. I see her sometimes when I am here.
While she was ordering, her daughter, about 8, made her way over to me and she said, “Hey, you have a good day, OK.”
I was a little floored but I smiled and returned the pleasantry and got back to my ramblings.
Then her mom corrected her, “Lisa, get over her, stop bothering people,” she apologized to me for her daughter’s intrusion.
And her daughter said, “Sorry, but he always tells us to have a good day when he sees us, and he didn’t, so I thought he was waiting for me to say it first.”
Her mom and I both laughed… I was touched. I realized that people may not always realize what I do, what I say, I may not even realize it, but people know how I make them feel. And this morning, I wasn’t making her feel like I usually do, and so she picked up the slack for me.
And in my life, that’s how it works best…. If I live my life well, a good life, if I make people feel decent, or have decent experiences, then on those occasions where I would retreat to my bottle, I can instead just go about my day, because someone will notice, and pick up the slack. And so the cosmos is hell bent on making me feel what I made other people feel, that’s fine – and there is bad with that…. But the more goodness I spread around now that I am happy and sober, the more that comes back to me as well…. And that, somehow comforts me.
You know what, I WILL have a good day.
You too.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Three moms
This past week, I have been dealing with moms. I want to start out by saying that I love my dad, and the fact that I don’t write about him in every single blog is not an indication of the importance I place on my relationship with him. He is cool, wise, and warm. As I grow older, I enjoy the time building the relationship I always wanted to have with him. He is good counsel, he is a LOT of fun, and he is as much a part of my treatment as anyone. More so.
My mother, however, is a colorful creature who, without trying, provides me with the kind of subject matter most writers dream about.
But back to the other moms I have met this week. Through a series of unusual circumstances I have crossed paths with three mothers who each have a son in a different stage of addiction and recovery, and to speak to these mothers is a profound lesson on the tireless concern that a mom has for an addicted son, the stages of addiction, and as I spoke to each of them, I could have substituted my name for their son’s name, I could have substituted their faces for my own mom’s.
I am writing about this because it really gives me some insight to the heartache I may have put my own mother through, or the joy I eventually provided to her, through this journey to sobriety. The other reason I am writing about it is that I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I am not special, and that my experience isn’t radically different from someone else who might be entering treatment – I wrote that because I want people who read this to understand that I am not remarkable, and that I have achieved success and triumph because I am living sober, not because I have some sort of special quality that others lack. I am your garden variety alcoholic.
I can’t imagine the emotion a mother must feel when she watches her grown son succumb to the torment of addiction. One mother who reads this blog often does so with her drunk son in the next room, sometimes she listens to him throwing up from the physical effects of long term abuse, or the short term of another bender.
She worries at night,
she is disgusted,
she loves him deeply,
she can’t stand to have him around,
she doesn’t want to be near him,
she can’t fathom the thought of him alone in this,
she misses him.
This is an indescribable emotion I would imagine. It’s the kind of emotion she feels in an instant – all of these feelings, wrapped up in a few split seconds every time she thinks about him; even when she doesn’t.
This mother takes comfort from reading this blog, she has said that there is something comforting to see the progress, the challenges, the changes. She reads it with the hope that soon, her son, will be traveling his own journey – the same destination, his own path.
Her son is on the list to come to the ranch. This is the first part of seeking treatment, but sobriety is an endurance race, it is not a sprint. As a runner, I can say with every ounce of confidence that every endurance run I do starts with what seems like an insignificant step. It leads to the next, then the next, and before I realize it, I look back and I am 5 miles away from where I started.
He drinks alone, he can’t stop. He is me, in another family. He struggles not knowing what to expect. He wants to be sober but the method on how to get there escapes him. There is obvious tension in that family because he has been graciously allowed to live with his family until he gets into the program. His life, like mine did, has turned into a minute by minute exercise in addiction maintenance, like mine were, his days are spent consumed by an excess of the pointless. He spins his wheels, and goes no where. This is the critical point that every addict on the farm describes right before they come here.
The chaos of a life which has spun completely out of control is mostly a blur to an addict. I want you to notice the verb in that last sentence, ‘has spun’ and not ‘spinning’ – I use this because by this point, he has either decided “I am about to stop drinking forever, this terrifies me, so I an going to consume so much now so I won’t have to face the idea that I am going to eventually have to stop,” or it means he has given up.
But what I told this mother was this is unsustainable. Something will end at this point. The addiction will go away, or he will die, but no one, not even the most seasoned veteran of functional drinking, can sustain a drinking habit or drug habit when it has reached this point. I say this with sincerity, if he continues, he will die – and soon.
This mother has glimmers of hope. He has days where he is lucid, she says she can still see glimpses of her son somewhere in there. She calls to discover he is advancing up the list. She tries to go about her day, tries to live like normal. She wants things to return to normal. How they should be, normal.
My mother, however, is a colorful creature who, without trying, provides me with the kind of subject matter most writers dream about.
But back to the other moms I have met this week. Through a series of unusual circumstances I have crossed paths with three mothers who each have a son in a different stage of addiction and recovery, and to speak to these mothers is a profound lesson on the tireless concern that a mom has for an addicted son, the stages of addiction, and as I spoke to each of them, I could have substituted my name for their son’s name, I could have substituted their faces for my own mom’s.
I am writing about this because it really gives me some insight to the heartache I may have put my own mother through, or the joy I eventually provided to her, through this journey to sobriety. The other reason I am writing about it is that I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I am not special, and that my experience isn’t radically different from someone else who might be entering treatment – I wrote that because I want people who read this to understand that I am not remarkable, and that I have achieved success and triumph because I am living sober, not because I have some sort of special quality that others lack. I am your garden variety alcoholic.
I can’t imagine the emotion a mother must feel when she watches her grown son succumb to the torment of addiction. One mother who reads this blog often does so with her drunk son in the next room, sometimes she listens to him throwing up from the physical effects of long term abuse, or the short term of another bender.
She worries at night,
she is disgusted,
she loves him deeply,
she can’t stand to have him around,
she doesn’t want to be near him,
she can’t fathom the thought of him alone in this,
she misses him.
This is an indescribable emotion I would imagine. It’s the kind of emotion she feels in an instant – all of these feelings, wrapped up in a few split seconds every time she thinks about him; even when she doesn’t.
This mother takes comfort from reading this blog, she has said that there is something comforting to see the progress, the challenges, the changes. She reads it with the hope that soon, her son, will be traveling his own journey – the same destination, his own path.
Her son is on the list to come to the ranch. This is the first part of seeking treatment, but sobriety is an endurance race, it is not a sprint. As a runner, I can say with every ounce of confidence that every endurance run I do starts with what seems like an insignificant step. It leads to the next, then the next, and before I realize it, I look back and I am 5 miles away from where I started.
He drinks alone, he can’t stop. He is me, in another family. He struggles not knowing what to expect. He wants to be sober but the method on how to get there escapes him. There is obvious tension in that family because he has been graciously allowed to live with his family until he gets into the program. His life, like mine did, has turned into a minute by minute exercise in addiction maintenance, like mine were, his days are spent consumed by an excess of the pointless. He spins his wheels, and goes no where. This is the critical point that every addict on the farm describes right before they come here.
The chaos of a life which has spun completely out of control is mostly a blur to an addict. I want you to notice the verb in that last sentence, ‘has spun’ and not ‘spinning’ – I use this because by this point, he has either decided “I am about to stop drinking forever, this terrifies me, so I an going to consume so much now so I won’t have to face the idea that I am going to eventually have to stop,” or it means he has given up.
But what I told this mother was this is unsustainable. Something will end at this point. The addiction will go away, or he will die, but no one, not even the most seasoned veteran of functional drinking, can sustain a drinking habit or drug habit when it has reached this point. I say this with sincerity, if he continues, he will die – and soon.
This mother has glimmers of hope. He has days where he is lucid, she says she can still see glimpses of her son somewhere in there. She calls to discover he is advancing up the list. She tries to go about her day, tries to live like normal. She wants things to return to normal. How they should be, normal.
She said she would come visit the ranch on a day she could be sure that things wouldn’t fall apart, and his drinking wouldn’t become a wet mess if she were to leave him at home. He isn't ready to come visit. She is held hostage by his addiction as much as he is.
We have a new guy on the ranch. He came in a couple months ago. Immediately, I sensed a reserve, almost sadness about him. He doesn’t mope around or appear to be melancholy, but, his smile is only slightly illuminated, it remains dimmed because he is where he is, doing what he is doing, and why he is doing it. I know this smile, I had it too. It’s not a forced happy, its more like, ‘I will tolerate this, I will appear happy but I am perfectly fine with living my own sadness without you even involved.” It’s the kind of smile that never makes it up to your eyes – it’s stalled somewhere before it gets there, perhaps right below the tear duct. By the end of this program, I hope his smile moves back up to his eyes.
This new guy was given the profoundly sad news last week that one of his best friends was found dead, a drug overdose.
He dutifully put his smile on, he went about his day, kind of in a daze. I observed him for several days – because we work out together sometimes, I know him socially, so I made it clear I was available if he wanted to unload. The ranch is a very safe place, but when you first get there, it is really hard to find a place to be comfortable and to find someone with whom you feel comfortable. You may remember, Curtis came to me first when his brother died over the summer. It was a privilege that he came to me. Providing compassion to Curtis, a friend who’s trust I earned, prepared me for the new friend who would require my compassion, a position of trust I hadn’t deserved or actually earned from him.
Because he was still in Phase I, and the rules of the program state that he can’t leave the ranch without being escorted by a higher phase guy, he humbly asked me if I would go with him on a Sunday afternoon to get clothes to wear for a funeral, to get his haircut, and a few small things he needed. WOW!! It’s as if an angel was at work here – I was being asked to go shopping, AND get a haircut. If anyone on that farm knew the importance of a haircut, it was me. Good grooming has been one of the guiding principles of my treatment plan.
His mom also accompanied us. Her son had already been in the program for almost 60 days, and she could hardly contain her glee at how he is progressing, and that he is somewhere safe. It is a small gift that we are able to give our moms while on the farm, the gift of relief. She was a lot like my mom, ‘When can you get a pass, we should go see a movie, what do you need, tell me about your friends.”
It was as if she finally found her son again, like he had been gone, and VOILA here he appeared again. It was as if the past several years were like a bad bad dream and now she had woken up, and here he was, all the time. When my mom dropped me off at the ranch that first day I arrived here back in May, she hugged me, fought off the tears and managed to kindly ask me to, "bring my son home.”
I watched the careful dance this mom danced, the one that my family made around me in the beginning. Not knowing how much to ask but having a million questions, not knowing what to say, but wanting to say a million things, not knowing how to act – they don’t want to offend, or say the wrong thing, but for chrissake, HER SON IS BACK and she is ecstatic.
When we stopped to get his haircut, she and I had a moment to speak. Of course she had a bunch of questions for me. I have been there 9 months now (257 days to be exact) – and I have worked a pretty good program. She is friends with my chaplain, her son has my chaplain, so the opportunity to speak to me was one where she might be able to fast forward and know what to expect, and one in which she might understand what has already happened.
She grew silent in our conversation. As she looked out into space, out of nowhere, she said with grief, ‘They used to find him curled up in a ball, asleep on the street.’ I listened as she began to pour out tales of her sadness, of her worry, she spoke from such a deep place in her heart about how she feels safe that now he is safe. She never looked at me when she told me of these things, its as if her mind shut off and her heart was talking, she was channeling the fear of a mother who lived with the idea that she could lose her son at any time. She spoke of her hopes for him, all the while restrained by her emotional caution. She hasn't completely submitted to the idea that this time, this may work, but she wants it, she hopes.
We have a new guy on the ranch. He came in a couple months ago. Immediately, I sensed a reserve, almost sadness about him. He doesn’t mope around or appear to be melancholy, but, his smile is only slightly illuminated, it remains dimmed because he is where he is, doing what he is doing, and why he is doing it. I know this smile, I had it too. It’s not a forced happy, its more like, ‘I will tolerate this, I will appear happy but I am perfectly fine with living my own sadness without you even involved.” It’s the kind of smile that never makes it up to your eyes – it’s stalled somewhere before it gets there, perhaps right below the tear duct. By the end of this program, I hope his smile moves back up to his eyes.
This new guy was given the profoundly sad news last week that one of his best friends was found dead, a drug overdose.
He dutifully put his smile on, he went about his day, kind of in a daze. I observed him for several days – because we work out together sometimes, I know him socially, so I made it clear I was available if he wanted to unload. The ranch is a very safe place, but when you first get there, it is really hard to find a place to be comfortable and to find someone with whom you feel comfortable. You may remember, Curtis came to me first when his brother died over the summer. It was a privilege that he came to me. Providing compassion to Curtis, a friend who’s trust I earned, prepared me for the new friend who would require my compassion, a position of trust I hadn’t deserved or actually earned from him.
Because he was still in Phase I, and the rules of the program state that he can’t leave the ranch without being escorted by a higher phase guy, he humbly asked me if I would go with him on a Sunday afternoon to get clothes to wear for a funeral, to get his haircut, and a few small things he needed. WOW!! It’s as if an angel was at work here – I was being asked to go shopping, AND get a haircut. If anyone on that farm knew the importance of a haircut, it was me. Good grooming has been one of the guiding principles of my treatment plan.
His mom also accompanied us. Her son had already been in the program for almost 60 days, and she could hardly contain her glee at how he is progressing, and that he is somewhere safe. It is a small gift that we are able to give our moms while on the farm, the gift of relief. She was a lot like my mom, ‘When can you get a pass, we should go see a movie, what do you need, tell me about your friends.”
It was as if she finally found her son again, like he had been gone, and VOILA here he appeared again. It was as if the past several years were like a bad bad dream and now she had woken up, and here he was, all the time. When my mom dropped me off at the ranch that first day I arrived here back in May, she hugged me, fought off the tears and managed to kindly ask me to, "bring my son home.”
I watched the careful dance this mom danced, the one that my family made around me in the beginning. Not knowing how much to ask but having a million questions, not knowing what to say, but wanting to say a million things, not knowing how to act – they don’t want to offend, or say the wrong thing, but for chrissake, HER SON IS BACK and she is ecstatic.
When we stopped to get his haircut, she and I had a moment to speak. Of course she had a bunch of questions for me. I have been there 9 months now (257 days to be exact) – and I have worked a pretty good program. She is friends with my chaplain, her son has my chaplain, so the opportunity to speak to me was one where she might be able to fast forward and know what to expect, and one in which she might understand what has already happened.
She grew silent in our conversation. As she looked out into space, out of nowhere, she said with grief, ‘They used to find him curled up in a ball, asleep on the street.’ I listened as she began to pour out tales of her sadness, of her worry, she spoke from such a deep place in her heart about how she feels safe that now he is safe. She never looked at me when she told me of these things, its as if her mind shut off and her heart was talking, she was channeling the fear of a mother who lived with the idea that she could lose her son at any time. She spoke of her hopes for him, all the while restrained by her emotional caution. She hasn't completely submitted to the idea that this time, this may work, but she wants it, she hopes.
She bought me a Smash Mouth Hamburger.
I accompanied this new resident to the funeral the next day because he still hadn’t phased. He spoke to me about his conflicts with that day. He wanted to be with his friends to grieve but he knew there would be alcohol and drugs around and he wasn’t ready for that. He wondered what he might have done if he wasn’t at the ranch. He was troubled all day by the tapes in his head, playing forward to what his friends were doing. The divine message that his friend senselessly died from an addiction, from an overdoes, was not lost on him. To his mom, I say, I believe that your son is gonna be OK… he get’s it. He wants to get it.
I thought about the first son, and how I wished he could have been at that funeral to see the kind of love people have for him, and so he could witness the devastating effects of unbridled addiction.
I also heard from a third mother. Her son was doing very good. She didn’t speak to me about his addiction, instead she spoke about a newspaper article she read over the weekend in which her son was written about because of a few career successes. She spoke briefly about her weekend, and she mentioned plans for her son when he went on weekend pass, the fun stuff they might do – or the regular stuff that they might get around to. When I talked to her she didn’t mention a thing about alcohol or worry, life had gotten back to normal.
And that mom was my mom. And next weekend, I will be bringing her son home.
Peace all,
Keep the faith
DAYS SOBER: 268
DAYS SINCE I WATCHED THE BONNIE HUNT SHOW: 259
I accompanied this new resident to the funeral the next day because he still hadn’t phased. He spoke to me about his conflicts with that day. He wanted to be with his friends to grieve but he knew there would be alcohol and drugs around and he wasn’t ready for that. He wondered what he might have done if he wasn’t at the ranch. He was troubled all day by the tapes in his head, playing forward to what his friends were doing. The divine message that his friend senselessly died from an addiction, from an overdoes, was not lost on him. To his mom, I say, I believe that your son is gonna be OK… he get’s it. He wants to get it.
I thought about the first son, and how I wished he could have been at that funeral to see the kind of love people have for him, and so he could witness the devastating effects of unbridled addiction.
I also heard from a third mother. Her son was doing very good. She didn’t speak to me about his addiction, instead she spoke about a newspaper article she read over the weekend in which her son was written about because of a few career successes. She spoke briefly about her weekend, and she mentioned plans for her son when he went on weekend pass, the fun stuff they might do – or the regular stuff that they might get around to. When I talked to her she didn’t mention a thing about alcohol or worry, life had gotten back to normal.
And that mom was my mom. And next weekend, I will be bringing her son home.
Peace all,
Keep the faith
DAYS SOBER: 268
DAYS SINCE I WATCHED THE BONNIE HUNT SHOW: 259
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
I am a selfish jerk. So what.
So, this weekend, I went to the City, and I went out. I had a great time, but as I mentioned in last week’s blog, I went out with someone who I was slightly more interested in that ‘just friends’ and I’ll tell you one thing, this changed EVERYTHING for me.
I have been going out with friends since I have been here. Many of them drink and I have even watched as they metamorphed into completely different people. When you are sober and you watch people you know well begin to drink, there is an almost immediate change in their behavior. It’s a slight widening of the eyes, there is a definite slur – even a small one – the smell is toxic – eyes seem to glass over. Other people may not notice this, but I can see it right away – almost after the first drink someone takes.
When I watch this, I chuckle a little at my own drunken behavior. I mean, who in the hell did I think I was kidding all those times I was drinking and claiming, “No, I am not drunk,” – My parents and Alex all say that they could tell immediately – sometimes within the first sentence. I remember being at grocery stores, the library, the bank, at restaurants, tons of places, just hammered and thinking that no one knew. But the smell alone… that musty, dirty, old booze, hot breath, stale cigarette, sweaty, ‘its coming out my pores’ smell…. It doesn’t have a name, but almost everyone who knows an alcoholic can smell it from a football field away. It’s the putrid smell of a spirit rotting.
Back to my friends. As the nights progress, these people change, become more emotional, rambunctious, I can see the common sense and composure begin to fade. I am usually jovial and happy around them – I never mind if someone drinks to get drunk – I decided early on that I was not going to be one of those recovering know-it-alls who is ready to prescribe addiction examinations to everyone because I made it through a few months of treatment.
God, I hate that.
But watching ‘people I know’ become ‘drunk people I know’ doesn’t really bother me. In fact, at this point in sobriety, it helps reinforce my commitment to staying sober. When I watch cool, calm, collected people become bumbling idiots, it helps me stay on the straight and narrow.
But a strange thing happened to me this weekend during the ‘date’ – I realized that when I am invested in someone, more than friends, someone with whom I want to build something more substantial with, it DOES matter that they drink. I know, I am as shocked by this as you are. I hardly cared a stitch about a buddy or friend or even a family member drinking, but when it comes to the person I want to let inside my heart – well, it certainly matters. And I just don’t think I can date someone who drinks.
You might be thinking that I don’t want this because I may be tempted to drink – but that isn’t it at all. I am not tempted to drink. I find it repulsive, in fact. THAT is why I can’t date someone who drinks. I just don’t want it in my life – not at that level anyway. I don’t want to deal with the drama and confusion that comes with it, I don’t care to deal with the lack of control and the emotional mutterings of a drunk person. I want to be able to go to bed with the same person I woke up with and I want to be able to wake up at a reasonable hour in the morning and do reasonable things and not waste a day on a hang over. So much of my life has been handed over to MY OWN hangovers, why in the hell would I spend another minute on SOMEONE ELSE’S hang over.
Hypocritical, perhaps. I don’t really know what to do about it except say that I am not above being a hypocrite in this regard, I know people stayed with me, loved me, and maintained relationships with me even when I was a dead-inside drunkard, perhaps they deserve a shout out, and I don’t know why they did it, or how they did it, but I am not going to do it. I am spending a heck of a lot of time trying to take care of myself right now, I don’t have the time to be taking care of someone else.
I think I have discovered why they say someone in recovery shouldn’t take care of anything more complex than a houseplant for a full year – for me, if the house plant bugs me, I’ll pull it out, and throw it away, or stop watering it.
They have rules about you doing the same thing to people.
Does this make me a selfish jerk? Maybe. But it makes me a SOBER selfish jerk. I am OK with that.
Anyway, I am not closing the book on the new relationship, but I am going to be a little more critical of where it’s leading. I’ll keep you posted.
Work has been going great. I love my job, and I love the job I am doing at my job. I feel a real distance from the ranch, though, and I don’t really like that. Lane and Marty have already moved to the final dorm before graduation. Next stop – freedom.
Brian, Curtis, then I will be moving to this last dorm in the next few weeks. We do have a transition group meeting that the top 20 guys are required to attend. This is a group that arms us with some real world skills as we transition away from the ranch into real life; when we are no longer accountable to the UA/BA’s we get, and only accountable to the guy standing in the mirror. I have recently found out that I am number 22 on this list. WOW!! I remember being number 72!!
I know there are many people who follow this blog and read it because there is someone in your life who is struggling with addiction. I want to assure you of one thing, I am not special, I am not unique. The successes and the happiness, and the personal triumphs I detail are not only mine. There are MANY guys on this ranch, many guys who have completed all kinds of programs who also have this kind of re-ignition of their spirit.
I am just the one who invited you along.
Peace all, have a good week.
PS - the email for the blog is snapshotsfromrehabranch@yahoo.com if you would like to write a personal email.
I have been going out with friends since I have been here. Many of them drink and I have even watched as they metamorphed into completely different people. When you are sober and you watch people you know well begin to drink, there is an almost immediate change in their behavior. It’s a slight widening of the eyes, there is a definite slur – even a small one – the smell is toxic – eyes seem to glass over. Other people may not notice this, but I can see it right away – almost after the first drink someone takes.
When I watch this, I chuckle a little at my own drunken behavior. I mean, who in the hell did I think I was kidding all those times I was drinking and claiming, “No, I am not drunk,” – My parents and Alex all say that they could tell immediately – sometimes within the first sentence. I remember being at grocery stores, the library, the bank, at restaurants, tons of places, just hammered and thinking that no one knew. But the smell alone… that musty, dirty, old booze, hot breath, stale cigarette, sweaty, ‘its coming out my pores’ smell…. It doesn’t have a name, but almost everyone who knows an alcoholic can smell it from a football field away. It’s the putrid smell of a spirit rotting.
Back to my friends. As the nights progress, these people change, become more emotional, rambunctious, I can see the common sense and composure begin to fade. I am usually jovial and happy around them – I never mind if someone drinks to get drunk – I decided early on that I was not going to be one of those recovering know-it-alls who is ready to prescribe addiction examinations to everyone because I made it through a few months of treatment.
God, I hate that.
But watching ‘people I know’ become ‘drunk people I know’ doesn’t really bother me. In fact, at this point in sobriety, it helps reinforce my commitment to staying sober. When I watch cool, calm, collected people become bumbling idiots, it helps me stay on the straight and narrow.
But a strange thing happened to me this weekend during the ‘date’ – I realized that when I am invested in someone, more than friends, someone with whom I want to build something more substantial with, it DOES matter that they drink. I know, I am as shocked by this as you are. I hardly cared a stitch about a buddy or friend or even a family member drinking, but when it comes to the person I want to let inside my heart – well, it certainly matters. And I just don’t think I can date someone who drinks.
You might be thinking that I don’t want this because I may be tempted to drink – but that isn’t it at all. I am not tempted to drink. I find it repulsive, in fact. THAT is why I can’t date someone who drinks. I just don’t want it in my life – not at that level anyway. I don’t want to deal with the drama and confusion that comes with it, I don’t care to deal with the lack of control and the emotional mutterings of a drunk person. I want to be able to go to bed with the same person I woke up with and I want to be able to wake up at a reasonable hour in the morning and do reasonable things and not waste a day on a hang over. So much of my life has been handed over to MY OWN hangovers, why in the hell would I spend another minute on SOMEONE ELSE’S hang over.
Hypocritical, perhaps. I don’t really know what to do about it except say that I am not above being a hypocrite in this regard, I know people stayed with me, loved me, and maintained relationships with me even when I was a dead-inside drunkard, perhaps they deserve a shout out, and I don’t know why they did it, or how they did it, but I am not going to do it. I am spending a heck of a lot of time trying to take care of myself right now, I don’t have the time to be taking care of someone else.
I think I have discovered why they say someone in recovery shouldn’t take care of anything more complex than a houseplant for a full year – for me, if the house plant bugs me, I’ll pull it out, and throw it away, or stop watering it.
They have rules about you doing the same thing to people.
Does this make me a selfish jerk? Maybe. But it makes me a SOBER selfish jerk. I am OK with that.
Anyway, I am not closing the book on the new relationship, but I am going to be a little more critical of where it’s leading. I’ll keep you posted.
Work has been going great. I love my job, and I love the job I am doing at my job. I feel a real distance from the ranch, though, and I don’t really like that. Lane and Marty have already moved to the final dorm before graduation. Next stop – freedom.
Brian, Curtis, then I will be moving to this last dorm in the next few weeks. We do have a transition group meeting that the top 20 guys are required to attend. This is a group that arms us with some real world skills as we transition away from the ranch into real life; when we are no longer accountable to the UA/BA’s we get, and only accountable to the guy standing in the mirror. I have recently found out that I am number 22 on this list. WOW!! I remember being number 72!!
I know there are many people who follow this blog and read it because there is someone in your life who is struggling with addiction. I want to assure you of one thing, I am not special, I am not unique. The successes and the happiness, and the personal triumphs I detail are not only mine. There are MANY guys on this ranch, many guys who have completed all kinds of programs who also have this kind of re-ignition of their spirit.
I am just the one who invited you along.
Peace all, have a good week.
PS - the email for the blog is snapshotsfromrehabranch@yahoo.com if you would like to write a personal email.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Now, what do I drink with fish?
The thing about relationships is they generally come when you least expect or even want them. I find it interesting that they tend to find me when I am least likely to make them work, and somehow they tend to work despite it.
I read a while back that it is not recommended for someone in recovery to even entertain the idea of taking care of anything or anyone more complex than a house plant for a FULL YEAR AFTER you’ve completed a program. Obviously, with my beloved dog, I shucked off this recommendation early on – I have every intention of incorporating my dog into my life when I get out and in fact, look forward to including her in so many things I plan on doing.
An intimate relationship, with another human – well, I hadn’t even thought of that. I mean, sure I look better than I have in years, and my personality and spirit have really come alive thanks to nearly nine months of sober living. Because of the program, I have spent a lot of time working on how I handle the world and how I greet the world. In a nutshell, I would TOTALLY date me, I am finally “a catch.”
The kinds of stresses that might have sent me into a tailspin a year ago are absorbed and dealt with as a function of my new instincts – not emotionally, not even mentally – but in a new plane of consciousness that is there for everyone, but often neglected or ignored.
Perhaps that’s one of the things that I find most refreshing rehab and about sobriety, I feel like I have been equipped with methods – automatic responses – that help me deal with life. I will say it again, I think everyone should grab a stint at rehab if they get the chance – even if you don’t have an addiction – the rehabilitation of my thinking and adaptability is the kind of thing I’ve been able to fold up in my back pocket and carry with me.
But back to the relationship – it is easy to get insulated when you live at the ranch. What a completely cool environment it becomes when everyone around is constantly improving something in their lives – all the time. Guys on the ranch are reconnecting with family, getting healthy, starting school, finding ideal jobs, creating new friendships and becoming active participants in their own lives and no longer the clueless observer that they once were. I don’t know if I can explain how utterly helpless you feel when you realize that somehow you’ve abdicated your own control over what happens to you or what you are doing to a bottle of $4 gin.
Lane and I were speaking the other night about when he first got here. Lane had been a career drinker by the time he was 18. By the time he was 21, he was drinking the equivalent of 3 six packs before the afternoon, then would follow it up with a half gallon of other booze or something else to ‘wind down’ the day.
He entered rehab this year, he is the youngest person in my group of friends at 23 – he sometimes regrets that he will never be able to go into a bar and have a beer with friends after work… but the life he will create at his age is worth that kind of denial.
Anyway, when Lane got to the ranch, he was detoxing super bad. Not even he realized the extent of his withdrawals. For a week, he seemed OK – he worked, he dutifully began his program with the mindset that this would have to work for him. And then it started.
Lane slowly began to lose his grip on his reality. Only about 50% of alcoholics will have a physical withdrawal to alcohol and only 5% of them will have Delerium Tremens – but the mortality rate for someone having delirium tremens is about 35%.
The days leading up to his episode were murky and become more cloudy to him as he tells the story. Brian and Marty came in with him and they recount stories of Lane, who would occasionally have a weird episode. One time on the shuttle, he rolled up a shuttle pass and whispered to them, “Hey when we get back, let’s go smoke this.” And while they all laughed at him because it was almost ridiculous, they didn’t realize that his brain had already begun the serious physical withdrawal which could kill him.
The night it all went down, everything appeared OK. Lane was working through the day, and recalls sweating really bad. He also felt extremely shaky.The ass squirts were pretty severe (we call this the Brown-Eyed-Pees – hey it’s a MENS farm, we’re gross, OK) – But then things began to change. Lane was sitting in the dorm where we all start the program and where he lived; people tell how he suddenly jumped up and began to rifle through people’s drawers! Later he would explain that he was looking for his ID because what was happening in real life was a far cry from the reality Lane’s brain was creating - and he was on his way to a party.
His brain was doing this, mind you, because it was starving from the nutrition it had been getting for years from the sugars and carbohydrates in the alcohol. His brain, maybe even by design, was taking over and tricking his body into a scenario where the reward of booze would be the goal.
While he was going through drawers, in his brain, he was in his parent’s basement, and was even beginning to see things that weren’t there – he was looking out into space, but seeing the interior of a room that was miles from where his body was.
Well, as you can imagine, a crazy person rifling through everyone’s drawers muttering things about going to a party and speaking to people who weren’t there was OUTRAGEOUS to say the least. Even on the ranch, a place full of crazies, there is a limit to what is considered ‘normal’. He had reached his.
Finally the guys had calmed him down, the ambulance was called and Lane was carted to the hospital. Once inside the ambulance, Lane was restrained and he remembers vividly the horror of several threathening men banging on the outside of the ambulance door, trying to get in to his new safe place – for what, no one knows. These men didn’t exist anywhere but in the terrifying corners of Lane’s malfunctioning brain.
Once he arrived at the hospital, his mother tells of a son who, by this time, was seething, cussing, and completely out of control, he was foaming at the mouth, even spitting; she described him as ‘possessed’ trying to bite the paramedics and the nurses, scratching and clawing– I can only imagine how terrible the ride must have been for him – the only person on earth that was experiencing this horrible melt down, and he was completely alone in the experience, mind you, still a 22 year old kid. He didn’t tell us the ‘possession’ part of the story until recently because he was so embarrassed about it. The 'possession' must have been a result of the demonic sights and emotions his brain was inflicting on him - terrorizing a 22 year old kid with no means to stop it - and NO help from anyone. He was alone in this, and his brain had him cornered.
At the hospital, he had several other episodes where he halucinated and saw terrible sights he descibes in vivid detail, but which I will nto recount out of respect for him; had to be restrained. At one point, he even toppled a completely full urn of piss because he had little control of what his brain was seeing or doing. I want you to realize at this point in the story, this was all going on 10 DAYS after he stopped drinking. He had been sober for over a week before his brain realized it was going to be denied the precious boozie nectar, and his brain and body WERE PISSED OFF!
Now, I am going to step back and describe Lane. He is one of the most sedate, calm, cool, collected guys I have ever met. He has a sense of balance and quiet about him that men twice his age have yet to master. He is generally in control, and I don’t think I have ever heard him raise his voice or say anything in a tone of contempt. For Lane to behave in the way he was behaving is made all the more horrific when you meet him now, sober, detoxed, healthy.
Anyway, the farm wouldn’t have him back until he had a psych release. His mom scrambled to keep him in the farm, making calls and ensuring that he would not lose his bed and have to get back on the list. Jack, the intake chaplain, assured her that this would not happen and that the farm has seen it all. He told her to take care of her son, and have him take care of himself, and that his bed would be stay his.
Lane describes the three days he spent in the psych ward as pleasant enough. He says it was nice that he was fed all day long, and he just relaxed, he talked, watched TV, he got better. But, in his head, he was still really embarrassed. I asked him what he was embarrassed about and he told me he remembers thinking, “Geezus, you finally made it all the way to rehab, and now you’ve gotten yourself in to a damn psych ward.” It spoke volumes about the kind of person he is – the kind of reflection he is also dealing with, it was a revelation he will always remember about how bad he, at 22, let his addiction become.
Which brings me back to where I was…. When I mentioned that you can’t imagine how helpless you feel when you realize you’ve abdicated your life to a bottle of booze. Lane had that realization and nearly died in the process of seeing it. He is going to choke me for saying this, but, I feel extra compassion for him because he is still so young and the horror of what he saw, what he lived through that night is made worse when you consider that he had to travel that path all alone – terrified – confused – and so damn out of it. Whether trauma is real or imagined, its trauma.
Lane is also the only one of the guys on the farm who has a full time, serious, on-going relationship. His girlfriend has supported him through the program and has stood by his side as he continues to fight the good fight to sobriety. The ranch can really test your relationship and help you see if it has some mileage in it – it’s a major event in a man's life and if your relationship doesn’t have some muscle, it will not survive rehab - don't even expect it. One of you or both of you will not be able to manage it.
Lane was fortunate in one aspect, and that is that he has had this relationship from the beginning, and so he has incorporated it into his recovery plan – the one we all make for ourselves to maintain sobriety.
I, on the other hand, have not incorporated anyone into my recovery plan and so I am now adjusting to someone new in my life. I am walking a fine line between allowing someone into my life and keeping my life private. It would be hypocritical of me to keep this part of my life from someone new when I spent the past few months pontificating the importance of ‘Being Real, Being honest." I can also say that if I was dating someone and they kept something like this from me, I would really feel left out when I discovered it - and frankly, cheated out of the opportunity to offer support, or even decide if I wanted to.
And so I am going on pass this weekend to the City, where I will probably explain why I live where I live and why my time is so limited. I will give an easy exit if this person needs it, I will not obligate them into sticking around. Nor will I make any promise that life will be a rosy picture of barefoot romps through fields of daisies once I am done. That's not real. There will be weak moments, heck, there might even be a relapse, it will not always be pretty, it will not always be a fantasy.
I am an alcoholic, my reality can never give way to a fantasy world or I might end up lost in it. Searching for the fantasy world is part of what got me here to begin with. Its that fantasy world that turned on Lane when his brain tried to force him from reality. If you don’t think peeking out and existing in complete reality is scary to an alcoholic, imagine Lane’s brain, the night it tried to hotwire his body, tried to take control and strong arm him back into submissive "reality aversion." The night it tried to terrify him back to the safety of a bottle, or perhaps kill him in the process.
There is one obvious advantage I will mention about embarking on a new relationship as a sober person… When I go on a dinner date, I never have to struggle with that age old question “What kind of wine DOES go with Today's Catch!”
Hey…. YOU have a good week.
Peace.
I read a while back that it is not recommended for someone in recovery to even entertain the idea of taking care of anything or anyone more complex than a house plant for a FULL YEAR AFTER you’ve completed a program. Obviously, with my beloved dog, I shucked off this recommendation early on – I have every intention of incorporating my dog into my life when I get out and in fact, look forward to including her in so many things I plan on doing.
An intimate relationship, with another human – well, I hadn’t even thought of that. I mean, sure I look better than I have in years, and my personality and spirit have really come alive thanks to nearly nine months of sober living. Because of the program, I have spent a lot of time working on how I handle the world and how I greet the world. In a nutshell, I would TOTALLY date me, I am finally “a catch.”
The kinds of stresses that might have sent me into a tailspin a year ago are absorbed and dealt with as a function of my new instincts – not emotionally, not even mentally – but in a new plane of consciousness that is there for everyone, but often neglected or ignored.
Perhaps that’s one of the things that I find most refreshing rehab and about sobriety, I feel like I have been equipped with methods – automatic responses – that help me deal with life. I will say it again, I think everyone should grab a stint at rehab if they get the chance – even if you don’t have an addiction – the rehabilitation of my thinking and adaptability is the kind of thing I’ve been able to fold up in my back pocket and carry with me.
But back to the relationship – it is easy to get insulated when you live at the ranch. What a completely cool environment it becomes when everyone around is constantly improving something in their lives – all the time. Guys on the ranch are reconnecting with family, getting healthy, starting school, finding ideal jobs, creating new friendships and becoming active participants in their own lives and no longer the clueless observer that they once were. I don’t know if I can explain how utterly helpless you feel when you realize that somehow you’ve abdicated your own control over what happens to you or what you are doing to a bottle of $4 gin.
Lane and I were speaking the other night about when he first got here. Lane had been a career drinker by the time he was 18. By the time he was 21, he was drinking the equivalent of 3 six packs before the afternoon, then would follow it up with a half gallon of other booze or something else to ‘wind down’ the day.
He entered rehab this year, he is the youngest person in my group of friends at 23 – he sometimes regrets that he will never be able to go into a bar and have a beer with friends after work… but the life he will create at his age is worth that kind of denial.
Anyway, when Lane got to the ranch, he was detoxing super bad. Not even he realized the extent of his withdrawals. For a week, he seemed OK – he worked, he dutifully began his program with the mindset that this would have to work for him. And then it started.
Lane slowly began to lose his grip on his reality. Only about 50% of alcoholics will have a physical withdrawal to alcohol and only 5% of them will have Delerium Tremens – but the mortality rate for someone having delirium tremens is about 35%.
The days leading up to his episode were murky and become more cloudy to him as he tells the story. Brian and Marty came in with him and they recount stories of Lane, who would occasionally have a weird episode. One time on the shuttle, he rolled up a shuttle pass and whispered to them, “Hey when we get back, let’s go smoke this.” And while they all laughed at him because it was almost ridiculous, they didn’t realize that his brain had already begun the serious physical withdrawal which could kill him.
The night it all went down, everything appeared OK. Lane was working through the day, and recalls sweating really bad. He also felt extremely shaky.The ass squirts were pretty severe (we call this the Brown-Eyed-Pees – hey it’s a MENS farm, we’re gross, OK) – But then things began to change. Lane was sitting in the dorm where we all start the program and where he lived; people tell how he suddenly jumped up and began to rifle through people’s drawers! Later he would explain that he was looking for his ID because what was happening in real life was a far cry from the reality Lane’s brain was creating - and he was on his way to a party.
His brain was doing this, mind you, because it was starving from the nutrition it had been getting for years from the sugars and carbohydrates in the alcohol. His brain, maybe even by design, was taking over and tricking his body into a scenario where the reward of booze would be the goal.
While he was going through drawers, in his brain, he was in his parent’s basement, and was even beginning to see things that weren’t there – he was looking out into space, but seeing the interior of a room that was miles from where his body was.
Well, as you can imagine, a crazy person rifling through everyone’s drawers muttering things about going to a party and speaking to people who weren’t there was OUTRAGEOUS to say the least. Even on the ranch, a place full of crazies, there is a limit to what is considered ‘normal’. He had reached his.
Finally the guys had calmed him down, the ambulance was called and Lane was carted to the hospital. Once inside the ambulance, Lane was restrained and he remembers vividly the horror of several threathening men banging on the outside of the ambulance door, trying to get in to his new safe place – for what, no one knows. These men didn’t exist anywhere but in the terrifying corners of Lane’s malfunctioning brain.
Once he arrived at the hospital, his mother tells of a son who, by this time, was seething, cussing, and completely out of control, he was foaming at the mouth, even spitting; she described him as ‘possessed’ trying to bite the paramedics and the nurses, scratching and clawing– I can only imagine how terrible the ride must have been for him – the only person on earth that was experiencing this horrible melt down, and he was completely alone in the experience, mind you, still a 22 year old kid. He didn’t tell us the ‘possession’ part of the story until recently because he was so embarrassed about it. The 'possession' must have been a result of the demonic sights and emotions his brain was inflicting on him - terrorizing a 22 year old kid with no means to stop it - and NO help from anyone. He was alone in this, and his brain had him cornered.
At the hospital, he had several other episodes where he halucinated and saw terrible sights he descibes in vivid detail, but which I will nto recount out of respect for him; had to be restrained. At one point, he even toppled a completely full urn of piss because he had little control of what his brain was seeing or doing. I want you to realize at this point in the story, this was all going on 10 DAYS after he stopped drinking. He had been sober for over a week before his brain realized it was going to be denied the precious boozie nectar, and his brain and body WERE PISSED OFF!
Now, I am going to step back and describe Lane. He is one of the most sedate, calm, cool, collected guys I have ever met. He has a sense of balance and quiet about him that men twice his age have yet to master. He is generally in control, and I don’t think I have ever heard him raise his voice or say anything in a tone of contempt. For Lane to behave in the way he was behaving is made all the more horrific when you meet him now, sober, detoxed, healthy.
Anyway, the farm wouldn’t have him back until he had a psych release. His mom scrambled to keep him in the farm, making calls and ensuring that he would not lose his bed and have to get back on the list. Jack, the intake chaplain, assured her that this would not happen and that the farm has seen it all. He told her to take care of her son, and have him take care of himself, and that his bed would be stay his.
Lane describes the three days he spent in the psych ward as pleasant enough. He says it was nice that he was fed all day long, and he just relaxed, he talked, watched TV, he got better. But, in his head, he was still really embarrassed. I asked him what he was embarrassed about and he told me he remembers thinking, “Geezus, you finally made it all the way to rehab, and now you’ve gotten yourself in to a damn psych ward.” It spoke volumes about the kind of person he is – the kind of reflection he is also dealing with, it was a revelation he will always remember about how bad he, at 22, let his addiction become.
Which brings me back to where I was…. When I mentioned that you can’t imagine how helpless you feel when you realize you’ve abdicated your life to a bottle of booze. Lane had that realization and nearly died in the process of seeing it. He is going to choke me for saying this, but, I feel extra compassion for him because he is still so young and the horror of what he saw, what he lived through that night is made worse when you consider that he had to travel that path all alone – terrified – confused – and so damn out of it. Whether trauma is real or imagined, its trauma.
Lane is also the only one of the guys on the farm who has a full time, serious, on-going relationship. His girlfriend has supported him through the program and has stood by his side as he continues to fight the good fight to sobriety. The ranch can really test your relationship and help you see if it has some mileage in it – it’s a major event in a man's life and if your relationship doesn’t have some muscle, it will not survive rehab - don't even expect it. One of you or both of you will not be able to manage it.
Lane was fortunate in one aspect, and that is that he has had this relationship from the beginning, and so he has incorporated it into his recovery plan – the one we all make for ourselves to maintain sobriety.
I, on the other hand, have not incorporated anyone into my recovery plan and so I am now adjusting to someone new in my life. I am walking a fine line between allowing someone into my life and keeping my life private. It would be hypocritical of me to keep this part of my life from someone new when I spent the past few months pontificating the importance of ‘Being Real, Being honest." I can also say that if I was dating someone and they kept something like this from me, I would really feel left out when I discovered it - and frankly, cheated out of the opportunity to offer support, or even decide if I wanted to.
And so I am going on pass this weekend to the City, where I will probably explain why I live where I live and why my time is so limited. I will give an easy exit if this person needs it, I will not obligate them into sticking around. Nor will I make any promise that life will be a rosy picture of barefoot romps through fields of daisies once I am done. That's not real. There will be weak moments, heck, there might even be a relapse, it will not always be pretty, it will not always be a fantasy.
I am an alcoholic, my reality can never give way to a fantasy world or I might end up lost in it. Searching for the fantasy world is part of what got me here to begin with. Its that fantasy world that turned on Lane when his brain tried to force him from reality. If you don’t think peeking out and existing in complete reality is scary to an alcoholic, imagine Lane’s brain, the night it tried to hotwire his body, tried to take control and strong arm him back into submissive "reality aversion." The night it tried to terrify him back to the safety of a bottle, or perhaps kill him in the process.
There is one obvious advantage I will mention about embarking on a new relationship as a sober person… When I go on a dinner date, I never have to struggle with that age old question “What kind of wine DOES go with Today's Catch!”
Hey…. YOU have a good week.
Peace.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Would I quit rehab over Bonnie Hunt?
When I came upstairs this morning, I was greeted with a sink full of dirty dishes and the cackling of a loud dorm mate who I regard as only slightly less annoying than the cough I have had non-stop since October; no doubt a result of living with so many germy people in close quarters. But the dishes, it amazes me that there are adult men living in a house and it appears that none of them knows clean to do a damn dish.
The cold, the mud, its filthy on the ranch in the winter. The ice cold wind races across the fields like a spray of invisible bullets and greets you with the moment of “GET YOUR ASS UP” shock – the kind I would have in the occasional mornings after a night of endless bar tabs, when I would wake up, roll over and try to figure out who I was sleeping next to.
Then there is the daily battle with the shuttle driver – do I have my pass – am I on time – where will I need to be picked up. I have to pack my crap each day, carry it half a mile to the shuttle, hope I don’t lose anything, then carry it to my car when I get to town, then get it to work, then unpack, then do it all over again in reverse. I have already lost my .mp3 player, my favorite gloves, and a left shoe.
When I get home, sometimes all I want to do is work out, eat a nice meal, watch TV and relax – in silence. WE ARENT ALLOWED TO WATCH TV! I live with 12 men, each with varying degrees of insanity, each with a different schedule, and each one operates at a decibel level that would startle Helen Keller. My food is always half eaten, and I have even had to post a sign on my 2 litre bottle of diet cherry 7-UP that says, ‘I SPIT IN THIS’ so it mysteriously stops disappearing. Someone actually tried to do the ‘water in the bottle to raise the level’ trick on me. WHAT?!? I invented this trick. My dad would sometimes drink scotch so watered down from months of me ‘sneaking’ a drink that I am sure if he started drinking REAL scotch again, he might die.
So, it goes without saying, I am getting over dorm life. And I am not the only one. Lane is part of the group of guys I came in with, he is one of the guys that wanted to graduate together, on the same day. He informed me that he has no intention of that anymore. 13 months, 1 day, he is out he said. The Band of Brothers is often a Band of Bothers.
We all love each other and still get along famously… don’t get me wrong…. But these guys are like my family, and like family, they are always more tolerable in smaller doses and with proper mental planning. Don’t say you’re not like that, we all are. Everyone needs space, time and the ability to live AWAY from the people we love the most. This is nature’s way of preventing murder.
Marty asked me the other day when I would be leaving the ranch. With the new job and money coming in, I have a car, I even have a place I can stay, I have been dating a little bit, I don’t really ‘need’ any of the things that the ranch offers - he was puzzled as to why I am staying.
And that puzzled me as well. I hadn’t really planned on leaving early, but I hadn’t planned on staying either. I kept telling myself that when I got what I needed out of this place, I would leave – whether I graduated or not. Could it be that I am still getting something out of rehab? Why the hell am I staying here? I have completed the addictions modules. I think I have a good handle on recognizing addictive behaviors in myself and I find that I employ the techniques all the time. I am constantly making course corrections in my whole life – not just as it pertains to alcoholism. Alex noticed it and mentioned it at Christmas when I was with my family for a Holiday party and the highly charged atmosphere of ‘fun’ game night was the usual mine field of arguments waiting to happen. And yet, somehow, I stayed calm. I stay calm a lot. My brain is constantly evaluating events and situations on a new scale of relevance.
Its like when my mom checks her blood sugar – if its too high, she immediately employs some exercise (physical or mental) to bring it back down. It’s a habit these days to just ‘know’ whats going on inside – her survival depends on it. And for the most part, things stay at or below the threshold of danger.
This happens in my brain as well. I find that silence is a much more efficient way to get out of a tricky situation than speaking ever was. Many people should try this technique. People would talk a WHOLE lot less if they had any clue how FEW people actually paid attention – or cared.
And so, this means I am cured, right? Whew – its about time.
But, the truth is, I am staying for a different reason, and I had to figure out why. And I’ve realized that I wouldn’t feel right if I left now. I mean, I committed to this and I only have a few months left. What kind of A-Hole would I be to spend so much time working on myself here and decided to bone out before the end.
Back in the summer, before we could leave the farm, Curtis, Lane and I would take walks from one end of the ranch to the other. It’s a half mile from one end to the other. We would walk from the south side to the north side and on the north side is a gate. Curtis would insist that we ALL touch the gate – each time. We would walk and talk and laugh for an hour in the blind darkness of the farm, probably logging 5 miles – back and forth, back and forth – and each time, when we got to that damn gate, we ALL had to touch it. It was not a suggestion, it was a requirement. If we even mentioned that we didn’t touch it, we would turn around and go back and touch it.
Lane and I used to tease Curtis about this OCD thing he had and one day he said plainly, “I just don’t see the sense in walking all the way here, getting all the way TO the gate, and not touching it – its senseless to go this far and not finish.”
Even now, when I pass that gate as I exit the property on a run or a bike ride, I have to touch it.
Much of my life has been like that. Too often, I have robbed myself that small satisfaction of touching the gate. I think we all do that. So much of my life has been in a state of incompleteness, and I can’t live like that anymore. There WILL not be any loose ends. No, There CAN NOT be loose ends.
This seems like a sensible idea for anyone, but for an alcoholic, the penalty is pretty significant. If you remember, I mentioned that one thing addicts all have in common is ‘procrastination.’ The whole idea of getting out of something, of avoiding doing something releases a flood of neurochemicals that are so powerful, that in the right doses, these chemicals will even synthesize the effects of cocaine.
This goes for being chronically late, it goes for calling in sick or playing hookie from school, this happens when we develop and accept the idea that, “I’ll do it later, I’ll get to it, I’ve done enough, It’s OK, I have gone far enough that people notice my effort.”
This is no way to live life, and in developing a new way of thinking, as an alcoholic I need to push through the crap I don’t want to do, and touch the friggin gate! Every time. And when it sucks, I can’t think, I will retreat to the comfort of a bottle of booze, I am gonna get through this. When you approach life with a resolve to finish something, when you put your head down and meet a challenge, then you can walk away from that challenge with your head up, instead.
And so I have to figure out how to survive, I have to put into practice techniques that will keep my metaphoric blood sugar where it needs to be, I need to exercise.
So I learn to develop new routines. This is something I will be doing my whole life – Alcohol was a routine as much as anything. Its methodical for an addict. There is safety in methods. My new routine includes my weekly visit with my dad – For as long as I have been on the farm and able to leave, he has picked me one day a week and we hang out. We watch TV, we go shopping, we do chores, I do laundry, it is my weekly respite from the insanity of living in a Rehab facility.
If it wasn’t for this weekly rendez-vous with my dad, I don’t know if I would have made it this far.
My new routine involves a monthly visit to see family and friends, these are people that I neglected for years when I was drinking, and now they occupy my time, as well as my heart. I will have to maintain that.
My new routine involves working out, running, staying in general shape; it involves new friends…. new ‘relationships’, it involves stepping back from the guys I live with and learning how to incorporate them into my life without suffocating each other. The new routine means that 'down time' isnt 'bored time'.
But the routine also involve quiet time. The idea of solitude was terrifying to me. The business in my head was silenced only by the over amplification of my environment – or else the self-induced coma I would seek to ride out the storm of being alone. Yes, solitude was a storm for me. Yet, now, quiet time is my reward. It isn’t feared, it is relished.
And so, the question remains…. Why do I stay here at this sometimes miserable farm, why do I live in these conditions, why do I tolerate this, day after day, week after week?
Well, you know, it’s simple. I haven’t touched that gate yet.
DAYS SOBER: 248 (WOW!)
DAYS WITHOUT BONNIE HUNT SHOW: 239
PS – I received some sad news today. It appears that Bonnie Hunt will be cancelled in May of this year. You will note that it will be a full year, in May, since I watched Bonnie Hunt. I have to wonder if my lack of viewing contributed to this. Kidding.
But seriously, I am kind of pissed because I will be graduating at that time, and I wont have Bonnie Hunt to watch, and worse, I NEVER EVEN HAD THE CHANCE TO GO TO HER SHOW!!!
I was going to reward myself with a trip to LA and see her show in person…
Now, if I don’t quit rehab over this…. Then, perhaps it is safe to say, I can handle almost anything.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
A 2010 Math Lesson....
This blog is a couple days late but I had to do a lot of research in order to put it together so it took some time. It was amazingly eye opening and I am entering 2010 armed with some real data, and I am a sucker for real data.
Well, I've recently set up my bank account with direct deposit, and its cool to see money actually being deposited in it! I love working and having a job again. But this got me thinking about my last bank account, and luckily I was online banking and decided to check out my transactions for 2008.... I kind of wanted to usher in the New Year with an idea of what a sober life might save me in terms of money. Shocking to say the least.
I used 2008 because thats the last full year I was in party mode. I was living with Alex, I was working full time, I had money, I had a car, and I had a nice robust alcohol addiction. And I figured as I head into 2010 with a new outlook on life, one of which is my perspective on money and working, I should probably take a look at what this cost me.
I spend a whole bunch of time detailing the emotional and spiritual cost, but the hard cost of addiction SUCKS as well. And this cost is conveniently spelled out in 12 consecutive bank statements.
Mind you, this is only my bank account, this doesn't count Alex's account or money that was spent on alcohol. It also kind of estimates the bar tabs - I didn't really drink at bars, I was a solo, at home drinker, so this would seem 'nominal' (can I use that word?)
In 2008, I estimate that I drank
308 pints of gin (cost $1268.96)
122 liters of wine (cost $868.64)
61 12 packs of beer (cost $798.34)
I bought 57 bottles of other alcohol (like rum or vodka, or something like that) (cost 889.20)
For a grand total of $3824.14
Now this does not include bar tabs or money I spent on things like cigarettes or food I ate while drunk or work I missed.
But lets do more math.
308 Pints is 38.5 GALLONS of gin. I went online and googled 38 gallons. Sam's club sells a 38 gallon trash can for 102 dollars - this is one of those massive trash cans you see at parks.
122 liters is 32 gallons of wine. 61 12 packs of beer is 8784 ounces of beer (68.6 gallons).
8784 ounces of beer is 52,704 teaspoons!
57 bottles of hard liquor is 102.6 liters, which is 27.1 GALLONS of rum, vodka or other booze.
So... let's add this up again. That's 166.2 GALLONS of booze in 2008. That is 2,656 cups of alcohol in 2008.
I went online and found the calories for each type of alcohol, and I estimate that I consumed 260,288 calories of alcohol.
Since a calorie is about 3500 calories, that is about 74.36 pounds of body weight I can attribute to alcohol.
That was 40% of my body weight.
WOW!!
So, It is nice to see that I am immediately going to cut out $3824.14 from my annual budget. This is an automatic raise of about $2.12 per hour of work. When you cut out cigarettes as well, that number jumps to $2.88 per hour. This doesn't seem like a lot, but imagine that every hour you are at work, you drop $2 in the toilet, just for the 'enjoyment' of it. And you do this every day, for a year. And then, look in the mirror and tell yourself, its not a problem.
Heck, do this experiment, I did it yesterday. I laid $2.12 on my desk at work. And I set my phone alarm to go off every hour. Not because I was really going to throw $2.12 down the toilet, but because I wanted to see how quick an hour of work passes, and I would glance over at the $2.12 each time the alarm went off.
Obviously, the cost isn't about the dollars, its about the hours I wasted, its about the experiences I didn't have, the cost was my health, my relationship, and when you add all that, its not $2.12 you are flushing down the toilet, its a future, its a past, its a present.
These days $2.12 an hour buys me a whole lot. It buys me a new life.
Happy New Year everyone.... be safe.
Well, I've recently set up my bank account with direct deposit, and its cool to see money actually being deposited in it! I love working and having a job again. But this got me thinking about my last bank account, and luckily I was online banking and decided to check out my transactions for 2008.... I kind of wanted to usher in the New Year with an idea of what a sober life might save me in terms of money. Shocking to say the least.
I used 2008 because thats the last full year I was in party mode. I was living with Alex, I was working full time, I had money, I had a car, and I had a nice robust alcohol addiction. And I figured as I head into 2010 with a new outlook on life, one of which is my perspective on money and working, I should probably take a look at what this cost me.
I spend a whole bunch of time detailing the emotional and spiritual cost, but the hard cost of addiction SUCKS as well. And this cost is conveniently spelled out in 12 consecutive bank statements.
Mind you, this is only my bank account, this doesn't count Alex's account or money that was spent on alcohol. It also kind of estimates the bar tabs - I didn't really drink at bars, I was a solo, at home drinker, so this would seem 'nominal' (can I use that word?)
In 2008, I estimate that I drank
308 pints of gin (cost $1268.96)
122 liters of wine (cost $868.64)
61 12 packs of beer (cost $798.34)
I bought 57 bottles of other alcohol (like rum or vodka, or something like that) (cost 889.20)
For a grand total of $3824.14
Now this does not include bar tabs or money I spent on things like cigarettes or food I ate while drunk or work I missed.
But lets do more math.
308 Pints is 38.5 GALLONS of gin. I went online and googled 38 gallons. Sam's club sells a 38 gallon trash can for 102 dollars - this is one of those massive trash cans you see at parks.
122 liters is 32 gallons of wine. 61 12 packs of beer is 8784 ounces of beer (68.6 gallons).
8784 ounces of beer is 52,704 teaspoons!
57 bottles of hard liquor is 102.6 liters, which is 27.1 GALLONS of rum, vodka or other booze.
So... let's add this up again. That's 166.2 GALLONS of booze in 2008. That is 2,656 cups of alcohol in 2008.
I went online and found the calories for each type of alcohol, and I estimate that I consumed 260,288 calories of alcohol.
Since a calorie is about 3500 calories, that is about 74.36 pounds of body weight I can attribute to alcohol.
That was 40% of my body weight.
WOW!!
So, It is nice to see that I am immediately going to cut out $3824.14 from my annual budget. This is an automatic raise of about $2.12 per hour of work. When you cut out cigarettes as well, that number jumps to $2.88 per hour. This doesn't seem like a lot, but imagine that every hour you are at work, you drop $2 in the toilet, just for the 'enjoyment' of it. And you do this every day, for a year. And then, look in the mirror and tell yourself, its not a problem.
Heck, do this experiment, I did it yesterday. I laid $2.12 on my desk at work. And I set my phone alarm to go off every hour. Not because I was really going to throw $2.12 down the toilet, but because I wanted to see how quick an hour of work passes, and I would glance over at the $2.12 each time the alarm went off.
Obviously, the cost isn't about the dollars, its about the hours I wasted, its about the experiences I didn't have, the cost was my health, my relationship, and when you add all that, its not $2.12 you are flushing down the toilet, its a future, its a past, its a present.
These days $2.12 an hour buys me a whole lot. It buys me a new life.
Happy New Year everyone.... be safe.
Monday, December 21, 2009
OH GOD!
My first week of work has been great, it is nice to feel like I am getting back into the driver’s seat of my life and things are moving along. We are getting ready for Christmas on the ranch, and our small tree in our dorm is already brimming with small gifts that we have been able to either make or buy for each other. Christmas this year is going to be a good one, I feel blessed by a lot, and there is something that gets you into the spirit when you live on a ranch – it’s peaceful, the snow is untouched, the Rockies are only 11 miles west of me so the snow capped peaks are a welcome reminder that it is December in Colorado. 
The buildings on the ranch are bright red, so they contrast the snow – it’s just beautiful.
So, the other day I went to treat myself to lunch. I stopped into a small deli in town and ordered my favorite – Braunschweiger sandwich on dark rye with swiss cheese and cucumbers – and I settled to a small table in back to eat it and suddenly, a small gaggle of high school girls and one parent came up to me and introduced themselves to me.
It was the high school girls soccer team and one of the team mates had heard me speak about sobriety when I visited her school, and she wanted to check in with me and introduce me to her friends and the coach and someone’s mom. They all wished me a great Christmas and New Year, they got my email address and said they would like to stay in touch.
A few days earlier a strange thing happened. I wrote about how my boss Googled me and found out about the article written in the Denver Post and as a result, he also read some of this blog. I mentioned that this didn’t really bother me because, in the long run, it’s easier and healthier to own my sobriety, and getting treatment isn’t something that I should be ashamed about.
A couple days later a co-worker came to me and, over the course of a somewhat awkward conversation (I couldn’t exactly figure out why it was awkward at first), she explained to me that it was she who actually Googled me, not my boss. And then she paused and said, “I am an alcoholic too, I have known I have a problem for about 10 years, but I haven’t stopped, I still continue to drink.” You would think I would be speechless by this admission from someone I hardly knew but I am less and less surprised by the way people have felt close or have even felt a kinship to me since I put myself out there – explaining how alcohol or addiction has touched them – either through a family member or by their own hand.
She went on to ask me a little about treatment and said that she is completely functional (which is obvious, she runs a tight ship in the office – one might never guess), but she said something I found to be powerful. She said that she is fine at work, she works quite hard, and she does, but she said that every night from 6-10, she is completely off-line in her life and is her time. I understand this because alcohol was a very personal time for me too. But by inviting me to share her experience she opened herself up to the uncertainty of my reaction – and this is how I began to own my addiction, it’s how I began to tear down the old self and rebuild a more fortified self, strong in my ability to look people in the eye and say, ‘I am what I am.” And so, it was really a priveledge to have her to tell me this.
At the beginning of this blog I used to say, “People will surprise you if you surprise them first,” and I said this mainly in reference to apologies, forgiveness, meeting you half way in amends, etc. This has happened with most of the guys I live with, they are succeeding in the program and their families are slowly meeting them back where they left off.
I think my statement is bigger now. When I said it, I was speaking about sobriety, but I believe that this statement has effects throughout my interactions with everyone. I wrote about how part of this process is tearing down the old facades and learning to be ‘real’. And the more real I become with people, the more real people become with me. It weird, and it might be unnerving; it’s real and surprising. There is something innocent and basic and comforting about being real. I watch my two youngest nephews, both two and a half years old, and observe how they see the world. To them, the world is very real – people are taken at face value, things that are said are assumed to be true, there are no hidden agendas, no hidden motivations, there is no guilt or shame in being human, whether you have a booger hanging out of your nose or you fart in public, to them, forgiveness is a no-brainer and they offer it as easily as they expect it.
And I think when you become like that, you surprise people, and they, in turn, surprise you.
But these two events, the deli and the office, bring me to this week’s topic, something that I had avoided writing about for some time, but it is an essential part of sobriety, and I don’t know why I haven’t really spoken about it. But it is part of my journey, it is something I had kept out of this blog because I wanted the whole spectrum of people to be able to relate to it, and then I got to thinking, this is my blog, my journey, and I promised that I was going to remain real, and so I’ll tell you, one of the most essential components critical to what got me here, and what might keep me here, is GOD.
My belief in a higher power is real. One of the things that I felt was damaged by years of alcoholism was my spirit, and repairing that spirit happened to me only when I repaired my relationship with God.
I am probably the most spiritual person in my family and certainly the most Catholic. One of the best gifts my parents gave me was a knowledge of GOD. I am not some bible thumper or someone who belts off bible verses to advance my own agenda. But I do spend a lot of time in quiet prayer time with God and I do manage to thank God for blessings. I also ask God for help when I need it, I ask for guidance when I am troubled, I sometimes just tell God about my day like we’re old friends. I am not intimidated by God, afraid of God or ashamed of God. Indeed, I pray to God right before I even start writing this blog each time and thank Him after I post the blog for giving me the gift to write and the burning desire to tell a story.
Sobriety works much easier when you can surrender to a power higher than yourself. There is something that frees me in the belief that I don’t have to solve my every problem, that some problems I can just give to God and have faith that things will work out the way they should. I like the idea that this is not for nothing, the idea that I am eternal in some form makes the work of becoming sober seem worthwhile.
Here’s why this blog topic came about now, however. I read Bible scripture and try to apply it to myself, its how I live the question, “What’s my relationship with my higher power.” (Remember “living the question” blog? If not, go back, these all tie in together) I feel a divine vibration throughout all of nature. There is something divine about the cycles of the seasons, the birth, death and resurrection of plant life. There is something divine about physics and the fact that things have an order within the chaos, today is the winter solstace, it is the longest night of the year... it is also the day the earth is closest to the sun. The longest darkness is marked by our closest proximity to our life source. Tell me that isn't divine.
I’ll wrap it all up, I promise, and I won’t go into some sort of a bible sermon.
But, in John chapter 11 we learn of Jesus’s good friend Lazarus. Lazarus was sick and Jesus was summoned by Laz’s sisters, Mary and Martha, to come and heal him. But Jesus didn’t make it in time (it is a remarkably hectic job saving the world) and Lazarus died and was buried. According to the Bible, Jesus intentionally stays where He was.
When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, he finds that Lazarus is dead and has already been in his tomb for four days. He meets first with Martha and Mary in turn. Martha laments that Jesus did not arrive soon enough to heal her brother and Jesus replies with the well-known statement, "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me shall live, even when he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die in eternity". Next encountering Mary, Jesus is moved by her sorrow, and we read the famous simple phrase, "Jesus wept".
Never one to miss an opportunity to do some miracles when a crowd is present, Jesus comes to the tomb. Over the objections of Martha, Jesus has them roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb and says a prayer – yes even Jesus prayed. He then calls Lazarus, “Hey, Laz, COME OUT OF THERE,” and Lazarus does so.
The next chapter takes place a few days later. Everyone in Bethany is so excited about what happened that there is a huge feast and people come from miles to speak to the guy who was raised from the dead. Lazarus was a spectacle because people began to realize that they, too, could be raised from the dead with faith and friendship in Jesus.
It should be clear by now that I feel like Lazarus. My friendship with God didn’t prevent me from heading down to the path to destruction and death. In fact, I believe that God intentionally stayed out of things, intentionally let me fail, for many years so I could eventually reach the end of that life – and die.
And when I finally surrendered to it, and I died, the stone that separated me, in my tomb, from a life outside, was rolled away by my faith and friendship in God and I was resurrected (I've always said it isn't WHAT you know.....). And now, I am in that feast period, people are coming from all over to speak to me, in a deli, in an office, via email, to speak to the guy who was raised from the dead. My new life offers a bit of hope that the death in their lives isn't permanent either. And while I rarely write about my belief in God, it is there, and I do apply these principles to my sobriety and daily life, and overcoming an addiction is so much easier when you just surrender to something greater than yourself – to God.
This year, Christmas is something I’ve anticipated and will enjoy. Not for the Santa stuff, the family, the kid
s, all those things are great, indeed. The story of Christmas is most importantly the simple story of a birth; the story of a baby being born - in a barn on a farm surrounded by sheep and goats and cows, a baby who's mom was travelling by of all things, a MULE, a baby who's very birth made people want to seek Him out and visit and share the experience. A birth that would bring hope and save people from their own demons, a baby who would grow up and help raise people from the dead, a baby who would give solutions, provide gifts of wisdom and a closer walk with God.
This is a great story of beginnings, and I bet you thought I would end by comparing myself to that baby, to my new spiritual birth, to my faith that I can give hope to people and offer comfort. Boy, are you off. I’m not going to do that. I am not that baby.
I am just His friend.
The buildings on the ranch are bright red, so they contrast the snow – it’s just beautiful.
So, the other day I went to treat myself to lunch. I stopped into a small deli in town and ordered my favorite – Braunschweiger sandwich on dark rye with swiss cheese and cucumbers – and I settled to a small table in back to eat it and suddenly, a small gaggle of high school girls and one parent came up to me and introduced themselves to me.
It was the high school girls soccer team and one of the team mates had heard me speak about sobriety when I visited her school, and she wanted to check in with me and introduce me to her friends and the coach and someone’s mom. They all wished me a great Christmas and New Year, they got my email address and said they would like to stay in touch.
A few days earlier a strange thing happened. I wrote about how my boss Googled me and found out about the article written in the Denver Post and as a result, he also read some of this blog. I mentioned that this didn’t really bother me because, in the long run, it’s easier and healthier to own my sobriety, and getting treatment isn’t something that I should be ashamed about.
A couple days later a co-worker came to me and, over the course of a somewhat awkward conversation (I couldn’t exactly figure out why it was awkward at first), she explained to me that it was she who actually Googled me, not my boss. And then she paused and said, “I am an alcoholic too, I have known I have a problem for about 10 years, but I haven’t stopped, I still continue to drink.” You would think I would be speechless by this admission from someone I hardly knew but I am less and less surprised by the way people have felt close or have even felt a kinship to me since I put myself out there – explaining how alcohol or addiction has touched them – either through a family member or by their own hand.
She went on to ask me a little about treatment and said that she is completely functional (which is obvious, she runs a tight ship in the office – one might never guess), but she said something I found to be powerful. She said that she is fine at work, she works quite hard, and she does, but she said that every night from 6-10, she is completely off-line in her life and is her time. I understand this because alcohol was a very personal time for me too. But by inviting me to share her experience she opened herself up to the uncertainty of my reaction – and this is how I began to own my addiction, it’s how I began to tear down the old self and rebuild a more fortified self, strong in my ability to look people in the eye and say, ‘I am what I am.” And so, it was really a priveledge to have her to tell me this.
At the beginning of this blog I used to say, “People will surprise you if you surprise them first,” and I said this mainly in reference to apologies, forgiveness, meeting you half way in amends, etc. This has happened with most of the guys I live with, they are succeeding in the program and their families are slowly meeting them back where they left off.
I think my statement is bigger now. When I said it, I was speaking about sobriety, but I believe that this statement has effects throughout my interactions with everyone. I wrote about how part of this process is tearing down the old facades and learning to be ‘real’. And the more real I become with people, the more real people become with me. It weird, and it might be unnerving; it’s real and surprising. There is something innocent and basic and comforting about being real. I watch my two youngest nephews, both two and a half years old, and observe how they see the world. To them, the world is very real – people are taken at face value, things that are said are assumed to be true, there are no hidden agendas, no hidden motivations, there is no guilt or shame in being human, whether you have a booger hanging out of your nose or you fart in public, to them, forgiveness is a no-brainer and they offer it as easily as they expect it.
And I think when you become like that, you surprise people, and they, in turn, surprise you.
But these two events, the deli and the office, bring me to this week’s topic, something that I had avoided writing about for some time, but it is an essential part of sobriety, and I don’t know why I haven’t really spoken about it. But it is part of my journey, it is something I had kept out of this blog because I wanted the whole spectrum of people to be able to relate to it, and then I got to thinking, this is my blog, my journey, and I promised that I was going to remain real, and so I’ll tell you, one of the most essential components critical to what got me here, and what might keep me here, is GOD.
My belief in a higher power is real. One of the things that I felt was damaged by years of alcoholism was my spirit, and repairing that spirit happened to me only when I repaired my relationship with God.
I am probably the most spiritual person in my family and certainly the most Catholic. One of the best gifts my parents gave me was a knowledge of GOD. I am not some bible thumper or someone who belts off bible verses to advance my own agenda. But I do spend a lot of time in quiet prayer time with God and I do manage to thank God for blessings. I also ask God for help when I need it, I ask for guidance when I am troubled, I sometimes just tell God about my day like we’re old friends. I am not intimidated by God, afraid of God or ashamed of God. Indeed, I pray to God right before I even start writing this blog each time and thank Him after I post the blog for giving me the gift to write and the burning desire to tell a story.
Sobriety works much easier when you can surrender to a power higher than yourself. There is something that frees me in the belief that I don’t have to solve my every problem, that some problems I can just give to God and have faith that things will work out the way they should. I like the idea that this is not for nothing, the idea that I am eternal in some form makes the work of becoming sober seem worthwhile.
Here’s why this blog topic came about now, however. I read Bible scripture and try to apply it to myself, its how I live the question, “What’s my relationship with my higher power.” (Remember “living the question” blog? If not, go back, these all tie in together) I feel a divine vibration throughout all of nature. There is something divine about the cycles of the seasons, the birth, death and resurrection of plant life. There is something divine about physics and the fact that things have an order within the chaos, today is the winter solstace, it is the longest night of the year... it is also the day the earth is closest to the sun. The longest darkness is marked by our closest proximity to our life source. Tell me that isn't divine.
I’ll wrap it all up, I promise, and I won’t go into some sort of a bible sermon.
But, in John chapter 11 we learn of Jesus’s good friend Lazarus. Lazarus was sick and Jesus was summoned by Laz’s sisters, Mary and Martha, to come and heal him. But Jesus didn’t make it in time (it is a remarkably hectic job saving the world) and Lazarus died and was buried. According to the Bible, Jesus intentionally stays where He was.
When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, he finds that Lazarus is dead and has already been in his tomb for four days. He meets first with Martha and Mary in turn. Martha laments that Jesus did not arrive soon enough to heal her brother and Jesus replies with the well-known statement, "I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me shall live, even when he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die in eternity". Next encountering Mary, Jesus is moved by her sorrow, and we read the famous simple phrase, "Jesus wept".
Never one to miss an opportunity to do some miracles when a crowd is present, Jesus comes to the tomb. Over the objections of Martha, Jesus has them roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb and says a prayer – yes even Jesus prayed. He then calls Lazarus, “Hey, Laz, COME OUT OF THERE,” and Lazarus does so.
The next chapter takes place a few days later. Everyone in Bethany is so excited about what happened that there is a huge feast and people come from miles to speak to the guy who was raised from the dead. Lazarus was a spectacle because people began to realize that they, too, could be raised from the dead with faith and friendship in Jesus.
It should be clear by now that I feel like Lazarus. My friendship with God didn’t prevent me from heading down to the path to destruction and death. In fact, I believe that God intentionally stayed out of things, intentionally let me fail, for many years so I could eventually reach the end of that life – and die.
And when I finally surrendered to it, and I died, the stone that separated me, in my tomb, from a life outside, was rolled away by my faith and friendship in God and I was resurrected (I've always said it isn't WHAT you know.....). And now, I am in that feast period, people are coming from all over to speak to me, in a deli, in an office, via email, to speak to the guy who was raised from the dead. My new life offers a bit of hope that the death in their lives isn't permanent either. And while I rarely write about my belief in God, it is there, and I do apply these principles to my sobriety and daily life, and overcoming an addiction is so much easier when you just surrender to something greater than yourself – to God.
This year, Christmas is something I’ve anticipated and will enjoy. Not for the Santa stuff, the family, the kid
s, all those things are great, indeed. The story of Christmas is most importantly the simple story of a birth; the story of a baby being born - in a barn on a farm surrounded by sheep and goats and cows, a baby who's mom was travelling by of all things, a MULE, a baby who's very birth made people want to seek Him out and visit and share the experience. A birth that would bring hope and save people from their own demons, a baby who would grow up and help raise people from the dead, a baby who would give solutions, provide gifts of wisdom and a closer walk with God.This is a great story of beginnings, and I bet you thought I would end by comparing myself to that baby, to my new spiritual birth, to my faith that I can give hope to people and offer comfort. Boy, are you off. I’m not going to do that. I am not that baby.
I am just His friend.
Merry Christmas All!
DAYS SOBER: 230
DAYS SINCE I WATCHED THE BONNIE HUNT SHOW: 221
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