signs

February 3, 2010 in as I retire | No comments

So the other day I walked out my front door, and right in the exact center of a square in my front walkway was a dead field mouse, on its back with all four legs in the air, and a couple of gashes of some sort in its sides. It wasn’t a little to the left of center, or a little to the right. It was in the exact center.

I looked down and thought “weird” and just sorta kept walking and realized it was probably a gift from one of the neighborhood cats that sleep on the chairs on my front porch.

And a few steps later I realized:

I didn’t think it was my neighbors or the CIA trying to scare me.

I didn’t think it was someone from my past seeking revenge.

It wasn’t a sign of anything—it didn’t mean anything–it was just a dead mouse.

And I laughed.

And now I know, my paranoia is gone. Really, finally, totally gone. Because a year ago, it would have spooked me. A year-and-a-half ago, I would have had a drink (or two, or ten, depending on the time of day). Two years ago, I would have lost my mind and started calling people (my mom, a friend who is an attorney, my ex, my shrink) to find out what I should do because somebody left this mouse to get inside my head. My head was not a place anyone wanted to be.

Things didn’t work right. My thought process worked like a drunk, angry horny 14-year-old on a go-kart in rush-hour traffic trying to outrun the police. I didn’t make sense, and I scared everyone around me (including me).

I feel bad for the mouse. It was a cute little mouse, not much bigger than a walnut. But it once would have had the power to make manifest every bit of fear that meth had tucked down into the folds and wrinkles of my brain. And that’s gone now. I no longer live in fear, or fear of fear.

And that is amazing.

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a daily reprieve

January 31, 2010 in as I retire | 3 comments

So, my sponsor told me this afternoon he relapsed last week. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—this disease is ridonculous.

I actually sort of had a feeling… the last few times we spoke, he sounded sketchy as hell. He wasn’t high at the time, but he also wasn’t himself. He’s going to pick up a white chip tomorrow morning. I wish I could be there for him, but it isn’t realistic (I would have to call in to work, which is a big dramatic thing at my workplace—it just isn’t gonna happen).

We’ve grown very close. I love him. I trust him. He knows more about me than anyone I’ve ever known. He will always have a place in my heart, and probably in my life. I don’t feel betrayed by him, or hurt, or any of those things I’ve heard people in similar situations talk about. I really do believe addiction is a disease, and that it is spiritual in nature. And he is sick, and I am sick. It’s just that today he is suffering.

I don’t question the value of the work we did together. But, right now, he probably needs to be looking more closely at his own life than working with me. It has been suggested that I get a new sponsor, and I’m going to follow it.

The immediate trigger for his relapse was insanely predictable—he has a sex addiction, and has been frequently, recently in the employ of crack whores. He is a crack addict. How much more simple could the math be?

People, places, things.

One of the reasons I chose him for my sponsor is because our using history was so similar—sex&drugs&drugs&sex. His drug of choice was crack, mine was meth, but whatever. I have chosen to be pretty much sexually abstinent in recovery. At least, I’ve had sex with fewer people in the past year than I have had in the past with people at one time (those numbers are irrelevant, lol).

And, well, I don’t really miss sex that much. I miss being in a relationship, and having someone to love and call my own, but I don’t miss the insanity that was my using life in that relationship. And, I’m not willing to risk the life I have today for some random meaningless sex, and I know for me that risk is real. I’ve had enough sex for a lifetime (just for today).

I never want to feel the way he feels right now.

I have been given a daily reprieve from feeling that way today. And for that I am truly thankful.

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what a difference a year (of days) makes

January 30, 2010 in just random thoughts..... | 1 comment

I know that I am one of millions who just finished my annual employee self-evaluation, but this one was pretty crazy. I really regret procrastinating until (nearly) the last minute, but I have been very busy, and this chore was at the bottom of my list, because it is always painful. Or at least, it always was. For the first time ever on an evaluation, all of the following are true:

1. I didn’t lie (or need to lie) about anything.

2. I met or exceeded all of the goals set for me this time last year.

3. Looking back, I am amazed at how much I accomplished, instead of feeling like a failure faking everything.

It wasn’t a perfect year. I made mistakes—and plenty of them. There is lots of room for improvement and growth and maturity (personal and professional). But at this time last year, I was writing an evaluation covering a period during which I had been pretty much nuts. The first half of the 2008, I detoxed off meth at home with the assistance of an epic volume of alcohol, making me a volatile mess at work (sleepy one day, screaming with rage the next), then I just checked out of work altogether to go to rehab for a few months. (Work doesn’t know about the suicide attempt, as far as I know.)

So when I came back to work last January, I was not greeted with warm fuzzies. I was greeted with shape-up-or-ship-out.

For most of the year, I was just trying to hang onto my job and my sanity. I managed 90 meetings in 90 days (but not one meeting on each day). I got a sponsor. I did the shit.

And it worked.

I didn’t set big goals for myself. I didn’t worry about getting fired (even though that was a real possibility). I just showed up, and did what I was supposed to do, one day at a time—literally and figuratively.

And the end result was that I ran out of time to write about all the awesome shit I accomplished when I was racing to get my evaluation in on time.

This past Tuesday marked two years off meth for me. And I was so busy being productive, I didn’t even notice.

I have been to two AA meetings since then, but that’s not their thing, it’s my thing. And even though it doesn’t count for anything there (except a slip, lol), it counts to me. And I’m going to get myself a pizza.

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carrying the message

January 24, 2010 in ninth step, service, twelfth step | 2 comments

Yesterday marked the beginning of something new for me—carrying the message of recovery. I attended a training session so that I can go into detention facilities and do the experience, strength and hope thing.but for the grace....

I’ve written before about my feelings about jail…. But the shorthand is, when I was using I had multiple suicide plans in place in the event of an impending arrest. Jail was my biggest fear. And yesterday I walked into one voluntarily.

It is not easy to get into detention facilities (here or anywhere else, apparently). In addition to the training, there are all kinds of crazy background and employment checks and fingerprinting—they really want to make sure who they’re letting in, and with good reason.

Around here, most of the people in recovery have felony convictions of one sort or another, and that is an instant disqualifier for being a corrections volunteer. And since I am one of the few who somehow managed to get through my active using years without a DUI or any of those other associated convictions we addicts tend to pile up, I feel obligated to give something back.

I spent a fair amount of the training laughing with a friend who is a fellow former coke whore—the warnings we were being provided sounded like a checklist of the behaviors of the people we know and love best:  “They will lie to you, they will manipulate you, they will use you to get whatever it is they want. They’re sneaky, and they’re smart. They’ll flatter you and tell you they love you and anything else they think you want to hear.”

I looked over at my friend at one point and said “We’re in the right place.”

The one thing that actually made me sort of sad was when the trainer (who was a warden, and has been for 20 years) told us that they have a two minute rule:  Any time an inmate has been talking for more than two minutes, he’s lying.

I don’t doubt the practicality of the rule.. it just made me sort of sad to learn that this is the mentality of the people who aren’t just keeping society safe from the inmates, they’re supposed to be protecting the inmates.

But they have to protect themselves, and they were teaching me how to protect myself, as well, and there was actually a lot of really good advice. (Also, a display of a multitude of shanks confiscated over the years, and the warning that we may be held hostage by an inmate.)

I have no idea how this is going to turn out. But I owe society and the rooms of recovery a lot, so I have to get started somewhere. It might as well be the place where I’ve been asked to help.

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an ant no more.

January 22, 2010 in as I retire, eighth step | 2 comments

“Oh, man, the most selfish of all animals, the most personal of all creatures, who believes the earth turns, the sun shines, and death strikes for him alone,–an ant cursing God from the top of a blade of grass!” A. Dumas, 1845

My favorite part about this quote (from The Count of Monte Cristo, which I just finished, and which is amazing), is that (to me at least) it really doesn’t matter whether you believe in God or not, the effect of cursing God is the same–it just effects the one doing the cursing.

Every living thing has its motivations—what it needs to survive, what and where it wants to be. To not be the center of one’s universe is the unnatural state, but I have found increasingly over time that those moments where I have been able to be free of self, however brief they may be, are extraordinary.

It was sort of fun to be reading Monte Cristo while completing my eighth step (which is now done). It really gave me an opportunity to reflect not only on how much of my life has been driven by anger, but also how much I have gained through forgiveness. I have a harder time forgiving myself than I do others, but I’m getting there.

I was in a meeting tonight where the topic was jealousy. It was a really great meeting. I’ve never been in a meeting where the topic was jealousy, but it occurred to me during the course of the sharing that jealousy and/or envy are the root of much of my anger and resentment—wanting what others had, resenting that I didn’t have it, and blaming them for it all.

I was almost always the guy with the eight ball—it was the one thing I had that people really wanted. It’s easy to be the center of attention when you’re the one with the thing that people want, but then when you have nothing, you are nothing to those people. And for me, I was nothing to myself.

But when I had meth, I could really believe. I could believe it was real, that I was real. I believed those guys I used with were my friends, that they really wanted be with me, that they wanted me.

The reality is they didn’t care any more about me than I cared about them. It would be nice to be able to say we were all just looking out for ourselves, but we weren’t even doing that—we were just burning through our lives as hard and fast and loud as we could.

I have been off meth one year, three hundred and sixty one days.

Tonight is a quiet night. No cursing, no screaming, no wishing. Just being, and doing. And really, all is well. And it is still sort of hard to believe that’s possible.

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a prayer for me?

January 8, 2010 in up(on) awakening | 2 comments

I just finished re-reading A Prayer for Owen Meany for the first time since high school, and it made me think—If I asked someone to say a prayer for me, what would I ask for them to pray for?

I say the Serenity Prayer for myself enough already—so I think I would take a pass there.

Most of the things that people pray for, I have, or have had enough of—health, life, love, comfort. Asking for more seems grabby, graspy, greedy, almost indecent in a way, when I consider the world I live in—a world in which I spent more on drugs in a day than many families spend on food in a year. Even asking for more serenity, courage and wisdom seems somehow selfish in a world where so many suffer.

I think my prayer would ask for more gratitude. For me, gratitude isn’t just a feeling, it is a way of living, of working to maintain what I value.

Just a couple of short years ago, I might have prayed for more drugs, or money, or to stop feeling pain, or to die, or for someone to love, or to love me, or for someone else to suffer. And all of those things were selfish in their own ways. And maybe I’m still being selfish—I guess we all are to some degree—but it isn’t a needy, taking kind of selfish. It feels good. I want to keep it.

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brand new day

January 2, 2010 in up(on) awakening | 3 comments

It’s sort of crazy starting off the new year without tons of insanity. I didn’t get everything I had planned accomplished over the holidays, but that may actually be more sane than not.

I attended a work-related holiday party a couple of weeks ago. There was a young woman (who I’ll call Sally) there who just really doesn’t like me—she is as obvious about it as she can be without being reprimanded. I may be the only male in her life who doesn’t give her anything or everything she asks for—she is very beautiful, and inappropriately intimate, even with me, who gives her no response—I think it is her default method of interaction. She knows through her best friend (who is not in recovery, but attended a closed meeting with a friend) that I am in recovery.

So, when I show up at the party, where there was supposed to be no alcohol, Sally comes stumbling over to me, sloppy drunk, and thrusts her drink into my face. Literally, I thought it was going to splash out on my face, because she could not hold it steady. And she says, “Here, I have a drink for you.”

I could smell the cheap vodka and even cheaper orange juice (probably canned). It was the first time I’ve been in such close contact with alcohol since going into treatment 15 months ago. My immediate reaction (even though it only lasted an instant) was that a Grey Goose and cranberry would be nice. And then, it was gone. I smiled and said, “I’m good, thanks,” and she said something else suggestive (her drink still under my nose) and I backed up and said something about going to the kitchen to fix myself something, and I did.

I learned later (from colleagues who observed this interaction) that she is a frequent, boisterous, and sometimes aggressively belligerent drunk. Her behavior on trips has earned her reprimands, etc.

But I was more interested in the sort of sensory effect just being in such close contact with alcohol had on me. Even though it was a fleeting thought, barely even there, it still happened. I didn’t seriously consider taking the drink, or having one later, but it was interesting to observe how it went away.

Also interesting—how I didn’t fly into a rage, or take it as a personal attack, or really anything. I don’t have a resentment. It was just a thing that happened, and then it stopped happening, and I went on with the party, and had fun, and came home, and went to bed, and woke up. I have no regrets, or amends to make. It really is a brand new day.

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