could and would

July 6, 2010 in promises | 1 comment

The topic today at a meeting I attended was the three pertinent ideas. (Which, technically, should be three topics? Or is it really just one? Anyway….)

The one that stuck out to me was number (c), That God could and would if he were sought. Of the three, this is the only one I ever really doubted. A cursory glance was all that was needed to tell me I was a drunk and an addict (among other un-useful things), and since I didn’t really believe any humans wanted to help me, whether or not they could was sort of irrelevant.

I think this is one of the pages that the original writers squabbled over. I have had the opportunity to see parts of one of the original manuscripts of the Alcoholics Anonymous text, and while many in the program consider it to be the mighty word of God, it came with a lot of strikethroughs and revisions and question marks. At some point, they had to get the thing to press, and it is a good thing they did—it has saved a lot of lives.

The paragraph that introduces the three pertinent ideas is in the active, present tense (“our personal adventure before and after make clear three pertinent ideas”), while the three ideas are in the passive, past tense, with positive and negative constructions (were/could not, probably no human power could, God could and would if) to muddy it up a bit further. The grammartician in me says this is weak stuff—the addict inside me who has been off meth for 2.5 years says it works.

But it didn’t always. And I think the reason is the whole God thing. No matter how many times I heard of our understanding, I still heard Santa Sky Robe Smiting-and-Damning God That Hates You.

So what phrasing would it have taken for me to be able to meaningfully hear this before I did actually have a spiritual awakening? I’m not sure those words exist in any order or tense.

“God can and will if you seek him” probably comes close, because the experience of what others had done didn’t really matter to me—I was a special precious snowflake meth addict &etc. YOUR past experience with YOUR hateful God didn’t really matter to me. In my mind, I had sought that God out, and he had ignored me (and worse).

[In reality, the amount of time I spent on my hands and knees with a flashlight seeking slivers of meth in my shag carpet was exponentially, tragically, comically higher than the amount of time I spent seeking God, but that's another story.]

God can and will IF you seek him is probably what I needed, with the if in all caps. It is all in the if. To me, the seeking is the most important part of the three pertinent ideas. Whatever it is I want, if I don’t seek it, I am unlikely to find it.

I had no problem calling my dealer to bring me meth (he could and would). Today I have no problem calling my pizza guy, or my plumber, or my doctor, or sponsor, or family, or friends, to do the things they can  do for me, because I know they will.

God cannot and will not if he is not sought sounds harsh, and almost threatening, but for me at least, it was true. And really, all that matters is that God cannot if he is not sought—his will is irrelevant if he doesn’t have the power. In my life, God’s power rested in me seeking it.

It was through the seeking, through the actions of the steps that I found my own little higher power, and from there that I was able to slowly build something like sanity, and happiness, and peace.

I don’t capitalize my h in he because my God ain’t like that. He doesn’t wear a pointy hat, or sit on a throne damning nations and families and children, or ask for wars to be waged in his name, or give a rat’s ass about King James and all his Thous and Thees.  He does want me to be relieved of the life I was living—to be sane, and happy, and peaceful. It took a while to figure that out. But in the end, he could, and he would, and he did. He is.

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the big sky

July 6, 2010 in up(on) awakening | No comments

I spent the July 4th weekend at my family’s old farm place, mostly just relaxing, walking my dogs along the trails through the woods. It is a big place, with a lot of old wetlands and planted pines. There is very little actual farming done there, and that is done by a tenant farmer who leases it.

When I was using, I couldn’t be there at all. It is in the middle of nowhere, the actual house where we sleep is in the middle of the property, which is a couple of miles into the property past a chained gate. There is no ambient light from anywhere–on cloudy nights, it isn’t possible to see your hand in front of your face. The house is on a hill in a clearing surrounded on all sides by dense woods and a couple of scattered ponds. It is the perfect setting for a horror movie–no one can hear you scream, and even if they could, they would have a hell of a time finding or getting to you.

The thing that is most surprising to visitors is how incredibly loud it gets at night. Thousands (or tens of thousands) of frogs and owls and crickets and things that are indistinguishable to me (but a cacophony of howls, clicks, whistles, chirps, barks, warblings, etc) join together to produce a noise that would shame midtown Manhattan. Especially, midtown Manhattan at night–I’ve lived there, and while the city may never sleep, it does get very, very quiet.

Anyway, my paranoia was just overwhelming there. Walking outside, and feeling eyes from everywhere–every lightning bug a cell phone–made it impossible to sleep (without the aid of a lot of alcohol and ambien).

This past weekend the sky was perfectly clear. I could see every star–the sky was so big, and open, and I wasn’t scared at all, and was able even to laugh at my former fear. I let my basset hound pull me by his leash for a couple of hundred yards while he galumphed after an armadillo almost as big as him. We walked for miles, and we slept deeply, and for a long time, and woke up feeling alive.

This is freedom.

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wanting

June 10, 2010 in just random thoughts....., promises | 1 comment

There are lots of songs that describe the human condition of being incomplete (of needing or wanting more), a condition that seems particularly acute in addicts. That void (or those voids—there were many in my life) and the accompanying fears (I will lose my job/house/car/mind, I will die alone, I will go to jail) in many ways defined my life.

Because I’m a child of the 80s, Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough and Duran Duran’s All She Wants Is (More) are songs that immediately came to mind after this completely random Johnny Cash song “Belshazzar” showed up on my iPod yesterday.

When I heard the line “he was weighed in the balance and found wanting,” it occurred to me wanting more and being incomplete are the same thing. And that choice is up to me. Either I have enough or I don’t. If I am wanting/expecting/waiting for/needing anything in my life, I am choosing not to be whole and complete.

I’m not a biblical scholar (or a biblical anything), but I wonder if Adam & Eve’s sin wasn’t wanting more, or disobeying God, but rather not being grateful in the first place. Granted, they didn’t have the comparables we have today to reinforce our gratitude for us (they couldn’t really say There but for the grace of God, cause it was just them, right?).  I’m probably just projecting the importance gratitude plays in my own life onto biblical characters–but for me, a lack of gratitude is deadly.

It took a whole lot of effort for me to be grateful for anything when I came into the program (and not just on my part—it took a counselor in treatment forcing me to keep an active gratitude list for me to be able to begin to see all that I have to be thankful for). In order for me to be usefully, happily whole, first I have to be whole, and for me, that first means being grateful. And I am.

I am coming up on 2.5 years meth-free in a few weeks. There are lots of things that have not turned out the way I wanted them to turn out since I’ve been sober. But when I go to bed each night, I am thankful for each day. I want for nothing.

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my two cents

June 3, 2010 in just random thoughts..... | 2 comments

A friend in the program who recently relapsed after a few years of sobriety and is back counting days has chosen a young woman as his sponsor.

He’s gay, and that is his not-entirely-unjustifiable reason for breaking with the tradition of same-sex sponsorship (in a small town where there is not a gay man with long-term sobriety). He wants a sponsor that he is comfortable talking to &etc. So he picked one of his sober hags.

For me, being terminally unique and special (and tailoring the spiritual solution described in the books and in the rooms to accommodate my own fears and resentments) was not helpful. It was counter-productive. It conscribed my vision of what was possible. When I followed suggestions (and the steps), my world expanded. Having a straight male sponsor has kept me focused on the spiritual solution of the program.

It seems almost counter-intuitive, but whittling away the excess of who and what I thought I was, and accepting the singular and fundamental truth that I am an addict, allowed me to really grow and begin becoming who I am (and will be).

And, even though I am a slightly pudgy white American male, with enough time, money and plastic surgery, I could become a bronzed Latina flamenco dancer and live in rural Barcelona. I could change pretty much everything about myself except the simple fact that I am an addict. I could buy papers to change everything about my past—my date of birth, my family, my education, my social security number. But I will always be an addict.

Before I tried to kill myself (and ended up in a treatment center instead), I had been talking to my therapist about getting a lobotomy, or maybe shock therapy. He had been trying unsuccessfully for months to get me to attend meetings (he is in the program himself). In the end, he was getting together some names in the region to talk to—the decline to my spiritual bottom was rapid, and terrifying to watch. Quitting meth without a spiritual solution was not a good decision for me.

Neither was drinking almost constantly for the next nine months. But it was what I needed to do, because I said so, and I knew me better than anyone else. Except, I didn’t.

I only knew the me that was, I didn’t know the me that could be. As long as I relied upon my own will, my own willfulness, I could not accept that I could feel anything other than despair.

Today I have hope. I even have hope for my friend. While he didn’t pick the sponsor I would have picked for him, she does have really good sobriety, and he is trying. So that’s a start.

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post-mortem

June 1, 2010 in afternoon reflections | 1 comment

I read the medical examiner’s report today of my friend who committed suicide. It was brutal in its simplicity—the reduction of everything he suffered, everything his family and friends continue to suffer, to a few words. Not even sentences—no nouns and verbs—just the barest idea of a life ending.

The toxicology report indicated dextromethorphan (the meth in cough syrup) was present.

But the real toxins—at least, the things that are toxic to me, and that I believe were toxic to my friend—weren’t listed. Fear, Anger, Loneliness, Faithlessness, Hopelessness, Despair (among others) are all toxic to my spiritual condition.

If I have no Hope, then my drug of choice is irrelevant: I have chosen death over life—I have chosen to withdraw into myself, to constrict my world, to limit my ability to see with clarity, to hear with sympathy, to have charity, to receive love, to be a part of the world, to be open to the possibility of being, and learning, and doing, and making, and….

I love my life today. I am sad my friend is gone, but I will not remember him as a coroner’s number. The man I knew was warm, and kind, and generous, and full of laughter. But the man I knew was sober, and meth-free. The person who died is not someone I ever knew, though it was someone I used to be.

I’m reading some old Stephen King, and I ran across a passage today where he describes Heaven as another name for the clearing at the end of the path. It gave me comfort somehow to think that while we may be taking different paths, we might be together again in a clearing.

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and now, without (much) further ado.

May 28, 2010 in up(on) awakening | 1 comment

So I am speaking tonight at my first speaker meeting in sixteen or seventeen years (after a fourteen year relapse, and nineteen months of sobriety). It is one of those big birthday speaker meetings with cake and stuff.

No one there knows my story. Some people know parts of it, because it is at my home group. It is a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we honor the primary purpose of A.A. to the best of our abilities in a meeting where probably 95% of the people who attend are people like myself who were addicted to things other than alcohol, but who found the spiritual solution to our problems through A.A.  It is a very young, very hetero, very Baptist meeting (I am none of those things).

I really have no idea what I am going to say. I have been looking for answers everywhere—prayer, my sponsor, my inner circle, the big book, the internet. Turning it over to God seems lazy and sort of contradictory—it feels like asking God to do my homework for me (or just not doing my homework and “putting my grade in God’s hands”).

I’m a decent public speaker. But I know that tonight I’m being asked to bring my A game. Families and friends are travelling in from out of town for the birthday celebrants.

I’ve been sorting through anecdotes in my head (Too funny? Too sad? Too revealing? Too off-topic?). I haven’t been rehearsing in my head, but I also don’t want to ramble for 45 minutes in a stream of meaningless non sequiturs. Really, I just want to be of maximum service.

I found an old post on Mr. SponsorPants’ blog that has helped provide some clarity for me:  Sharing x [(ego) + (fear)] = performance art

It doesn’t tell me what I should share, but it does tell me what I shouldn’t (or more precisely, why I shouldn’t). Like some other people I know, I have fully mature insecurities about acceptance, and truly juvenile needs to be applauded and loved—Look at me! But only when I want you to look at me, and only with a look that I can perceive as loving and supportive!

So I’m going to share my truth tonight—I hope it is the right truth, and at the right time, and that it helps someone. And if I don’t, at least there will be cake.

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the shadow people

May 9, 2010 in as I retire, just random thoughts..... | 2 comments

I’ve been talking to someone recently who, while not new to recovery, is newly sober again, and new to town. And in our relatively small community, he is very happy, as a drug addict, to talk to someone who understands the shadow people—the others who come visiting addicts such as myself when we happen to have been up way too long and taken way too many drugs, and not had enough food or water.

He has a very developed understanding of the shadow people—he firmly believes they are real. He cites specific instances (proofs) where the shadow people interacted with him in real and positive ways. (My only “real” interaction with the shadow people was one night when I had an extensive conversation with a leafy shrub that told me law enforcement was on its way, so I called my mom at 3:00am to let her know I was about to be arrested—turns out that shrub lied).

He believes the change in body chemistry makes drug users better able to connect with the spirit world &etc, ie, some drugs enhance your sense of smell, some enhance your sense of taste, some enhance your ability to communicate with the dead. Peyote, blah blah blah.

I won’t say I haven’t ever believed those things. I don’t actually disbelieve them today—my psychotic episodes were just too real to be unbelieved. I was frequently in states of drug-induced psychosis where my mind could not limit itself to the realities of the physical world. I can’t un-ring a bell, even if I know the bell really never rang, or even existed—the memory of the sound remains. What I do believe is that it doesn’t matter.

Whether or not there are swarms of spirits (and/or aliens, and/or law enforcement) monitoring me at all times, my life is significantly better without the thought of them. I no longer wonder who is behind (or in) my house when I hear a limb break, or a board creak.

I don’t write about this stuff much, because I don’t find it useful to relive those delightful moments of my life hiding in closets and peeking out of blinds, but I realized when listening to my friend that it might be useful for others to know that it really does stop. It took my psychosis over a year to abate entirely after I stopped using meth. But it did stop. There is hope. I have a real spiritual life, instead of drug-induced phantasmagoria. Hope and despair are equally intangible, but they are not equally valuable.

I know today the only person who was ever out to get me was me. The only shadow people who were ever there were both me—my shadow in front of me that I was always chasing, and my shadow behind me I was running from.

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