regrets

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well I’m glad that’s over. really.

November 22, 2009 in 12 steps, afternoon reflections, fifth step, sponsorship | 2 comments

So, step five today went better, and much different, than expected. I was completely honest, when I wasn’t really planning to be.

The first time I did my fifth step (with a temporary sponsor while in treatment), I was as honest with him—or anyone—as I could be at the time. At the end of our fifth step meeting, he asked if there was anything else I needed to tell him that I had never told anyone else &etc. I was a little flabbergasted.skip the eau de toilette, go for the parfum.

I had just spent hours with him detailing my sins and crimes against man and God, and he wanted more. So, I just lied.

There was just that one thing….  It didn’t have anything to do with my addiction. It was from my childhood, years before I had my first drink, and almost a decade before I would touch meth or anything like it. My justifications for withholding it were valid and true and reasonable.

But it was there. And it stayed there. Up until the time it came out of my mouth this morning with my new sponsor, almost a year later, I was planning on not telling him, either, and with even more justification—he has a deep and personal connection with the thing. It was like telling a volunteer forest ranger I secretly burned down a redwood forest (I did not burn down a redwood forest).

But I told him. I’ve never told another person in my life. Never even considered telling anyone (including my therapist). But I took the leap of faith, and my sponsor caught me. He gave me love, and support, and understanding, and, importantly, a way to move forward. Another step.

I feel more free, and secure, and able, than maybe ever in my life. Nothing in the world around me has changed, but it feels amazing.

Someone should find a way to bottle this shit. Oh, wait, …. Never mind.

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Good Friday

October 23, 2009 in afternoon reflections | No comments

I got the best news today I’ve received in a very, very long time. My first sponsor, and friend, who I met in rehab in 1992 (he shared his experience, strength and hope, and I wanted it) is alive. He stuck with me and put up with my nonsense for a long time after I relapsed, even after I left New York.

Through a series of technical snafus (computer crashes, lost phones, moves, etc), we lost contact in 2002. I found his old sponsor (who brought him to my treatment center) on Facebook, and he told me this person I love, who I thought I had lost forever, is alive.

I have an unpaid debt to him—the gratitude I never really felt before. I wasn’t ready then, but he stood by me. He did so much for me. Soon, I may get a chance to thank him. Life is good.

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powerless

August 16, 2009 in first step | 4 comments

first, can you just sit still?The first time I did my first step, I was in treatment. I was required to “prove” to my treatment providers and treatment cohort that I believed I was powerless over my drug(s) of choice, and that my life had become unmanageable, through an exhaustive inventory in the many ways I had been out of control. I had tried to kill myself (thoroughly, but unsuccessfully—faulty mechanics) a week before, so I didn’t really see the point, but it was a good exercise in illuminating how the wreckage of my life had been fueled by my mood-and-mind-altering activities.

It was an awkward time. Most patients, when presenting their first step inventories, presented them to the entire patient community. My doctor warned me against doing so, or at least in being honest about it if I did. Unlike most people in my treatment facility, whose powerlessness/unmanageability was defined by DUIs or family or work-related episodes, the most direct and lasting “external” effect of my using drugs was becoming positive. It happened 18 years ago, but fell very neatly into the “health effects” and “terror” boxes on the inventory checklist.

I was basically told that I am a grownup and that I understand homophobia and the treatment center could not be responsible for any backlash I received from other patients if I was honest about my health. They even (strangely) at some point tried to suggest there was no association between my status and my using. Um, hello? I was there. I know. (And why bother with rigorous honesty when practical honesty will do, eh?)

I ended up presenting my inventory to a small group of patients I met with regularly for group sessions, and with whom my case worker and I established the super-double-ultra-secrecy-pledge so I wouldn’t get bashed or whatever. I think people I was in treatment with thought I was ashamed of being gay or something… I wasn’t. I’m not. I was just following the rules, trying to make rehab work, trying not to die, silk purse, sow’s ear, etc.

Looking back over that inventory this morning, I realize that the powerlessness I needed to understand was not just powerlessness over meth or alcohol, but my powerless over everything, except my own actions and reactions.

That doesn’t mean I can’t be proactive, that I cannot try to affect change in my life or the lives of those around me, but ultimately the only things I can control are the things within me.

Most of my life has been one bad reaction after another. That doesn’t mean I haven’t accomplished anything. I have accomplished a lot. But so much of what I have done in my life has been out of anger—sometimes justifiable—at perceived unfairness, injustice, cruelty, etc, usually at the world, but to me.

I was powerless to accept life on life’s terms, to accept myself on life’s terms, and within that, I lost all sense of self.

Meth gave me such an incredible feeling of power. Just the first bump made me feel warm, and sure, and able, and whole, and worthy. I was king of the world. But the first bump kept getting bigger. And nights stretched into weekends into weeks into months. And I just ended up sad and terrified and alone and empty. There was hardly anything left except fear and anger where a person, however incomplete, used to be.

I quit using meth nine months before I tried to kill myself, and entered treatment. Without meth, I had no identity. I had no way of knowing who I was anymore. Alcohol was a poor substitute for meth or a soul, but I sure drank a lot of it (daily), trying to create some sort of spiritual amnesia, I suppose. All I got was drunk, and if possible, crazier.

I’m becoming myself, slowly but surely. Today, none of the many impacts on that inventory I wrote so long ago matter to me so much, because today, there is only so much I can do about them, and I am doing it. Recovery has given me the power to change, to start becoming the sure, and able, and whole, and worthy person I once had chemically-induced grandeur of being. But that is all based in the fundamental understanding that I am powerless over meth, over alcohol, over you, over whack treatment plans, over the world. I am just here, present in this moment today, a little overweight and still smoking (dammit), and that’s progress.

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my best day

August 5, 2009 in up(on) awakening | 3 comments

today i have my happy face on










I hear people in meetings say with some frequency that My worst day sober has been better than my best day drinking. And that just simply isn’t true for me. I was not always the hopeless, soulless being I became. There were times I was happy, joyous and free, when I felt love and loved others, when I was filled with optimism about the possibility of life.

There were times that I drank like a normal person. There were times I could have a couple of drinks. For that matter, there were times when I was able to recreationally use other drugs, like ecstasy. I used meth once every six to eight weeks (at most) the first couple of years I used it.

However, those times are long past. When I crossed which imaginary lines and became addicted to which chemicals isn’t really important. I’m an addict now, period.

I choose not to use chemicals that alter my mood or mind not just because of the horrible place I arrived in my life of my chemical dependence, but also because I realize that the person I am now is unable to be present for the people in my life when I am drinking or using. I can no longer be in the moment with others, I cannot be there for them, when I am in active addiction.

Still, it is important to me to be honest about the past. I think it is unwise to retrofit every action of my life into parts of a script I hear retold in meetings—some things fit, some things don’t. There were some really amazing times in my life, and more importantly, some amazing people who I still have loving relationships with, who bear no part in the isolated and sad life I would go on to lead.

To the people who were never able to make true friends because of their addictions, who were never able to feel the joy of living at all before coming into recovery, what a remarkable thing to experience.

Best. Worst. Why must we use so many superlatives? Does everything have to be in black and white? Is our existence so stark? Must we be such a glum lot when we look at our pasts? If you cannot find a moment of joy in your past before coming into recovery, I feel for you, but that is not my story.

My past is not so clear cut, but my future is. Life for me is now an either/or equation. But it wasn’t always. My best days using were fucking awesome, but my worst days using caused immeasurable sorrow in the lives of my friends and family, and almost cost me my life on multiple occasions.

My best day is today, because it has possibility in it. That isn’t an entirely new feeling for me, but it feels new, and it feels great.

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it just keeps comin’ at ya

July 30, 2009 in as I retire | 4 comments

and when exactly will this too pass? cause i shall soon lose my mind.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever accomplished anything at all when I was using. The answer is, really, most of the time I was just barely getting by, but would pull myself up just enough to hit some attention-getting home-runs every once in a while that would allow people to think He must be doing ok, despite the obvious truth that I was not.

Today I began to get some resolution on an ongoing situation in my life. The details are protracted and stupid, and I am (remarkably, amazingly) not at fault. Well, except for losing my temper a few times over the year and a half it has been drawn out by the other parties involved. It could be over, they want it over, but I know that is not the right thing. It would be the easy thing, and might be the right thing for me. It would be noble to carry on, but would it be wise? No one has an easy answer. Pray on it is not an answer. It’s a good suggestion, but so is Take a nap.

Today I actually got the angry high that I’ve heard people talk…. I was in such a rage at one point words were coming out in some sort of a jumbled order. My blood was racing. I never lost total control, though.

But it reminded me a lot of the night I knew things were over—that my using, that my relationship, that my way of life in active addiction had to change. My ex and I got a hang-up call on our unlisted number, and I don’t remember exactly what I thought happened—I was in the middle of intense paranoia and coming down from a weekend binge—but I blamed him for the phone ringing, and I started accusing him of I don’t know what, and I was so angry I threw a new and giant ceramic vase at a wall. Shards went everywhere. And I screamed. And screamed at the top of my voice until I thought my throat would bleed. Until I lost my voice. My ex tried to comfort me, and to rationalize with me, but all I could do was cry. And I was so scared because I knew everything was over. I knew then that I couldn’t go on that way, but it would take me another six months to put down the pipe, and another year to put down the bottle.

The next day I had to give a presentation to 75 people. I did it through a combination of mime and powerpoint, and everyone felt sorry for me because I had “strep,” and then I cried all the way home and whispered to him that he had to leave. Eventually, months later, he did. But we never slept in the same bed again. And I have felt alone ever since. Not always lonely, but really alone sometimes.

I’m actually crying right now just thinking about that night. So much anger. Today was not a safe place for me. I talked to my sponsor for a while. I bought a frozen pizza.

I’m officially off my pink cloud, but I’m still very thankful to be sober, happy to be alive, and I know I made the right decision to end that relationship. It is what I needed to do to be sober. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love or miss him, because I do. But he was not the life for me.

No relationships in the first year is bullshit. Come on, October! I have no interest in feeling this way or learning anything about myself or my feelings. I just want someone to hold and make me feel better again. Serenity prayer and goodnight.

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Wasted Grace in Crazytown? Never.

July 7, 2009 in afternoon reflections | 2 comments

Elvis is buried in Graceland. Michael’s family wants him buried in Neverland. What sort of land would I be buried in? When I reflect too much upon the time I spent using, in active addiction, it feels like it would have to be Wasteland.

If you combined the hours I spent peeking out of closed window blinds and the time I spent crawling around on the floor looking for something else to put in the pipe, I could probably have knitted socks for all of Asia. Also, I probably could have been building (instead of losing) relationships, doing the job I was being paid to do, mowing the lawn, taking my dogs to the vet, living life, that sort of thing.

We are told that we will not regret the past. Well, I’m not there yet. I’m not sure I need to get there, either. Those people who don’t regret the past didn’t get to see the hardwood floors that were destroyed from urine stains my poor dogs made over years of meth-neglect (taking my dogs outside required me putting down the meth pipe and putting on clothes, and neither of those things were especially appealing to me when I was using).

I have friends who were John Barleycorns or Pharmacy Phils or what-have-you, who had different drugs of choice, and different preoccupations when they were using, but I don’t think any of us were focused on being productive and engaged citizens of humanity when we were actively getting fucked up. Those things don’t go together, really. At least not for me.

I am thankful everyday there is not a human who was dependent on me for food or water or care while I was using. My dogs barely made it through with me.

My life now is pretty active and full (even if some of it is entirely random). When I ask myself the question regarding what I have packed into the stream of life each day, I am typically more than content. Maybe I’m trying to make up for some of the time I wasted. Who knows.

Maybe Wasteland is too dramatic…. (also, hackneyed). Crazytown seems appropriate… Time to get to a meeting.

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