sharing

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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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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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clarity

July 1, 2009 in up(on) awakening | 1 comment

i can flyA note on the Terminally Ridonculous Caregivers at my treatment center: They weren’t all ridonculous. My primary care provider, known as my case manager, was extraordinarily wise, insightful, human and humble. The incredible hubris displayed by many of the employees there has not infected her, and I don’t believe it will.

Where most of the treatment staff made pronouncements, she asked questions. Where other staff members sought to humiliate patients, she sought to make them understand themselves (even if that sometimes required humility). Where other staff members acted like God, she acted like someone who actually believes in God. She made all the difference for me.

There are plenty of things in this world much more loathsome than people who claim to be sober abusing their positions of power in treatment centers, but it still sucks.

My time in treatment was extraordinarily beneficial to me, but all of the treatment I received there was not. For me, staying in treatment really was one of the going to any lengths we hear about in the rooms. But without my case manager, I don’t know that it would have been possible. I’m so thankful for her today, and grateful that there are others like her who give so much of themselves (in and out of treatment centers), so that us addicts can find hope.

It is not uncommon to hear people who have been to treatment centers say that they do not know how they could have gotten sober without the treatment center. I don’t think that is true at all. For me it was either die or get sober—in or out of treatment.

But I don’t know that I would have made as much personal and spiritual progress as quickly as I have without my case manager as my guide, and without the confinement and immersion in an atmosphere of recovery.

Ultimately though, I’m on my own in the rooms. We all are. We choose our sponsors, we choose to listen and hear or not, to share honestly or not, to be a part of the fellowship or not. Ideally, treatment centers help us to make better choices, but the choices are still up to us, like they are for everyone else inside and outside the rooms.

I hope I make good choices today. I know I’m capable of making better ones than I did in the past. My choices may not be crystal clear, but they also aren’t crystal.

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file under: just let it go

June 30, 2009 in just random thoughts..... | No comments

What is meditation? I was in an AA meeting this afternoon and the reading was about the importance of meditation. Unfortunately, it did not define meditation, but basically said it was up to us to decide what meditation means for us.

For me it means classic eastern meditation, and I said so in the meeting. I was told (in that indirect-crosstalk kind of way) that it means listening for God’s answer to our prayers.

Well, God help the agnostic (heh heh).

I was also told (in the same share) that the sharer had found a dictionary from the time the AA big book was published and that her understanding of meditation is what is proscribed (her word) by the big book.

Whatever. I’m venting. I wanted to ask her about this magical dictionary (which, if it exists, was probably published by some preacher somewhere), but remembered that I also frequently remember things as I want or need them to be, not as they actually are or were. She said what she needed to say, I said what I needed to say.

For the record, from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

meditation c.1225, “discourse on a subject,” from L. meditationem (nom. meditatio), from meditatus, pp. of meditari “to meditate, to think over, consider,” from PIE base *med- “to measure, limit, consider, advise” (cf. Gk. medesthai “think about,” medon “ruler,” L. modus “measure, manner,” modestus “moderate,” modernus “modern,” mederi “to heal,” medicus “physician,” Skt. midiur “I judge, estimate,” Welsh meddwl “mind, thinking,” Goth. miton, O.E. metan “to measure”). Meaning “act of meditating, continuous calm thought upon some subject” is from 1390.

Now, I’m going to meditate. (As opposed to medicate, which is what I used to do.)

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Sky God, are you there? It’s me, Margaret.

June 22, 2009 in meetings | No comments

So today I was having a conversation with someone in the program (does it matter which one?) about program stuff, and he said “yeah, we should probably just leave the sky God out of it,” which I thought was just hysterical.  That was totally new to me.  Program lingo I can love.

I’m glad I had a chance to talk to him today, because the meeting I went to was um…  crap, for the most part?  98% was people talking to hear themselves talk (I think, probably including me), except for this one guy who was in enormous pain.  A very county guy (borderline hillbilly) who tried so hard not to cry, but did anyway.  It was really moving.  He didn’t have the words to articulate what it is he’s feeling, and he didn’t really share exactly what it is that’s going on, except for all the people in his life except the people in the program are letting him down when he needs them the most.

I wonder if he even realizes he was sharing both his problem and his solution with us.

I hope he feels better.  I do.

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“Exclusively what and restricted to whom?” Auntie Mame

June 8, 2009 in 12 steps, meetings, up(on) awakening | No comments

I went to an amazing speaker meeting at an Alcoholics Anonymous clubhouse Saturday night.  A woman with almost three decades of sobriety shared her story, with unmatched emotional honesty, about her life as a drunk and a user of heroin and crack, the many ways she had harmed herself and others, and how she had used the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to begin recovery and become the remarkably inspirational person she is (to me) today.

 

After the meeting, I went with a friend to a 24-hour coffee place, where we ran into someone from the program (I’ll call her Betty) who, after hearing that I had enjoyed the meeting and thought the speaker was great, announced to me and my friend (and anyone else in the restaurant who might care to listen) that she disagreed with me wholeheartedly, and that when the speaker had begun to share about drug use, that she had left the meeting.  Betty said that with her 20-plus years of sobriety, she knows what keeps people sober, and it is not breaking with the singleness of purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous.  &etc.

 

(That she speaker had more time in the program than Betty did, or that Betty was breaking the anonymity of both me and my friend very publicly, in a small town, with her “Alcoholics Anonymous” tirade didn’t seem to bother her.)

 

Whenever I hear anyone about to share their thoughts on the singleness of purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous, I always groan in my head (at least I hope it’s entirely nonverbal).  If AA truly has a singleness of purpose, it should be able to state it clearly in a single, simple sentence.  Twelve Steps would not be necessary, much less a Big Book, or series of books.

 

Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety directly implies a dualistic group purpose, at minimum. 

 

Our primary purpose is to stay sober would be a single-purpose statement.

 

Our primary purpose is to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety would be a single-purpose statement.

 

The and changes everything.  If the authors of writers of the steps (who I think most can agree were not careless in their writing of the steps) had intended to create a single purpose including both these activities, the sentence could have (and in my humble view, would have) read Our primary purpose is to stay sober in order to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.

 

But that is not the statement.  The statement includes the and, making the sentence compound rather than simple.  Dual rather than the single.  Inclusive rather than exlusive.  Expansive instead of limiting.

 

Also, they used primary instead of only or sole or single.  These words, and many others, were available for their use, to limit and proscribe the program’s purpose as they saw fit—and they did not see fit.  An even cursory review of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous will provide abundant evidence that the collective vocabulary of the writers of that text was sufficient for them to exclude discussion of any topic other than alcohol.  They did not.  Indeed, drug use and other now-controversial topics are discussed in the text as related to alcoholism.

 

[It also says in the big book Chapter 6 that Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us, which, um, doesn't mention alcohol at all.]

 

If a group chooses to have a singleness of purpose, and decline to let people share about things other than alcohol, whatevs.  Have at it.  I have been to some awesome single-purpose meetings.

 

But saying that Alcoholics Anonymous itself has a single purpose implies either an inability to understand the difference between 1 and 2 at best, and a narrowness of mind, or selfishness of purpose at worst.

 

If we walk out of meetings because we have different views than other people in those meetings, is love and tolerance really our code?

 

 

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