Recovery and Relationships

Without question, the most challenging arena for me in terms of living out my recovery is in the context of relationships, especially the relationship with my wife of 28+ years.  In one of my regular meetings, there's a statement made in the meeting format that after the meeting "loitering is not tolerated" -- I used to find that somewhat offensive and offputting: but eventually I took it to be a clear message that this meeting room is not a home, it's a place of respit.  A resting place where we recharge our batteries -- but it's temporary.  It's not where we live.

Where I live is at home with my wife and that's where the rubber meets the road, as it were,in terms of me and my recovery.  Recently, I've been reading another book by David Richo called "How to be an Adult in Relationships (The Five Keys to Mindful Loving)".  It's a great book.  It must be frustrating for my wife though, seeing me read this book and me, at least it seems to me, having so little to show for it.  We are probably in the best shape we've ever been in though, so I don't want to misrepresent the quality of our relationship.  It's great.  But I'm always wanting it to be better...  Think we both share that hope.

One thing that really hit me though yesterday is that Richo talks about how in some relationships one partner will have a basic fear of abandonment and the other partner will have a fear of engulfment.  For us, my wife is the one who seems primarily experiencing a fear of abandonment over the years and I am the one who seems to have the polar opposite fear of being engulfed.  Richo recommends what he calls the "Triple-A Approach to Fear:  Admit, Accept and Act As If...  We first need to admit that we have these particular fears and then we need to accept these fears.  Lastly, he talks about acting as if....  And this paragraph hit me to my core.

"Act as if you have no fear.  If you fear abandonment, risk allowing the other to stay away one minute more than you can stand.  Cling one minute less than you feel you need to.  If you fear engulfment, allow the other to get one inch closer than you can stand.  Stay away one minute less than you feel you need to.  By acting in these ways, you are playing with your pain, a healing device too often neglected by those of us who take things too seriously."

This paragraph screamed out at me with its beauty and truth.  I've commited it to memory and have been reciting it again and again during my day today.  I really like the idea of "playing with my pain"  -- I've spent much effort in the past trying to avoid and medicate pain.  It was as though there was something wrong with pain.  And emotional pain, in particular, was something to be avoided at all costs.  Richo has got me looking at it differently though: pain is communicating information to me and I need to listen carefully and with reverence.  I needn't run from it.  I can keep my eyes and all my senses wide open.

Take care while you play with your pain!

Mike L.

Opening Up to What Is...

Some time ago, I began reading several books by David Richo (Shadow Dance, The Power of Coincidence and How to Be an Adult in Relationships).  I've been reading each of them somewhat concurrently, bouncing back and forth between them as felt right to me.  With each book, I've been making conscious decisions to open myself up to that dark side of who I am (the shadow self that I don't like acknowledging and certainly don't like accepting or, God forbid, embracing) and to the various "assisting forces" (dreams, coincidences, events, spirits and what I thought to be dead people like Earle) who are helping me be more truly who I already am.

What I'm starting to realize now is that once I made those commitments, things really begin to happen fast and that there's probably no way to put the Genie back in the bottle, even if I wanted to! There seems to be nothing that happens to me, 24x7, that isn't part of the process.  A few nights ago, I was meeting with a sponsee for coffee and while we talked, I started to understand with much greater clarity the answer to a key question in my life that's been plaguing me for several years now. 

What that question has to deal with is not something that I want to go into here, at least not now, but my point is that while I was talking and listening to this really great guy (who has 3x more sobriety than I do and who is a tad older than I am and who is very successful in his business life) talk about his (and coincidentally my!) problems/struggles with his wife of many years -- it became clear to me that everything that's been going on in my life in the last 8 years is part of a process that began many many years ago when I was first growing up.  And that what I knew to be true for me then (that I had a special purpose in life and that that purpose involved helping others), is something that I have been moving toward step by step all these years.  Most especially now.

More importantly, I started to realize that everything that has happened over the last 56 years of my life is just what needed to happen in order for me to be where I am right now.  Everything.  There was nothing in that path of events and people that should have been any different than it actually was.  It was and is perfect.  (Thank you, Earle!)

Several weeks ago, sometime after I began doing this "shadow work" I woke up one Saturday morning and realized that my wife was already up having tea and reading the paper.  I gave myself permission to do what I wanted to do: go back to sleep.  I was very tired.  I slept.  I dreamt.  I awoke.  I repeated that process a couple of times, slept, dreamt and awoke.  The last time I did that, I awoke and as soon as I was conscious, the idea came to me that "Everything's true!".  As that simple thought entered my mind, everything went White.  A bright light is the only thing I can think of to describe this experience.  I had this thought lingering in my consciousness "Everything's true" and in the background I'd see various things (events and people) from my past and present and as I would gaze at them I would remember that "Everything's true!" -- everything and everyone is true, complete, perfect.  And everything was surrounded and immersed in this incredibly bright light.

After a few moments, the idea about Everything's True would drift and the White light would fade.  And I would be aware that it was fading.  I had mixed feelings about this fading away of the light: the light had actually scared or frightened me...something seemed almost "foreign" about it.  Yet it also filled me with energy and peace.  As it faded almost completely away, I would then remember some other event or person from my past and then the idea would come to me again that "Everything's true" and the White light would return, full force.  And then it would fade.  And then it would return.  I don't know how long this cycle went on, maybe 15 minutes, but I eventually tired of it and decided that I should get up, go hug my wife and begin knocking off her list of Honey Dos for the weekend ahead.  And so I did.

This has been an amazing couple of weeks.  All because I gave myself permission to be open to what is.

Take care!

Mike L.

Empathy for Atheists

Even with my newfound theism, I do want to say that since coming into AA I have developed and nourished a strong and passionate empathy for those who do not share a belief in a God, however defined.

My empathy for atheists is usually expressed by me when I talk with an professed atheist, usually after an AA meeting where one or more AA member's have shared much details about their Higher Power, including their Higher Power's name (i.e., Jesus, God, etc.) and what they believe to be the important characteristics of their Higher Power (e.g, He is male, He has a plan, He wills specific things to happen (including that some people get sober and some people do not, or when people die...).    Sometimes these shares are phrased in such a way that the speaker, probably unintentionally, talks for the group rather than just for themselves.  Sometimes, they state their beliefs as though all or most of us in the room share their beliefs.  When that happens, I am always on the lookout for any wincing or pained looks --- or for people walking out the door (or seeming to be looking in that direction).  I try to either say something a group level that gives a counterbalanced view (delicately avoiding the proscription against crosstalk...) that these sorts of issues are very personal and no one speaks for anyone but themselves on this issue. 

And when I actually get to talk one on one with a professed atheist, I eventually like to ask them, "So tell me, describe for me the "God" you don't believe in?  What is it that you don't believe in.  What's behind the label "God" for you?"  Inevitably, the God that they don't believe in is a God that I don't believe in either.  If so, I smile and say then, that well, maybe I'm an atheist also because I don't believe in that God either!  I don't go on to prove or argue for the God that I might happen to believe in that day (it changes frequently!).  That's really none of their business and I don't need to share it with them unless they are curious or interested in talking about it.

Ultimately, in the context of recovery, I basically advocate the philosophy of an apatheist:  I really don't care what another person believes and don't feel any one view or theological position is required for AA membership or sobriety.  The atheist has a wide range of options for developing a sense of a higher power in their lives that does not entail a personal God:  "Truth" can be a very effective Higher Power for a recovering alcoholic!  The agnostic can be comfortable with a lifetime of investigation and waffling if they are so inclined and they can take pride in the fact that the Big Book named a chapter after them (We Agnostics) and that there is no chapter called "We Theists" or one called "We Atheists" or one called "We Apatheists".

To each their own.  "Above all else, to thine own self be true." (Shakespeare)

Take care!

Mike L.

Hi, My Name is Mike and I'm a Theist.

I have recently entered headlong into the strange world of Facebook.  And I think I agree with Carl Jung: "If there is fear of falling, then the only safety is in intentionally jumping!"  I've jumped into Facebook, ready or not.  Here's what happened:

The other day, I received an email from a long lost friend: an ex-Jesuit priest who was my novice master when I first entered the Jesuits over 30 years ago.  After I left the Jesuits almost four years later, met my future wife and then became engaged to marry her, Bob welcomed the chance to marry us.  We did various things with him in the early years of our marriage, camping trips, playing stupid poker games, etc.  He eventually left the priesthood, married and we lost touch soon after that.  Life got in the way I suppose.

Anyway, a few days ago, he extended a "friend" request to me on Facebook and I welcomed him to my lonely Facebook page.  You see, I had reluctantly created a Facebook page some months ago so that I could bond with my wife and kids, all of whom were very active and enthusiastic Facebookers.  But I immediately got scared of the whole Facebook experience, locked down my site so tightly that no one in my family ever found it and I never volunteered to any of them that I had a Facebook page.  Much of that fear was due to the fact that I've always kept my recovery life quite separate and apart from my other life, my life with family, friends and work.  And I couldn't see how I could possibly post things on Facebook that would have any real significance without bringing "out" the important aspect of my life called "recovery."

After Bob's request and agreeing to let him be my friend, I made the mistake of telling my wife that I'd heard from Bob -- and that it had been via an request to be my Facebook friend.  "You have a Facebook??" she asked and accused all at once.  I tried to explain what had happened and why I really didn't want to do Facebook, but she wasn't listening.  She was already pulling up Facebook on our computer and having me login to my page so that she could start helping me figure out how to invite others into my life, including her, my kids.  Within in minutes, I was drowning in Facebook family and friends.  And within a few days, my life as I knew it started falling to shit in a hand basket.

On Facebook, they have a thing where you enter some sort of short statement called your "Status" -- this statement is an attempt to let your friends know how you're doing at that moment in time or sharing some interesting (or not) thought.  My children often post some obscure lyric from a song and everyone else is supposed to guess (we are a competitive group...trust me on that!) who wrote the song.  Well, I started trying to connect with my wife and kids (and the ever growing world of extended family and friends..) by posting various status statements.  Within minutes, they were making fun of me and my ways: philosophical to an extreme (I think I even quoted Cicero in one of my status statements) and serious about what I consider meaningful insights into myself and my world.  It was all light-hearted ribbing and laughing...until I made the mistake of saying some things about God and my beliefs or non-beliefs.

In one status statement is said something to the effect that sometimes I consider myself a theist, sometimes an atheist, sometimes an agnostic and sometimes, in the dark corner of my soul, an apatheist: someone who really doesn't care.  That's something that I had sometimes said in an AA meeting and there was a specific intent for saying that in that context: I was trying to convey, especially to the newcomer, that this was not a religious program (even though it appears that we act similar to some particular religions when we begin/end meetings with Christian prayers...) but a spiritual one.  That we were encouraged to come up with our own concept of a Higher Power and that that concept was purely a personal one and not something that they needed anyone's approval or validation. 

But in the contest of Facebook, this statement took on a whole different context, particularly when it was read by my wife of 28+ years.  She read the comment and was deeply upset by it.  She felt that I was portraying myself as being someone totally different from the person she had married 28 years ago.  At one point, she told me that this was like waking up and looking across and the man in bed with her and realizing that he was a Republican!  [No offense to those of you who are Republicans!  She meant only offense toward me, a life long Democrat.]   Someone who she had always seen as deeply spiritual and one who believed in God's existence and who thought often and deeply about theological issues. 

Who then was I now if I was an Atheist, Agnostic or whatever in the hell an Apatheist was??  We got into quite an argument about this one night that ended up with her walking out of the room and sleeping in another room.  I initially reacted to her reaction as though she was trying to control me (I often misinterpret her in that way!) when in fact, I was reacting to her anger in such a way that disclosed that I was really the one with the control issue: I didn't like her reaction and wanted her to stop reacting to me. 

I didn't sleep well at all that night.  I couldn't bring myself to apologize but I knew something was wrong.  Eventually, the next morning I remember something that David Richo wrote about "If something upsets me and it keeps gnawing at me, I do not attribute my reaction only to what the person said or did.  I take my reaction as a signal that something has been triggered in me.  As a signal to look at myself."  I then realized that I was the one with the control issue and that, in fact, it was this very control issue that I been beneath my intentional separation of my life into two parts for the last 8 years: my recovery life and the rest of my life.  I never let my wife into my "recovery life" because I didn't want to deal with her reactions and feelings about whatever was entailed in that life of recovery.  I didn't want to hear her opinions or feelings related to how many meetings I went to or how many sponsees I might have.  I felt justified in doing this for all this time because I thought she was the controlling one.  I was wrong.  I was the controlling one.

As soon as I realized that, the sun came up and I went to my wife and asked her if I could give her a hug and I apologized for being an ass the night before.  I explained why I had reacted so poorly and we talked about this off and on for the next couple of days.

What happened next surprised me.  I went to an early morning and the topic was the 2nd step and as I was sharing I realized that my prior statements about being Theist, Atheist, Agnostic and Apatheist all rolled into one was not true.  And it's never been true:  I am a Theist.  Plain and simple.  Always have been since whenever I struggled with these issues when I was in my late teens.  I have grown and matured in terms of what/who I believe God to be, but I've never had any doubt about the essential presence of some Ever Present Goodness in the world that goes beyond some moral tenant. 

I was mistaken in thinking myself an Atheist.  What had happened on this issue is that I had often asked the atheists that I had encountered, "Please share with me the God that you don't believe in..."  When they did, I inevitably concluded that I also didn't believe in "that" God and then laughed and told them that I guess then that I too was an atheist like them because we didn't believe in the same God that didn't exist!  I neglected to tell them that I actually still retained a belief in a God who did exist!  Usually, I didn't think they would be all that receptive to that....

I had similar experiences with Agnostics.  I've never met another Apatheist.  I do sometimes talk about the option of being Apatheist in the context of recovery though as I think that's a helpful concept for those, especially newcomers, as they struggle with the God issue in AA/recovery.

OK, that's enough for tonight.  Going home for family game night and some Facebooking.

Take Care!

Mike L.

Dealing with Death

At last night's meeting, the chairperson talked through some grief he was feeling overwhelmed by...  Apparently, his first sponsor from years back had died this week. He said that this guy had saved his ass many years ago when he was working as a counselor in the treatment facility the chairperson had gone to when he began getting sober. He paused and with tears leaking out of his eyes, shared with us that he had come to love this man and missed him greatly now.

Everyone became reverent in the presence of this gut wrenching emotional experience. When he finished telling his story, he asked us to talk about how--in sobriety--we had dealt with the death of a loved one.

I shared how I too had been helped by such a man when I got sober. It was a man that had gotten sober two days before I was born and who had died some 14 months after I had gotten sober. I spent a lot of time with this man, particularly in the last five months of his life.  Regularly, for three hour periods of time in the early mornings, two to three times a week. When I was with him those mornings, we didn't talk much then even though he would wake while I was there for short periods of time. Usually, he'd ask me how I was doing, how my wife and I were doing, how my son was doing in his recovery. I'd help him pee into a bottle. I would call the nurse if he pooped.  I would hold his hand when his body would some times shake with seemingly unbearable pain.  Once, I thought he was going to break my hand.  When that particular spell was over, I asked Earle if he was OK.  He looked at me with one of his patented smiles and said, "Well, for awhile there I was in a lot of pain.  But it's gone now."

I was holding his right hand the night he died. His daughter was holding the other. They were gnarly old arthritic hands.  None of the fingers could straighten out.  I think they were both molded into the shape of his hands grabbing onto the hands of newcomers.  His hands would always drift over to the newcomer's hands: welcoming them, giving them hope that it was indeed possible to stay sober.

I wasn't scheduled to be with him that night. But through a series of mishaps and tardiness, I went over to see Earle that night because there was absolutely nothing working for me that night and I knew being with him, if only for a few minutes, would make everything right. And it was.

I often say that I have three sponsors, two of them are alive and I talk to the dead one more than the live ones. People think I'm joking. I'm not. Earle exists in some sort of virtualized form within and without me. Most of my life struggles and subsequent awakenings are influenced greatly by what comes from his virtualized presence. Suppose it may be just a memory, but it seems far more.

I then shared that I used to watch a TV show called The Twilight Zone where the stories always involved the writer taking a human fantasy/hope that we all seem to have at times which are basically rooted in the belief that "if only such and such" would happen, then everything would be right for us in our world. If only everyone were like me.... If only people would just tell the truth... If only people didn't die.... The storyline would then live out that fantasy and demonstrate the falseness of our dream. The truth was always that our world would be Hell if we got our wishes.

What would life be without death? Ultimately, I think that life would then be devoid of all meaning and of all beauty and of all love and of all true joy. There is no such thing as life without death. Thank God.  Earle taught me that before, during and after his own death.  I encouraged the chair not to run from this experience.  To grieve.  To love.  To remember.  To share.  To cry.  To laugh.  Most especially, to listen within.

Take care!

Mike L.

AA Membership is Lifetime, If You Want

I've been chewing over my last post about the 3rd Tradition and the fact that I haven't had a desire to stop drinking for a long time --- in fact, that desire stopped two days before my first meeting of AA.  Seemingly on its own.

What I've concluded is that the desire to stop drinking is an event that happens and once it does, that person has achieved the one thing that is required for AA membership and that once this happens, that welcome is extended to them for as long as they want.  Once you've walked in the doors and choose to be one of us, then that membership is, in my opinion, permanent.  At least so far as you want to remain a member. 

For me, that's what happened.  I had a desire to stop and for a variety of reasons, I woke up one morning and realized that my inability to stop was because I was (and am) an alcoholic.  Looking back, after having come into the rooms of AA, I realized fairly soon that what happened that morning wasn't that "I stopped" --- what happened, to my utter surprise (even now!), was that I stopped trying to stop (some call this "surrender") and, in effect, I stopped stopping.

I began trying to stay sober --- one day at a time.  And that, amazingly, has worked for me for over 8 years.

So, in case you were wondering: I do now consider myself a legitimate member of AA.  No one can take that from me, but me.

Take care!

Mike L.

Am I Still A Legitimate Member of AA?

For quite a few years now I've been quietly wondering to my innermost self whether I am still a legit member of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Why?  Well, because of the 3rd Tradition.  I know that I oftentimes hear people refer to that tradition as the one that allowed them to remain a member of AA when all else seemed to warrant excommunication or desertion.  But I've been unable to honestly say that I have "a desire to stop drinking."  In fact, I haven't had a real desire to stop drinking for over 8 years now.  In fact, I think I lost that desire two days before I first set foot in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Sure, prior to the morning I woke up "struck sober" on October 20, 2001 I had become resigned to a daily and hopeless desire to stop drinking.  Most mornings, my first thought was "Christ!  I just can't stop!"  I'd almost given up trying to stop.  Stopping wasn't possible.  For the last 10 months of my drinking, I was trying only to drink and not get caught.

So when I began attending meetings of AA and heard mention of the 3rd Tradition -- my initial reaction was like most people: I felt welcomed and included.  Finally, here was a group of people like me.  People who couldn't stop drinking either.

But in time, as the fear of drinking again began to melt away as a natural consequence to my re-focusing my efforts not on "not drinking" but on "staying sober" and "learning to live sober", I gradually realized that I no longer had a "desire to stop drinking".  In fact, the mere thought of "trying to stop" was a dangerous path for me.  It seemed to reawaken the false belief that I could use willpower to stop and stay stopped.  It wasn't any solution for me to seek a "higher power" to allow me to stop.  That was equally dangerous for me because the line that separates me from "me becoming God" is a very thin one and easily crossed by me without my knowing it -- except in retrospect.

So I freely and knowingly gave up the desire to stop drinking years ago.  I eventually subscribed to the "AA didn't teach me how to stop drinking, it taught me instead how to stop stopping!" school of AA thought.

Last night this all came to a head when I was at my main home group, the Wednesday night Dignitaries Sympathy men's group in Walnut Creek.  At that group, we don't have a speaker.  We just read How It Works and then go around the room and have people share (1) what they've done in the last week to stay sober and (2) if they are struggling with something, to share it with the group.  And we permit feedback during the meeting.  What happened last night while Gary was reading the introduction to the meeting, I noticed that our format says that the only requirements for attending this meeting are that we be male and that we have "a desire to stay sober."

A desire to stay sober!  Not a desire to stop drinking!  A desire to stay sober!  I BELONG TO THIS GROUP because I HAVE A DESIRE TO STAY SOBER! 

Although I have no dreams of getting AA to change it's coveted 3rd Tradition, I guess it won't hurt to make my motion here on my own recovery blog.  Why don't we change the 3rd Traditon to say, "The only requirement for membership is to have a desire to stay sober."  I think setting the standard for admission and membership to this even lower level (I've always appreciated AA's setting the bar for admission to a very low standard!) than the "desire to stop drinking" level.  Let's bring it down one more notch!

Hi, I'm Mike and I have a desire to stay sober today.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Human Ego: Not an Original Part

I was reading something yesterday in one of David Richo's books and it was really powerful.  He said in effect that the human ego was not part of us humans when we were born.  It's something that each of us have learned as a consequence of certain events happening or not happening in our lives. 

What events cause an ego to develop?  Essentially, I think he was saying that the human ego---what Chuck Chamberlin defined as "the conscious feeling of being separate from other people, other things, God and ultimately, even ourselves---comes about when we do not receive what Richo calls the "Five As" from our parents and other important influencers in our lives.  The Five As are: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection and Allowing.  All of us have had experiences in our lives when we did not receive the fullness of each of these from our parental figures.  The Five As all taken together, it seems to me, amount to Love.  And as a result, all of us have developed an ego in response to these events where we wanted and needed love, and didn't receive as much of it as we wanted and needed.  And as a result, we developed an ego to help us survive and move on....

The point made by Richo that struck me so deeply though was that the ego is a natural development of human beings.  It serves a good purpose at least for some period of time.  For most of us, it seems to save our lives and allows us to survive various traumas, big and small, as we grow up.  As a result, Richo cautions against the tendency to want to attack and demean the human ego.  The ego is not diminished by such attacks---in fact, it seems to only grow as a result of such efforts.  The effective treatment for the ego is love and kindness.

I'm going to chew on this for awhile now.  This approach seems right but quite contrary to much AA talk where there is much written to the effect that our ego needs to be "smashed" and all the talk about the need to rid ourselves of so-called defects of character.  And even our talk in regards to the disease of alcoholism itself: treating this disease as though it's something bad, as something that's wrong with us.  Something needing a cure.

There's nothing, absolutely nothing!, wrong with begin an alcoholic.  At least not for me.  Today.  My problem wasn't that I was an alcoholic: it was that I was an alcoholic who was trying to drink like a non-alcoholic.  Once I realized that my body was simply "alcoholic" in nature, permanently, and that it was possible to live sober and live fully despite that fact of being alcoholic, I experienced a freedom that's been sustained in me for the last eight years.

I still have lots of work to do, to be sure.  And most of that, I suspect, has to do with learning more about this ego of mine, how it's developed over my life and how it influences how I see things today.  I think I'm going to enjoy getting to know more about this inner child of mine.  I think I know his voice, gentle, oftentimes afraid, wanting my attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and, most of all, wanting to be allowed to be himself, just they way he really is.

My name is Mike and I am an alcoholic.

Take care!

Mike L.

...And then Actually Made that Amend!

Not all amends can be made without causing more harm than would make the amend worthwhile or helpful.  Some amends wouldn't mend anything: they would only serve to rip off a scab and reharm the other person or cause "fallout" harms on other innocent people.

In the case of the amend that I was facing (I almost wrote "confronted by" but as with most things in this recovery process, it wasn't something outside of me that was my problem: it was within me!) the other day, I ended up deciding that I could make an amend without causing more harm to my son's ex-girlfriend or to my son or to anyone else.  Even me.

Contrary to the advice given me by An Irish Friend of Bill (one of my all time favorite recovery bloggers!) I decided against making any sort of humorous approach with this amends.  While such an approach might work in a situation where the amend was being made by a woman to a woman, my sense (male as it is...) is that humor doesn't go in my favor when making an amends to a woman.  It never has worked that well when I've tried it with my wife, the object of most of my living amends, and I suspect it wouldn't have gone with with this woman either.

My amends was done as a response to her last unanswered text to me, in which she had apologized for any confusion she might have caused through the last couple of texts between us.  I'd never responded because I was just digging myself deeper and deeper with each text I made and I decided it best to just put down the shovel.  But on this last Saturday, I felt that I could simply respond to that text of hers and let her know that I needed to make a really big amends to her for what I had said in my earlier text to her.    I had struggled with remorse over my text for several days and it finally became clear to me that the statement I made was probably untruthful and certainly unnecessary and unkind.  I finally realized too that the source of my anger and saddness (which was the source of my stupid and ill-advised statement to her) was my emotional reactions to her and my son breaking up.  I hadn't dealt with these feelings head on, I'd pushed them down and negated them---and instead focused on her as the cause of my feelings. 

In time, I realized that my feelings had nothing to do with her or my son or their breakup.  They had to do with my own issues: anger over someone hurting my son, helplessness at being able to make my son's hurt vanish in an instant, saddness over her decision to break up not so much with my son, but with our entire family and, I suppose, with me.  She'd become another daughter to me and I hurt badly as a result of her decision.

I explained that to her briefly and told her to let me know if there was anything I could do to make this right.  I was going to try and avoid such statements in the future and I was going to try and be as helpful to both her and my son as they worked through this separation.

It worked I think.  We've had several text and email exchanges since then and no hard feelings or tension has been evident in them.  And I feel much lighter.

I love this process.  Much better than a bottomless bunch of drinks!

Take care!

Mike L.

And Became Willing to Make Amends

Several days ago, I really screwed up.  I received two text messages from my son's recently ex-girlfriend.  Over the last three years she'd become a real part of our family and her decision to break up with my son hit all of us hard.  As my wife and daughters banded around my son, I suppose we all pretty much disconnected from his ex-girlfriend.  When I received these text messages, something got triggered in me and I was angry.  Instead of pausing when agitated, I responded with a long text message that contained one sentence that was technically not completely true.  And even had it been completely true, it was not kind.  And it certainly wasn't necessary.

The comment hurt her.  And rather than strike back at me, she struck out at my son.  That hurt my son.  He and I talked the day following, and I admitted to my stupidity and told him I was sorry.  I asked him what I could do to make things right and at the time we decided that anything I might do in terms of reaching out to her would only cause more harm.  I tried to let it go.

Over the last couple of days I've felt a growing sense of depression and unease.  The other night my wife sensed something was amiss with me and she asked me the dreaded "What's wrong?" question.  It's dreaded for two reasons: (1) I usually don't know what's wrong and (2) I know by the very fact that she's asking that there is something wrong and she really really wants to know what "it" is.   But the truth is, I don't know what's wrong.  So I get stuck and then we go through a "dance" for some period where she tries to get me to talk about something I don't know....  For some reason, that night the dance was short and sweet.  No harsh words or threats.  I think we were both feeling tired.  We are getting to old for that dance anymore.

The next day on the way to work I was going through my routine of reciting various things that I've memorized over the years.  Many of the things that I recite have become something of an inventory process for me.  One of those inventory type passages is a poem by Rumi called "The Guest House."  I've included that poem in a fairly recent post, so I won't put it here again.  What happened yesterday morning though was that while I was reciting this poem, I became aware of the saddness and depression that I had been feeling the last couple of days.  And I decided to take Rumi's advice and "welcome them at the door laughing" -- "Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond."  I then repeated that same closing line again, except I changed it to "Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from within."

I then listened to my guide from within and realized that all this saddness and depression is related to the harm I had caused this young woman by judging her and questioning her decisions.  In addition, these same feelings were expressions of grief over having lost someone who had come close to being another daughter to me and a member of my family.  I hurt.

I knew that I was not yet done with making my amends with her.  And I realized that I had become "willing" to make an amends.  An 8th step process was complete.  My 9th step task now is to determine, with my son's help I believe, how best I can make such an amends without causing even more harm.

The saddness and depression lifted yesterday with this coming to greater awareness of myself.  What a gift this recovery process has become for me.
 
Take care!
 
Mike L.

Willingness: Not an Action

Willingness is not an action.  It's a state of mind that precedes certain types of actions that are called "intentional acts".  Willingness does not precede some action that is accidental.  Willingness can also precede non-action.  For example, I can be willing to make a particular amends but choose not to make that amends because I realize that it might very well harm that person (or someone else) more than help them.

The amount of willingness that is required to perform a particular action will increase in proportion to the level of unwillingness that I have toward doing the contemplated action.  This imbalance is probably the reason behind my not finishing my 4th/5th step process until I was almost two years sober.  I have no regrets about that, it's just they way it happened....and it worked.  This imbalance, with the amount of unwillingness being far greater than the amount of willingness, also was behind my inability to get sober back when I was able to stop drinking for significant periods of time, even though I had strong reasons to suspect that I, like my father before me, was an alcoholic.  The willingness "to stop forever" was never there for me because I could hold on to the belief, supported by the facts it seemed, that I could stop...if I really wanted to.  My "problem" was that I never really wanted to stop!  That is, until the day came when I simply couldn't stop. 

And when the day came that I really, really wanted to stop: I couldn't.  My willingness was far exceeding my unwillingness I believe ---- but was keeping me stuck was the firmly held belief, also supported by the facts as I understood them, that I could not "not drink".  I couldn't imagine me "not drinking" for any significant period of time.  It seemed impossible to me.  So, in a growing state of desperation and despair, I continued to drink for the next ten months.  At the beginning, most of me wanted not to get caught drinking: I didn't want to get caught because then other people would begin expecting me to do what I knew to be impossible: stop drinking!  But at then end, probably for the last month or so, I gradually began to sense a growing hope that someone would catch me in my deceit and confront me on my actions. 

And then the night came when my son almost caught me: he came out of a meeting and walked over to the car where I was waiting to pick him up and take him home.  He asked me if he could go get something to eat with his friends and I told him that it was OK with me....   He started to walk away and then I think he was confronted with something he didn't really want to do either: confront his father after smelling alcohol on his breath just then.  I can't imagine that the prospect of confronting your dad, with only 5 months and 10 days clean time and a history of screwups, relapses and run-ins with the police: and accusing him of drinking...how that would be something done lightly.  My son became willing though and his willingness saved my life.

He walked back to my car and asked if he could ask me a question.  I said yes.  So he asked, "Have you been drinking?".  My life came to a standstill.  I wanted to tell him the truth so badly!  I knew that he wouldn't get mad at me, yell at me or condemn me.  I'd seen him handle other situations like this with his friend's dads who'd been doing what I'd been doing (except for the not-getting caught part): he was always kind and gentle.  He accepted them as fellow addicts and asked them if they wanted help.  No strings attached.  No expectations.

But I couldn't tell him the truth.  What kept me from doing that was the idea, "if I tell him that I've been drinking, he'll then begin expecting me to stop!"  ---- and I can't fucking stop!!!  That's impossible.  Looking back, it seemed like I had a lot of willingness/desire at that time: but it was blocked by the certainty of the desired action being impossible. 

What happened then was I did lie to my son.  I answered, "No, I haven't been drinking."  I said it as defenselessly as I could.   My lying skills have always one of my strong points: he accepted what I said without question.  He just said that he had to ask because he smelled alcohol around my car and he couldn't not ask me this question.  He then let it go and went to have something to eat with his friends.

Me?  I sat there all alone.  Alone.  Isolated.  In my own personal hell.  I'd missed my golden opportunity to escape that hell and I was doomed.  After about an hour later, my son returned and we headed home.  We had our usual back and forth conversation that would follow me asking him "How did the meeting go?".  Just like always, he'd tell me stories without betraying confidences.  I'd listen --- feeling a growing sense of shame for my inability to face this problem with the kind of courage and persistence that my 15 year old son and these other young people were demonstrating on a daily basis.  We got home and I just walked by my wife and said that I was going to bed: I was very very tired.  It was a Friday and I'd had a very long week.  If only she knew how true that was.

I went right to sleep and then next thing I knew it was 6am the next morning and I was completely awake.  The first thought that came to my head was "I just can't stop drinking!"  It was the same thought that I had been waking up to for the last ten months, if not the last 30 years.  Then, a millisecond later, I had a second thought and that was, "Not being able to stop drinking is called "alcoholisim" and alcoholism is just a disease and I just happen to have it!"  Wow!  I just have a disease!  My body is different than those who are non-alcoholics!  In an instant, it seemed like my whole past life flashed before me and I understood everything that I had done over the years in terms of drinking and not being able to stop.  But this morning, another though followed and replaced the "hopelessness" that I had always felt in regards to the idea of "stopping" and that idea was I could do what my son had been doing: instead of "trying to stop" I could do what he had been doing, "trying to stay sober/clean one day at a time!".  In an instant my whole worldview changed.

What then happened, not that I knew it at the time, is that I became willing to try and stay sober one day at a time.  I stopped trying to stop.  As someone later told me, "I stopped stopping!".  Willingness only became effective for me after I came to a complete state of hopelessness: another state of mind.  Hopelessness is the state of mind that precedes giving up on something you want to do, but something you believe to be impossible.  I reached a state of hopelessness in terms of my belief that I could continue to drink and not be an alcoholic.  Once I was convinced to my core of the hopelessness of that, then all it took was a very small amount of willingness to try and stay sober one day, to try and do what my son had been doing successfully for over 5 months.  With willingness, I then took my first step.

Take care!

Mike L.

Another Drinking Dream...

Three days before completing my 8th year of sobriety this last Tuesday, I had a drinking dream.  It was the first one in several years.  During my first five years, I had one about every year.  Like clockwork orange, as it were.  All of the drinking dreams are consistent in several respects: the drinking dream never includes me actually drinking.  They all begin with me being somewhere by myself.  I look down to my right hand and there's a half empty glass of alcohol (usually Scotch...).  I see it and I know immediately where the other half is: in me.  As I'm realizing that I've relapsed, but before it sinks in, someone walks into the room: usually my wife, sometimes my son, sometimes my daughters.  And they see me and know that I've been drinking.  And then I wake up from the dream in a cold sweat, feeling as though I actually had drank.  As though I actually had relapsed. 

In the first four dreams, I would have a hard time convincing myself that I had not actually relapsed.  Even though I would know that it was a dream and not "real" --- my emotional state was stuck in a parallel universe where I had actually relapsed and I was tremendously upset that I drank.  I was ashamed.  I was guilty.  I was afraid.  Afraid of what?  Ultimately, I realized that all of these feelings were centered on the fact that I knew I was going to have to go back into the rooms of AA and raise my hand as being in my first 30 days.  As being in my first meeting since my last drink.

Why was I afraid of that?  I was afraid of that because I thought that people would judge me in various ways.  They wouldn't do it out loud, but they would say things to themselves or maybe to others in private conversations: Ol' Mike tried to do AA "his" way -- and he drank.  Maybe he'll be willing to take direction now and do it the way the book says to do it!   Maybe he'll get down on his knees and do a real 3rd step!  Maybe he'll join in with the prayers before and after the meeting and not separate himself from the group like he did: never praying with us. 

It took five of those dreams before I realized that the fear was that everyone would think/know that Mike was full of bullshit.  When I realized that, I laughed!  Shit, I don't need to drink to prove that fact!  So I began telling people about my drinking dreams and my related fears: and I let them know what they already knew, that I was full of bullshit, I didn't know shit, that I struggled like everyone else with figuring out how best to do this sobriety and living thing.  What happened is I made peace with my drinking dreams and I stopped fearing or dreading them. 

Then I didn't have another drinking dream for three years.  I did have an "almost drinking" dream in those three years: you know a dream where you are contemplating taking a drink, looking at the glass, tasting it before you've actually drank?  In that dream, before I did drink I became aware of the fact that I really didn't want to drink again.  And I woke up.  Weird.

But this last Sunday night, I actually had another drinking dream.  Similar to the first five in that I wasn't aware of actually taking the first or subsequent drinks: I was only aware that I had drank.  I was standing in front of a TV, holding a half empty bottle of wine in my right hand and a half empty glass of wine in my left hand---knowing where the other halves were.  And then I realized that I'd drank three days before completing 8 years of sobriety.  Fuck!  So close!  Why did I do that?!? 

But unlike the other dreams, I didn't wake up at that point.  What happened in this dream is I was then aware of myself being in a noon meeting up in Sacramento.  I was sitting in a chair as the meeting was beginning.  I saw all my close AA friends there in the room and I felt at home.  And when they asked if there was anyone in their first 30 days of sobriety, I saw myself raise my hand and say, "My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic."  I was home and I was OK.

And then I woke up.  Sober.  Still three days from completing 8 years of sobriety.  And not afraid of raising my hand if I ever were to drink and make it back into the rooms of AA.  I've never really feared taking another drink: I've only feared that I would drink and then be too proud/stubborn/ashamed/fearful to come back into the rooms of AA and tell the truth.  My name is Mike.  And I am an alcoholic.

I am tremendously grateful this night for all those who I have seen come back into these rooms after having relapsed.  They've helped me understand that we always welcome back those who've fallen down and that we don't shoot our wounded.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Amends Process: Consequences, Not Promises

I'm pretty sure I've written this before, but I'll repeat just for clarity: I don't like calling The Promises "The Promises".  Makes it sounds like God is a arcade dealer who will hand me a prize if I knock over all the bowling pins.  So I prefer calling them "The Consequences."  These sorts of things seem to happen when you go through this process, not just the 9th step itself, but all of the steps preceeding and following the 9th step.  They are quite natural consequences to the process: assuming we are painstaking (pains taking, not pains avoiding) in the process.  I realized that ever more powerfully today as I've been able to be available to my son recently as he's going through a very rough spot in his life.  And that's a consequence.  Not a promise.

To place the recent events in context: when I got sober almost 8 years ago, I had gotten to the point where I was truly disconnected from every human being who meant something to me in my life, especially my wife of 20 years and my three children, ages 14, 16 and 19.  True, we were still technically a "family" -- I was married and I was a father -- but it seemed to be more of a technical qualification than one borne out by having actual and meaningful relationships with any one of those people.  Looking back with sober eyes, I see that I really wasn't there for them because I'd found another solution that replaced the need for other people: alcohol.  When I woke up sober on 10/21/01, the obsession left me and I accepted that I had a disease and that I needed to do what my son had done in order to deal with this disease and get my life back.  And I had no idea what that would entail or how long it would take.  I just had an inkling that it would work based on what had happened with my son: he was 5 months and 10 days clean when I woke up sober.

Contrary to contemporary AA wisdom, I very quickly began working on making my amends with my family, especially my wife.   Contemporary AA wisdom seems to stress doing the steps "in order" --- but that's not really doing it by the book you see.  Check out the 12x12, the chapter on the 9th step, and you'll discover that it acknowledges and even tacitly encourages the newcomer to begin the amends process early on in their recovery---true, there are some well chosen caveats to that effort to keep these amends efforts from causing additional injury/harm to that which we've already caused in the past.  But it seems to say that this need to try and repair or heal some of the damage that we've done in our relationships with others is a normal human need and that we needn't avoid doing what we can toward reconciliation even though we may not have even contemplated doing some of the earlier steps.

Two of these early efforts at mending involved my using the words, "I'm sorry...." and looking back, I think those were the only amends I ever made which included the phrase, "I'm sorry...".   In my first couple of months, there were several discussions with my wife where I would attempt to repair the damage of my actions and words with "I'm sorry..." and I truly meant that when I said it --- but it never seemed to have any positive impact on my wife.  It did have negative impacts in that much of what I was saying "sorry" for were things that hurt her deeply and challenged her capacity to trust, to forgive, to tolerate, to understand or to have compassion toward... me.

The other "I'm sorry" occurred around Christmas time, two months sober.  My oldest daughter had returned home from a year abroad studying.  Being away in Ireland, she'd missed being here when her younger brother had gotten clean and sober.  And she'd missed the last ten months of my drinking in secret and the last two months of my sobriety.  She returned home with a huge bag of resentment slung invisibly over her shoulder:  my son had, in her view, destroyed her childhood; her father had, in her view, never really been there for her.

One afternoon, my wife, daughter and I were sitting in the living room.  I was minding my own business, as I recall, probably reading a book.  They were chatting back and forth, watching TV.  Eventually their "chat" turned into a full fledged argument and at some point, my daughter said something extremely rude and somewhat vulgar to her month.  I stupidly stepped in to the fray and told my daughter, "Katie, you can't talk to your mother like that!".  She looked directly at me and snapped, "We weren't talking to you." and she paused as her resentments surfaced from the dark deep hole within and then she added, "And you never have been there for me.  Ever."  I don't remember the context of the whole discussion/argument or why that last comment was relevant to what was going on, but regardless, they struck me to my core.  And I started crying.   All I had every really wanted to be was a good father.  And it was clear as mud that I'd failed miserably in doing that.

My wife then came to my defense and jumped down Katie's throat, disputing the truth of Katie's hate-filled words to her father.  "That's not true!  Your dad has always been there for you.  He coached your basketball team, he's been to all of your plays, he's worked hard to provide home and shelter to you!"  I interrupted her though and held up my hand, "Nancy, stop.  Katie's right.  I haven't really been there for her in many many ways during her life.  I wasn't there for her emotionally because I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I didn't let anyone close to me and I couldn't get close to anyone, including all of you."  I was crying through all of that.  Barely able to talk.  At the end, I just looked at Katie and told her that I was sorry for not being there for her when she was growing up.  And that I was trying to deal with my problems, not just the drinking, but the living problems.  I was trying.   Katie didn't really say anything, but the moment was over.  I'd begun the amends process with my oldest daughter. 

That process took a long time.  Years.  It didn't involve any more "I'm sorry" statements from me.  It did involve my being there for my daughter.  Most recently, I was there for her when she got married.  I stayed out of most of the planning details (I'm not stupid!) but I did everything I was asked to do, without complaint.  Willingly.  Excitedly.  Gratefully.  I was available to her and her fiance when they struggled with the inevitable ups and downs of relationship and growing up.  I shared my experience and my hope.  Our house gradually became a home again.  Arguments and blowups gradually faded away; laughter, joking and compassion returned.  She asked me to dance with her at her wedding and asked me to protect her from anyone else from dancing with her (other than her husband) -- she hates dancing as much as her father! -- and I was there with her on the dance floor.  Being dad.  When we were done, my son and wife came dancing up next to us.  Nancy asked Katie if she wanted to switch partners and she said OK.  I then moved over to dance with my son, my wife awkwardly and laughing from her deepest self, began dancing with her daughter.  Being mom.   Being family.  Again. 

As the wedding reception was coming to a close, I saw my youngest daughter dancing, glowing with what can only be described as pure joy and happiness.  Rachel had lived through my son and my "dark years" and had survived and flourished.   She has a compassion and kindness and sensitivity that exceeds that of any saint that I've ever read about---and none of that would have been there were it not for both the "dark years" and the recovery accomplished by my son and me.  And so, I got up and went on to the dreaded dance floor one more time: and danced.  I even did my best at doing my daughter's "signature move" -- which is indescribable in written word and barely capturable on camera.  Someone did try their best though and that blurry image of me and Rae, still resides on my daughter's cell phone and shared with anyone and everyone as one of the most glorious moments in my life.

These consequences are truly beyond my wildest imagination or hope.  There is no justice in them.  That's why when someone asks me "how's life treating you?" my response is always: "Unfairly!  If it were treating me fairly, I'd be dead."   I think I'm ready for November to come now.  I'm ready for Gratitude.

Take care!

Mike L.

Does a Relapse Always Require a 1st Step Redo?

I've recently been working with a couple of guys who've been struggling with relapse and it's gotten me to rethink the issue of the necessity of reworking a 1st step after a relapse. While I think there's much wisdom behind the conventional wisdom suggesting that a person take a harder look at the 1st Step after a relapse, assuming they'd taken a gander at it before the relapse, I wonder if it's not possible that some people get stuck in the 1st Step and fail to stay sober because of their not moving forward to the 2nd Step.

In both cases that I'm dealing with, I believe both men have a good understanding of the basic tenets of the 1st Step, but for some reason they've both had problems translating that mental understanding into their heart of hearts.  Or maybe it's something as trivial as having the -ISM in alcoholism: incredibly short-term memory.  Regardless, I'm thinking that either or both of these guys might want to move on to the 2nd step and begin asking for help from something or someone greater than they are, as well as begin considering what alcoholic insanity is for them.

For me, it was helpful early on to begin asking others for help.  It seemed to happen quite naturally for me as soon as I walked into my first meeting.  I had a sense, I suppose from watching my son get clean as a result of going into these 12 step rooms, that I would find help within these rooms myself...if only I would ask.  If only I would accept the help so frequently offered to me.  For me, the 2nd step didn't really need to get to the thornier question of whether there was a God or not, or if there was a God, what that God was/wasn't like.  For me, the powerlessness found and accepted in the 1st step only called for me to accept help from all sorts of sources outside and even within myself.

The 2nd step has become much more one where I have come to understand the insanity of much of my life, both drinking and non-drinking.  The insanity that I have discovered in the 2nd step has to do with an awareness, gradual to be sure, that I spend much energy trying to be someone I'm not.  In terms of my drinking career, much energy was spent over 30 years or so trying not to be an alcoholic "like my father" --- well, trying that AND trying to drink "like" a non-alcoholic.  That was my alcoholic insanity.

The 2nd step has given me much freedom in my life: freedom to be who I am.  Who "that" is is always going to be somewhat mysterious and unknown, but I have developed a greater comfort in the knowledge that I am perfectly OK who I am, even if I'm not all that sure who that is.  It's beyond a simple "I'm OK, You're OK" --- much more to the truth of the matter, it's a "I'm not OK, You're not OK and THAT's OK!"

I know that all have their own path and I'm not one to know what another person's path is or will be.  I will raise this issue with these guys though and let them chew on it for awhile.  A 1st step is never really something that's completed and done with, so if they want, they can continue being with the 1st step as they continue moving on through the next steps....whether that be 2 or 3 or 10, 11 or 12.  I'm not a big stickler on doing the steps in order to be honest....  Whatever will work, I'm for.

Take care!

Mike L.

Are There Really Defects of Character?

I've always had somewhat of a problem with the concept of "defects of character" which is something I'd never heard of until getting sober almost 8 years ago. My problem with this concept is probably due to how "defects" were handled in my law school days. I suppose I still analyze "character defects" with lawyer-like eyes. As an aside: I decided shortly before completing law school that I didn't want to become a lawyer: if I were to do that, I'd surely become an alcoholic!! Anyway, I still think a little lawyerly (in no small part because I currently work for lawyers) to my wife's chagrine.
Anyway, here's how my "anal"yzing (thank you, wife) goes: When Ford built the infamous Pinto and the Pinto was later determined to have a defective gas tank, Ford became liable for such manufacturer's defects. Builders of products are expected to do their work with a level of care sufficient to protect the public.

If then, "defects of character" are like manufacturing defects, I then went on to wonder then if the creator/manufacturer of us humans should be subject to the same expectation and liability that we hold to other manufacturers like Ford, Chrysler, etc.? If indeed we are capable of having so-called defects of character, can't we legitimately blame our creator? Can we sue God?

A silly line of logic/reasoning, I know. Regardless, I've always been more ta little hesitant to buy-in to the popular AA rhetoric about the root of our drinking problem being some sort of defect of character (e.g., selfishness and/or self-centeredness). Nor do I buy the idea that somehow, if we're going to be able to stay sober, we're going to have to get rid of such defects of character and thereby reach some state of "happy-joy-freedom-ness." Aren't these the character flaws the very targets of the 6th and 7th Steps, if not all of the steps? No, not for me.

I've been convinced since very early in my own recovery that the root of my so-called drinking problem is physiological in nature. My body processes alcohol and other drugs differently than those who are not alcoholics. That progressive drinking problem sure did impact my physical, emotional, social and spiritual development or maturity; but, any immaturity in my physical, emotional, social and/or spiritual self is/was not the cause of my alcoholism. I personally don't believe that the root of my problem is spiritual, emotional or social.

How then did I work a 6th step? It was pounded into my head by my sponsors that "I was perfect, just the way I was and that I didn't need to change anything." The solution to the problem of alcoholism was not to stop being an alcoholic or having God remove my alcoholism. The solution was waking up to the fact that I was an alcoholic and accepting that truth at my innermost core. The alcoholism wasn't taken away, it's still here, alive and well. What's changed is something in me: in this recovery process, I'm understanding more the truth about who I am, why I've done what I've done in the past and what I can do to do better in the future.

In the first step, I came to a deep acceptance of who I am as alcoholic and that's becoming ever more clear to me as I continue down this path. In the second step, I came to understand that there was a path before me which would allow me to be the best Mike that I can be and that I don't need alcohol or other outside substances in order to be OK with myself. In the third step, I submitted my resignation as God and Controller of My Universe and began a process of letting go of my choke hold on life as it is.

In the fourth step, I took the time to reminisce about the past through the eyes of understanding and list out all those events of my life for which I still held a strong sense of shame or guilt. Guilt for the wrongs I'd done; Shame for who I was. The fifth step kept me from getting mired in this remembrance of the past and helped me achieve a sense of freedom and lightness by the mere sharing of these secrets with others. I discovered my humanness. That I was a human BEing, not a human WASing.

In the sixth step, what then was I entirely ready to have taken away? Well, first of all, I don't believe that anything was taken away by someone external to me, God or anyone else. What I experienced was that I came to a point when I realized that the only thing holding on to my past was me and that this behavior was causing me needless pain and keeping me from being the best Mike that I can be. When I realize that (this is an ongoing process for me...) truth in terms of any one particular "defect" or "flaw", I let go and move on. The defect or flaw has served its purpose and I can let it die a natural death. What died in my first step was not the disease (or defect/flaw) of alcoholism, but the false idea that being alcoholic was wrong or was my fault. It was neither wrong or my fault. It just was the way I was, the way I still am. Accepting that truth didn't make the disease go away, it allowed me to be perfectly at peace with this aspect of who Mike is.

The same happens with other aspects of who I am, what I suppose people are referring to when they talk about "defects of character." I suppose I don't like the phrase "defects of character" because it seems to convey that there's something wrong with me. And the only thing wrong with me is the fact that I haven't yet discovered the truth about me in terms of any particular "defect" or incompleteness about me. Once I discover that truth, what was once a "defect" or flaw, becomes awareness and truth. It becomes perfectly ok. Defects of character are like coins, they all have two sides as it were: a positive and a negative side. We tend to be more aware of the negative side, because that's the easiest for us to see and the easiest for others to see AND point out to us!

If I were to sue God in court for any sort of claim that this creation called Mike was defective in any way, I think that God's response to the judge would simply be that "I'm not done with Mike yet!" I am not a manufactured being, I'm a being in the process of creation. God's not done with me yet. My suit would be thrown out as being premature. As things stand now, my sponsors were right (again!) --- I'm perfect just the way I am, right now and right here. And I'm not done becoming yet!

I like what David Richo said in Shadow Dance, "An acorn is not a defect, only a not-yet!"

Take care!

Mike L.

Good and Wicked

Since I've been doing this "shadow work" all sorts of strange things have been happening to me. 

Vivid dreams.  Waking up from one such dream Saturday morning--a dream which ended with the thought, "Everything's true!" --waking up fully conscious and awake and feeling as though I was surrounded in white light, within and without.  The light would begin to fade, but then when I would focus back on the thought "Everything's true!" and apply that to some person or event or circumstance: the light would return.  A deep sense that everything was "just perfect the way it was" -- including me.  It seemed to be with me on and off the remainder of that day.  Now when I write about it, it doesn't seem real or powerful anymore.

Driving around for several days and noticing everytime I accelerated or slowed down that something would roll forward or backward in the side pocket of the passenger door of my car.  Not doing anything about it for several days, just noticing the sound, being a little annoyed about it but not annoyed enough to reach over and find out what it was or to secure it.  Then one day on the way to work, I heard the noise one more time and I looked over toward the noise and noticed that it was being caused by a loose CD in the side pocket.  I couldn't tell which CD it was because it the label of the CD was facing away from me.  I then reached over to grab it and looked at it and it was the soundtrack to the musical play, "Wicked". 

While I love this musical and have seen it on stage multiple times, I don't think I ever heard the words so vividly as I did that morning when I decided to forgo my usual recitation of various "stuff" on my way to work and to listen to this CD one more time.  Within moments, I realized that this musical captured or synthesized all the shadow work I had done to date and brought it to a new level or depth.  I was fixated on the musical the entire commute to Sacramento and before I knew it I was at work.  Every word and lyric resonated with me and what has been going on in the last several weeks.

Wicked, if you don't know, is the prequel to the Wizard of Oz: where the Wizard of Oz begins, the story of Wicked begins and ends.   

The Wizard of Oz begins with the tornado dumping (albeit in a dream...) Dorothy and her house on to and killing the so-called Wicked Witch of the West.  Dorothy is then welcomed to Oz by the so-called Good Witch of the North, Glenda) and pointed down the Yellow Brick Road toward Oz and the so-called Wonderful Wizard. 

Wicked begins with that same tragic ending to this supposed wicked witch, Elfaba, and the same seemingly kind act of the goodly Glenda....  As all the munchkins were celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch, one of them asked the Good Witch Glenda, "Didn't you know her?".  Didn't Glenda know the Wicked Witch? 

Glenda then becomes the storyteller and rewinds back in time to when Elfaba and Glenda (then Galinda) met as roommates in college.  Without going into the story more, let me just say that when I listened to the musical again the other morning, I was transfixed by the "ultimate truth" of this fanciful story and how it enlightened my own journey seeking "to become" good.  For years, seeing that "good" as something exterior, to be learned and/or faked.  Good being a state which others determined and defined.  Good being out of my reach.  Leaving me isolated and alone.

I listened to the CD multiple times in the last week and I can only say that I've come to understand this as a perfect metaphor for my own journey to this point, that I am Good, that I am Wicked...that I am "me" and that I am Unlimited.  I must admit though, that much of the week was spent yelling "Liar!" to much of what Glenda and others were saying about what it means to be "good" or "wicked".   They never listened, not even once.  But, gradually, I have begun to listen...

Take care!

Mike L.

A Different Perspective on Turning Things Over

Until recently, when I heard other members talk about the concept of turning things over I'd always interpreted them to be saying that they were giving something (i.e., some problem) over to their Higher Power, you know, God.  This morning as I was driving to work and beginning to go through my various prayers and other recitations, I discovered another way at seeing this turning over process.

I was reciting a poem by Rumi called "The Guest House" -- a really beautiful poem that I found in one of Jack Kornfield's books several years ago.  I have recited this poem to myself many many times over the last two years, but only this morning did I see it differently.  I saw it as a most insightful, beautiful and powerful description of what I've been doing recently in terms of "shadow work."

“The Guest House” by Rumi

This being human is a guest house,
every morning, a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness:
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all,
even if they are a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house empty of all its furniture.

Still treat each guest honorably;
they may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice:
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

This poem seems to capture the essence of shadow work: The Guest House is my highest Self and these guests are not so much outsiders coming in, but insiders coming out into the open as unexpected visitors.  My past (and present...) strategy of avoiding and destroying these unwanted visitors was/is the very building process of my Shadow self.  This new strategy of "welcome" toward Shadow self will, so my little voice tells me and which I believe, transform this shack of a self into a home, filled with light and shadows, laughter and tears, and room for all.

The only change I am going to make to this poem now (which will now make this "my poem") is the last word.  My new ending will be "Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from within."

How does this relate to the concept of turning over?  Well, once I'd meditated on this poem in the light of my shadow work, I remembered this concept of turning over and as I was mulling it over I remember my father teaching me about a gardening technique called "turning over":  at a certain time of year (I think it was this time of year if I'm not mistaken..) after the plants had finished producing all their flowers and/or fruit, it was important to "turn over" the ground of the garden.  This turning over process involved taking a shovel or pitch fork and digging up the earth and turning it over so that the bottom most soil was now on top and the soil that was on top was now on the bottom.  Once this was done, the remaining work would be done by Nature: the dry leaves and depleted soil would now be underneath the surface and there in the dark (shadow) the dead leaves would be transformed into new and rich soil.  And there would come a time, in it's proper season, for the turning over process to be repeated.  Again.  And Again.  And Again.

And this is how I'm feeling now with this new Shadow work adventure.  It's a turning over process within me.  There's nothing really to be afraid of.  I just need to turn the soil.  Nature will do all of the real work, the real healing.

Take care!

Mike L.

Discovering and Embracing Our Shadow Self

For the first couple of years of his sobriety, my son did nothing (so I thought) except sleep and eat.  Well, that and go to 10-14 meetings a week.  I'd come home from work and ask him what he'd done that day and he would typically answer me with "I did some writing (or painting) and some reading."  I would then bite my tongue to the point of bleeding and walk away to calm down: I knew that anything I might say to him would be angry and ineffective.  At least, that's my self-serving memory of how it went: I think Pat probably has a different memory.  ;-}

Then, I think when he was about 3 years clean, he called me at work to let me know that his book was going to be published by Lulu Press (a self-publishing publisher)!  I was flabbergasted--at a complete loss for words.  His book was very well done, albeit a quite dark autobiography of his short but scary life before and after sobriety.  Shortly after that, I told my son that I was very proud of him and his accomplishment: in fact, I was quite jealous.  I'd always wanted to write a book myself and wish that I'd had half the dedication and commitment to that endeavor as shown by him.

That next Christmas, my son gave me a beautiful leather bound journal.  He told me that it was for my book.  I was blown away.  I almost burst into tears.  All that said, for the past 5 years, that beautiful leather bound journal has been sitting untouched and unbothered at the bottom of my book pile on my bedside nightstand.  What happened was that instead of writing in that journal, I began this recovery blog in December 2007.  The blog seemed better suited to me at the time: I could access it from almost anywhere and I can write faster and way more legibly using a computer keyboard than with pen and paper.  My handwriting includes a form of encryption exceeding many DOD standards.

This weekend though, I finally found a reason to begin using the journal: last week my wife gave me several books that she purchased for me while she was on a retreat.  One of the books was authored by a favorite author of mine, David Richo.  He wrote a book called "Everyday Commitments" that I've used regularly over the past 2 years for daily meditations.   My wife didn't even know he was a favorite of mine though, she just saw several books, including two by Richo, and knew that I would love them.  She's amazing that way.  And I'm horrible that way.  Oh, well.

Anyway, the book of Richo's that I'm beginning to read now is called "Shadow Dance" and in it he provides help in learning how to discover and embrace one's personal "shadow self" (sometimes referred to as our "dark side" -- that part of who we are which is oftentimes hidden deep down and denied or rejected). 

[An interesting aside:  Richo also makes a very interesting comment early on in his book, he says that "if you're an alcoholic, you might want to consider going to Alcoholics Anonymous.  There you will learn about the twelves steps of recovery and most of these steps are really nothing more than shadow work..."  (or words to that effect)]

After reading only a few pages of this book, I knew that it was the perfect gift for me right now and I knew that I had the perfect tool for keeping track of all this Shadow work: my journal!  

So, I grabbed my Journal and opened it up for the first time.  As suggested by Richo, I wrote a statement on the first page which states that I am choosing to become willing and open to learn more about my shadow self and that I was dedicating these pages toward that effort and adventure.  I then began with one of the first exercises which was to list the most negative traits I saw in people within various areas of my life: my family, my profession, my religion (here I used AA).  The reason behind this exercise is that we can oftentimes discover a great deal about our own shadow self by identifying the negative traits of people we really don't like!  Once I completed this list of negative traits, Richo then asked me to go down that list and start trying to identify how these very traits were actually a real part of my own self.  Much surprised, I discovered that he was right!!

I then took a nap (this Shadow work is exhausting work!), but before I drifted off to sleep, I gave myself permission to let my Shadow speak to me through the use of dreams (also a suggestion by Richo).  Amazingly, I had this dream in which I saw these huge concrete slabs laying on the side of a hill --- looked like they were the rubble of some deconstructed highway or building.  In the dream, I realized that these concreate blocks were part of who I was and that they constituted part of my Shadow self.  I then began staring at these blocks, wishing and hopeing that they would disappear, that they would just blow up into nothingness.  But then, I realized that that was not the right strategy for Shadow self: rather than blow them up and make them go away (which is why they make up my Shadow in the first place!  I don't want or like these aspects of who I am!) --- I need to simply be aware of them, accept them, embrace them.  There's nothing wrong with concrete blocks, there's nothing wrong with these shadows, these negative and unwanted traits of mine.  They are perfectly OK.

I woke up completely rested and jotted down what I remembered from this dream into my journal.

Last night, I had many more dreams (I normally don't remember dreams...) and I'm not going to go into them here as this is not the place for that.  In fact, I think I may create a new secure blogsite just for me to supplement my Shadow journal.  Only I will be able to access this site: it too will be dedicated to furthering my Shadow work.  I am really excited about beginning this work.  My recovery is taking a new and deeper focus.

Take care!

Mike L.

p.s.  Son update: he now has two jobs, lives on his own, is completely and financially independent, has great friends and support group, is basically happy and 8+ years clean.  What was I worried about?

What's so Good about Hope; What's so Bad about Hopelessness?

In two different meetings this week, the chairperson has come up with the topic of "Hope" and while I've enjoyed hearing everyone's shares about how much hope they've come to have in their lives since getting sober, I was reminded by an article I read once written by Thich Nat Hahn, the Buddhist monk from Vietnam.  It was called, "The Danger of Hope" or something along those lines. 

His main point in the article while there's much good to be said about "hope" -- there's a somewhat hidden danger in placing too much stock in hope.  The danger, according to this wonderful Buddhist monk,  comes about when one's hope is based on a belief that there is something unacceptable about the present moment or our present condition or circumstance.  Thich Nat Hahn would have loved my grandsponsor Earle (and vice versa) because Earle was always saying that "everything is just perfect, just the way it is" -- and, as was often the case, Earle was talking more about "emotional" conditions and reality than he was about anything else. 

To be honest, I thought Earle was off his rocker when he would chant this philosphy of his to me in his persistent manner.  He'd sit next to me (or, more often, I would sit next to him) and ask me how things were going.  At first, I'd lie by answering "Fine..." -- but he would smile and look deeper into my eyes and chuckle/ask "You wouldn't lie to an old man like me, would you?".  Caught again, I'd laugh, "Well, I guess I would!".  But he wouldn't let me off the hook, he'd follow up and repeat the initial question: "Really, how are things going?  How do you feel?"  And then the dance would begin, I would give him a high level view of what I was feeling by saying, "Oh, I guess I'm feeling a little tired or worn out...."  And then he would answer that answer with, "And what's wrong with that?"  Now, I hadn't really said there was anything wrong with that, but there was I suppose and that's why I had so wisely answered his initial question with "Fine" and why I really wanted the meeting to start soon! 

But I'd made the mistake of getting there early and it would have been rude of me to get up and find a less annoying person to sit next to...  So I answered him with a little less high level perspective on what was going on inside of me and I'd disclose that "Well, when I get like this, I start to feel kinda depressed."  He'd look at me like he was really listening but the truth would come out when he'd ask me again, as though time was going in reverse, "And what's wrong with that?"  And that's how the dance would go, back and forth, me getting a little deeper and closer to the real truth of the matter, him remaining in the comfort of his mantra of "Well, what's wrong with that?".  It could go on forever it seemed, so ultimately, I'd want to skip all the preliminarys and jump to the heart of the matter in terms of what I was feeling and why, goddammit, these feelings were so goddammed wrong: "Earle, if I keep feeling this saddness or anger, I'm going to start wanting to drink again!" 

He'd laugh deeply and kindly, then pause, and then ask with all sincereity: "Well, Mike, what's wrong with that?"  I didn't have the heart or the time to follow that up with my ace in the hole, "Well, Earle, if I keep feeling like this, I might very well get to the point where I actually do drink!   Take that!"

Now, almost 8 years after getting sober and 7 years after Earle's death, I still feel like I'm just starting to assimilate this truth about hope and hopelessness.  And just as there can be a danger in assuming "hope" is all good, there's an equal danger, it seems to me, in portraying "hopelessness" as all bad.

When I hear people talking about hopelessness, oftentimes when they are referring to the hours, days and weeks before they got sober, they seem to portray this hopelessness as this horrible state of being that made even the horrible thought of life with alcohol as more attractive than the hell they were experiencing after alcohol seemed to stop working for them.  While that's true of course, Earle used to talk about how much he cherished those moments of despair and hopelessness in his life---particularly after he got sober!---because were it not for the fact of these moments (short- or long-termed) of despair and hopelessness, we would have never had the following experiences of enlightenment, of waking up!  He even wrote an article for the AA Grapevine called, Thank God for Despair along these same lines.  What he would do during those moments of despair, would be to remind himself that in every prior experience of despair, there was always an end to the despair (eventually) and that following the despair (always) came a moment of enlightenment.  A moment where things made sense.  A moment of clarity.  An "aha!" moment.

I try, as best I can to remember these strange truths about both hope and hopelessness.  Nothing intrinsically good or bad about either one of them.  Hope seems healthy and beneficial when it's for something that's possible and loving.  Hope seems unhealthy and harmful, for me and others, when it's for something that's not possible (e.g., an alcoholic like me trying to be a non-alcoholic) or harmful for me or others.  Hopelessness, on the otherhand, seems bad when I feel unable to do/be someone I am not.  And seems good when I let go of trying to be someone I'm not.

Take care!

Mike L.

Hints of Second Step Insanity Found in the First Step...

In the Big Book, it begins talking about the second step of recovery in Chapter 4, We Agnostics and finishes just after the preamble of Chapter 5 ("How It Works")  -- you know, that part of Chapter 5 that we read at many meetings.  Well, just after that section, there's a statement, "Being convinced, we were now at Step Three."  Well, if we're at Step 3 at that point in the book, then we must have just finished Step 2.

But even before We Agnostics, I just noticed that there's some great insight into the concept of alcoholic insanity contained in More About Alcoholism, especially that first page which I call the long version of the 1st Step.  I didn't really notice it before until I began finishing up working through Step 1 with several guys and I was going over that long version of the 1st Step again.  I simply can't get enough of this first step.

What I noticed yesterday was that there are several references to insanity on p.30:

"No person likes to think they are bodily or mentally different from their fellows."  Here Bill is laying the groundwork for his belief that there was a mental aspect of this disease and that the solution is going to have to do something in that regard if we are going to get better.

"...our drinking careers have characterized by constant vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people."  The constant vain attempt to be someone that we aren't (i.e., non-alcoholics) is, I believe, alcoholic insanity.  It's a layman's attempt to describe our experience as alcoholics and I can't think of a better way to describe my own experience for over 30 years of my life....  In fact, I still see traces of this insanity in my present sober life.  And these traces of insanity lead to similarly "vain" attempts to be someone I'm not.

"The idea that some how, some day, he could control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker."  Again, this "idea" is insane because it's based on the desire to be "who we want to be rather than who we really are".   That's insane.

"The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death."  Need I say more?

"The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."  Our insanity then, as it pertains to our alcoholism, is holding the false idea that we are different than we really are and ignoring all the facts to the contrary.  While it's not an immoral or silly desire not to be an alcoholic, just as it's not crazy to want to avoid having cancer or a heart attack.  What's crazy though, is once one "is" an alcoholic, trying to be something or someone who is not alcoholic. 

My problem was not that I was an alcoholic, my problem was that I was an alcoholic trying to act, to feel and to drink "like" a non-alcoholic.  That was my problem.

The 2nd Step, again: for me!, has nothing much to do with God or a higher power.  It has to do with becoming aware of who I am as an alcoholic and that there's nothing wrong with that fact.  For me, the higher power referred to in this step is "Truth".

Take care!

Mike L.

The Three Ps of Alcoholism: My Answer

Several people tried their best, but no one was able to come up with my answers to this riddle....except me.  Funny how your own riddles are easiest to solve!  Anyway, without further ado, here are my answers to the question/riddle in regards to the Three Ps of Alcoholism and how all of them end up being summarized by the one word, Powerlessness:

The disease of alcoholism, as described in the long version of the first step (p.30 of the Big Book), is:

1.  Physical or Physiological in nature:  "Most of us were unwilling to admit that we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think they are bodily or mentally different from their fellows."  One of the most important aspects of this disease to me was that it was physiological in nature.  My disease was not a moral failure on my part.  My past actions in relation to alcohol weren't due to a weakness of moral fiber or willpower: everything became clear to me when I woke up and realized that my body processed alcohol differently than those who were not alcoholics.   Ahhh, that's why I did that and felt that....  When it says here that "no personal likes to think that they are bodily (physically) or mentally (here you may think this is not physical, but I'd challenge you to think about what organ in the body does all the mental stuff (the brain) and that the brain is physical!) different from their fellows." --- I take that to mean that we didn't like to think that we alcoholics were physically different from our non-alcoholic fellows: but too bad!!!  We are different!  And that's ok.

2.  Permanent, not temporary:  "We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control. But such intervals, usually brief, were inevitably followed by still less control which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization."  When I was younger, I learned somewhere that alcoholism was a disease but (and I didn't realize this until after I was sober...) somehow I thought that this disease was something more akin to a bout with the flu.  It would come and go.  In this framework, I was able to think that I had a few "alcoholic incidents" over my first 30 years of drinking but that I was always able to recover from those drunken and shame-filled incidents with a new and powerful resolve "never to do that again" -- and I wouldn't!  I would never again drink 151 rum!  I would never again drink beer, then tequila, then scotch, then more beer! (I would, of course, drink tequila, then beer, then more beer, then scotch!)  It was a real awakening to truth the morning I woke up and realized that this disease was no intermittent or temporary: it was permanent.  This was the way my body works and that will never change for the better.  It will, however, change for the worse....which leads me to...

3.  Progressive:   "We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period of time, we get worse, never better."  This physical and permanent condition is not static in nature: it's progressive.  Progressively worse, not progressively better.  That is, the way my body processes alcohol is such that once I've started putting alcohol into my body, my body will act as though I desperately need more...and more....and more.  There is no amount that will ever be "enough" for any period of time.  What might be enough when I was 20 was no longer enough when I was 30.  And by the time I was 48, I knew that there was really no quantity that would ever be enough.  I was hopeless.

Well, I was hopeless until I discovered through watching my son and two other young people get and stay sober for 5 months and 10 days.  When their success blinded me to my own delusions, I woke up and saw myself as I really was: an alcoholic, a man whose body process alcohol differently than non-alcoholics, whose body would always process alcohol differently and who disease would continue to get worse and worse as long as I kept putting alcohol into this same body.

So when I'm reciting this long version of the 1st step, the most important part of the reading comes in the middle: "We learned that we had to fully concede to our inner most selves that we were [Physically, Permanently and Progressively] alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed." 

Well, this delusion of mine got smashed October 21, 2001.  The Powerlessness referred to in the Reader's Digest version of the first step found on p.59 of the Big Book, does not get me thinking about me vs. a glass of scotch.  No, powerlessness gets me thinking of the Three Ps: that my Physical body processes alcohol the exact way an alcoholic's body processes alcohol; that my body will always--Permanently--do that and if I were to put alcohol into my body now, this disease would reactivate and begin its Progressive destruction of me, body and soul.  I'm not so much powerless over alcohol as I am powerless to be someone other than who I am: at least in regards to alcohol and other outside solutions to inside problems.  Thank God or Whoever.

If you feel any sense of disappointment that you couldn't figure out my riddle, please don't feel bad.  The only reason that I think this became so clear to me is that I decided to add this long version of the 1st step to my daily routine of reciting things to myself while I drive to/from work every day.  I suspect that I have recited p.30 to myself probably close to a 1,000 times in the last five years.  You try that and you will find things within such a passage that you never saw before.  You'd be amazed at what I've found in How It Works after reciting it a comparable number of times AND hearing it in probably 700+ meetings each of the last almost 8 years:  and I'm still able to hear one "new" word in that passage now that I never saw before!  Shaking my head...  Some are sicker than others.

Take care!

Mike L.