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.