Checking Back in...

Do you ever get so disconnected from something or someone that it's hard to get reconnected?  I feel that's what happened with me and blogging.  Life got so full that something had to give and blogging was it.  Now I know I need to get back in touch with this important part of my recovery.  And it's hard getting started again. 

Turns out the key ingredient to a solution is pain.  I'm away from home for a three day business conference in Orlando, Florida.  I am in a fancy resort for three days, don't know anyone, very uncomfortable, lonely. 

Heard the other day that alcoholics treat loneliness with isolation.  It struck me true then.  And even more now.

Thus, this blog.

So what have I been doing to stay sober?

• Going to lots of meetings (1-2 per day)
• Listening (95%) and talking (5%) in meetings
• Chairing (telling my experience/strength/hope) in meetings (avg 2/month)
• Getting together regularly with sponsees (10 active sponsees, meet for an hour once every two weeks or a month depending on their needs and my availability)
• Reading spiritual books (Pema Chodrin's my recent favorite)
• Meditation (mostly reciting things memorized over last ten years while I commute to/from work each day); listing to CDs by Jack Kornfield (Insight Meditation) and Pema Chodrin (The Fearless Heart))
• Started a Recovery Twitter account: @MikeLRecovery (short stories have never been my strong suit -- but I thought I'd give this a shot just to try something different -- committing to tweet 4-5 times a week)

My family is growing:  wife and I are growing older (celebrated 30th wedding anniversary this year); my granddaughter turns a year old soon and we are expecting two more grandchildren shortly: my son (still clean/sober after 10 1/2 years even though he's on some sort of meeting hiatus) and his girlfriend are expecting a girl in December and my youngest daughter and her husband are expecting a boy in April.  My children are all living their own lives, yet have remained connected with us and each other.  I'm truly blessed.  I think that this area of my life is what has been getting more of my energy in the last six months and that's a good thing.  I have a tendency to overdo things (to put it mildly!) and I have to constantly be on guard that my recovery work does not overshadow my family life. 

Balance: defined as that moment in time that I pass by when swinging back and forth between one extreme and the other!

OK, that's enough from me.  It's close to six a.m. and I need a quick nap before going out into that scary world!

Take care!

Mike L.

Our Part

Last night I got to get away to a meeting, my first once since beginning my vacation almost a week ago. It was a small group in a small Oregon coast town. They each seemed to know each other as the back of their own hands and welcomed me as a visitor without any hesitation. Very informal format which came from the fact that they all knew each other so well. When no one stepped up with a topic, they grabbed one of the daily meditation/reading books and made that the topic: I heard the reading to talk about relationships and the sickening role resentments can play in relationships if we let them. Others heard anything from the 4th, 5th and 6th steps, or an opportunity to share their story of recovery with a fresh face (me) in the meeting.

I shared with them my own most recent experience with deep hurt morphing into resentment and how AA had taught me the importance of focusing on "our part" if we are to find any sense of peace and serenity in our recovery. This experience came during my youngest daughter's wedding reception about a month ago now.

Rachel had asked me about a week before the wedding to give a talk at the reception. This meant a lot to me and for the entire week between then and the wedding, I spent numerous hours crafting the perfect talk for my daughter and her soon to be husband. I never wrote a thing down on paper. I just started drafting my talk out loud in the car as I drove to a from work that week. The centerpiece of the talk was a quote that I had memorized years ago (even before I was sober) from a book called "The Magical Child" by Jonathan Chilton Pierce. I began reading that book shortly after our first child was born and something at the beginning of the second chapter gave me a great sense of peace and comfort at the overwhelming panic I began to experience at the thought of what this newborn child was going to need from me and how little prepared I felt to provide what she so needed from me. The quote was:

Matrix is Latin for the word womb. From that word, we get the words matter, material, mater, mother and so on. These all refer to the basic stuff, the physical substance from which all life derives.

The womb offers three gifts to the newly forming life: a sense of possibility, a sense of energy with which to explore those possibilities and a safe place from which those explorations can take place.

Whenever these three needs are met, we have a matrix. And the growth of intelligence takes place by utilizing the energy given to explore the possibilities given while standing in the safe place given by the matrix.

By the time the day of the wedding arrived, my talk was ready for primetime. It was perfect. I had every word right, the tones and inflections just right. At the end of each practice recitation, I cried. And I knew that my words would strike my daughter the same way. I was ready.

Just before it came time for me to give my talk, my son (who was Rachel's Maid of Honor) and my oldest daughter Katie (who served as Rachel's Matron of Honor) gave their talk to their sister and her new husband. It was wonderful. My son came "this" close to being inappropriate about three or four times, but always stayed this side of the line he's spent years crossing. During their talk, my wife leaned over to me and asked me to walk down to them and take the microphone from them and ask them to "hurry it up". I looked at her aghast and she said, "No, if you do it, it will be funny! If I do it, it will look controlling." I responded that "It wouldn't be funny even if I did it--because it WAS controlling!" Shortly after that, their talk came to a funny and heartfelt end and the microphone was turned over to me to say a few short words to Rachel and Daniel.

I walked down and took the microphone and began my talk. I shared that when I was their age, I discovered what was most important to me to accomplish in life and that was to become a father, a parent. That shortly thereafter, I met Nancy and fell in love. We were married and began having children. And I got scared. Then someone gave me a book called The Magical Child by Jonathan Chilton Pierce.

At that point, I realized that someone, my wife, was now standing beside me. Nancy reached out and took the mic and said, "Mike, can you hurry it up? We only have this place until 10 o'clock!" Everyone laughed, I suppose all of them know I don't have a short story in me. I didn't laugh though because it threw me off balance as I was trying to recite the perfect talk to my daughter and I realized there was no way to finish this talk as I had planned it in my head ahead of time. As Nancy walked away, I knew that my perfect talk had been destroyed but that I couldn't do anything but try to move forward without making a complete disaster out of it. So, I went on to quote most of Pierce's magical words, left off the last sentence and also some other parts of the remaining part of my perfect talk. No one but me knew that their was anything left out. All of them, including Rachel, thought it was a beautiful talk -- very much from my heart, very much Mike. Everyone but me.

Me? I was deeply hurt. I was angry that Nancy had attempted to control the situation -- for whatever reason that might have been for her. I blamed her for ruining my perfect talk, my perfect moment, my perfect gift to my daughter. Ruining something that simply could not be recreated or repaired. That moment was over and done with. There was no way to rewind or
"do over". But I knew that I could not share my hurt with my wife -- it would destroy her. She had put so much into creating the perfect wedding for our daughter: collecting 200 dinner plates from garage sales and antique shops over the last year that would make this a unique event for our guests, finding the perfect venue for this wedding, the perfect flowers, the table gifts for our guests (small Heinz catsup bottles with Rachel and Daniel's names and wedding date--Rachel is a catsup addict), etc. If she knew that her funny interruption of my talk, meant only to keep things "light" when I had a tendency to be serious and philosophical and longwinded, had actually hurt my feelings at such a deep level, it would kill her and destroy her memory of this wonderful wedding day.

So I kept my hurt inside and tried to rationalize it away. I thought of ways that I could get around this unfortunate situation without talking it out with my wife: i.e., I could formalize my talk "in full" onto a plaque and give it to them on their 30 day anniversary, I could "let it go" and move on, etc. But the hurt remained and within two days it had morphed into a full blown resentment. Resentment is a decision to hold on to a feeling beyond its normal lifetime. And that's what I did: I held on and more, I nursed it and fed it. And it grew. By Monday, all it took was some little annoying comment made by my wife before I snapped at her with far more feeling than her comment deserved. And she snapped back with deeply held hurts/resentments of her own. Because we were in the company of other family members, we covered over our anger "until later".

When "later" arrived that evening after all family and friends had left to return home, Nancy look over at me and asked, "Well, are you going to apologize for what happened today?" I looked at her and kept all my vicious responses inside my head where they belonged and said nothing. Silence is my favorite weapon in battles like this--although at the time, I really don't realize I'm using this as a weapon -- I am just trying not to hurt someone I love and the only way I know how to do this when I'm feeling such strong and powerful emotions is to be silent. Of course, that silence is the one thing that hurts Nancy the most.

So, she then asked, "Is this apology going to be something that comes in a day or so, or after a week?" I keep my silence as long as I could and ended it by saying the kindest thing I could, "I'm leaning more toward a week...." Amazingly, she didn't reply with anything other than her own silence.

The next day, I got up early and went to an early meeting before heading to work. It was a step meeting and they were reading Step 4 from the 12x12. For some reason, this morning, the whole chapter spoke directly to me and what I had been going through in the last four days and unfortunately, it was all about looking for my part in this whole ordeal. I didn't want to hear anything but "her part" but I realized that focusing on her part was what I had been doing for all of the last four days and all that had gotten me was more and more suffering and more and more pain. As I surrendered to the idea that I could get relief from this suffering and pain only by taking a serious and careful look at "my part" did things start to change for me. I briefly shared my discovery of my part with the group: my part was all the expectations I had placed in coming up with the perfect talk, giving that perfect talk at this one point in time and history "no matter what", my thinking I had some control over the outcome of all my preparations and planning and efforts, and, most of all, my decision after my wife's interruption not to go ahead by reciting exactly what I had planned without any edits or rushing things! True, she interrupted my perfect talk, but I'm the one who changed the talk from that point forward. Not her. Me. God, I hate it when I'm wrong!

I drove to work as usual, but I spent the time again reviewing my part in all of this and seeing that I needed to make an amends to her rather than holding on to the falsehood that she owed me a huge amends... That night, as I was leaving work (trying to avoid the inevitable I suppose...) I texted her and told her that "I was going to be home around 7, with humble pie and an apology." She replied quickly that "Blackberry would be sufficient...". I knew it was going to be alright then. That night, I started off my apology by telling her that I needed her to understand that what I was going to tell her that night had NOTHING to do with her or anything that she had done. I had discovered earlier that day what had been bothering me for the last five days was something that I had done, even though I had been mistakenly thinking it was something she had done to hurt me the day of Rachel's wedding. I told her that earlier that day, it dawned on me that it wasn't anything she had done that had really hurt me, but rather, what I had done myself that was the true cause of my hurt. That said, I told her the story of what I saw happening the night of my "perfect talk" and how hurt I was by what happened that night after her interruption.

As expected, my sharing this information with her hurt her deeply and profoundly. She stood up crying, saying that I had ruined the memory of this wedding for her... All feelings that she had a perfect right to have and to feel and to share with me, but none of which really had anything to do with me (thank God I'd learned something in these years of recovery!). After a few minutes of some painful sharing, all things between us came back together and we were reconnected again in no more than 10 minutes. My irrational fear of her feelings and reactions has always been a self-constructed roadblock to me being myself and expressing my feelings to this woman who I love and adore more than anyone on the planet. You'd think after more than 30 years of marriage I would get over this.... But then, if you were thinking that, I suspect that you don't have 30 years of marriage!

By the time the next night came around, she was able to share with me that earlier at work, one of the nuns at her school walked up to her and said that her favorite part of the whole wedding was when Nancy interrupted Mike's talk (this nun was my former Department Chair when I taught religion at this same school where my wife is now principal...) --- sure, Mike's talk was great and touching and "pure Mike!" it was Nancy's lighthearted interruption that brought a lightness to the whole event that made this one of the perfect Mike/Nancy gatherings. And we laughed. And then I began rubbing her feet --- a self-imposed penance that I've lived now for nine and a half years of recovery and expect to be doing for the remainder of that recovery and for the remainder of this life/marriage.

The freedom gained by focusing on my part has been great to be sure.

Take care!

Mike L.

Time Away

My wife and I have taken two weeks off and are spending time away from everything here at a house on the Oregon coast. Joining us is a couple who are long time friends. I'm barely able to access the internet, but it's sufficient to access my neglected recovery blog. My dependence on technology has shown itself in various withdrawal pains and cravings. My other unhealthy addictions to other things have also come to the fore: addicion to work, to helping others, to busyness, to meetings, to noise, to projects, etc.

We've been away now for almost five days now and it's been great. We stay up late playing games and telling stories about things that have happened over the last year since we saw each other: birth of our first granddaughter, engagement and marriage of our youngest daughter, and the announcement by my son and his girlfriend that they are expecting a child this coming December.... We had a guest for dinner last night, a friend of Randy's who has been his fishing buddy for years. He happens to be 12 or 13 years sober and very active in AA. We didn't get a chance to talk much or even share our common bond out loud. But it was nice to have another AA close at hand and know that we had a bond that didn't need to be talked about. Lots of laughter and storytelling.

My favorite activity of all though has been catching up on reading. Downloaded the 1st edition of Alcoholics Anonymous and have enjoyed reading all the stories included in that and subsequent editions of the Big Book.

Also reading "The Fifth Agreement" by Don Miguel Ruiz and his son Jose. A great followup to The Four Agreements. 1. Be impeccable with your word. 2. Don't take anything personally. 3. Don't make assumptions. 4. Always do your best. And now, 5. Be skeptical; learn to listen. I totally buy into this Toltec wisdom tradition which basically says that since a very early point in our growing up, we let go of our innate sense that we were perfect just the way we were and saw things without judgment or wishes that thing were different than they were....and began to accept the teachings of others that we could be bad, that we should be good, that we needed to conform in order to be accepted and acceptable, that we could't/shouldn't trust our perceptions or thoughts or feelings.... And in so doing, began adopting certain "agreements" as to how reality should be interpreted and analyzed. These agreements became part of our self and they have become the basis of our self-evaluation and of our evaluation of all of reality. The problem is that these agreements are all false and our adoption of them is the bottom-line cause of all our suffering. Ruiz proposes five new agreements that, as we adopt them and commit ourselves to living as best we can, allow us to regain that childlike view of ourselves and our world as being perfect just the way we are.

These four agreements have been helpful to me over the last couple of years. I often use them whenever I'm feeling a bit "off the beam" -- and usually I'm able to see where my failure to adhere to one of more of these four commitments has led me to the suffering I'm experiencing. Sometimes my use of words to hurt others, or more frequently myself!, is this underlying cause of my suffering. Other times, it's the decision to take someone else's words or actions as though they had something to do with me. Other times, the suffering is the result of assumptions I've made about something or someone that simply have no bearing in reality. Or the expectation that I should always be perfect in my actions or thoughts. Whatever: suffering is always self-imposed and self-generated. I then chuckle to myself about this and reacquaint myself with each of the agreements and move forward a little lighter than I was before.

This new 5th agreement seems to hold much potential in that it stresses the importance of stepping back from my instant reflex reactions to reality "as Mike sees it"; the importance of Doubt when looking at Reality as I tend to interpret it using untrue assessment rules learned by me over the last 58 years; and the importance of just seeing things as they are in the light of awareness.

These five agreements are a nice addition to my kit of spiritual tools in recovery.

OK, back to my time away.

Take care!

Mike L.

Our Calling

For th last two months I've been running on all cylinders in all areas of my life. Work has been consuming me with multiple major projects, any one of which could have occupied me and my staff for a full year. My family is expanding and changing on what seems to be a daily basis: youngest daughter getting married next month, first grandchild reaching her six month milestone with an infectious smile, a second grandchild (my son's) due before end of year.  My recovery program has continued to escalate, more sponsees than I feel comfortable with, but for now, haven't been willing to say no when someone asks (primarily because I could always give up a meeting or two if needed since I still go to 10 or more meetings a week).

But in the last two months or so, I was presented with some challenges with one of my sponsees that kept me "just before" being overwhelmed at almost a constant state of affairs.  But, as suggested by one of my mentors in AA, I needed to simply take things one whelm at a time --- otherwise, I'd get overwhelmed!  The challenge came with the guy who first asked me to be his sponsor over five and a half years ago: late last year he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and he successfully walked through all the fears that came with that diagnosis and had the surgery to remove his prostate early this year.  During his two month recovery at home, it seemed like his anxiety levels began to gradually increase -- I thought due to having too much time on his hands and not being used to that.  I suggested going to more meetings than he was used to and he did.  Nevertheless, he had something sort of blindside him in February and as a result of that, his mental health began to degrade on a daily basis and within a few weeks I had to have him committed to a psyche hospital because he was becoming a danger to himself.  After a harrowing several weeks in and out of these mental health hospitals, he's now back at home and beginning an intensive outpatient program to get his feet back on the ground.  Miraculously, through all of this, he's stayed sober.  Taking a drink didn't cross his mind: taking his life did.

Through all of that, I was doing everything I could to help him walk through this challenge.  I broke down and met with my sponsor about half way through the process and asked him for feedback in terms of setting boundaries, but also with dealing with the certainty that I needed to do everything within my power to help my friend.  That meeting was tremendously helpful.  He listened, asked a few insightful questions (he's a lawyer, so this is one of his great strengths!) and then shared a story with me that he'd never shared with anyone else: he'd walked through something very similar to what I was dealing with now and he shared with me how he approached his challenge.  He shared the story not to suggest that I needed to do what he did, but rather, just because his story was all he could offer me.  I could take what seemed to work for me and leave the rest...  I walked away with a greater sense of peace about what I was doing and that it was right for me.

Within a day or so of that meeting with my sponsor, I was reading a book by David Richo called "The Five Things We Cannot Change" and at the beginning of the section I was reading, Richo quoted something from George Bernard Shaw called "The Calling":

This is the true joy in living: being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish, little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world is not devoting itself to making you happy!

This quote hit me like a ton of bricks!  I reminded me of the chapter on the 12th Step in the 12x12 wherein it states in very first paragraph that "the theme of the twelfth step is the joy of living" and then restates slightly differently amd even more powerfully in the very last paragraph of  that same chapter, "the theme of the twelfth step is the joy of good living."  Shaw was saying essentially the same thing: the joy of living comes by way of "being used for a purpose" (for me, helping other suffering alcoholics) and knowing that that purpose is a "mighty one"; that this service is done without much regard for prudence or balance, but rather, by throwing ones self into service without regard to personal hardship or reward.    That in doing this, we obtain true joy.

I committed this quote to memory over the next day or so and have repeated it to myself several times a day during my commute to/from work.  It always fills me with renewed strength and commitment to doing what I've been called to do: help other suffering alcoholics.  My recovery has taken on a renewed vitality and I don't care to question its source.

As things seem to be settling down a little now, I'm glad to get back to some blogging which is one of the things I've had to cut back on over the last couple of months.  Just not enough hours in the day.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Two Stages of My Alcoholism (there is no 3rd Stage)

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been realizing that there really are only two stages in my alcoholism: the first stage was when I could stop and the second stage is when I couldn't stop.  For me, there was and is no third stage.

My first stage started from the time when I took my first drink, I was probably 17 years old.  When I took that drink, strangely enough, I took it with the clear intent that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it without becoming an alcoholic like my dad.  When I was 21, my dad's drinking took off downhill and he gradually descended into a lonely and isolated existence and eventually death.  My way of proving to my self that I was not an alcoholic like him was to demonstrate the ability to stop drinking.  And whenever my drinking looked like it was coming close to alcoholic, I would stop.  The only problem to this strategy was that I would always reach a point in time when I'd realize that I had "really" stopped and therefore, I was not an alcoholic.  And inevitably, whenever I proved to myself that I wasn't an alcoholic, I would drink!  Isn't that the perfect test for alcoholism?

That first stage lasted almost 30 years.  It ultimately ended when my son entered an adolescent chemical dependency program when he was 15.  In order for him to get into that program, my wife and I had to agree to a couple of conditions, the most crisis-invoking for me was the one that "strongly suggested" that I stop all alcohol and drug use while my son was in that 3-6 month outpatient program.  That's the moment I moved into the second stage of my alcoholism, the "I can't stop" stage.  I knew as soon as the counselor (a recovering heroin addict now psychologist...) asked me to stop that there was no way in hell that I was going to be able to stop.  And I knew equally well that I could not tell them (my wife and son were also in the room) that I could not stop.  So I lied and convinced them that I would certainly stop if it would help my son learn how to "live life without chemical assistance" as they referred to their plan for him and now his mother and me.

I hid my drinking successfully from everyone but me and the strangers who saw me drinking for another 10 months.  At the end of 5 months, my son experienced some sort of change and things all clicked for him.  He's been clean now for almost 10 years.  I watched him from a safe distance for another 5 months and then one night I went to pick him up after his Friday night Marijuana Anonymous meeting (he went to every 12 step program there was before ultimately finding a home in NA...) and he smelled liquor on my breath.  He asked, without anger, if I had been drinking and I lied.  I wanted to tell him the truth -- not only had I been drinking while he was in that meeting, I had done the same thing for almost 10 months while he was going to 10 to 14 meetings a week.  I drank almost everytime after dropping him off at a meeting.  But what kept me from telling him the truth was that if he knew I was drinking, he would begin expecting me to stop.

And I simply could not stop!

He accepted my assertion and left me to my misery.  The next morning, I woke up at 6am with the clarity of thought: I can't stop drinking!  I'd had that same thought every morning for 10 months and for many mornings before that....  But that morning, a second thought came to me: not being able to stop is called alcoholism and alcoholism is a disease.  My body is different. 

All of a sudden everything I had been doing in relation to my drinking made perfect sense!  I couldn't stop because my body was different!  Wow!  What followed then was another thought and that was, I can do something about this.  I can do what Pat has been doing.  I can try to stay sober for one day.

You know, when I hear people talk about the day or moment that they were finally able to stop drinking, I cringe inside.  You see, I have decided not to describe what happened that morning of October 20, 2001 as the morning I stopped drinking.  Not even for one day.  What happened that morning is that I "stopped stopping" and starting putting effort into staying sober a day at a time.

So now whenever I hear someone come back into the program, full of shame and guilt for having drank "again", I suspect that much of their guilt and shame is based on the false idea that they are the only one in the room "who can't stop drinking."  What I try to do, as gently and as kindly as I can, is let them know that they are not alone in the room.  You see, I can't stop drinking either!  And the solution I found over nine years ago was that instead of trying to stop, I just redirected my attention toward the goal of staying sober today.

For me, there is no third stage of alcoholism.  This is a physical, permanent and progressive disease.  That doesn't go away, doesn't get cured.  What happened for me, as the result of some moment of grace and the impact of witnessing my own son's recovery from this same hopeless state of mind and body, is that I woke up and accepted who and what I was: an alcoholic, pure and simple.  Once I passed into the second stage of this disease, the only possible outcomes were ever increasing suffering and isolation, death or recovery.

Recovery has involved much work, but within a fairly short period of time, the process seems to have taken on a life of its own.  I don't do things with the intent to stay sober or to avoid the first drink.  I do the things  because they fill my life with meaning, peace, joy, purpose and love.  My life is full, if not overflowing.  I am connected to a large web of other recovering alcoholics and much of my day is spent doing something to help another alcoholic in a myriad of ways. 

Take care!

Mike L.

Away from My Peeps

I am away for a long weekend in Phoenix with my wife and youngest daughter.  This is my fourth day in a row without a meeting and we won't get back home until late tonight.  It's rare that I go four days without a meeting and I'm missing my peeps greatly.  What I've been doing to stay sober these last few days is to read books somehow related to my recovery.  Yesterday, my brother-in-law gave me a book that he thought I might like: it's by Mel B. and is called Three Recovery Classics.  The idea behind the book was to provide people in recovery with access to three key pieces of literature that were a big part of Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith's life in recovery.  The three works are: As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, The Greatest Thing in the World by Henry Drummond and The St. Francis Prayer.

I think that Mike gave it to me because he knows I love reading anything about the history of AA and anything about recovery in general.  Not sure where he got the book, but it's autographed by the author.  The book has this "I haven't been read" feeling to it, so I'm guessing that Mike gave it to me just to free up a little space on his book shelf.  He's not as "in" to AA as I am and that's perfectly fine with me. 

As a Man Thinketh is a really good book and fits very well into my own experience: my thinking, right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, has a lot more to do with my circumstances in life than chance, happenstance, luck or a Santa Claus-like God. 

As I mentioned in one of my early blogs, I developed this weird habit, early on in my recovery, of memorizing all sorts of things that I cam across in my recovery reading.  In a sense, I was almost "brainwashing" myself by committing to memory all sorts of things that I found beautiful or utterly true for me.  By repeating them over and over, they eventually became part of my way of seeing and interpreting things that were happening in my life.  Some of them became tools for personal inventory or self-examination.  As I read through As a Man Thinketh I realized that I couldn't but agree with almost everything he said.  The same was true for Drummond's book on Love (which "is" The Greatest Thing in the World).

Whatever.  Reading this book helped me reconnect with another alcoholic (Mel B.) and that sets things back on path for me.   Like Bill W. and Dr. Bob, I've found much value in reading non-AA literature and using it to give greater depth and width to my own recovery.  What I most looked forward to in reading these early classics was not so much the truth that they might contain, but rather, I looked forward to finding more about the founders of AA through sharing something that they read and incorporated into their lives and their writings. Helps me put more "context" into their writings.

In addition to this book, I also was able to talk to a sponsee yesterday and that was great.  He's having a hard time not only with staying sober but also with depression and isolation.  The depression and isolation seem to feed on each other and he tends to get caught in a very negative cycle with these-----but at least this time he's refrained from drinking during this bout with darkness and loneliness.

There's a part of me that wants to suggest refocusing his attention to more positive things (as suggested by James Allen) or on helping/loving others as a means to get out of himself (as suggested by Drummond) --- but making such suggestions has rarely been my way (as suggested by Dr. Earle!).  I may pass on this book, Three Recovery Classics, though --- it might suggest some alternative ways out of the painful place he tends to go when he runs out of solutions.

I am very much looking forward to returning to my home and work and regular routines.  I like routine.  Except when I don't.

Take care!

Mike L.