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.

Relapse and Raising One's Hand Again

I've had two experiences dealing with friends relapsing this weekend, one was a sponsee who had worked hard and well to achieve 18 or 19 days before he drank today and the other was a guy who I'd known for awhile at one of my meetings--I'm not sure how much time he actually had as he rarely talked in meetings and I only knew him in passing--but he began drinking a few days ago and called me Saturday morning asking for help.

My sponsee called me tonight after he'd had a few beers---not enough to be really drunk, but enough to begin feeling a horrible on rush of shame over what he'd done. For some reason, he called me before taking his next drink or before going out to buy more alcohol. I took that as something of a miracle---the more expected/normal thing for someone to do after relapsing would be to go ahead and give themselves the go ahead and get really fucked up because they'd already broken the "first drink" barrier. But he called me instead.

The other guy had been drinking for two days and by 10am Saturday, he was already quite well on his way for a third day of drinking. Again, the miracle: he began reaching out to people he knew and had phone numbers for. When I took his call, I was at my daughter's house begin a long day of planting flowers and getting her house ready for a family party next weekend for my other daughter (the recent graduate). Not something I could walk away from. But when he called, I walked off to the side of the house and talked to him for about 10-15 minutes. He was at home and it appeared to be a safe place. His wife was on the way there to be with him as was someone else from AA who was taking off from work to be with him. I asked him to try to help them find all of his alcohol (or anything else) and get it removed from the house. I suggested that he avoid beating himself up for what he'd done, try to not put more alcohol in his body and once he'd sobered up enough, to get himself to a meeting. That's when he told me that he was terrified to raise his hand. He was embarrassed and felt he had let us down. He didn't think he could raise his hand again.

That was the same fear that was going through my sponsee: he was fearing tomorrow's noon meeting and raising his hand. He'd been feeling so good the last two weeks! He'd not been able to string 1 or 2 days before this recent run of almost three weeks. He was so close to being able to "not have to raise his hand anymore!".

I'm not sure either one of these guys understood what I tried to share with them: either because they were still somewhat drunk or because I think this is a hard concept for even sober alcoholics to understand:

I'm not most afraid of drinking again. I suspect that that may very well happen to me at some point in my life, maybe even multiple times. Who knows. I certainly don't want that to happen. I can't even imagine how it would happen. But I know that it could happen. And while I'm afraid of that happening, there's one thing that scares the shit out of me far more than the possibility of me drinking again: and that's that were I to drink again, I fear that I would be too ashamed to come back into a meeting of AA and raise my hand as a newcomer---or more accurately---as someone in my first meeting after my last drink. That's what I fear most.

The fear that I might drink is a real fear because I don't really know for sure what will happen as a result of that first drink. I suspect all sorts of bad stuff, but I don't know for sure. The fear that I would be too ashamed to come back into AA and begin the process again: that's a more dreaded fear because I do know the result of that: all sorts of bad stuff and no real hope of getting sober or staying alive.

For me, I've found it worthwhile to work through both of these fears so that they are not so frightful. I've accepted that alcoholics, even recovering ones who work good programs, will sometimes drink. I'm not shocked when that happens. I'm actually more shocked that it doesn't happen more often!

I've also come to the awareness that the night on October 23, 2001, when I walked into my first meeting after my last drink and raised my hand and said, "My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic." that that was the best night of my entire life. And now, seven and a half wonderful years later, that same night is still the best night of my entire life. Were it not for that night, nothing that followed could have happened and nothing that came before it could have come to provide the foundation for so much growth and healing.

So, were I ever to drink again, I'd pray and hope that I would be able to get a second chance to raise my hand and give this life of sobriety another shot.

I hope my two friends come to understand this strange fact of recovery. I suspect their life may depend on it.

Take care!

Mike L.

Hope: The Contagious Message of Recovery

I've been immersed in life the last couple of weeks, so I've been remiss in blogging. I've missed it, but I've just not had time to blog. Even now, I'm sneaking in this blog between a couple of chores left me by my wife. She's out getting her nails done with my soon to be married daughter. I deserve this blog!

At one of my favorite meetings earlier today, the chair offered "Hope" as the topic and it was a perfect fit to her story. In fact, it is a perfect fit with every one's stories in AA! It dawned on me me today that Hope is one of the essential ingredients for recovery. Every time we tell stories in AA, they are filled with all sorts of horrendous tales which include shame, hurt, guilt, failure, betrayal and pain. Strangely, when we hear these stories, we often laugh with one another and I've often thought that laughter to be odd and maybe even inappropriate. But I can't help joining in anyway! Why do we laugh (and sure, we cry too!) at these stories??

I think it's because our stories, by definition, contain hope. They contain hope for all of us because while these stories tell all sorts of hellish events from our past, we have all apparently lived to tell and share our stories. They are all stories of survival. Somehow we survived. Where life was nothing but hopelessness and isolation, we somehow survived. We got sober. Even if someone was sitting in the meeting today still with alcoholic flowing through their veins, for some reason, they were there in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Even if they were there at the behest of a lover, the command of a lawyer/judge, or the pain of a swollen liver, they were there sitting amongst others who also could simply not stop drinking and/or using. And not only had these people experienced the same hell of not being able to stop, it appears that many of them had figured out a way to stay sober one day at a time for many days.

That meeting really gave me a renewed spirit of hope. Reconnected with a bunch of people I now get to honestly consider friends. And am now able to go back to my chores with a certain lightness and calm. Pretty amazing.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Gift That Never Stops Being Given

When I got sober my 15yr old son, just 5 months sober himself, gave me a 24 hour chip that meant everything to me. It was metal, not cheap plastic like most other early recovery chips. It had the Serenity Prayer on one side and an engraving of a butterfly on the other. I carried it in my pocket whereever I went, next to my current month chip. A few nights ago, something happened in an AA meeting where this gift of the 24 hour chip came back into my life.

Before telling that story, I need to say that my son has always been supportive of me and my recovery. He expressed no anger at the fact that I'd been hiding my drinking during the first 10 months of his recovery, oftentimes my drinking was done between the time I dropped him off at his NA/CA/AA/MA meetings and picking him up afterwards. In fact, his first reaction when I came clean with him about my problem was, "Gee, Dad! This is great! We're both addicts!!" I remember shaking my head with a slight smile and replying that, "Well, Pat, I'm not all that pleased to be an addict with you, but I am extremely happy to be in recovery with you." I never got to be in recovery with my dad (who'd died from alcoholism some years before this...), but I was overjoyed to be able to do this with my son.

So this 24 hour chip meant a lot to me. Some months later, before having a year sober, I'd been watching a young woman come in and out of the rooms, really struggling with staying sober. But I was always struck by her persistence and courage. She'd always come back, raise her hand and disclose that she was once again in her first 30 days. She'd make progress and then disappear. And then come back. One night, she came into one of the meetings which held birthday celebrations on the last Tuesday of the month and raised her hand again as being in the first 30 days...

And because it was birthday night, when they called out asking if anyone wanted to pickup a 24 hour chip, she raised her hand and went up to receive her chip. But the box contained no 24 hour chips and the secretary was embarrassed to say that there was no 24 hour chip in the chip box. I then realized that I needed to give my 24 hour chip to this woman and I stood up to do so... As I handed it to her, I told her my son gave this chip to me and it meant everything in the world to give it to her this night. My only hope was that one day she'd get to experience some taste of the joy I felt right now by getting to a point in time where she could give it to someone else who needed it.

Over the years since, I've seen this woman stay sober for longer periods of time, but then disappear again. I hadn't seen her for quite awhile until last Friday night when just as the meeting was beginning she walked into the room. When they asked for newcomers to raise their hands, I noticed that she did not raise her hand with the others.... I smiled inside thinking that she'd "gotten it."

The topic of the meeting turned out to be "what do you do to help the newcomer"? I told some of my favorite newcomer stories which attempted to explain my basic approach which is one of trying to be kind and gentle with those who crawl into these rooms. And then I told the story of my son giving me his 24 hour chip and then my subsequent giving of the same 24 hour chip to a young woman who was struggling with staying sober....and that tonight that gift came walking into this very room sober. To date, there'd been no greater gift received than to see her walk into a meeting of Alcoholic's Anonymous.

After the meeting, she walked up to me smiling and she said that when she'd heard me start talking, she recognized the voice but couldn't see me. Then when I started talking about the 24 hour chip, she started to realize that I was talking about her. Her face began to blush red and she was afraid that people would realize that she was the woman I was talking about. She was ashamed because when she walked into the meeting, she'd been unable to raise her hand yet one more time because she was once again in her first 30 days of sobriety. She'd felt so ashamed and beaten down by the fact that she just couldn't stop drinking.... She felt like she didn't belong here.
When she shared that with me after the meeting, I hugged her and welcomed her back. I told her that for some months just preceeding my getting sober, I felt that I too was different from those who were, like my son, going into the rooms and getting better: I felt that I couldn't stop drinking and that until I did, I couldn't dare go in. Even when I did get sober and was in the rooms for some months, I continued to see others in the rooms as one of two types: people who couldn't stop drinking and people could...until one day.

One day I was looking around the room and it finally dawned on me that the one thing that I had in common with everyone in that room was NOT that we were all people who could stop drinking, but rather, that the one thing I held in common with everyone was that NONE OF US COULD STOP DRINKING! In fact, none of us CAN stop drinking. "Stopping" seems to imply power over alcohol and that seemed to be contrary to what I learned in the First Step. So, at least as far as I'm concerned, that inability to stop drinking is still true for me and always will be true. I can't stop drinking. Even today. But my saving grace has been that what I can do is stay sober, today. Just for today.

I told her that her walking into the room that night made my whole week, month, year! It simply didn't matter to me how many days or hours sober she had when she walked in. It meant everything to me that she walked in. I didn't care if she raised her hand. I was just glad that she came back. As she was walking away, she said that she was going home to try and find that 24 hour chip so that she could give it back to me---she said that she never realized how much it meant to me, being from my son and all. I yelled back, "Absolutely not! That chip is yours!"

And that chip is hers, until the wonderful day when she'll be able to give it away to someone who fighting the same battle that she fought....and lost. On that day, I hope she will be blessed to be able to give away a gift that never stops being given....

Mike L.