What's Not a Blessing?

At today's meeting, the chair suggested the topic of blessings --- in our recovery, what sort of blessings had we received as a result of our sobriety.  I never got called on, so I got to practice listening.  Everyone who shared talked of a wide array of blessings that they received since getting sober, most commented at least in passing on the blessing of sobriety itself and that certainly resonated within me. 

OK, I have to admit my listening during the meeting was frequently interrupted by memories.  I couldn't help remembering was the many things in my life which I never saw as gift or blessing when they were being experienced by me at the time.  It was only in retrospect, after getting sober, that I began to see the blessing in these supposed unfortunate or unfair circumstances in my life.  Of course, the greatest misfortune in my life was all the issues related to alcoholism: my father's alcoholism, my fear of becoming an alcoholic "like him", my son's addiction and his unknowing struggle to be just like me: a son who was not an addict like his father.

It was only after getting sober that I started looking at all these "wrongs" in a different manner and that's in large part due to a man named Earle.  Earle had gotten sober two days after I'd been born and by the time I got sober, he'd been sober for over 48 years.  Although he taught me many important lessons during the short 14 months I knew him before his death in January 2003, the greatest lessons involved learning to see myself as perfect, just as I am.  This was a message that was difficult for me to accept or even to hear.  It was seemingly inconsistent that much of the message I was hearing in the rooms of AA in my early months of recovery: the message which I heard being preached by many was that there was something terribly wrong with us and that sobriety involved not just "not drinking" but also cleaning house, being rid of defects of character and doing the right thing.  At least, that was the message that I was hearing --- probably because of my own self-hatred, guilt over what I'd done over the years and shame over the alcoholic I had become despite my fears to the contrary.

Earle seemed to speak a different and discordant language.  "Mike, you're perfect just the way you are!  You don't have to change anything!"  He seemed to know how much I wanted to be anything and to feel anything other than who I actually was and what I was actually feeling.  He would elicit from me what I was feeling at any one time, but didn't want to feel and certainly didn't want to talk about with him or anyone else.  Feelings scared the shit out of me.  I was highly sensitive, in large part because I had been without my self-prescribed medication for too long and the feelings were sensing open season on assaulting me and paying me back for years of repression and denial.

He'd ask me how things were going.  I'd try to evade him, but he was persistent beyond belief.  I'd try to appease him with a tidbit of what was going on, "Oh, I'm doing fine, thanks."   But he'd smile and say, "You wouldn't lie to an old man like me, would you?"  I'd be disarmed by his smile and laugh back and say, "Well, yes, I guess I would."  He'd laugh, and begin his gentle assault, "No, really.  How are you doing?"  I'd look up at the clock, praying that the meeting would begin soon -- but no such luck.  "Well, I'm feeling a little down I guess."

He looked like he was really listening to me.  But that obviously wasn't true, because once I was finished telling him how I was feeling, he'd ask me, "Well, what's wrong with that?"  What's wrong with feeling down?  Come on!!!  Down is not a good feeling and I deserved to feel better!  I'd been sober for two months and my reward was feeling down?  Where's the happy, joyous and freedom experience I'd been reading about?  I knew enough not to say all this to him, because he was clearly dangerous.  But he was persistent and wouldn't let me off the hook: "What's wrong with feeling down?"

I'd try to give him a few more morsels, just to tide him over until the beginning of the meeting: "Well, when I'm feeling down, I start getting depressed."  I'd give him a little more detail than that, but he was relentless.  When I'd run out of breath explaining why depression wasn't a good thing to be experiencing, he'd look at me with uncomfortable kindness and ask me again, "Well, what's wrong with feeling depressed?"

This guy was a licensed psychiatrist and a surgeon, and he didn't know what was wrong with depression?  It's an illness, for god's sake!  People go to doctors when they are depressed and I had no business being depressed.  I needed to stay sober and I wasn't going to be able to do that if I kept feeling so damned depressed!  I know, I was sitting there with such a doctor and telling him about my depression certainly didn't seem to be helping.  He just didn't seem to understand.  Ultimately, I resorted to my own scare tactics as an attempt to get him off my frustrated back and said, "You know Earle, if I keep feeling all these feelings of saddness, anger, depression, remorse, etc. -- I'm going to start wanting to drink again!"  I mistakenly thought that would shut him up and put him back in his place and far away from me.

He only smiled again and countered my evasive maneuver with, "Well, what would be wrong with that?"  Earle died before the truth of his lesson really sunk down to the core of my being.  It took a long time before the habit of distrusting and manipulating feelings began to dissolve and to be replaced by a general attitude of acceptance for whatever feeling I happened to be feeling at any particular time.

So as I listened to people's stories of supposed "good" things that had happened to them since getting sober, I couldn't help but think of Earle and I silently began compiling a list of the hidden blessings in my life that were once seen as bad or wrong: 

• my alcoholism
• my feelings
• my body
• my past and present
• death
• pain
• suffering
• my wrongs
• my mistakes
• my ignorance
• my confusion
• my uncertainty

All blessings without exception.  And when something strikes me sideways, I may not see it as blessing right away.  But I am more likely as not to eventually hear Earle's voice asking, "Well, Mike, what's wrong with that?"  Sure, I can fence around with him trying once again to evade the master.  But I inevitably end up smiling and laughing with Earle as I let him know that there's simply nothing wrong with anything in my life.  It truly is perfect just as it is.  I don't need to change a single thing.  Including the desire to change...

Take care!

Mike L.

A Quick Check-in

It's been over a month since I've posted a blog here and now as I try to get back into the groove of writing, I'm facing some sort of writer's block as I try to dip my toe back into the water.  I've got two blogs that I've been drafting but neither seems ready for publishing.  One I'll probably never post as it was done more for personal chewing through of a difficult time I was having with my wife.  It turned into something I've never really done: a fourth step with a fourth column. 

Somehow in the writing process, I ended up understanding my need to see my part in what was going on and -- all of a sudden -- her part became irrelevant.  And then everything became clear to me in terms of why I had done what I had done --- and before moving forward to make an amends with her, I spent time having some compassion/forgiveness for myself.  I'm awfully hard on myself --- and it's not helpful to be unkind, even toward one's self.

I've had titles for interesting blogs float past my mind over the past couple of weeks, but I've just not had the time to sit down and write.  They were great titles --- wish I could remember them.

I've been struggling to find some balance in all the various aspects of my life, both in terms of recovery and family/work.  Overall, I think I'm doing well --- but the blog writing has taken a real hit in terms of consistent effort and action.  Someone once told me that balance isn't a state of being, but rather, it's a brief moment in time that we pass by as we swing from one extreme to another.  The swing has slowed down much in the past eight years --- but I still seem to drift back and forth.  Guess it's better than the alternative!

I will commit to writing more in the next week.  My wife's out of town for a couple of days beginning tomorrow, so I should be able to get something out.  I tend to binge on meetings when she's away, plus have time to be with friends/sponsees and just talk about whatever.  Plus my honey-do list.

Take care!

Mike L.

The Pre-Requisites of Willingness

I've been going through something of writer's block recently.  Felt that I had sort of said everything I had to say.  That everytime I sat down to write, there was an eery feeling that I'd already told that story.  I took a break I suppose so that I could come up with some new stories.

The other night the speaker asked us to talk about willingness because she was at a point in her life where she was unwilling to be willing.  And that frightened her.

Whenever willingness is the topic, I always remember a woman who was new to the area and had just been asked to chair a meeting at the last moment.  I was probably two years sober at the time.  During her chair, she said that her favorite quote in recovery was a line that she had stolen from her sponsor in Santa Cruz.  The sponsor had often said that "she got sober at the corner of Grace and Willingness."  I was immediately struck at how beautiful that line was.  I went up to her after the meeting and asked her to chair a meeting for me in several weeks.  She was glad to.  She was trying to get to as many different meetings as possible now that she was in this new area with no friends or connections.

Between that night and the day she was to chair for me, I kept going back over the line she'd stolen from her sponsor and while I really understood the beauty of that description of where her sponsor had gotten sober, I knew that I hadn't gotten sober on that same corner.  Grace was right on: when I got sober, it was pure gift.  I'd done nothing at all to achieve the sobriety I achieved the morning of October 20th in the year 2001.  The night before, I'd taken my son to one of his 12 Step meetings (he was 15 and had 5 months and 10 days sober...) and then hid myself away in a local bar to have what became, to date, my last two drinks.  Two goblet sized gin martinis.  When I left the bar, I didn't feel drunk but was probably over the legal limit.  I went to pickup my son after his meeting.  He smelled the liquor and asked me if I'd been drinking.  I lied.  He let it go.

I'd wanted to tell him the truth.  But had I done that, I would have had to stop drinking.  Or at least go through the public motions of trying to stop drinking, while knowing in my heart of hearts that it simply wasn't possible.  So I lied.  We went home.  Chatted about what the meeting had been like.  I went in the house, told my wife that I was very tired and was going straight to bed.  I was very tired.  I'd been hiding my drinking for over 10 months and it was horrible.  I was lonely, isolated.  Controlling my drinking was very draining!  Around people all day---but connecting with no one.

The following morning, I woke up at 6am with the clearest of all true thoughts: "I can't stop drinking."  A thought I'd woken up to many, many times before over the previous 30 years.  More and more frequently as the years and the disease progressed.  And then the miracle happened with another thought, "Not being able to stop drinking is called Alcoholism--and alcoholism is a disease that I just happened to have."  Within a nanosecond, a third thought followed: "That's OK -- I can do what Pat (my son) had been doing."  And then I saw myself sitting in a circle of folks and when my turn came to check-in (it was one of the weekly multi-family group sessions at my son's recovery treatment center), I saw myself raise my hand and say, "My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic."  The obsession I'd been living under for years left me with that disclosure to non-existent people.

Well, that moment was certainly one of Grace.  Grace was surely one of the streets which intersected my moment of recovery.  But was that a moment of Willingness?  Not really.  It was something else and I just couldn't think of what else other than grace brought about my sobriety.  What was the other street.  I thought about that for several weeks and it didn't get resolved until the morning I woke up to go secretary the Sunday Step meeting at the Lafayette Hut, the meeting where the line thieving sponsee was going chair for me.  That morning I realized where I got sober and I was feeling like I was going to explode inside until I could share my truth with the woman chairing for me that morning.

When she walked into the meeting, she walked over to sit in what I sometimes call the most uncomfortable chair in an AA meeting.  When she sat down, I welcomed her to the Hut -- and then leaned over to tell her that for several weeks I had been trying to figure out "where" had I had gotten sober.  She looked puzzled (as people often do when I'm talking to them!) and I reminded her about her favorite line and told her that while I loved the line as much as she did, I knew that that was not where I got sober.  I didn't get sober at Grace and Willingness.  She smiled and asked me, "Well, where did you get sober?"

I got sober at the corner of Grace and Hopelessness, about a half block down from Grace and Willingness.  What happened that morning for me was a moment of grace which occurred only because I had reached a point of utter hopelessness in terms of my ability to stop drinking.  What happened that morning is I gave up on "my" attempt to stop drinking.  And I began a new approach at life.  I began trying to stay sober that day.  That is what I had seen my son do for over ten months --- and he'd done it "poorly" at first, not being able to stay clean for more than 5 to 10 days for several months.  But then, something clicked for him in May 2001 --- not sure what streets intersected at his moment of clarity -- and he's been clean for almost nine years now.  That morning I knew that the solution was in doing what he had been doing: going to meetings, raising my hand, steps, talking/listening with other addicts/alcoholics, getting up when we fell down, telling the truth.

So what then are the pre-requisites of Willingness?  There are at least three:

First, willingness only comes into play when we are confronted by something that we really don't want to do.  Willingness isn't necessary for me to eat a piece of chocolate cake!  Willingness is only required when there is unwillingness.

Second, willingness presents itself only when one is experiencing a certain level of pain or suffering.  Unwillingness is a pleasant place to be: pain is the only thing that pushes us out of that state of unwillingness.

Third, willingness --- at least for me --- came only when I came to believe that the Impossible was in fact Possible.  That morning, I discovered that sobriety, one day at a time, was possible.  No guarantees for life, but at least sobriety was possible for me that day.  Tomorrow?  I'd deal with that when it came.  That morning, I realized that Pat had done what I had considered impossible.  He'd gotten sober and his life was changing.  Since then, I have seen many others who were like me: people who simply couldn't get sober.  People who couldn't stop drinking.  That morning, I accepted that I couldn't stop---but I could stay sober.

A moment of Hopelessness transformed by Grace into Willingness.

Take care!

Mike L.

Grieving: Part of the Healing Process

A young woman with 60 days shared at a meeting yesterday that over the last weekend she and her husband had done some things together (planted a tree in the backyard, watched a football game, etc.) and that something really strange had happened to her. She paused and then looked around the room and said, "This is getting really hard!  I guess I've been on some sort of pink cloud until now.  This is hard!"

Anyway, during the weekend she and her husband (a non-alcoholic it seems) did some things together that in the past would have involved both of them drinking (her to excess, him not). Each time she realized that fact, she would start crying. Eventually it got so bad, that she went to her bedroom and laid down and sobbed. And sobbed.  Then she went out to cuddle up next to her husband in front of the TV and she sobbed some more. He tried to comfort her.  At one point, her 4 year old saw her crying and said to his Daddy, "Mommie's sad!". She'd never cried in front of her son.  She cried some more.

She got up then and called her "sister in sobriety" (they both have same sponsor) and the friend listened and understood.  She encouraged her friend by saying, "Just don't drink today. You just have to not drink today. This will pass...."

Then she called her sponsor and shared what had gone on that day.... The sponsor listened.  At the end of the story, the sponsor explained to her that she was grieving....   Grieving!  And then it all made sense to her. She was grieving the loss of being able to drink "like normal people.?

Before she had even shared what her sponsor had told her, I too had the clear thought that this woman was grieving a very deep loss.  Grieving is so important in our recovery and I think most of us go through it without really knowing what's happening. 

As she continue with her story, I took out a piece of paper and drew a tombstone and engraved on it the following:

R.I.P.

"Shannon-the-'nonalcoholic'-who-could-drink-like-a-normal-person"

Died: 2/__/2010

May she rest in peace!

I gave the drawing to her at the end of the meeting. And she laughed and laughed as she read it. Then she shared it with her sober sister, and they both laughed and laughed.  And then I got two great hugs.

I did whisper to her later as I was leaving the meeting, that in regards to this false self (it's what people in AA are referring to--even though they don't know it!-- as the "ego")  that she needs to know that this "dead ego" may not really be dead: it can wake up at anytime and start whispering, "It's ok, you have just one...."  It's ok and she needed fear it's coming:  if she doesn't feed it, it will go back to sleep.

Sometimes, it takes a while before they really go in peace.

Take care!

Mike L.

Powerlessness (v5.2)

Powerless to stop
Even when I stopped.

Powerless to stop
Before I'd even started.

Powerless to stop
Then.

Powerless to stop
Now.

Powerlessness accepted
Freedom.

Powerlessness embraced
Strength.

Powerlessness discovered
Life!

Powerlessness forgotten:
Jails, Institutions...
DUIs, Treatment Centers.

Powerlessness:
A choice.

Recovery
or Death.

Powerlessness

Powerless to stop
Even when I stopped.

Powerless to stop
Before I'd even start.

Powerless to stop
Then.

Powerless to stop
Now.

Powerlessness accepted
Freedom.

Powerlessness embraced
Strength.

Powerlessness found
Life begins.

Again.

Poetic Writing

Yesterday I went to an early meeting and then met with a sponsee afterward for coffee and talk.  Leaving him for home and chores, I checked my email and found one from someone in the program who I barely know. This guy knew from some of my blogs that I really like an author named David Richo --- so he thought I'd like to know that David was doing a book signing at a local bookstore that afternoon.  I called the sponsee I'd just met with to let him know about the book signing because we had just been talking about some of Richo's books while we'd talked earlier that morning.  Both my sponsee and I were able to go to the book signing, he with his wife.  It was an amazing afternoon.

Richo's most recent book, "Being True to Life: Poetic Paths to Personal Growth" talks about how both the reading and writing of poetry can become an important part of one's spiritual work or practice.  As he was talking, he mentioned that many of us have had some really bad poetry teachers in our lives and that the damage done to poetic literature has been devastating.  That was the reason for his writing this book.  He dedicated it to all his poetry teachers.

As he talked about the book, I remembered back to college when I was taking a poetry class that I now realize killed off in me what had been a budding love of writing poetry.  This professor began the class by telling us that there was no one correct interpretation of a poem, that they were all open to a multitude of interpretations.  The class grade was going to be based on one midterm exam and a final exam.  None of the other work that we would turn in (mostly our interpretations of various poems) would have any impact on our grades.  I really enjoyed the class and the poetry it exposed.

The midterm was one question: interpret a single poem.  Several weeks later, I was devastated when I got my midterm back because on it was an "F".  Apparently I had found the one incorrect interpretation of this poem.  I somehow escaped the class with a C- (the final was to write a limrick and the only challenges were to not make it obscene and to avoid plagiarizing someone else's work) but yesterday I realized that after that class, I never again risked writing a poem.  In fact, I don't think until recently that I ever gave a poem more than a cursory onetime reading (Richo says any poem takes several readings before the meaning can be even lightly touched).  I interpreted all poems as "blah, blah, blah..." --- nothing of value.

I see now that in recent years I've slowly been recovering from this poetically damaging event back in college.  Poetic recovery began shortly after I got sober, which is when I developed a weird habit of memorizing certain passages or writings that I've found to be "beautiful" or "true".  By memorizing, I mean reading and reciting "beautiful" lines and paragraphs again and again and again and again....until they became song-like, musical and could be recited/sung aloud during long commutes to/from work every day...  Now I realize that many of these types of passages are the essence of poetry.  They are words that have somehow captured a deep truth about life and this truth has somehow struck me to my core.  I told this to Richo yesterday and he told me that the word "core" means our "heart".  That rung true for me.

I also shared with Richo that some months ago, I bought several more of his books---including this one on poetry.  What was strange, I told him, is that while he's becoming one of my favorite writers, I simply couldn't open this one particular book.  It's been sitting on my nightstand for weeks now and I couldn't get myself to open it.  Poetry was of absolutely no interest to me.  Yesterday, I understood why.  His sub-title contained the word "poetic"!  He laughed and said that when they were getting the book ready for publication, the original title had had the word "poetry" in the main title but they removed it because they were afraid that it would scare many people off!  So "poetry" got relegated to sub-titled status as a mere adjective.  And it still scared me off!

I also realized yesterday that I had fallen away from my routine of blogging.  It's been a month since my last blog.  In fact, CJ commented on my last blog yesterday and let me know that she was missing my blogs and wanted to know where I was.  I was glad to be missed.  [Of course, I wanted to snap back, "CJ, where have you! been!  Blog yourself!!!  Course, I wouldn't say something so mean and judgmental.]

I'd gotten distracted with other aspects of my life and my recovery and blogging had gotten pushed to the background.  Yesterday, I realized that writing is very important to me and my recovery.  I don't see blogging as poetry --- although sometimes I suppose there's "poetic" bits and pieces that accidentally get wedged in all the flow of words.  I want to play more with poetry soon.  Blogging comes easily to me.  I suspect that poetry takes more work, more discipline.  Editting.  Slicing/Dicing.  Listening.  Watching.  Being still.  Struck silly.

Yuck!  ;-}

OK, I'm back.  Will try to be more regular with the blogging.  Might share some of my poetry once I'm satisfied it's "done".  Cooked to imperfection.

Take care!

Mike L.