My Life After AA

The Serenity Prayer Part III

2012-01-28T09:48:00.000-05:00

It seems I have set myself adrift in penning this blog with regularity simply because of the lack of time I have had to sit down and write. But here goes as I sit on a flight down to Rio. (No actually Florida but the movie with Ginger and Fred was truly fun to watch) What makes me the person I am is the distinct lack of being able to let go of the idea that someone doesn’t like me. Now we all have had plenty of relationships that end up on the cutting room floor for reasons beyond and in our control. And what makes it particularly difficult for this alcoholic is the fact that when there is nothing I can do about a particular situation right here and right now I have an arduous time letting it go. Somehow my brain thinks that by holding onto it I give it priority and I am in a better position for resolution down the road. Often times these events are never what the mind conceives them to be and I seem to cling to the idea that until it is resolved I cannot engage in any pleasurable endeavors until such time that I can shut the doors on it.

What seems to help me is the Serenity Prayer because in the shortened version we use in AA meetings (penned by Niebuhr) I feel like it’s a mantra and by uttering the words it can give me peace amidst the chaos I create between my ears. And if I can just verbalize what is the worst that can happen I can start to get past it. Nietzsche said that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and these words put to music recently by Kelly Clarkson are a great lesson in remaining calm when things aren’t going according to plan. Just yesterday I was faced with a less than desirable phone call and yet encased in that same day was the best birthday of my life. I always thought that when something goes wrong everything goes wrong. It just isn’t so.

Emotional Sobriety

2012-01-14T11:17:00.000-05:00

“Hold on to yourself in relationships, be emotionally balanced, and maintain a healthy perspective on things that are upsetting.”

When I read these words it struck me that my emotional balance was an unhealthy one. Too often I listen to those with a contrarian’s view and examine it too microscopically hence I lose focus of what is the middle ground and I tip the scales with someone else’s foot. It is not for me to judge others or myself because I am not Solomon. I can’t weight what I think or what anyone else thinks too heavily else the perspective will be a selfish one. And it matters little if I make it all about me or all about them. It will be delusional to think that my emotional stability can be based how someone else feels about themselves or about me.

When I get upset now it is less about what is than what I think is. My mentor taught me that negative thoughts perceived through the mind without factual evidence to support the chatter in my head are not intuition only low self-esteem. And with facts I can act and not procrastinate. In this way when things arrive that are upsetting I don’t lose my footing.

Same Old Excuses

2012-01-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

Did you make it through the New Year without picking up? Or is it time (gulp) for your New Years resolution to take effect. Come on you must have an excuse up your sleeve to delay putting down the drink for at least another month or two. Let’s see what can you come up with. You could say you were meaning to stop but on second thought you really don’t think you have a problem and that you will cut back and just imbibe on the weekends. That seems like the most logical excuse that comes to mind. Or maybe you decided that you are going to quit smoking instead and to quit both at the same time just isn’t possible. I am sure you can come up with others. I don’t mean to be facetious after all it is your life.

2012: What Will it Mean For You

2012-01-01T15:01:00.000-05:00

And so a New Year has dawned once again. If Nostradamus had anything to say about it will mark the end of the world, as we know it. There is always the remote chance that he will have been right for some of us. There are those of us that will cease to exist this 2012, and leave only memories of an existence that might bring sweet tears to our loved ones as they reflect about us.

As alcoholics we can do something to make sure those tears aren’t bitter. If you’ve stopped drinking you know what I mean. Some of our wreckage will not be forgotten no matter how many acts of contrition or actual grace we’ve accumulated, but we can get a start on forgiveness from those we have harmed no matter how long the list is.

When I think about the benefits of not drinking the old Ben Franklin ledger of plusses and minuses comes to mind for me. The plus of active alcoholism if it has come to that leaves only a solitary reason and that is “taking our comfort” or as some Americans believe it to be an inalienable right mainly because it’s legal and everyone does it. If we just take the time to scribe the reasons not to drink the list will be off the page. It’s the one thing we can control to put down the drink. There is no excuse or extenuating circumstances or unique situation that can keep us from taking back our life it just might make that prediction by Nostradamus something for us only to muse about. Some old timers used to say try stopping for 90 days and if it’s no problem for you then by all means keep on tipping your glass and fill your gullet. But if it is as one might suspect 90 days will be too tall an order to stick to because our dependency on alcohol makes it our higher power.

Commit to Action

2011-12-27T15:22:00.000-05:00

There’s nothing like a drink to end the day to celebrate a job well done. That’s what earthlings can say and most of them can get away with it. Most of us have lost that privilege because we used to celebrate no matter how the day or the night before went. It was our wont to escape reality and if we did actually do a good job in the mocus state did we even remember what it was that was so good? I doubt it.

The week between Christmas and New Years can find us at a loose end. We might be for example in the middle of making our resolutions for 2012. Some of them might include a new diet, an exercise regimen or even in the case of those still sick and suffering the declaration to stop drinking. Resolutions rarely work because we usually lack the commitment to put those words into action. And let’s face it resolutions although the concept is a good one usually falls on deaf ears: our own. I found that it can help to tell our significant others that we have made these resolutions and in this way there is a social proof underway that we not only can’t disappoint ourselves but those we have made that commitment to as well. However, in the case of stopping the drink public announcements are just not strong enough and the only way we can put our words into action is to take it to a higher power.

Now a higher power doesn’t mean that you have to expose yourself to religion or even start gong to church what it does mean is that there is a power greater and it just so happens it’s not us. We can join AA or we can see a member of the clergy or a CASAC counselor or a therapist. We don’t have to do it alone because there is no token economy that gives us a commendation for doing it alone. If we are in a rowboat and the oars are provided we use them if we are to get anywhere other than where the tide takes us.

The week between Christmas and New Years can be the one where we start to take action and put down the drink without ceremony. Get dry and sober right here right now.

Why Not Right Now?

2011-12-25T11:36:00.000-05:00

Thinking about drinking this holiday season? Because in the back of your mind you’ve told yourself that that after New Year’s you will turn over the proverbial new leaf? And since it’s so close by somehow it seems like a real promise. In this way we can still take our comfort in a time when our drinking will get lost with the other earthlings that are over indulging too. We love to compare because it deflects us from looking at our behavior of a self-will run riot.

Trouble is that as there is no particular time to stop drinking. We make dates on a calendar in our delusional mind that give it more significance than right now. We lose ourselves in promises we’ve made over and over and broken more times than we’ve tied our shoes.

So no one will notice if we wait until January to start what needs to be begun today except ourselves. I can only tell you from experience not wisdom that there’s no time like the present to stop and the significance it will have next year will be better than any New Years resolution we’ve made all our lives.

Tears of a Man

2011-12-19T09:37:00.000-05:00

At a party last night my friends gathered to mark a dual celebration of Christmas and Birthday of a dear vulnerable man with the heart of a lion who sheds tears like the falling rain. I loved the transparency of his emotion and instead of erasing the tracks of his tears they made their way down the creases in his strong countenance like a winding river. I thought here was a man who found his balance between his anima and animus and the lucky woman at his side watched in love feeling both his tenacity and tenderness.

In my drinking life I had often felt the urge of my lachrymal glands but I would always stifle them thinking I had lost some of my masculinity but it was only regret that I was experiencing not true emotion. That’s how dysfunctional my drinking life was oblivious while intoxicated and filled with regret and empty promises of a sober lifestyle. I don’t miss drinking only the unlived life it kept me from.

Kill 'Em With Kindness

2011-12-08T21:31:00.002-05:00

I have mastered the heartache and heartburn being with my relatives on the holidays. Kill ‘em with kindness as it makes me forget all the transgressions I imagined they perpetrated on me and softens some of the emotional crimes I pulled on them.

The 5 Dollar Martini

2011-12-03T14:07:00.000-05:00

It has been a long time. 22 years ago my drink of choice, which was an Absolut dry Martini on the rocks with a twist, might have cost a 5 spot, but today 15 dollars might not fetch the premier vodka Grey Goose. 15 bucks can you imagine that? Maybe some of you newcomers might know firsthand just how costly it is to drink these days. A considerable hole in the pocket it would be even in today’s dollars to be drinking alcoholically.

My spin instructor was talking condescendingly about a restaurant offering this retro price of 5 skins for a martini as if it was heresy to imbibe anything but the top shelf brands. I thought to myself maybe that explanation might be just a bit snobbish but she is an earthling and can afford the high price of alcohol because she might just have one. But for us pros after the first drink we knew it didn’t matter if the vodka was Grey Goose or Smirnov and our pinky wasn’t raised as we gulped down the toxic clear elixir. Our goal wasn’t how to drink elegantly but only to drink as much as our liver could process and do it with the least amount of paper disappearing out of our wallet.

The 5-dollar martini might be a thing of the past and as long as I stay stopped the price will never change.

Mixed Drinks

2011-11-27T18:11:00.002-05:00

Some of the earthlings tell us that mixing drinks is never a good idea. What do they know? Do they really think there is a science to drinking in the right combination? Maybe it works for them but it never mattered for this alcoholic because if I drank enough I got drunk and it didn’t matter if I started with beer and ended with vodka.

Funny that this topic actually gets airplay but if we keep it simple and just rely on the fact that alcohol no matter what it is cloaked in: beer, whiskey, scotch, vodka or bourbon it still gets us inebriated.

Drinking and Drugging

2011-11-23T16:50:00.002-05:00

What a life we have left behind. What were we thinking? Did we really think that it would ever end? Was it simply that we were addicted and could not escape the compulsion? As I look back on it I can’t really say what the hell it was. My mind was obsessed with the next one and it simply crowded out the thought that a real life was actually taking place with or without me. And believe me I missed a helluva lot. I was a terrible partner, lousy son and an absentee brother. I was just too self absorbed to be thinking that anyone that still loved me was watching helpless as I went down in flames.

Divine providence intervened and I was rescued from an early demise. Drinking and drugging kept me from the unlived life, the one I am living now.

The Lash

2011-11-20T18:21:00.000-05:00

Think you might be invulnerable to alcohol now that the obsession to drink has left you? Not so fast Baba Boy. It’s been 8,119 days since my last drink and at a party recently I found myself handling and holding some of my friends’ drinks. There were bottles of beer and glasses of wine and mixed drinks that I held onto for several minutes at a time. For the first time in 194,855 hours I was within few inches of taking a sip. It wasn’t premeditated but I have always thought that the lash of alcohol was beyond its power over me.

My Friend Jimmy

2011-11-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

Sometimes my friend Jimmy is the person I lean on for the voice of reason mainly because he is no nonsense with a heart of gold. He usually gives me the usual AA dogma but it never is condescending. He doesn’t try to fix things only lets me see what an objective person would see that is not emotionally invested in neither the outcome nor the people, places and things of life’s situations.

I have never had luck with sponsors but a friend like Jim is nearly indispensable because when I call he is never far away and he always makes me smile and gives me focus when my lens is fogged. I like to think he needs me as well because when I call I get him out of him and AA has taught me that when we help someone else our own problems seem to shrink to manageable expectations and the outcomes are never as fearful as we had imagined. Do you have a friend like Jimmy? I am glad I do.

A Letter to Don Bisson

2011-11-10T17:46:00.000-05:00

Here is a man to know, Don Bisson.

Dear Don

I was blessed and I do mean blessed to have attended your silent contemplative retreat at Mariandale last month. Your gentle self-effacing style has (and pardon the new age word) resonated with me since then. I have listened to 4 of the 6 CD's of The Shadow and although I cannot tell anyone (not yet anyway) what they are about however I have found myself smiling and nodding throughout each CD. Thank you Don. You have inspired me to write about that conversation with temptation and I thank you for that.

If you might be interested: http://www.donbisson.org/

Fortitude

2011-10-29T14:15:00.000-04:00

It is by Merriam’s definition the strength of mind that enables a person to meet danger and bear pain with courage.

Well we certainly met danger but not necessarily with courage in fact courage had little to do with it. It usually came in the form of stupidity and even worse arrogance that the laws or nature just did not apply to us. If we were half in the bag there was little we cared about others and besides the next drink there was not much concern as to what happened to us either. Until of course it was time for us to wake from the black cloud of the night before.

Before we could enter the zone of fortitude however we had to go through the feeling of being paralyzed with fear. It was through fear that we would later be able to summon up the courage to face danger and bear unmistakable pain with courage. There is no time line that sobriety sets for this strength of character only the willingness to be in the right frame of mind for it to take hold.

Fortitude also lies in the strength of mind that we have made the decision to stop drinking. Some are sicker than others and this strength is not simply doing pushups in the parking lot, it takes fear that our previous life could come and take us away again to incarceration, insanity or even death. Sobriety can be a pink cloud but it’s more about us occupying time facing life on life’s terms something we never gave an askance look to.

The Wonder Drug

2011-10-24T23:01:00.000-04:00

When I came into AA 22 plus years ago I was desperate and knew that my drinking life was over. I did not have a clue how I could cope with life on life’s terms without the aid of alcohol. I had given up cocaine some 1000 days earlier and thought I could continue to drink socially but alas as I have chronicled here that was a futile thought as I soon realized just as cocaine took over my every waking thought so did alcohol. A drug is a drug as I learned in those smoky church basements.

Now after 3 failed marriages I have to take a look at another addiction and that is my addiction to love in the context of relationships. Although I do not feel desperate about it I do know that I have to “grow up” in terms of what I want in a relationship, what I will tolerate and what is expected of me. It is not enough that there be a tacit agreement about what the ground rules are. Too many times I have found that many things were just implied and not expressed. I know that I will never ever take a hostage again nor be one myself.

The tools of AA are applicable to just about any addiction, whether it be about eating, sex, love you name it the principles of AA can be just like aspirin: The wonder drug.

One Addiction With Another

2011-10-18T20:33:00.000-04:00

What happens when we stop drinking and we are faced with all this new time on our hands? We can go to meetings sure but I suspect that one or even two hours a day doesn’t come close to replicating the time spent thinking about the next drink, drinking itself and of course the recovery from the hangover most of us suffered through where there was little of anything constructive we filled those hours with.

There are plenty of things we can occupy our time with but finding what that exactly is might take some doing and some good old fashioned trial and error. For me it was becoming an avid classic movie fan and my collection of movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s started in earnest. At the time I put down the drink the VHS was still in vogue and I found myself in front of the television watching old Abbott and Costello movies that I had loved as a teenager. Fortunately I didn’t smoke so I didn’t start increasing my cigarette intake but what I did find was that I started exercising again and for me I found an instant nirvana of putting my body back together little by slowly.

I was a runner in my pre alcoholic life so it wasn’t that much of a stretch to put on my New Balance shoes and hit the roads, but for those that aren’t so inclined there are a myriad of things to do now in the 21st Century to occupy our minds and quell the savage desire that once ruled our lives. More recently as the severity of pounding from running was just too much for my joints I took up spinning for the last 21 months and it has afforded me a tremendous loss of weight and has given a shot in the arm to my self-esteem as I can actually take off my shirt again and not feel too self conscious.

What about you? I think one of the things that is most important is that we don’t take any human hostages and try and replace one addiction for another because the effects can be devastating and too many of us have gone back out again using and misusing relationships before we are even right with ourselves. More better as they say to take up an avocation that can give us satisfaction like reading or like me writing. Whatever it is we must occupy our minds with healthier addictions if we are ever to remain sober.

12-Step versus Medical Treatment

2011-10-15T12:26:00.000-04:00

On Linkedin.com a debate has erupted in the past month and I just had to jump in. The debate centers around medication focused treatments versus the 12-Step program most of us know intimately. I responded to a Doctor who says that the debate is a false dichotomy and that there is nothing in any medical treatment that says not to work the Steps. I thought how novel that was because it doesn’t have to be either or

Yours is the first post I have read on this subject and sober for 22 years plus using AA as my foundation all I can say is that it worked for me. AA never has much to say only the people in it. I think that for something that was born in 1935 when psychology and pharmacology was more in its infancy than it is today was revolutionary for the time. If not for AA where might all these other protocols be that claim to have a better answer than the one Bill and Bob did without all the technology at their disposal. Too many people want formulaic answers within three easy steps. And I always heard in my meetings that some are sicker than others and that some may need additional help AA never said it was the only way.

Making Amends

2011-10-14T21:01:00.000-04:00

I have been on a sabbatical for the last few weeks as my life has radically changed and I need to take a look at my own personal inventory and look more closely at those who I have harmed. No I don’t mean disappointed or made sad I mean those who I have harmed. The list is there and it will be my duty to make amends to all. I have let my resentments go after of course I have spoken them out loud in the company of another alcoholic that has nothing to gain or lose from my words. That is one thing that is essential when making amends and that is to air our dirty laundry with those that care but have no personal agenda with us. They can give us their opinion but if they are worth their salt they will just listen and say nothing unless of course we plead for their advice. Advices remember is like a part of our anatomy everyone has one.

The Other Side

2011-10-08T14:27:00.000-04:00

A word to those that suffer with the still sick and suffering. Not an easy life living with an active alcoholic. You busy yourself on a daily or even hourly basis with rationalizations and live with torture not knowing when it will ever end. Nevertheless you keep on keeping on. Is it out of pure love that you continue taking the abuse you wouldn’t endure for your best friend? You tell yourself he has a disease and he just can’t help himself. Or you hope and pray that he sees the error of his ways and will one day just snap out of it. Any normal person will if given half the chance.

There’s the rub the more you placate and sit idly by because you think you’re helpless the more mired and justified the active alcoholic becomes. If you stop and think that because you tolerate his behavior you have actually made your situation worse and given a permission slip for him to continue his drinking life you might have a different view. Some are sicker than others and that I truly believe because some of us will never escape from the lash of alcohol because we are constitutionally unable to.

So the question becomes where do you get off? How many chances do you give him? What lengths of pain and suffering will you endure? Not easy questions because most of the time we are not prepared to answer them. More on this topic if you want me to continue.

Unbreakable Part II

2011-10-01T08:56:00.002-04:00

There are times when I think my sobriety is unbreakable. Having had a summer filled with new friends that indulge in libations albeit in distinct moderation my “people, places and things” AA mantra was put to the test.

And my conclusion is that there is simply no reason for me to pick up a drink and become active again on any level and that includes ‘normal’ or moderate drinking. Alcohol is a toxin at least for this physiology. You may have a different view and conclude that once you have been ‘cured’ you can go back to becoming a social drinker. Well there is no room for that new age homily in my world. And there is no 21st Century protocol out there (and there are quite a few) that will convince me to the contrary. 1935 was the year AA was born and a huge cottage non-profit industry lives on some 76 years later. Those principles that for some might seem outdated are an operating system that functions without any virus for me. How does AA work? It works just fine.

The Proximating Cause

2011-09-18T14:09:00.000-04:00

As an alcoholic I continue to suffer from my character defects and shortcomings. And fortunately without the drink I can see them more clearly and at least have a beginner’s chance of abating them. In my active days drinking only exacerbated them but did not cause them. I have often heard that alcoholic drinking is responsible for some of the evil we do. I disagree. The decisions we make that we end up regretting are not due to alcohol per se I believe that those are learned behaviors we must un-learn through diligence, persistence and consistency. We can use AA or the help of a therapist to assist us in these aberrant behavior patterns. Simply blaming alcohol as the reason is the easier softer way. Alcohol is the proximating cause not the cause.

Intention

2011-09-09T22:17:00.000-04:00

Are your habits stronger than your intention? If the answer is in the affirmative, then work on strengthening your will. A pearl of wisdom I just gleaned from my ex-wife and maybe she was talking about me but that doesn’t matter because it hit me like a lightning bolt. I asked myself how much of my good intention over the years had gone awry when I had seemingly good motives to start with? Well if I look at some of my bad habits it becomes quite clear. I became sober but I was still engaging in bad habits and without me carrying out the discipline of not drinking into all of my affairs all I was a sober drunk. The key was for me that by using my will to stay stopped I had all I needed to work on the other character defects that kept intention always out of reach.

A.A. teaches us that it is our self will run riot that gets us into trouble. But that’s not the will she was talking about. It is the path the will must take if it is going to be successful with the intention we set out for. When some of us began to drink it was not with the intention to get drunk, it was to have fun and be convivial with our socializations with others. But what happens to the alcoholic is that instead of loosening our tongue alcohol became the path of destruction where intention of any kind was lost.

When we stopped drinking we used the tools of A.A. to get sober: Meetings, phone calls, a sponsor and staying away from people, places and things that brought us closer to the drink. However, breaking the habit of drinking took discipline and a strong will to change the compulsion of picking up. And once the habit of alcoholic drinking was broken we were on the path of our intention and that was to stay sober. But we couldn’t stop there because we were still plagued with bad habits some that were a result of drinking and some that were due to our dysfunctional personalities. We may have been dry but we were still not making sober decisions. Strengthening our will is putting the horse before the cart and not the other way around. Armed with a strong will our bad habits fall away and intention becomes not only easier but crystal clear as well.

The Enabler

2011-09-06T18:38:00.000-04:00

Ordinarily when we enable someone it doesn’t carry deleterious affects. But when it comes to alcoholics some of our earthling loved ones and friends do more harm than good when they try to enable our drinking and our misshapen attitudes that accompany our dis-ease with excuses for themselves and to anyone who might question why it is that they were putting up with us. Enabling takes many forms and it’s not just turning a blind eye to our alcoholic drinking. It includes making rationalizations and setting the table for us to continue our drinking.

Enabling can be a part time or a full time job for some depending on just how deep our addiction is. My ex-wife would buy me vodka and never let me run out of that liquid nitro. She was happy just not to have me snorting cocaine and my drinking was perfectly acceptable in her eyes because it was not an illegal substance and drinking was something everybody did.

A friend of mine who is loyal to a fault is constantly trying to rationalize why a close friend of his keeps relapsing. He thinks it’s because his friend needs a geographic change because they are lonely and have no car. In his mind he is being a good friend by sticking by his alcoholic friend. The point is enabling just makes it easier for the drinker in their life to continue picking up and can actually exacerbate things. We alcoholics when we think we can get away with our behavior will push the envelope. And when the alcoholic starts to get the idea that the enabler in their life is giving them a free pass they will manipulate by any means necessary. Tears, pleading and if that fails even outright intimidation like a spoiled child. The enabler might as well be just pouring and handing us the drink.

It’s funny because when we get sober we become intolerant of enablers even though our very drinking lives depended on having some of those pawns in our lives.

Drink of Choice

2011-09-01T20:49:00.000-04:00

Most of us if we considered ourselves connoisseurs of the demon rum had a drink of choice. After I put down my drug of choice cocaine I picked up vodka as the next best mind altering substance that most mimicked that devastating white powder. Although this is an AA blog we should touch on that drug somewhere along the line because it has devastating and sometimes everlasting effects on the user way beyond the pocketbook.

Back on topic about my DOC, vodka and it’s first cousin the martini had me in its web for quite some time, 1000 days as I have chronicled here and it was to me much like a narcotic as it had to be within arms reach at all times. I made sure that I always had a backup quart of Absolut in the freezer in case time found me at loose ends and an empty glass on my nightstand.

Of course if vodka wasn’t available beer or Dewar’s and soda would fill in but it was always vodka in my end of days before I was able to extinguish that nightmare existence of my life. My drink of choice never failed me and if I was careful as careful as a drunk could be, I usually didn’t drink too much the night before so I could pick up the night after. Vodka almost had a mind of its own over me until I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. It was a very quick way for me to get launched into my happy zone and unlike beer, which might take a full belly, vodka got me off until it was my time to turn myself off at night. The drink of choice is one sign that our ride is over if we are ever going to get off that dizzy merry go round.