Category Archives: Alcoholism

June 25, 2016 · 7:00 am

Reasons I Wasn’t an Alcoholic

04Julesshakespear73Writing the final exam for my college Shakespeare course, I had to close one eye to read the questions, since I was seeing double.  Not puking also required an occasional surge of resolve, and I had the spins.  All unfortunate.  What concerned me most, though, was my handwriting: it looked more as if a third grader were reflecting on Shakespeare’s intent than a college junior – one who adored his plays and knew many lines by heart – at least, ordinarily.  That exam pulled my final grade down to a B despite many A papers.  I think about it every time I see my transcript.

What was wrong with that picture?  About three hours.  That’s all I needed to sober up. Wisdom acquired?  For an 8:00AM exam, one should stop drinking, not at 3:00AM, as I had, but probably closer to midnight.  Having learned that lesson, I’d manage better next time.  It was a mistake – not a problem.

When a couple years later I drank a fifth of 151 in a few hours and passed out so deeply, nothing could wake me, that was clearly because no one at the housewarming party had warned me about 151 – that you had to drink it slower!  Who knew?!  Another mistake.

When, at my wedding celebration, I hovered a couple of steps behind Michael Dukakis, governor and guest of honor, imitating his every gesture and doubling over with laughter (I might have peed my nylons just a little), it was simply a shamewine_cheese my in-laws lacked a sense of humor!  Though, okay – I might have had a bit much.  But the bride gets to make a mistake, right?

When a few years later I attended a wine and cheese graduate school function with my (new) partner, told inappropriate stories, shattered a fancy wine glass, and passed out face down on the floor of an upstairs room, it was just – whoops! – another mistake.  Good thing I wasn’t lying in my own vomit, because I was a pretty classy English professor!

So I learned to do better next time!  Well, actually, um, not next time, but the time after that.  I learned I really didn’t like getting falling down drunk, so the next time I… got falling down drunk, I didn’t like it again…once it was over, so next time I wouldn’t do it – til I did.

What those people who claimed I had a problem with alcohol failed to realize was this: I loved alcohol.  I adored it.  It fixed me, it fixed you, it fixed the world – so everything could be okay.  How could that be a problem?  I just kept fucking up on the amount, was all.  I just kept overdoing a good thing.  But it was a good thing!  That I knew.  No one was going phase me with this “Louisa, you’re an alcoholic” bullshit.  Maybe I was one – but so what?  It was my way.  Nobody has the right to tell you to change that!

So, fuck ’em, I said.

Besides, I could list off a million reasons I wasn’t an alcoholic.  I…

  • Didn’t drink hard booze after I turned 26 – except when I did
  • Didn’t drink in the mornings – except when I started before noon
  • Didn’t lose my job or house – only chose to downsize
  • Didn’t get a DUI – because the cops appreciated my doe-eyed apologies
  • Didn’t black out and wake in strange places – just miraculously back home
  • Didn’t suffer DTs – just shook wildly, maybe a smidge of amorphous terror

As the years rolled by, however, and I continued to make unfortunate mistakes despite my lack of a problem with alcohol, a few liabilities did crop up, so my phrasing had to change a bit, like this:

  • Though I occasionally collided with door frames, I did so reminded of life’s bittersweet irony
  • Though I occasionally fell down, it really didn’t hurt
  • Though I attended keggers in my mid-30s, I did so from a worldly, intellectual perspective
  • Though I hit a car head on, I’d slowed down so much it hardly did anything
  • Though I cheated on partners, I did so secretly so it kind of didn’t happen
  • Though I might enjoy a glass of white wine while I cooked dinner, or perhaps a beer at lunch or while journalling, gardening, vacuuming, folding clothes, building a fence, watching TV, doing the dishes, clipping my nails, or taking a shower, I didn’t drink all the time
  • Though I hated myself, that was my business – and a fine reason to drink more

I could have gone on like that forever, with an answer for everything.  I don’t know why I didn’t.  I guess gradually the old threadbare idea that I’d manage better next time wore thinner and thinner.  At the same time, the prospect of any next time, any next anything, grew increasingly dull and even disgusting.  Though I think what actually defeated me, what drove me to break down and hit bottom and finally say ‘uncle,’ was that last point: hating myself.  The hate grew so intense – such white hot, pure acid, unmitigated and inescapable hate – that I simply could not stand to exist another day – drink or no drink.  So it was suicide or… what the hell, AA.

Meeting snowflake

Those of you reading this sober may know exactly what I’m talking about.  Some reading just a tad hungover may experience a twinge of recognition and whip their Monopoly-style NOT-THAT-BAD card from a back pocket.  No one can diagnose another person’s alcoholism.  But a word I discounted back then was honesty.  Today I know honesty is not a true/false prospect; it’s a matter of excavation.  And digging takes courage.

On January 29, 1995, whatever it is I call god removed my mania for drinking.  I’ve not had a drop since.  What could be more miraculous?  Deep down, just under our hearts, we can all sense our source, our core, our truth beyond knowing.  I used to drink to bury mine.  Today, with the help of my fellows, I strive to live by it.

 

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May 27, 2016 · 7:00 am

The Ultimate False God: Coolness

What is “coolness”?

Words are tricky.  This philosopher guy, Derrida, once pointed out that words and ideas are all attached to one another like a big web or network, but the web itself is attached to nothing.  The word/idea “rock” has nothing do with an actual lump of minerals, except in our collective memory.  The whole mass of meaning floats.  There’s no anchor.

So when I say “coolness,” we’ll have to at least take a second to figure out what I might mean.

No culture worships this quality more ardently than ours in the US.  The vast majority of our cultural icons embody it – figures emblematic of wild West lore, gangster lore, entertainment industry lore, and so on.  John Wayne.  Al Capone.  Drake?  We foist coolness on famous figures who eschewed it in real life, like Einstein or Lincoln, and even on certain animals like panthers or falcons.

Coolness is an aura of infallibility that rebuffs any weakness – including fu insecurity, confusion, or dependence that makes one vulnerable.  Coolness implies the individual is a source, a sun of personal charisma.  Even alienated characters, if they’re cool, attract the audience who “gets” them, just as each peer group defines its own style of cool.  Across the board, though, cool figures exude confidence – an immunity to bungling, embarrassment, and indecision that elevates them in the eyes of others.

But because words float around, we sometimes conflate coolness with positivity.  In conversation, we use “cool!” as a synonym for laudable, so we might potentially mix it up with goodness.  However, there’s a world of difference.  Take Mother Teresa for instance: what she did in Calcutta was “really cool,” but did she embody any of the “coolness” described above?  Would Kanye West rap about her?  Not exactly.

Alcoholics often drink to feel cool.  At least, as a practicing alcoholic, I did.  And you know what?  I succeeded with flying colors – again, and again, and again – in my own mind.  Of the thousands of drinks I took, the only one that failed to cool-ify me… was my last.

snoopy_joecoolToday, when I try to go back mentally and recreate that sense of “coolness,” what I arrive at is a sense of a force field, a glow of indifference highlighting me as subtly superior.  Louisa with a few drinks in her was undaunted by whatever (imagined) disapproval mainstream dolts cast her way.  Fuck ’em!  Some part of me watched myself and approved, finding ways to make you think I didn’t care what you thought.

Shitfaced, I was even cooler.  I became a rugged individual, a Rambo against social decorum, yet slinky and wily, sorta like Catwoman.  Your cool may differ.  Yet whether boisterous or aloof, we all seek the same sense of impervious, indifferent badassery – a condescending dismissal of the humanity around us.  We’re keen.  We’re cocky.  We know shit.

But all we’ve done, in reality, is swallow some liquid.

Sobriety, on the other hand, demands rigorous honesty.  People who cannot recover are “constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.”  In my eyes, coolness comes down to a form of inner dishonesty which, for us, can be lethal.  The friends I see struggling most in AA – the ones who keep relapsing, almost dying, or who eventually do die – are the ones I sense still worshipping this false god.

As hard as it may seem, rigorous honesty means giving up the illusion of coolness.  It means ceasing to worship at that altar, unmasking that ideal as empty and pointless.  It means grasping and accepting that everyone – not just us, but everyone – is fallible, vulnerable, incomplete, and often scared.  Sure, some people with emotional defenses close their minds to these flaws, but they still suffer them, and to the degree that they deny them, they will never find peace.

To be human is to not know what the fuck you’re doing at least half the time.  It’s struggling with worry and insecurity, wanting to be liked even when you don’t want to.  It’s meaning well, but having stuff not work out, and looking stupid.  We’re vulnerable, fragile, and frequently lost.  Coolness pretends to banish all this – but it lies.

To be human, fundamentally, is to be incomplete.  We are each of us a tiny bubble of life, little princebroken off from a greater source that is living-ness, the whole of god.  Being isolated is painful.  It’s hard to be sealed off in our yardage of skin, encapsulated in our lonely skulls – because our true essence is we.  God is we – the manifold of all beings.  For this reason, what fuels us most is connection to others – compassion, collaboration, love – not in our glory, but in our humbleness – our simplest human state.

Those who can’t stay sober – many are trying to worship both gods: the god of love and the god of “fuck off, bitches.”   Some are addicted to imagined admiration, but most are simply grasping for a life-ring.  A few still glorify partying as a form of rebellion: “Fuck, yeah, we gonna rip it up tonight!” (meaning they’re going to ingest things).  Others retreat into the cool of morose isolation, of just not giving a shit.

The antithesis of coolness is caring deeply.  That means we do give a shit about what matters, including others’ welfare.  We’re forever working toward something constructive, remaining true even when the going gets tough.  For me, the source that loans me the power to care passionately is god.  I have enough; I can take a risk and reach toward you.  Ironically, the more we renounce coolness, the greater our capacity to generate acts of goodness that could be deemed “cool.”

Only when I acknowledge that I’m not an island, when I admit to god all the weaknesses and wounds my ego denies, do I open myself to a loving power that completes me, rather than the drink that only  seems to.  Love – that energy we can pass on in a thousand forms, not of coolness, but of warmth – is ultimately the power that keeps us sober.

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May 13, 2016 · 7:00 am

Self-Loathing: it’s a thing

Whatever I write here, it’s going to  fail epically because my words can’t capture the feeling of self-loathing.  I’ll just end up looking like some pompous dork who thinks she knows shit, so she posts, “Hey, everybody!! I know ALL ABOUT self-loathing!  Yeah, um, it’s like, when you hate yourself!” All you guys reading are going to wince in response, saying, “Whoa–” and hurry to click your way outta here.  OMG – I’m so embarrassed.  Cause here it is, me again, tainting everything with that gross, defective me-ness and fucking it all up. Why? Because there’s just something fundamentally wrong with me! Cause I just plain SUCK!

Okay, that was a simulation.  Really I’m okay.  🙂  But if you didn’t recognize that mental path as familiar turf, you should probably skip this post. Chances are, if you’re an alcoholic, you know it well. Self-loathing is that voice that volunteers ruthlessly condemning “insight” when you’re tired or sick or PMSing  – or sometimes even when things are fine.

Gary-snail-spongebobSelf-loathing is particularly pronounced in alcoholics/addicts as the flipside of self-aggrandizement. We develop an oversized ego that attempts to compensate for our weak sense of self-worth. You can envision it as a big, technicolor-shelled snail waving antennae of “I’m so totally awesome!” that, when you flip it over, reveals the oozy slime of “I so totally suck!”  Scientifically speaking, relief derives from becoming a humble, right-sized little snail like Spongebob’s.  That’s why we need the 12 Steps.

Before I came to AA, I believed the voice of self-loathing was unique to me. As described in my addiction memoir, I first experienced it in preschool, a feeling that other kids could all consult a script I lacked.  In my teen years through recovery at 34, I thought of that voice as “brutal honesty” or “facing facts.” When it was on, any sense of my own basic okayness struck me as self-satisfied idiocy. It seemed to declare truths I’d always known deep down.

The only person I’d ever heard speak self-loathing was my alcoholic father. “As soon as I wake up,” he’d confess, “I say to myself, P—,” (our last name) “get your lazy butt out of bed! You’re gonna louse something up today, you no-good schlemiel!”  Sadly, Dad never got sober, and gradually his self-loathing developed an immunity to the alcohol that had once curbed it.

By contrast, when my sweet son was only 6, he cried to me one night before bed: “I just feel sorry for anyone who has to be around me, because I’m such a horrible person!  I don’t feel sorry for me, I feel sorry for them. I just wish I could be anybody else!  I hate me!”

Hugging him didn’t help.  Telling him he was wonderful didn’t help. What helped was explaining to him what I’m about to tell you.

Self-loathing is a thing.  It’s a voice, an entity unto itself, a part of our mind that tells us the same stuff over and over.  My sponsor taught me to call it “the worm.” My son and I named it “the mean voice.”

Having a name for self-loathing, recognizing its voice self_hating_by_lithraelwhen it speaks, takes away half of its power. In meetings, when I first heard others describe their self-loathing, I was floored. How could John possibly experience self-loathing? He’s such a wonderful guy!  Karen is so funny and smart – how could she possibly think she’s shit?

In my experience, most non-recovered alcoholics (and some Al-Anons) vacillate between thinking they’re the shit, and thinking they’re a piece of shit.  Normies must experience this phenomenon too, but A) I doubt their swings are as extreme, and B) people outside the program rarely admit to things that make no sense, even to themselves.  We in recovery, however, admit to everything and thus discover we’re not alone, which opens the way to healing.

Getting rid of self-loathing entirely is not, at least in my experience, possible.  What we can do through the steps is label its voice and take away its megaphone to render it fairly harmless.

DaisySteps 4 and 5 showed me my fundamental human foibles. Steps 6 and 7 narrowed them to flaws I could, with god’s help, stop practicing – self-pity, self- importance, and harsh judgement of others – all platforms on which self-loathing stands.  Steps 8 and 9 allowed me to set straight past wrongs to arrive at a clean, guilt-free slate.  Today steps 10, 11, and 12 keep me current, connected, and useful.

How does this weaken our sidekick, self-loathing?  Working those steps and many years of living a spiritually-based life have drawn from my core a certainty that god loves me. Despite many human shortcomings, I am fundamentally good – because god guides me toward goodness.  Ultimately, that’s the sunlight the vampire of self-loathing can’t endure.

And yet – even after 21 years of sobriety – self-loathing still won’t die.  It hurls insults at random intervals.  “You’re alone cause you’re boring and no one wants to be with you!” “You’re wrong and shameful!”  “You’re full of inherent, bumbling dumbness!”

Coprolalia

It helps to make friends with that voice.  Like someone suffering coprolalia – the Tourrette’s symptom of uttering profanity – it just can’t keep quiet!  It’s trying to beat the world to the punch, blurt out the worst so no one else can surprise us with it.  Stripped of its accusations, self-loathing amounts to nothing but another guise of fear.

The quickest strategy I’ve ever heard for dealing with self-loathing is my friend Brenda’s. She named her self-loathing voice Carl.  Why Carl?  No particular reason.  Now, whenever it crops up and tells her she’s a failure, no one likes her, etc., she just rolls her eyes and says simply, “Shut up, Carl.”

It works!

Did John F. Kennedy ever think incredibly dumb things or occasionally fart with a quizzical inflection?  Of course he did!  But he alone knew it.  Because we know ourselves more intimately than does anyone else alive, we must love ourselves – screw-ups and all – with equal fervor and humility.

Take that, self-loathing!

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April 15, 2016 · 7:00 am

Six Reasons I “still go to those meetings”

Sometimes if I share that I’m 21 years sober, people unfamiliar with AA will ask: “You don’t still go to those meetings, do you?”

The answer is, hell yes!  Yes, yes, YES!!!  And I hope I always get to!

The fact is, I’m talking about something completely different than they are.  They’re thinking of whatever bullshit AA they’ve seen on TV and in movies.  Yuck!  The actors always use this solemn, self-deprecating tone of confession, or else they blurt out horrific embarrassments that cue mindless laughter.  I’m always angered when I see these depictions.  They have nothing to do with the AA I adore.

Here’s a photo of my most recent AA meeting (that preserves anonymity):

Tiger AA

We’re all former loners and shy people who’ve hiked to the top of 3,000′ Tiger Mountain for a meeting that happens there every Sunday morning in all kinds of weather.  Coffee’s in the middle – people bring big thermoses – and treats of every description, from lemon bars to fresh baked calzones, circulate in plastic containers.  Why hold an AA meeting up in the mountains?  Because it’s fun!  Because friendship, exercise, nature, and recovery are all great things!

Last week before my old homegroup, a friend and I met downtown for coffee, which was tremendous fun.  The two of us differ drastically (he’s half my age, Korean-born, and hip), but because of our shared disease and the way of life that cures it, “there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful” (17).

When this friend, back from relapse with about a year sober, chaired the meeting of 150-200 recovering drunks, he called on a young woman who raised an interesting question.  She said, “I don’t understand why, even though I have 11 years sober and I’m a yoga instructor with my own spiritual practice and I read spiritual books and meditate and pray, I still get crazy if I go too long without a meeting.  Why is that?”

Answer: Because she’s still an alcoholic.

Six Reasons I’ll Always Go to Meetings

  1. Treating fear and ego: Alcoholism is a dis-ease of maladjustment to life, a suffering in selfhood and social interaction that we tried to alleviate with a dopamine-boosting neurotoxin – until that strategy began to kill us.  But even after we’ve stopped drinking and worked the steps, whenever that maladjustment crops up – whether as anxiety, resentment, or self-loathing – ego volunteers (“pick me! pick me!”) to fix it.  Ego puffs us up as “special,” turning us away from god and love, which brings on all the old feelings.  In meetings, as we connect via others’ shares, we remember the common humanity our stepwork revealed.  Hearing others lay out their inner experience, a privilege we find nowhere else in our culture, reopens our hearts.
  2. Reminders of what it’s like out there: Only in meetings do I witness this story in a way I can’t doubt: “I was doing well so I tapered my meetings.  I decided I had my act more together now so I could drink normally, and I did great for a couple weeks: I’d have a drink or two and stop.  But then it took off, worse than ever, and I had no brakes…”  The person isn’t just saying this.  You can see it.  You can hear it.  My friend Carl came back a near skeleton.  Others end up in the psyche ward.  And some just plain old wanna die.
  3. Chances to help others, to be of use:  Meetings give an opportunity for service work, whether by making the coffee or reaching out to someone who’s new or hurting.  It’s a spiritual axiom that when I give, I get.
  4. Learning from others: At almost every meeting, myrolodex internal Rolodex of AA wisdom gets updated with cool stuff – like this Rolodex metaphor!  Last spring I learned of Drop the Rock, a great book on Steps 6 and 7.  A month ago I heard the excellent term “awfulizer” for that part of my mind that jumps to worst case scenario.
  5. Laughter: Succinctly stated truths of experience we’d thought to be ours alone are what drive all great stand-up comedy.  My fellows are fuckin’ hilarious.  And laughter heals.
  6. Love, love, love:  At that big meeting, another friend responded to the young woman’s question about why we need meetings:  “It’s the love. This room is full of it.  We know each other, we love each other.  We’re family. We’re like a good mafia.”  He pointed out people here and there, naming memories that connected them.  To my friend, the chair, he said, “We saw you when you were out there, man, and it hurt my heart.  You were ridin’ your bike, you had this big ole abscess on your arm and your eyes were dim and you’re all like, ‘It’s cool!’  But we knew it wasn’t.  I’m so glad you made it back, man!”

Threads connected me, too, to so many in that room.  Over there was the young woman with multiple sclerosis I called from a parking lot in a panic at my cancer diagnosis, who comforted me and has miraculously cured her own symptoms.  Here was that wise-ass guy I thought would never make it, whom I just saw at Starbucks reading the Big Book to a teenage junkie – also present.  That suicidal girl I sat down with on those steps twelve years ago, who now has a beautiful marriage and toddler and sometimes cuts my hair – I sent her a smile.

rainbow_heart

As for the “good mafia” part – it’s true we take care of each other.  I’ve edited cover letters, resumes, and financial aid requests that helped people move ahead in life.  Alcoholics have built my deck, given me (amazing) facials, fixed my car, rewired my home, split my firewood, built my website, changed my locks, fixed my sink, and more – much of it for free.  And what’s more, all borrowed when I stood atop the 14,380′ summit of Mount Rainier the first time were my ice axe, crampons, helmet, harness, gaters, shell pants, and goggles – from alcoholic climbers.  Who else does that?

We’re not drunk.

We’re not dead or wishing we were, as we did for years.

Because the truth is, alcoholism made only one mistake: it’s the same for all of us (Rolodex item #557).  By meeting and sharing our stories, we call out this disease on its cunning, insidious lies and take steps toward a higher power that kicks its hoary ass.

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April 2, 2016 · 7:00 am

Anxiety vs. Prayer

I’m often scared.  A lot has changed for me in 21 years of sobriety, but serenity still comes and goes.  Recently, it went.  I don’t know if it’s because something pretty traumatic happened to me about a year ago or because some part of my brain just kicks in now and then to broadcast a low-level, relentless alarm: We’re in trouble.  We’ve screwed up.  Shit is NOT okay.Anxiety

Hello, anxiety!

By definition, anxiety’s empty and formless, like someone invisible. Since our brains can’t get a handle on that ambiguous “arggghhh,” we tend to clothe it in various worries.  Anxiety almost never appears in the nude.

For me, it’s most often dressed as finances: I don’t make enough money, so X will happen.  But it can sport all kinds of other great outfits: I’m missing out, getting old, doing it wrong, gonna be alone, or have cancer again.  Maybe ISIS will seize a nuke, the “biggie” earthquake will flatten Seattle, or global warming and ocean acids will collapse our ecosystem.  What if a massive asteroid collides with Earth, wiping out life on our planet?  Did I remember to turn off the stove?

This is not to say none of these issues merit concern.  That’s why they lookcyrus-money-dress so damn foxy on anxiety!  But concern about a particular issue is not the same as a distrust of life itself.  My ego is trying to save me.  It’s remembering past pains and rejections and anticipating more, trying to prep me to outsmart them so I can lessen the blow of impending disaster.

Except – there’s nothing wrong.

A major difference between addiction and sobriety lies in awareness.  When I was drinking, I assumed all my thoughts held validity, so I needed a big gun like booze to blow them out of the water, never mind what else I destroyed.  The greatest gift from the 12 Steps has been the detachment to recognize my thoughts and feelings – even intense ones – as brain activity (see Eckhart Tolle and Gabor Mate) and turn to god for help with them.

For instance, the other morning I recognized a feeling of alarm churning around in my guts like some satellite view of a hurricane, radiating dread.  It was so intense that while my son was getting ready for school, I went back upstairs and prayed.

I prayed in frantic whispers: “You guys, you guys!” (how I address god and whoever else is out there) “I’m so scared!  I can’t do it!  I just can’t do it!  It’s so hard!”  I meant the job of being human, showing up for another day, earning a living – you name it.  “I need you!  I need to know you’re there!”  I was bawling.  Tears spilled down my cheeks, and in the instant of that sensation, a big packet of meaning downloaded.  It said:

1)  You get to be a spirit within a body, energy invested in matter.  No, it’s not easy – we never said it was.  Bodies are laden with weighty emotion.  But that soul-incarnate splice is incredibly precious.  What you’re feeling right now is a gift larger than you can realize.

2)  You know we’re here!  Don’t pretend you don’t!

3)  You’ve been provided everything you need to stay close to us.  We gave you a kit.  It’s called Loving- but you have to assemble it!  Love your life, love all there is – and we will pour through you into the world and you will know joy.

That “kit” idea brought up the image of someone shivering in the cold while beside them lay a disregarded supply of kindling, fuel, and matches.  I have to COMBUST my love for life.  That’s my job, and mine alone.  So I started, right there in the chair.  My flame felt tiny at first: I loved my son, my dog, our home.  But throughout the day the feeling kindled and spread to include people who crossed my path, the sky, the trees.  Pretty soon, I could feel love and gratitude for everything in my life.  Anxiety shrank.

Sister meI began to envision a sister-me in a 3rd world country whose anxiety was far less because she had real needs to fill, basic essentials on Maslow’s Triangle.  She knew she was okay because the values of her culture were steady: she was close to family, she had a role to play, and a spiritual tradition to follow.  And she had a natural humility – no sense that she had to compete to prove her specialness.

I’ve always felt guilty for enjoying the luxuries of life in a 1st world country, but her image showed me that, really, life in the US amounts to unrelenting combat in a spiritual Colosseum.  We’re constantly goaded and attacked by marketing ploys conveying the insidious message: YOU LACK something crucial~!  Every day some highly acclaimed specialist informs us of a critical breakthrough in how to wipe our frickin’ noses.  We’re never done.  We’re never okay.

Journal 1 copyI found myself yearning for the self I become on solo long-distance hikes.  After a few days and nights alone in the mountains I can recall that I’m just a critter, that I need only to live – and not in some hip, smarty-pants way.  On the trail my defunct cell phone is unmasked as a ridiculously self-important slab of circuits; I want to chuck it in a lake.  I make resolutions never to brain-lock with my computer  – email, Facebook, videos, “we know best” articles – ever a-fucking-gain!

Then I come home, and urban culture subsumes all my resolve in its anxiety-inducing gridlock of doom and demand.

I’m realizing that I can’t uproot anxiety, but I can choose to detach and invest my attention elsewhere – into praying earnestly, loving actively, and living simply.  Today, I don’t need a drink that will tweak my brain chemistry.  I just need to remember that, powered by god, I’m far more, far greater than my poor, scared little thoughts.

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March 5, 2016 · 6:30 am

The Power of Powerlessness

About a year ago, I used to frequently pass a billboard claiming thousands of “stubborn” men who avoided seeing a doctor would die that year.  This photo isn’t from my street, but our local billboard met with the same (funny) response:

Stubbornness

 

While I don’t know about the billboard’s claim, I do know when it comes to stubborn alcoholics, even more will NOT seek out a program of recovery this year, which is why in the U.S. alone 2.5 million years of potential life will be lost, shortening by an average of 30 years the lives of those 88,000 who’ll die.*  Instead, despite an inner knowledge that they’re addicted to alcohol, millions will (yet again) marshal their willpower to decide not to drink so much.  Never mind how many times such resolutions have failed!  Never mind that they and everyone they live with can recognize night after night that they’re drunk as usual!  They’ll simply refuse to accept the fact that they’re powerless over alcohol.

The Big Book tells us, “The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.  The persistence of this illusion is astonishing.  Many pursue it to the gates of insanity or death.”**  But even more simply resign themselves to permitting the self-disgust, degradation, and pathetic caricature of chronic drunkenness to taint their inmost conscience and closest relationships for the rest of their lives.

Why?  Because they believe so ardently in the preeminence of their own minds!  They insist their brains have the power to enact choices of free will that, research increasingly indicates, they simply do not have.  For an addict, Emersonian self-reliance means, in fact, an imprisoning cycle rather than freedom of choice.

Gabor Maté, in his book on addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, explains our predicament as follows:

We may say, then, that in the world of the psyche, freedom is a relative concept: the power to choose exists only when our automatic mental mechanisms are subject to those brain systems that are able to maintain conscious awareness…

Electrical studies of brain function show that… the interval between awareness of the impulse and the activation of the… impulse is only one-tenth to one-fifth of a second.  Amazingly, it’s only in this briefest of intervals that the [cerebral] cortex can suppress behavior it judges to be inappropriate. …[But] in the split second before the impulse emerges into awareness… the brain carries out what is called preattentive analysis… the unconscious evaluation of what [is]…essential or irrelevant, valuable or worthless.  The cortex is primed to select actions that will achieve [these] goals…

“Those habit structures are so incredibly robust, and once they form in the nervous system, they will guide behavior without free choice.”***

In other words, before we even know we’ve thought of having a drink, the brain has cleared the impulse.  The cortex may occasionally summon a “but wait!’ counter-insurgence, but more often the drink idea advances to GO and collects $200.  Maté calls this condition “brain lock.”  AA calls it the “curious mental blank spot.”  In either case, with an internal sigh of “oh well!” we take the drink (just this one time) and tell ourselves we decided to.Broken Brain

Our brains are broken.  They cannot be fixed.

 ~

I knew none of this when I came to AA wanting to die.  When I first heard the statement, “I can’t fix my broken brain with my broken brain,” so much became clear to me!  For one thing, I understood why I’d fought tooth and nail against “surrendering” to AA.  Who wants to admit she can’t trust her own brain?  No one.

The ego lays claim to omniscience, at least within ourselves: I know all about me.  My thoughts are accurate.  To admit a glitch in my thinking has rendered me unable to choose, unable to correct myself, unable even to see what I’m doing while I’m doing it – this goes against all instinct.  It’s on par with admitting mental illness or, as Step 2 forces us to swallow, insanity.

Yet a deeper part of me – my soul –  heard the resounding truth of that phrase.  I realized I had no answers, and that AA, no matter how foreign, offered one.

So I gave up.Step1

I admitted I was powerless.

And do you know what happened?  Miracles!

First, I quit drinking.  Second, I began to see I was maladapted to living, that I’d never developed the skills and insight to “manage” life’s choices.  Third,  I discovered it wasn’t too late to learn.

The remaining 11 steps reconnected me to the god of goodness I’d known in earliest childhood – to the nurturing powers of Love and divine wisdom.  To maintain contact with them, all I had to do was adopt the 12 steps as a way of life.

At first, mind you, that idea repulsed me, too.

Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant?  Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done?  Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer?  Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry AA’s message to the next sufferer? ***

Not early sobriety Louisa!  I did these things because I had to.  Today I do them because I get to – because they fill me with freedom and fulfillment.  Drunk, I blathered about climbing Mount Rainier.  Sober, I did it – 3 times!  Drunk, I dreamed of writing a book.  Sober, I wrote it – check the sidebar!  Drunk, I longed desperately to be liked.  Sober, I love more people than I’d ever have believed possible.

Mount_Rainier_from_northwest

Mount Rainier: click to enlarge:  14,411′

THAT is power, guys.  It’s just not mine.

~

The most important 1st step is the one I take today, the one I re-experience every morning, every hour.  My compulsion to drink is 100 times stronger than my cortex’s resistance.  Alcohol kicks my ass, has its way, calls the shots, rules my mind.  But luckily, it’s the same for you!  Alone, each of us has no power to fight this thing.  We bloat, soggy and mollified in the dregs of our lonely cups.  But connected to god and fellow alcoholics through AA, we tap into a Power that lifts us above the limitations of our broken brains – to heights we never dared imagine.

 

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* http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm
** Alcoholics Anonymous p. 30
*** In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Chpt. 26

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February 20, 2016 · 7:00 am

What Alcohol Did; What god Does

Pain happens, starting when we’re young. In our efforts to evade it, we suppress a whole array of feelings, turning away and denying them. But like an ignored roommate sharing the small apartment of our psyches, the pain lives on. It doesn’t grow up. It stays the age we were when the trauma happened. Countless negative beliefs systems sprout to position it – that we’re not good enough, that others will reject our true selves, so we need to strategize to please them.  We try.  Again we miss the mark and endure more pain, the rabble of negativity within us creating a ceaseless inner shitstorm.

It sucks – the shitstorm does.  Our psyches can become a hellhole.  In AA, we speak of the shitty committee.

Shitty Committee

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What Alcohol Did for Me
The first time I got wasted, alcohol shrank that entire tornado of pain and fear so small it could fit inside a harmless little bubble and float off somewhere in my mind’s periphery – totally irrelevant.  Hey!  I was fine, you were fine, and if someone didn’t like us, fuck ‘em. My psyche’s protective walls fell away so the world opened up as a land of plenty, beautiful and safe. Life was so damn easy!  Cocaine tripled that effect*, adding an intense interest and delight in all things.

I wanted that feeling again.  And again.  Addiction promises a shortcut, an escape from ourselves. It’s that hope, that sweet anticipation of GOOD STUFF that lures us every time to jump on it again. Something as simple as a red notification number on Facebook can trigger a spurt of anticipatory endorphins in our minds – this is gonna be good! This cheesecake, this big sale, this cocaine porn winning horse remodel facelift romance booze is gonna lift me right out of the bad stuff, set me on top, make being me so smooth!  Dopamine levels surge, causing us to “forget” all the pain in our lives.

“Thus addiction… arises in a brain system that governs the most powerful emotional dynamic in human existence: the attachment instinct.  Love.”  Gabor Maté is writing here of opiates, but the same principle applies to all drugs that impact our dopamine levels – including alcohol.

sunshine1That first perfect, blissful high is, in my opinion, reminiscent of heaven.  Literally.  Hear the story of anyone who’s had a Near Death Experience (NDE) in which they went to the Light, and they’ll tell you they were permeated by an ovewhelming Love, a brilliance so powerful it left no room for anything bad. The Light is the unfiltered energy of Love that is not incarnate, not trapped in a limiting body; it is whence we originate, what powers us here, and what we’ll return to. And it’s a memory of bliss for which we hunger desperately as we trudge through the difficulties of being human.

So what am I saying?  That consciousness from a brain artificially flooded with dopamine resembles consciousness in heaven?  Yep.  ‘Fraid so.  That’s why many addicts sacrifice their lives in pursuit of it.  Un/fortunately, our brains respond to such bombardment by curtailing both production of and receptors for dopamine, so life without using more becomes increasingly hellish – and that change persists for years.

What god Does for Me
…is not as fast or dramatic, but it works: god gives me the self-compassion to heal my own wounds.  The message of the Big Book is love.  In the rooms we’re surrounded with it as we dare to take that First Step, to admit openly, “You guys, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing!!”  From that humility, we tap an “an inner resource” – god as we understand it – which begins to edge out ego as our guide for living.  The more love we accept from god, the more we have to offer others, and vice versa.  For the first time, we can love imperfect people from the standpoint of our own imperfection.  In other words, as working the steps gradually teaches us compassion for others, we also develop it for ourselves.  We become conduits of the Light.

“You have to feel it to heal it,” my cousin and I like to say.  In scaredgirlmeditation I go in looking for that little 9-year-old Louisa who was so blighted by shame, and I ask her to tell me where it still hurts.  I feel it, too; I grieve with her; I comfort her.  You don’t have to do anything, I tell her. You can just be you, and I’ll love you.  I can promise her this because my god has promised it to me. At the core of Al-Anon, ACA, and SLAA, named either directly or indirectly, is the healing power of self-parenting. That’s the nexus of change.  We can play both roles, loving and healing our past selves.

Today my inner little girl is pretty happy.  She got banged up rather badly in my recent break-up, but she’s convalescing well.  We share an open world infused with goodness – because I perceive god in all I encounter.  At times I do experience bliss – basking in the beauty of the mountains, laughing myself loopy with sober friends, or witnessing the miracle of my sweet son. It’s not a cheap bliss, either: it’s the real McCoy, earned through hard spiritual work – that freedom I once faked temporarily with alcohol and drugs.  And like heaven, it’s all about love.

~

Watch This:
Here’s a simple animation that depicts volumes about addiction in a brief 4.5 minutes.  Strangely, watching it makes me cry.

I’m guessing Andreas Hykade, the film’s German creator, knew addiction well. It’s not by coincidence that our protagonist is a kiwi, a flightless bird.  We all feel like that – denied the soaring others pull off.  Neither is the grating step-by-step sound effect accidental. Real life is one step at a time and arduously incremental compared to the smooth bliss of intoxication. Even the images’ barren simplicity reflects the stark focus of addiction. An animation teacher at Harvard, Hykade chose a simple line drawing over every state-of-the-art visual effect at his disposal.

NUGGETS

Kiwi addict

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So many of us never escape that final darkness.  If you have, take a moment for gratitude.

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* Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, p.153

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February 6, 2016 · 7:40 am

10 Principles for Living Sober

FoodinBagA few weeks ago, I asked a clerk and bagger if they’d watch the sack of groceries I’d just bought while I ran back for another item.  When I returned, my groceries were gone and they felt terrible – so terrible that the bagger walked the aisles with me trying to help me remember what I’d bought.  But without the receipt we couldn’t recall much.  I’d picked up a number of things on impulse.

“You know,” she said after we’d covered the store with little success, “this deal is on us.  Really, you can just fill a bag with–.”

“Corn flakes!” I remembered.

But I soon drew another blank, so she urged a little harder. “It ends up as a theft write off, so you can just go for it.  Anything you want is fine with us!”

True, I’m a single mom and always short of money, so almost everything I looked at, I wanted.  Fancy jams and teas – mmm.  Maple syrup.  Organic soaps.  Mega-vitamins.

I left with a half-filled bag containing only what I distinctly remembered buying.

Question:  Why?  Am I going for sainthood?  Do I get a bang out of feeling superior?  Do I think god keeps score?

Answer: None of the above.  The fact is, I’m a doomed alcoholic who’s graced with sobriety one day at a time.  I’m not mindlessly drinking myself to death right now due solely to the power and guidance of my new employer – god as I understand god.  In each situation, I have just one prime directive: Do the most good I can for all concerned. 

The store was concerned; having my stuff stolen did not mean I could steal from it.

During active alcoholism, I lived by a slightly different prime directive: Do the most good I can for Louisa.  In every situation, I considered what would most benefit me.  What would make me feel good?  What might pay off later by making me feel even better?  If there were negative consequences, what eventual rewards might outweigh them? Certain people’s esteem was worth more than others’ pain or anger.  Gradually, navigating by my own best interest, I ruined my life.

Ruby slippersSo I quit that game.  What I seek now is clarity.  How I find it is by living in alignment with my HP’s prime directive, which I will here attempt to unravel as my own 10 principles for living sober gleaned from the Big Book, my fellows, and my own stepwork. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Be where you say you’ll be and do what you say you’ll do.  (Choose Integrity)

2. Think of others as you’d have them think of you.  (Choose compassion)

3. Be honest with yourself always, and with others short of reckless harm. (Choose reality)

4. Give as much kindness as you possibly can to every being you encounter. (Choose love) 

5. Avoid gossip – and envy, which fuels internal gossip. (Choose respect)

6. Do not flirt either as or with a committed person. (Choose honor)

7. Let others be in charge of what’s best for them. (Choose detachment)

8. Pay attention to all you do and how it squares with your values. (Choose awareness)

9. Be grateful for everything – everything – everything. (Choose humility)

10.  Know that god loves you the same way you love small, helpless creatures, only a billion times more – whether you’re in your body or out of it – so try loving yourself that way, and love god for loving the world.  (Choose faith)

~

Now that I’ve written them all out, it looks like an awful lot of rules!  But I don’t think of them distinctly – more as Miguel Ruiz’s Fourth Agreement, “Always do your best.”

My agreement with god – my way of acknowledging  sobriety as a gift I’m graced with – is simply to try my best in each situation to do the most good I can for all concerned,  which means applying the above 10 principles.  For example, #3 and #8 mean I don’t eat meat by denying the horrors of factory ‘farms,’ or even shop at Walmart; #4 means being of service.  Sometimes the rules conflict and I have to work out what “most good” means.  For instance, to follow #5 – don’t gossip – I may reply “I don’t know” when I pretty much do.  Or to fulfill #6 – don’t flirt – I may pretend to be indifferent when I’m not.  But those bits of dishonesty fall under the “short of reckless harm” proviso in #3.

Then there’s the Al-Anon piece.  Up until a few years ago, I thought #4 – giving kindness and love – was to be practiced unconditionally.  You could treat me like shit and I’d just keep showing up with love, giving you the benefit of the doubt and killin’ you with kindness.  Al-Anon’s “Don’t be a doormat” applied, I assumed, only to codependent wives and mothers slaving selflessly for those who used them.

It took blatant abuse from those closest to me to drive home the fact that I need to recognize and respond to toxicity in others. People’s behavior tells me what they’re made of.  If I overlook continuous patterns, I’m lying to both myself and them.

Detachment (#7), I’ve learned, applies to letting other people think of me as they choose: I can’t make them understand me.  I can’t make them return goodwill no matter how much I beam their way.  At a certain point, loving myself as god loves me (#10) means I have to set boundaries.  Tortoises carry shells and roses sprout thorns for good reason: we often need protection to hold our own.

tortoise-roseOf course there are plenty of times I screw up – times I choose fear, choose anger, choose self.  Sometimes I wallow in loneliness and self-pity.  Plus I once ordered a cheap tent from Walmart.  But I never give up and say “fuck doing what’s right.”  As soon as clarity returns, I own my mistakes and do my best to clean things up.  It’s actually the easier, softer way, because I get to live in a beautiful, love-bright world with like-minded people.

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January 9, 2016 · 5:50 am

AA Newcomer Fears

My newest sponsee and I were reading the Big Book together the other night, with me passing on to her all the margin notes my sponsor passed on to me so many years ago. When we got to this passage in The Doctor’s Opinion, I had her change the pronouns as my sponsor had had me do:

Men and women I drink essentially because they I like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they I admit it is injurious, they I cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them me, their my alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are I am restless, irritable and discontented, unless they I can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they I see others taking with impunity. After they I have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they I pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person I can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his my recovery.

Next I asked her (as I’d been asked) to read it aloud and tell me if she identified.  Over the years, the response has varied, but for newcomers seeing this passage for the first time, it’s often tears.  One tough, independent woman of Inuit descent, single mom to a disabled boy, could not finish reading the passage  for weeping.  She murmured, “This is me.  This is my life.”

(But her life changed.  She’s been sober nine years.)

My current sponsee has a few years sober, but she, too, was moved.  In the silence following her simple “Yes,” I could see her  travel back in time.  She said, “I remember… I came home after my first AA meeting, and I sat on the couch, and I just cried and cried and cried.  Life seemed over.  I couldn’t see the future – anything – without alcohol.”

Though it’s been almost 21 years, when I’m sitting with an alcoholic who remembers, I, too, remember my first meetings.  I knew I was an alcoholic.  I still couldn’t speak those words, but inside I’d rounded that corner.  Yet the vacuous terror of living without booze, of identifying with AA crap, and going to meetings for the rest of my life, felt like such a horrific, endless nightmare that I almost preferred to slop my drunken way toward death – privately.

Here are some of the things I feared:moonshine

  • My life would be boring
  • I’d have to pretend to like stupid AA people
  • AA would feel cultish like an Amway scam
  • I’d never feel deeply relaxed and happy again
  • I’d never feel wildly excited and happy again
  • “Psychic change” was mumbo-jumbo – I’d feel this bad forever
  • Steps 4 and 9 would be degrading, so I wouldn’t do them
  • Step 12 would mean consorting with weirdos, so I’d never do that one, either

Now, AA works by attraction, and I don’t mean to promote anything.  I can only report what I’ve experienced and how I’ve changed, and maybe offer tidbits of advice.  I’m just one sober drunk.

  • Meetings vary tremendously, but if they’re based in the Big Book, they’re about the solution.  I got sober at folksy meetings in Olympia, then switched to lesbian meetings in Seattle.  For a few years I preferred hipster meetings where everybody had tats and pierces and spoke in strings of profanity.  I’ve also felt at home at meetings in Boston, LA, Hawaii, and Greece.  Yet any meeting is only as good as the stepwork of people attending.  I avoid informercial (“everything’s wonderful since I worked the steps!”) meetings, and bitch sessions (“but at least I didn’t drink!”).  Look for meetings with fun people who exude the energy you want, who speak honestly of their struggles but apply the solution.
  • Friendships formed when I started going to gatherings outside meetings.  Old friendships deepen, but I keep making new ones; today I have more friends than time to see them all.  This Sunday I went snowshoeing with five kick-ass sober women who say ‘fuck’ a lot.  We laughed and shared frankly and the young ones dropped their pants for bare-ass-in-the snow pics – which I can’t show you ;).  But each of them has a quiet side, as well; each has known devastating misery.

 

Ks bdaysnowshoe

 

  • Boring is how I’d describe my life of drinking and faking coolness in contrast to the wide-awake, life-savoring ride of sober spiritual growth.  Even the most painful experiences, walked through sober, are valuable teachers.
  • Conformity is an anathema to every alcoholic.  It’s the disease that’s the same for all of us, and the “way out” – i.e. living by spiritual principles.  Through trial and error, we each find our unique spiritual path.  “And how’s that workin’ out for ya?” is all a wise sponsor need ask.
  • The psychic change grew in me oh so gradually as I worked the steps.  Taking Step 3 made me ready for 4-7.  Doing 8 -11 finally opened the door for 12.  Each time I repeat all 12 steps, I see a little deeper.

Have I changed much?  Hell, yeah.  For instance, these past few months I’ve gotten up early every first Saturday and driven downtown to help cook breakfast for about 150 homeless people.  In the past, it was all about me. But last Saturday, on a freezing cold morning, I was dishing out cheesy scrambled eggs, first server on the line.  I greeted each person directly, recalling a few names, with my heart overflowing.  “Nice hat!  Cheesier or less cheesy?  It’s nice and warm in here, and so are these eggs!”  Faces lit up – they thanked us, wished us Happy New Year.  Some laughed with me.  The sausage guy next to me remarked, “Boy, you sure are Miss Sunshine, aren’t ya?”

And I am.  Except it’s not me, not my light.  It’s Light that shines through me because of all I’m connected to.  Today, I have something to give.  And, as that new sponsee texted me the other day, “I’ve never felt so happy in my life!”

 

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Hey, guys!  We are everywhere!  Thanks for 290,000 views in 2015 – and that ain’t even counting RSS, email, or most Facebook tags.  WordPress says you visited from 166 nations.  I never dreamed my little free blog would attract so many readers.

If I’ve helped any of you anywhere to stay sober another day, I’m super grateful.  I mean, sure, I’m glad if people like my writing and stuff, but even gladder that we all share this thing, this gift, and this connection – and “get” each other.  Love to all of you!

 

Screen Shot 2015-12-30 at 3.40.44 PM

Nations in white had no views, yellow few, greenish more, blueish LOTS.

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December 27, 2015 · 9:27 am

New Year’s FOMO and other Alcoholic Horsecrap

What is FOMO?  Fear  Of  Missing  Out.

It’s that sinking feeling that someplace you’re not, lots of amazingly cool people are having an absolutely stupendous time. Maybe there’s kickass music and people are lookin’ sharp n’sexy and having a fuckin’ blast and – oh my GAWD!!! Can you believe what those two did?! That is so hilariously outrageous!  It’s not just goin’ aParty-Dancing-Vectorll over Facebook –it’s like a “fun times” montage out of a Hollywood flick!  If you could be there mixin’ it up you’d feel – oh my god – so damn good! You’d be dialed into life, you’d be carpé-ing the fuckin’ diem all night long!   But you’re missing it!

As Katie Perry sings:

Last Friday night

Yeah we danced on tabletops
And we took too many shots
Think we kissed but I forgot

Yeah we maxed our credit cards
And got kicked out of the bar
So we hit the boulevard

We went streaking in the park
Skinny dipping in the dark
Then had a ménage a trois

Yeah I think we broke the law
Always say we’re gonna stop-op
ooh-ohh*

Here’s what the song leaves out: live those lyrics and you end up with a busted ankle from falling off the damn tabletop, years of credit card debt, and maybe even salmonella because you skinny dipped in a fucking duck pond.  You’re lucky if you don’t end up in jail with charges on your record or an STD from the ménage a trois with morons.  Of course, it goes without saying that you’ve poisoned yourself again ‘til you’re heaving up bile.

Lets-partyNo, Katie doesn’t really mention that part. Neither does your FOMO.  It airbrushes away all those pesky consequences and lures us with the promise of a bright and shiny “great time.”

It’s Also Called Immaturity
For normies, FOMO spikes in youth when they’re highly peer-oriented, but as they mature into adulthood, FOMO diminishes to a rare blip on the screen. The trouble for alcoholics is, once again, our perspective is skewed.

Our disease carries many tricks in its bag.  Though normies don’t understand, we  often speak of it as having a mind of its own, exploiting whatever ploys avail themselves to keep us using or, in recovery, to trigger relapse.  A lot of alcoholics crave adventure – a sense of living on the edge.  So addiction broadcasts FOMO to persuade us that swallowing a neurotoxin is really the key to livin’ large.

Much like the craving for alcohol, alcoholic FOMO can never be satiated.

For example, New Year’s Eve of 1982, after snorting coke in the car and paying some absurdly high cover charge, my future (ex) husband and I sauntered into a hip and glitzy Boston nightclub. We scored a table near the dance floor, ordered champagne, and lit up our smokes. We danced. But at as the countdown for midnight approached I was struck by the realization I still recall so clearly: We were at the wrong club! The one down the street was way cooler! No one here was even worth impressing because they, too, had fallen for the wrong club!  If only I’d known! If only we’d gone there! I was missing out!!

This pattern would repeat itself for over a decade. I never did find the right club or party or even picnic, because if I was there, a better one had to be someplace else.

Recovery = Reality
FOMO is really just another guise of codependence. It’s not actually a yearning for fun; it’s a belief that we can gain something that will deliver a shot of wellbeing by being seen in the right places doing the right things. At some level, we believe others hold the power to validate us, though we’re actually validating ourselves through projections of those people’s imagined esteem. The esteem has to seem to come from them to be any good – we can’t feel it simply by knowing and valuing ourselves.

More and more I’m convinced most alcoholics are also codependent. The source of pain for all codependents is an external locus of self-worth – often because we grew up in dysfunctional families where we did not get what we needed to develop a strong sense that we are loveable and worthy. We keep chasing and chasing it in others and never getting any closer.

While non-alcoholic (classic) codependents try to subdue their pain by concerning themselves with what others should do and ‘winning’ love by caretaking, alcoholic codependents subdue it not only with alcohol, but with attempts or impress and winCodependent over others, often becoming social chameleons and regarding friends as something like collectible baseball cards.  Active alcoholics can’t really love our friends. We can only seek relief via people – and “love” that relief.

When we get sober, we begin to seek a higher power that can grant us the worth we’ve so desperately sought in all the wrong places. With guidance from sponsors and a growing sense of Good Orderly Direction, we can begin to live a life of integrity that lets us discover our worth as loving and lovable human beings.

But FOMO still nags at us to forget all that. It can wheedle into our minds at any time, but New Year’s Eve is its favorite holiday – especially for the newly sober.

The Big Book’s authors knew all about FOMO.  While they do instruct us “not to avoid a place where there is drinking if we have a legitimate reason for being there” (p. 101), they also caution against attempting to “steal a little vicarious pleasure from the atmosphere of such places.”  They warn us to “be sure you are on solid spiritual ground before you start and that your motive in going is thoroughly good.”  Not just good – thoroughly good.  In other words, don’t bullshit yourself.

In my almost 21 years sober, I’ve never found a thoroughly good reason to go hang with drinkers at a New Year’s Eve party.  I prefer to usher in the new year with a good night’s sleep and a cushy set of earplugs.  Sobriety fills my life to the brim, and I know it.

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* Katie Perry Lyrics – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdyfr4lU8sk
See also 6 Tips for Holiday Parties

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