Category Archives: living sober

September 14, 2014 · 9:52 am

Drama Addiction vs. Emotional Sobriety

Drama – emotional turmoil for its own sake – is one of those things that may entail drawbacks for normal people, but in the mind of an alcoholic, can lead to serious trouble.  When I get too whipped up by anything, real or imagined, I ‘m pulled off the beam spiritually, which means I’m a further from god and closer to a drink.

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Self-portrait, 1980 – 1/28/1995

One of my favorite lines in the 12 x 12 is this: “We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it” (47).  In the past, we used to “quiet” our inner disturbances by drinking, which enabled us to excel at not giving a shit.  You remember those days, right?  Nowadays, though, we have to do manually what we once did chemically.  That is, living in sobriety, we have to find ways to become calm by letting go of what we can’t control.

Some call Al-Anon the grad school of AA – at least for those of us who are “Double Winners!”  (Can’t type that with a straight face!)  In any case, Al-Anon is where I finally got it – that axiom in the Big Book that whenever someone else seems to be upsetting me, it’s really me – my reactions – upsetting me.  My instinct is to point at the other person and say, “You’re the problem!”  But in every case, that conflict and pain is actually all coming from me fighting reality.  I can either be RESISTING something real, or MANUFACTURING something unreal, or both.

In years past, I’ve been addicted to infatuation.  While obsessing on that magic person, I’d play all these mind-movies of me doing stuff and them being impressed. “How extraordinary Louisa is!  Look how X and Y!”  As I’d bask in the idea of them thinking this, I’d get a glorious, glowing kickback of what felt like self-worth.  It wasn’t reallyDaydream-Cartoon-1966169 self-worth, though.  It was just a sweet dopamine hit caused by delusion.  (Because, lord knows, I couldn’t just have worth as a human being!)  Anywho – I’ve always assumed that when god took away that infatuation thing, I was also cured of the whole delusional projection business.

Except for something that happened the other night.  See, I write this blog with a lot of trust in you as an open-hearted reader, so when I figured out that a family member highly critical of me had subscribed to it, I became “seriously disturbed.”  My heart pounded.  I called friends.  And that night, I absolutely couldn’t sleep, because I kept imagining this person poring over every word, judging and condemning away.  Toss!  Not going to think about that.  Turn!  Except, what will they think of that part where it says…

God, as I’ve often noted, visits me mostly via a little “BULLSHIT” indicator light somewhere in the back of my mind.  I’m super busy signing onto my bullshit, which seems to be truth, so I’m certainly not going to recognize anything bullshitty about it, myself.  But after years of praying, “Please guide me, please help me grow,” I sometimes get this faint, subtle signal:  “BULLSHIT…  BULLSHIT… BULLSHIT…”

It’s like a smoke detector going off when you have no idea what’s burning.  I have to root around for the source.  What, god, where?!

So I sat up, turned on the light, and grabbed my journal. As I wrote, I came to see how I was wrapped up in the opposite of infatuation, which involved just as much projection.  This time I had the little Louisa-hating puppet in my mind reading this or that part of the blog and thinking, “How awful that bitch Louisa is!  Look how X (shitty) and Y (shitty)!”  And this time the kickback was the opposite of self-worth – a hit of self-loathing and guilt.

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Good ole’ self-flagellation

Why would my ego want this?  The same reason I worry about stuff I can’t know or control – that delusion of beating pain to the punch, of somehow bracing myself for the worst.  But in shining light on my bullshit, I saw this projection had NOTHING to do with reality.  Yes, I can know this person does not like my blog.  But there I have to stop.  End of topic.  No matter how many times the old phonograph needle of my mind wants to return to that groove of our story in progress, I have to remove it and say firmly, “Not real.”

Maybe my ego’s just addicted to the self-importance of drama.  Compared to my projections, reality’s storyline is pretty tame.  “I’m here now” doesn’t merit much of a compelling soundtrack.  I realize it’s only human nature to imagine what we can’t know and, likewise, to feel emotional reactions to those conjectures.  But as an alcoholic, I can get addicted to just about any diversion from the work of being myself – that ordinary woman wiping down her kitchen counter.  What might it be like to really give up the idea that these projections, these personal dramas, have any bearing on reality?  What if, rather than losing myself in mental commentary and spin-offs, I were willing to be humble one moment at a time, and to live in the simplicity of what is?

God, I’m pretty sure, would click LIKE.  (jk!!)

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September 9, 2014 · 9:32 am

Service for the Lazy Alcoholic

So here we are, hopeless alcoholics, and we find out we can’t stay sober without god’s help. Dammit. Next, we learn we need to work the Twelve Steps to remove all the clutter blocking us from god, which entails a lot of time and work. Bummer.

But it gets even worse!  Service? Usefulness? These are scary words for the self-centered. The Big Book is kind of craftyhyper in not laying too much on us at the outset. In chapter 1 Bill W. describes being “catapulted into the 4th dimension of existence,” where we will know “happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes.”

Happiness. Yep, that’s on our spiritual shopping list! Peace. Definitely want us some o’ that! But usefulness? What’s so wonderful about that? Hmm. Apparently, we begin to sense, it’s essential to getting the previous two. Chapter 2 tells us, “Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend on our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.” Yuck! we think. Constant thought? I don’t even like others!  Still, if our sole alternative is misery, we move forward.

Solution-based meetings urge newcomers onto a bunny slope of usefulness via a service position – two-coffee-urnsmaking coffee, answering phones, helping with set-up or tear-down. Reluctant as I was to take on one of these, I found that, strangely enough, during my duties I experienced a sense of ease and comfort I’d never known before without being drunk. I didn’t get why, but I knew I liked it (and still do). Same thing when I started sponsoring other women. I remember marveling each time I closed my front door at the end of the hour, how was it that “getting out of self” felt so damn good? How had those all-consuming morasses of my own problems dehydrated to little flecks of scum in just sixty minutes? What was this lightness, this joy that let me turn back to my own life with love and gratitude? I didn’t understand it.

Now I do.

What flows through us when we’re helping others is the energy of god – no less. We become that “channel” the Saint Francis prayer opens with, and, as the power of compassion, the desire to help, and the love that asks for nothing streams through us, we ourselves are replenished and healed. Beyond AA, almost any spiritual tradition worth its salt tells us helping others is essential to a meaningful life; Christianity and Buddhism are two that come to mind.  My own view of god as the collaborative power behind life works even better.

It’s as if the nutrients our spirit needs to flourish can materialize only in circulation, in flow from and to. The ego, walling us in, promotes stagnation.  By contrast, whenever I pray to feel god’s love for me, the prayer is answered in my flow of love for you.  All this makes sense.  But what it’s taken me years to abandon is that mistaken notion of service I developed early on – that we do X in order to get Y.

I remember the moment when my Al-Anon sponsor pointed out this disturbing passage embedded in step 9: “At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.”  What?  Not an end in itself?  A smile came over her face, probably in response to the look of puzzlement/ horror on mine. She said, “So many of us put the cart before the horse. We don’t help others so god will fix up our lives. No.  God fixes up our lives so that we can help others.”

So… what starts off as a quest for relief gradually morphs into a reason for being.  My body exists in order to let me move about in the world, and the more I use it, the more it thrives. My spirit exists to express love, and the same principle holds. To love each other is why we’re here. Period. The purpose of life, right there, Charlie Brown.pitfalls

A few quick addenda:

  1. Martyrdom is selfishly oriented, though easy to mistake for service. When I give help based on a preconceived notion of how someone should view/ respond to it, I’m not channeling god. I’m manipulating. I may want their fucking gratitude, or for them to live in a certain way to reinforce my rightness. Love, by contrast, is open-minded, freeing each person to find their own relationship to god.

2) Judging others is kryptonite to the part of you that loves. “Many of us sense that real tolerance for other people’s shortcomings and viewpoints and a respect for their opinions are attitudes that make us more useful to others” (19). Love does not “should” on anyone.

 3) Love is not enabling. “It is not the matter of giving that is in question, but how and when to give. The minute… the alcoholic commences to rely upon our assistance rather than upon God,” we’re both screwed (98).

Today a lot of my service work outside sponsorship involves just answering my phone.  This week alone I’ve gotten three alcoholic HELP! calls. I don’t try to solve anyone’s problems. Instead, I listen and love – and whatever comes out my mouth comes out. They can take it or leave it.

The most difficult of these calls I ever took came from an acquaintance crying almost too hard to speak.  She’d fallen in mutual love with someone she shouldn’t have, and though extremely aware of the moral stakes involved – why she was sobbing uncontrollably – she insisted this love was, for her, non-negotiable.  They hid nothing, but everyone had turned away from her.  She was in a living hell, losing her mind from all this pain!  I’d been weeding when she called, and I remember praying by my flowerbed to be both honest and useful to her.  My own feelings about such romances, having suffered the butt end of one, are intense. So much churned inside me – old hurts, judgments, pronouncements! – but compassion won out.  Pain, I told her bluntly, was the inevitable price for breaking her own morals and causing someone else even more pain. There was no way out.  But that said, I did have a lot of experience with living sober through pain, and I shared what had helped me most.  She was avidly grateful – more, I think, for my clemency than the suggestions themselves.

It’s a far cry from making coffee! And I can’t say I felt joy when I hung up, either. Rather, what I felt was a deeper acknowledgment of the difficulties of being dandelionhuman and compassion for all of us – including myself – who struggle with them. Bad weeds, bad loves!  There’s an element of arbitrariness in all our designations. I appreciated my own life not as an individual effort but as inextricable from my culture, which was in turn part of the larger unfolding of life – all of us trying to find our way. To feel connected with all things is the most profound form of peace, and for the next few hours – still pulling weeds but now a little more merciful – I had it.

Alcoholic or normie, we can’t help but be motivated by the rewards of service.  Today, though, I view them more as a chicken/egg phenomenon.  Being happily sober, we can be lovingly useful, which keeps us happily sober.

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August 26, 2014 · 10:21 am

A Lil’ Note on Fear

What’s that saying we hear around the rooms – “Be careful what you pray for – you just might get it” – ? In the last few weeks I’ve learned that when you do get what you thought you wanted, it turns out not to be what you thought.

A week ago Wednesday a client of mine canceled, so I thought I’d grab the time to write a post.  I’d skipped the previous week because of a long hike, so I pushed myself to just crank something out.  News of Robin Williams’ suicide had shaken me.  My own years of battling depression were but a drop in the bucket to his, I knew, but after Google brought me his choice words on the inner experience of alcoholism, I’d felt a powerful upwelling of compassion.  Could I remember and describe that feeling?

An hour and a half later, it was online.  That entire day, the post got one (1, uno) view.  I considered deleting it, seeing as it didn’t “fit” with most of my blog.  Except that I liked it.  It said what I’d felt.  So, after adding the opening disclaimer, I posted a link to Facebook and left for work.

When I got home that evening, there were 187 views.  Since my previous all-time high had been 80, I thought something must’ve gone haywire with my WordPress stats.  Two friends had shared the link – that’s it. trending-sign But just for shits and giggles, I posted it on an open AA Facebook page as well.  In the next 24 hours there were 1,600 views, a number doubled or tripled daily.   As of right now, the total number of views has reached almost 75,000 from over 100 nations.

Two weeks ago, I’d have told you my only reaction would be elation.  Every writer wants to be read, right?  But the inflow of comments gave me a feeling more like when you’ve put too much lighter fluid on the briquettes and light them too soon.  The flames leap higher and higher until – aack! – what have you done?!

Exposure was a scary feeling I’d not anticipated.  The blog had traveled to readers critical of AA and recovery, a few of whom accused me of discounting depression, glorifying myself, or forcing AA on others – nonetrend of which I’d intended.  In these voices I felt aggression, like flaming arrows entering my home.  They seemed certain I thought I knew shit, that I was saying, “Here’s the real deal on Robin Williams.”  But there is no high horse to knock me down from.  I never claimed to know anything.  I’d written my feelings – what I’d wondered, and how that felt.

I’ve never seen this in AA literature, but it seems to me that, just as there plain hamburgers and cheeseburgers, so are there two basic types of alcoholics: plain and codependent.  Plain alcoholics fear god won’t care for them, and codependent alcoholics fear they’re not worth caring for, period.  That is, unless others say they are.  Codependents try all kinds of ways to win the approval that, this time, might just fill that painful hole in their soul.  It’s a double disease that divides the adult self, who of course knows better, from the inner child who still pleads, “Like me! Like me!”

In my case, apparently, that means everybody.  My emotional balance often seems as precarious as if I were riding a unicycle, so that any disturbance makes me wobble and flail absurdly all over the place.  Because this fear was absurd!  Even with tens of thousands of folks quietly re-posting, and kind comments outnumbering critical ones by 10 to 1, every damn time I went to checked email, my body anticipated criticism with huge shots of adrenaline – that flush in your stomach that fills you with dread.

During the two days of highest blog traffic, my constant state of fear obliterated mindful presence.  I got a parking ticket (too many thoughts to feed the meter), a speeding ticket (too many to notice speedometer), and went without sleep.  When I described my critic-angst to sober friends, their advice was either “Fuck ’em!” (by far most common) or “It’s self-centered to expect others to see what we see.”  But neither helped.  I’d originally started this blog to publicize my addiction memoir, which I secretly hoped might some day take off the way the blog has, but now I had doubts about even wanting that. Maybe I was just too easily bruised, I thought, to be putting myself out there that way.

The irony is, I don’t fear the world.  This past weekend, I loaded up the car with my son, dog, and two backpacks, drove 138 miles into the North Cascades, hiked a mile in, rented a canoe, and paddled 4 miles on a glacier-melt lake to find a small inlet where our sober friends were camping – no roads, no cars.  Sunday morning, along a trail where for the past two years we’ve encountered bears, I went for a run carrying a collapsed, pointed trekking pole just in case.  Sure enough, major bear poop showed up on the trail about a mile in – dark with lots of berries – but since it didn’t look fresh, I kept on, just keeping my eyes open and blowing out a trumpet-style farty noise every so often as a bear-bell.  That kind of courage I don’t lack.

Codependence makes me over-reactive to others’ responses, because I think I need approval to outweigh my deepest fear – that dark secret that I do suck and am going to be exposed as a fake and a fraud.  It’s the fear that others will discover how flawed and therefore vile I am and react with disgust.  On this camping trip, surrounded by loving, flawed alcoholics and the beauty of mountains, I saw my fear as something I need to make peace with until god takes it.  When fear of judgement comes on, I can only accept it as I would a sneezing fit, involuntary and inevitable.  Whoops!  Adrenaline rush!  I’m a fake and a fraud who’s unworthy and everybody’s gonna find out!  …Gesundheit!

One of the greatest gifts I’ve received in sobriety is the distance allowing me to not believe my own thoughts.  I have faith in something far greater than my own mind, something that shapes my life with wild turns of events that I could never, ever see coming.  For now I can tell fear, “Thanks for sharing.”  I can hold up the “Please wrap it up” card.  But I can also trust that god is teaching me in ways I can’t yet fathom, and that fear, like pain, is a voice for what still needs healing.

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Boy and dog on Ross Lake: what does matter.

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July 15, 2014 · 9:28 am

Solo Hiking as an Alcoholic’s Inner Journey

I drank because I was maladjusted to life, and to a certain extent I still am.  So are you.  Life’s not entirely comfy for anyone, no matter how selfish or spiritual, because we constantly bump up against a reality that doesn’t suit our expectations.  Even Kim Jong-un, supreme leader of North Korea who can send any annoying person to prison with a snap of his fingers, probably has a list of reasons to be pissed at the end of each day.  The Dalai Lama, when I heard him speak, told about a fussy toddler on the plane whose mother kept trailing her up and down the aisle until he reflected, “I’m the Dalai Lama, and this woman has more patience than I do!”

One solution is to drink.  Drinking doesn’t change the world, but it dulls our reactions to it, granting us a temporary peace.  But notice that it’s our reactions to life, not life itself, that cause us pain.  And to go even further, what I called “life” by the end of my drinking was a conception thoroughly skewed by my distorted thinking.

I once worked with a sponsee who kept relapsing because she “needed to take the edge off.”  What was this “edge?” I would ask her.  Together we worked out a definition as “tension that mounts incrementally as I am untrue to myself.”  She felt her job forced her to simulate relationships and attitudes she did not really have, but rather than examining her reactions to people and situations, she A) suffered then B) medicated.

For me to react authentically in life, I have to know who I am and what I’m feeling – a feat easier said than done for a codependent adult child of an alcoholic.  (How do codependents greet each other?  “Hi!  How am I?”)  Hiking alone is, for me, one of the most powerful ways to arrive at this knowledge – especially longer thru-hikes that entail a week or so on the trail.  In 2012 I did the Wonderland Trail, about 100 miles and 22K’ of climbing/descending, and in 2013, still recovering from radiation treatment, I did a section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) covering 75 miles and 16K’ of climbing/descending.  Hiking alone, the only interactions are between you and “nature,” people who’ve made or walked the trail before you, and the present-day hikers you meet.  Many, many hours are spent in your own company.  Incredible beauties are witnessed.  Countless decisions are made.  And each day brings a few hazards that call for courage.

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Josephine Lake Wonderland

 

The first days, in my case, are about purging.  On Rainier, I found myself crying for two days.  This was my first major hike after breaking up with my boyfriend, who had taught me nearly every trail skill I knew.  But beyond that, I was coming to terms with the passing of youthful illusions that life stretches on and on.  How did I, Louisa, get to be 52?  Who was this lined, graying woman I’d become?  On the PCT, I expected tears again, but instead met with fear.  I’d begun by traversing Stevens Pass ski resort, and when the trail dropped from there into woods and rounded a hillside to a wholly new vista of indifferent, towering mountains through which I would pass, I got scared.  “What the fuck am I doing?!” I thought.  “What if a bear comes?  Mountain lion?  Rapist?  What if I fall and no one even knows?”  It took me a day or two to realize my deepest fears centered around cancer.  It had struck me, it seemed, out of nowhere, threatening everything I love, forcing me through a prolonged nightmare of treatment from which there was no escape.

In both cases, I had nowhere to run from these feelings.  I had to walk in their company, trudge in their muck until I truly got to know them.  In both cases, I came out on the other side to delight in a freedom so airy and light, I can’t possibly describe it.  The grief for all I’d lost turned to gratitude for the immense wealth I still had – these stunningly gorgeous surroundings plus the strength and know-how to travel though them.  The fear of cancer and all other scariness turned into a reconciliation with god.  Cancer happens, but I could choose to love all the cells on my team striving to protect me from it, and the many generations of medical experts all working to cure people.  I would choose to put my trust in goodness.

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Dusk – I’ll tidy up! Clothesline strung behind my tent – wash in a large ziplock, dump away from source.

There’s nothing cozier than your own little camp, bedding down in your own tidy one-bitch tent, when you know what you’re doing.  You look at the map and see what’s coming up tomorrow.  Few moments are more empowering than, after passing warning signs of a high creek or a trail damaged by landslide, you gather your gumption and do what you need to.  Amid the roar of rushing water you choose your stepping rocks with care, plant your trekking pole and orient your balance to push off toward the next stance until, somehow, you’re across.  Or refusing to look down on the now tiny creek that wends far below, you focus on the narrow strip of trail that remains and keep moving.  Once you’ve passed these obstacles, they’re behind you.  Damn right, they are!  You don’t look back and analyze; your attention, buoyed by accomplishment, is all for what’s to come.

Finally, on both trips, I acquired an unexpected companion – both young men who loved the wilderness and had cobbled together from REI displays an idea of what they needed to get through it.  How could my pack be that small?  Why was I not wearing boots?  Why no Mountain House food pouches?  They asked to hike with me a few days and bombarded me with questions.  In each case, I developed love for a total stranger – one a butler to the most glamorous movie star couple alive, the other a Taiwanese Christian Electrical Engineer – sharing a grubby, spontaneous sincerity unimaginable in normal life.

The moral is that if I can practice all these skills on a daily basis – know what’s really going on with me, take each challenge as it comes, and love others by sharing whatever I have to offer – I am in tune with life.  And for as long as that is true, I will not develop an “edge” I need to “take off” by self-medicating.  There are ways to be free within the confines of our own skin.

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Emerald Ridge, Wonderland Trail 2012

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July 1, 2014 · 7:24 am

Lessons from Chickens: Emotional Sobriety

Thoughtlessness, Jealousy, Resentment

About three years ago, we acquired chickens.  It’s a growing trend in our PC neighborhood, but I doubt I’d have taken the plunge if the mom of my son’s playmate hadn’t offered me two of her hens, saying six was just too many.  After I’d spent my weekend building a coop, she reneged without the least regret.  “Actually, one of them died, and I’m keeping the rest,” she told me over the phone.  When I noted that it might have been nice to learn this sooner, she offered only a brisk apology:  “I just decided this morning.  Sorry!  You can get yours someplace else.”

Ironically enough, this normie mom’s attitude captures perfectly the mindset of chickens I envy most.  Maybe I’m just too much of a people-pleaser, but never in this world could I could retract an offer that way.  I’d probably give you the promised hens on principle, stuffing how much I wanted not to, or at least apologize to a slobbering degree if I kept them – “I’m so sorry!  God, I’m so terrible, but I just can’t!”

The thing about chickens is, like feathered Cartmans, they do what they want.  Roaming about our yard, if they think of something, they do it.  The minute a gate’s left open, they’re through it and psyched.  If I take too long to feed them, they jump the back porch barrier and peck at the glass door:  “Ape!  Where’s our goddamn oatmeal?!”

My chickens never doubt their own self-worth.  God made them to be chickens, and, damn right, they’re gonna do it!  They know how to scratch and forage for bugs, how to preen and sunbathe and find shelter during rain.  They know where to lay their eggs and when to retreat to the coop toward dusk.  These are the bulleted items of their Chicken Job Requirements, and they carry them out with flawless, almost scornful confidence. Chickens have no morals, no conscience.  They don’t Facebook.  Chickens do, however, have plenty of drama.

Two of the three hens we ended up getting “someplace else” turned out to be peri-menopausal.  That is, the farm woman offloading them on us felt so guilty that at the last minute she literally chased after us with an Ameraucana pullet. “Wait!” she puffed. “Chickens are happier in threes!”  We thought she was just being nice, but after one season, the first two quit laying.

So on my son’s 12th birthday I brought home, peeping and scrabbling inside a paper lunch sack, a day old chick – helpless, scared, and weighing slightly more than a walnut.  Because she was slate black, like our dog and hamster, coincidentally, my son named her Pepper.

Now, whether chickens are happier in threes I don’t know, but a baby chick is definitely miserable alone.  Pepper’s needy cheeping filled our living room any time we tried to leave her in her cage.  I happened to be going through radiation for breast cancer at the time, and found my constant anxiety soothed by little Pepper’s gentle rustlings, soft peeps, and toying with my earrings or hair as she nestled on my shoulder – enough that I could meditate. ( I wrote this blog about it.) An adolescent Pepper once perched on my shoulder through the entire six block walk to my son’s school, with passersby asking, “Um… is that a… chicken?”  I’d nod, eyeing their chickenless shoulders with slight condescension.2013-04-14 18.48.47

Pepper grew up to be an absolutely tremendous Barred Rock hen who lays eggs daily and loves me fiercely.  Yes, chickens can love!  How else would you explain the fact that any time I sit down in the back yard, she jumps into my lap, makes happy chicken noises galore and, after holding my gaze steadily with her bright eye, settles down for a nice meditation nap?

Tragically for Pepper, however, after the two menopausal hens expired, my son and I brought home another lunch sack, this time holding two new chicks – Claire and Henrietta.  Having a pair, we found, made a world of difference: they were content to snuggle with each other but still bonded with us.

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Even before we transferred Claire and Henrietta outside, we knew Pepper was going to be jealous, but we had no idea how jealous.  She hates those little fuckers!  It’s not just a matter of pecking order.  The Ameraucana, though still at the top of the chain, shows no interest in these two outside the occasional feigned peck over food.  But for Pepper, it’s deeply personal.  It’s about rights to Mom’s attention, to being loved as cute and little.

When I come outside, she tries to drive those brats away from me by chasing them all over the yard, or jumps on me as if to claim me if she can.  I have to put down food in multiple places because Pepper hustles frantically from one pile to the next, pecking at the chicks and trying to gobble down everything before they get any.  Of course we can’t enclose them all in the same pen or she corners them and pecks them bloody.

In short, Pepper is the embodiment of jealous, possessive self-centeredness, played out in chicken caricature.  She does what she wants, yes.  And she wants those damn chicks gone! While Pepper sleeps in my lap, I often admire the perfection of her feathers, each one barred with a band of black, white, and rainbow iridescence.  I notice the perfect way they’re arranged to merge toward her tail, or the parallel precision of her white wing quills.  There is such great artistry in a single chicken!  But I also contemplate the design of Pepper’s feelings and instincts, her ruthless jealousy.  That demand for emotional security is built into both of us almost as powerfully as the needs of basic survival.

What does any of this have to do with alcoholism?  I guess that depends on how long you’ve been sober, and whether you work a program.  But the next time I hear a 4th Step, or find in my own 10th step the hostility of claiming what’s “mine” – that person, recognition, attention, security, or love I can’t let anyone else “steal” from me – I’ll think of Pepper as I recognize that these natural, god-given instincts are forgivable.

But I’ll also realize that, with a greater brain comes greater responsibility.   We need to check ourselves – particularly if we’re alcoholic.  Sure, that playdate mom can indulge now and then in “I do what I want!” mentality without consequences.  For her, the line between self-care and self-centeredness is not a crucial distinction.  But for me, giving free rein to even the simplest, chicken-brained instincts – selfish jealousy, resentment, and aggression – can sabotage my entire recovery.  “For when harboring such feeling we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.”

It may sound dramatic, but in my AA community, we hear of another alcoholic/addict’s death every month or two – the culmination of a landslide that began with a few petty grains of sand.

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Pepper where she still loves to be.

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June 24, 2014 · 9:57 am

Looking Back from almost 20 Years Sober

Then vs. Now

My life is far from perfect.  In a few days, I’ll turn 54, having failed to achieve any of the goals I set in youth.  I’m not a famous writer, and I don’t have much money.  I drive a 1990 Honda that starts with a screwdriver (really), because all my money goes to keep a small house that’s in disrepair.  My boyfriend is out of state most of the time, and I haven’t spoken to my sister or brother in a year and a half.  But… I’m sober.

What does this mean?  It means my life today is a an amazing gift.  As I get closer to hitting the 2o year sober mark, it gets harder to remember who I used to be.  But as a sponsor, in helping other women who suffer as much as I used to, I get to look back and remember.

There was a day when I woke up morning after morning full of toxins and shame.  I’d hide my headaches from my partner, pretending brightness, but more importantly I’d hide reality from myself, pretending I’d just had a bit too much last night because of… whatever.  At least half the time, I’d also be hiding the exhilarating glow of obsessive dreams about whomever I was infatuated with.  I’d go about my day being whoever I thought others expected me to be, looking to you for signs that I was okay, and thinking up ways of impressing you.

And since nothing would work out as I planned, I’d end up filled with sickening envy at your easy life and disappointment at my unfair one.  Most of all, I lived with self-loathing: the conviction that I was a worthless loser.  This conviction could survive any accomplishment I achieved because its taproot ran so deep, all the way to my core: I was hopelessly defective, fundamentally flawed.  And yet, this same worthlessness was the one sure rock I could stand on, the one foundation I could know without doubt.  It set me apart from others, ordinary folk who seemed so naturally filled with well-being.  Honesty, to me in those years, felt like the flat out admission that I sucked.  And the only way to fix that was to have a drink (well…  maybe two.  And then, whoops, a dozen plus) thereby temporarily rendering life simple and myself fabulous.

So what’s the miracle?  What’s the amazing gift?  It’s freedom.  It’s that not only have I woken up clear headed and sober for the past 7,000 mornings or so, but I wake to perceptions much closer to real.  The overwhelmingly loud self-static that used to roar in my thoughts has been tuned down, so my consciousness is a pretty comfy place to live.  I can love being who I am instead of berating myself for all I “should” be, and I can even see that I am a good mom who loves many people and supports herself.

How does that happen?  I got here by working the 12 steps repeatedly, skimming off one layer of denial at a time, one unacknowledged fear at a time – and giving what’s out of my power to god.  (Long version here.)  Today I stay on course by using the serenity prayer as my compass, and as I progress, the landscape keeps changing: things that once seemed those “I cannot change” have jumped sides to things requiring the “courage to change” them, and vice versa.  Gradually, I acquire the wisdom that all I can change is myself – my attitudes and actions – but that doing so transforms my entire world.

My ambition today is not a newer car or even a bestselling novel.  It’s honesty.  I want to go deeper.  There are still untruths I tell myself, deceptions that auto-play in my thoughts.  With god providing the light, I want to root them out and turn them over.  Though they don’t now drive me to drink, I can still feel, as I get ready to meditate, grips on falseness that tighten my world.  “Give up,” I tell myself, “let them go!”  Whether they come from growing up in an alcoholic household or amid a society of warped values and assumptions, unidentified beliefs are incredibly hard to release.  There’s the challenge.

The closer I get to living in truth, the comfier my life becomes – to the point that it’s outrageously luxuriant.  No amount of material luxury can rival that.  Living in a twisted mind, I have traveled Europe, sailed on yachts, eaten at fancy restaurants, or worn sexy new outfits – all the while drowning in dis-ease and self-consciousness, prisoner of an edginess that maybe a few drinks could fix – couldn’t they?  Now, to be where I am, naked under my clothes, simple-minded in my thoughts, flawed in countless ways, and making boo-boos right and left as I use up this obscure lifetime that will vanish under the footprints of future generations – what an amazing party it is!

Plus I can start my car with that screwdriver without even looking faster than 99.999% of the planet’s population.  Ain’t that a heck of an achievement at almost 54?

2014-06-22-goat

Goat Peak, day before yesterday.  What more can I ask?  (Or so I thought… See 5/18/15 post)

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