August 24, 2023 · 8:46 am

How I Went from Atheist to Woo-Woo

Hi guys. I’m working on a real post, but meanwhile, here’s a pitch — lucky you!

My new book – just published – follows my battle to remain atheist after dismissing my Near-Death Experience journey as nothing but a dying brain phenomenon, mainly so I wouldn’t need to change. My inner cynic struggled to deny a series of paranormal aftereffects (ghost, clairvoyance, voice, accidental mind-reading) but eventually lost the battle.

This is the story of how I became a full-on “woo-woo” who can absolutely guarantee you the spirit realm is real.

It’s also the story of how my guardian angel rescued me from alcoholism, starting with a clear boundary: This is the last time I can help you. And you DO know right from wrong!

If you’re interested in NDEs, afterlife, and/or the spirit realm, you might dig it. Paperback or eBook on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFZF1GKM E-book cover screenshotCover painting and design by me.

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June 7, 2023 · 6:30 am

Emotional Sobriety – Ever a Work in Progress

Last week at my home group, I noted a difference that sometimes arises in AA. Our group is a tight family. Some have only a few years’ sober, but more of us have 25+. Anyway, the person chairing, having lived sober through 30 years of joys and deaths, boons and losses, chose a meeting topic of authenticity in friendships.

Here’s why. They’d made an off-color joke among a group of friends. One friend went ballistic without bounds, ripping them a whole new ass…assination of character in front of the others. Our chairperson instantly apologized for any pain they’d caused and, reading the room, departed to allow their friend space. But now they felt their trust hurt beyond healing.

Here was their dilemma: their AA sponsor maintained that they’d already cleaned up their side of the street, owed no further amends, and could choose whether to reinvest in the friendship. But another friend, not in AA, said they ought to meet with the explosive friend and tell her how that outburst made them feel.

Which was the right course? How do we navigate our continuing journey of sobriety to keep growing toward what our higher power would have us be — i.e. toward our full potential in emotional sobriety? 

The group picked up the question and ran with it. Everyone had relationship issues — with friends, partners, and relatives — to share about. Almost everyone. The thwarted expectations issue arose when a visitor from out of town spoke up. He said essentially, “I don’t care whether I talk to friends honestly or not! All I care about is whether I take a drink over it. I come to these meetings to learn how not to do that TODAY — not how to dance around in relationships!” keep_the_plug_in_the_jug_yard_sign

He had a few years but, clearly, just not drinking was still a struggle. 

This is an issue. Aside from meetings specifically named BEGINNERS, AA generally takes a one-size fits all approach. Our Singleness of Purpose, clearly outlined in Traditions 3 and 5, runs like this: “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking” and “Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.” 

But… define “suffers.” 

Plug-in-the-jugging is not enough for a happy life. Rather, most of AA is about ferreting out the defects of character that lead us away from our higher power and toward isolation, resentment, depression, and “a thousand forms of fear” — conditions ripe for the ego and addictive drive. Relationships test the mettle of our recovery. Emotional sobriety comes down to an ability to recognize our character defects and cope with them in constructive ways. Is it more constructive to routinely zip our lips or to show up honestly with our emotions, personalities, and vulnerabilities, sharing who we are à la Brené Brown?

Screen Shot 2023-06-06 at 11.35.32 AM

During the 1980s, John Welwood coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to mean, in simple terms, trying to be so “spiritual” that you ignore whatever emotions you’re feeling. Any negative feelings get dismissed as “attachment.” Welwood was speaking in a Buddhist context, but boysee! Do his words ever apply to AA! For instance, I’ve known people who throw themselves into gobs of service work, go to jillions of meetings per week, and work with dozens of sponsees — all so they won’t have to FEEL the pain nipping constantly at their heels. They try to guilt others into following their path, a stance I like to call “competitive sobriety.” 

In my first 10 years, I used to worship such people, considering them AA sages. In my next 10, I’d get resentful at them, feeling I had to make excuses for NOT doing likewise. But as I wrap up my third decade of sobriety, meetings, and stepwork, my attitude is a mix of compassion and live-and-let-live. I know they have pain that won’t let up, and I understand that this solution helps them. It must help, or they wouldn’t do it. Myself, I’d rather stick my head in a flaming bucket of shit than sit through General Service meetings. It’s terrible, but it’s true. 

So I don’t practice competitive sobriety but, somewhere beneath my own radar, I DO practice spiritual bypassing. I keep my side of the street clean no matter what — whether it makes me become a doormat, tolerate rudeness, or pretend to agree with values I dislike. I look like I’ve achieved emotional sobriety, but it’s a sham — more like emotional constipation. 

What spiritual bypassing boils down to is dishonesty — with myself Mowing-lawn-and-leaving-grass-clippings-9f17741fa7a94a47b5ea58ec6a4ddf87and others — leading to a lack of boundaries. I discover my false tactic only once the pain load reaches such a pitch that I have to take action: “If someone keeps running over your foot with a lawnmower, it’s up to you to move your foot.” That’s one of my favorite sayings, and yet I’ll leave my foot in their path for years! “No, no, it doesn’t hurt much!  It’s just a little blood! Just a toe I wasn’t using! After all, they have a perfect right to mow!”

Screen Shot 2023-06-06 at 11.46.07 AMSpiritual pride tells me I’d be too “unspiritual” if I said what I actually think and feel. Too unspiritual if I showed up as myself. Too petty, judgmental, wave-making, or self-centered in telling others “Here are my feelings” or admitting to myself “This isn’t working.”  In fact, by pretending everything’s fine, I’m harming everyone involved.

Recently, my pain reached such a pitch that I finally moved my foot. I’ve spoken about the situation with my sponsor and a few uninvolved confidants. But for me, it was wonderful that our chair opened up this question of finding the fine line between kindness and authenticity. This is where the rubber meets the road for me today, the area where I’m most uncomfortably growing.

I hope the out-of-town guy could glean that eventually Honesty, Open-mindedness, and Willingness lead us far beyond just not drinking. “Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions” (How it Works). Turns out, of course, that dislodging each cause reveals a deeper cause beneath: onion layers. Insight by insight, we keep learning how to live a little bit better, until we run out of time.

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February 12, 2023 · 12:58 pm

Chpt 4, We Agnostics: Short Version

AA Barf ReligionI’m an alcoholic who loves god but kinda wants to kick religion’s ass. I never capitalize “God” in my own writing because that big “G” smacks of scripture. Every time I hear an AA newcomer, potentially dying, say they can’t get over the “religious” aspect of AA, I want to yell toward the ceiling, “Are ya HAPPY, Religion??  See how you’ve fucked up god for BILLIONS of humans?!”

This probably has more to do with me than religion. More often than not I’m sitting in a church basement, after all, kindly rented to an AA group for cheap. Churches do mean well.

The first time I read “We Agnostics,” 28 years ago, I called myself an atheist — despite having had a Near-Death Experience during which I was bathed, for just a short while, in the brilliant intensity of god’s love. That and the paranormal after-effects it brought on were memories slammed away in a DONTTHINKOFIT vault.

Alcoholics can do that.

So I was shocked to find this chapter did open my mind to a higher power, simply by means of its water-tight argument(s).  Here’s my version of how it proceeds — though of course, you should read the original.

We Agnostics…….

  • If you’re a bona fide alcoholic, you have only two choices
    • a) be doomed to an alcoholic death (my note: perhaps slowwwly)
    • b) live on a spiritual basis

Lots of us thought we couldn’t do (b), but we have – so you can, too.

[NEXT PAGE

  • IF we could think our way out of addiction, we’d all be fine. We had tons of moral and ethical resolve, but even when we willed with all our might, we got drunk.  What we lacked was power — a power greater than ourselves.

Guess what this whole book is about?  Finding that power.

Screen Shot 2023-02-12 at 11.14.51 AM

“Let’s go kill anyone who won’t believe in me!!”

  • We know you’re going to bum about this.  We know religion makes you puke.  We know even the word “God” might bring up the shit thrown at you in childhood. We all thought [NEXT PAGE] reliance on God was a crutch for cowards. We thought about all the destruction religion’s caused and all the hypocritical assholes in media and small towns posing as holy. We couldn’t even wrap our brains around a Supreme Being, anyway.  We know, we know… we felt all this, too.
  • AND YET…. sometimes, especially in the beauty of nature or awareness of the vast universe, we felt a fleeting sense of awe. As soon as we could just become willing (or willing to become willing), as soon as we said, “Mayyyybe I can kinda believe in a power greater than me,” shit for reals started to change in our lives.

Don’t think about anybody else’s God. What feels like GOODNESS?  Open to that.  God is basically hanging out by the phone waiting for you to call.

[NEXT PAGE]

  • So, when we say “God” here, just think about whatever works for you (ask why you want to live — it has to do with god).  Don’t let all that negativity stop you from looking deep within.

Ask yourself, “Am I willing (to be willing) to believe there’s something good out there more powerful than me?” If you can say yes… dude, you’re on your way!

We’d aways assumed we’d have to drink major Kool-aid to jump through this hoop, so we were stoked to keep it simple.

[NEXT PAGE]

  • Being pissed off about spirituality in general — we had to quit that crap because, let’s face it, we were dying.  Alcohol was thoroughly kicking our asses, so we had to open our minds.  You’re asking, why believe? We’ve got some good reasons.
  • People love evidence-based stuff, but most of us electricityaccept all kinds of explanations we’re clueless about.  We’re like, “Yeah, um, electricity is like electrons jumping from one atom to another.  Totally!”  And we let it go without needing to really understand because we just want to use our goddamn phones and appliances. They work, and that’s good enough.

There’s all kinds of shit like this we believe without proof.  Even science itself holds that appearances don’t mean jack.

[NEXT PAGE]

  • Let’s take your average steel girder (I-beam in a sky scraper) It’s really a bunch of electrons whirling around a crazy speeds according to laws of physics (my note: PLUS it’s 99% empty space and the electrons pop in and out of existence with all kinds of quantum weirdness, dark matter, and anti-matter — and WE are way too dumb to understand any of it.)  We’re all like, “Cool, I got it.”

BUT as soon as somebody suggests there’s a guiding, creative force behind the universe, we say, “Hold my beer! Let me use my grapefruit-sized brain to determine the nature of the universe!” If our atheist arguments were right, then life would exist for no reason and mean nothing.  We like to think we’re the smartest game in town.

  • You know, even organized religion isn’t all doo-doo. We’ve all seen religious people we had to respect. In fact, a lot of them have had their shit together WAY more than we ever have.

[NEXT PAGE]

  • We were too busy judging to see the upside. We accused religious people of being intolerant, when we were actually the intolerant ones.
  • If you read the stories in the back of this book, you’ll see how each person found their own higher power their own way. What they have in common is that every single one believes their higher power worked fuckin’ miracles in their lives.

You’ve got thousands (millions) of people who’ve lived hardcore but who swear that since they opened their minds to an HP and started working the 12 steps sincerely, their whole world has flipped from despairing to happy.  [NEXT PAGE]  They tell  about how they were the ones screwing up their own lives, alcohol aside. When all these (millions of) people say God changed them, CAN you really dismiss all of us as feeble minded, gullible, deluded cult members?

  • Progress in science and technology gets hampered when people cling to fixed ideas.  Columbus, Galileo — people said they were nuts.  Aren’t you just as stubborn about spirituality as those guys were about science?

For example, in the Wright Brothers’ day, NOBODY thought humans could fly. EVERYBODY was sure that idea was bullshit — how could heavy, big machines possibly go zoom in the air?  But 30 years later, airplanes were just a normal part of life.

If you showed some average Joe / Joette an article about going to the moon (or now Mars) and they’d say, “I bet they will.” More and more, people can throw away the theory or gadget that doesn’t work in exchange for one that does.

  • Dude — what’re you doin’ clinging to self-sufficiency?  It doesn’t work!  Try the new gadget, for chrissakes.

We were bedevilled by shitty relationships, roller-coaster emotions, misery and depression, money problems; we were scared and unhappy and useless.  Wasn’t fixing our lives by ANY means more important than seeing proof?  Duh!!!

wright_brothers

Orville and Wilber Wright

  • The Wright brothers built a plane that flew after 50 million failed attempts because they BELIEVED in their dream so purely.  Alcoholics who’d rather suffer than try the new thing — they’re just like those cynics who scoffed at the Wright brothers’ naïveté.

[NEXT PAGE]

  • Logic is great. Let’s think about how to have faith is actually more logical than the soft and mushy thinking we settled for in our agnosticism.  As alcoholics, we were dying (or wasting life). We had to get fucking honest: either
    • a) God animates everything, or
    • b) God is nothing.

We HAD to DECIDE.

[Here’s a bunch of corny shit about some bridge that I wish they’d cut.]

  • Come to think of it, we’ve always had faith in our reasoning skills,

    Screen Shot 2023-02-12 at 12.26.21 PM

    Life / god happens.

    even though we’re wrong a lot. We’ve all worshipped cool people, sentimental icons, commercial STUFF, $-money-money-money-$, and our private imaginings of someday being badass.  But at the same time, we’ve all felt reverence for a sunset, for the ocean, for a flower. We’ve all loved someone.  And NONE of these things had jack shit to do with pure reason.  Our lives are made of love and faith and feeling, and would be totally empty without them. We believe in life, and we know, deep down, it has meaning.

[NEXT PAGE] 

  • Just think about all those alcoholics who were trapped wallowing around in their own mess for sooo long, and how they say God showed them a new way to live, and how we liked to privately smirk about it.

We were actually full of shit, because we knew, deep, deep down, that God is. That core knowledge may get obscured, but it’s there, always.  Looking inward, we find a lifesource that loves us, that is part of us.

  • Okee-doke!  That’s all we can do to help!  Time for YOU to get honest — but we know you can do this.

[Here’s a corny story about some minister’s son having a HUGE, DRAMATIC spiritual awakening.]

  • If you just find the humility to let down your guard and honestly ask God to help you, God will show up.  But you’ve gotta ASK.

Ta-dah!  I hope this little Cliff Note session was helpful.  I’m one of those people whose lives have been completely transformed by god. I never thought that could happen. I hope eventually you’ll love this chapter exactly as it stands and help your sponsees understand it, too.

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December 31, 2022 · 11:03 am

“Why is Nothing Working? It Must Be Me!”

Have you ever heard this saying around the rooms of AA, “Alone is a dangerous place”?  I got another lesson last night in how true this is.

As someone coming up on 28 years sober, I’m usually in pretty good place.  Those demons of shame, not-enoughness, loneliness, self-pity, envy, awkwardness, self-loathing, and many others that fueled my drinking and nearly killed me — they still live in my head, but their megaphone batteries are weak, and I’ve made friends with most.  When they show up, I try to A) view them as familiar characters and B) invite them to tea, as Buddha invites the demon Mara in the brilliant Buddhist story. In other words, I acknowledge I’ll never be rid of them, but each is a voice from my psyche trying to help me, though their methods are flawed.  The difference between befriending and believing these voices — that’s the key to emotional sobriety. 

Shitty Committee

But last night, no such serenity! I tripped over all their wires, bought all their Brooklyn Bridges, and was, in effect, sucker punched.

What happened? Over Christmas, Alex, who normally makes coffee and sets up the meeting space for my AA homegroup, Salmon Bay, was visiting family on the east coast. I volunteered to cover for him, in addition to my normal “cake person” duties. Maybe 8 years ago I’d been coffee maker here, and in 28 years I’ve made a lotta coffee for a lotta groups, so I was sure I’d be fine.  Alex handed me his key to the church.

coffee brewer

    But WAYYY older

Last night, I got there 45 minutes early, had little trouble unlocking, grabbed the big storage tub from the closet, and fretted a bit about how much coffee to put in. As an avid tea drinker, I had to Google the matter, but everything was “per cup” with nothing about 2.2 liter airpots, and I felt somehow too flustered to do the math.  So… I dumped what looked like a good amount into the filter, placed it in the brewing basket with the airpot below, and hit BREW LEFT.

Nothing happened. 

A light was flashing at the top of the machine: READY TO BREW.  Under that was an ON/OFF switch. I pushed both of these and BREW LEFT for short and long periods. Maybe I should try BREW RIGHT.  I moved everything over and repeated the process. Nothing.  I searched the kitchen walls for instructions, checked the power, whether it was connected to water.  The tea spigot water was warm, but not hot.

Meanwhile, time was ticking away: no coffee, no room set up, just an increasingly freaked out alcoholic.

I called Alex in Virginia where it was past 10:00 PM.  He didn’t answer.  I sent an email to the entire homegroup with the subject line, HELP!  Then I put a large tea kettle on to boil, said f*ck this, and went out to set up the meeting space.  

Something was wrong here, too. We normally have several big round tables off to the left and a U-shape of rectangular plastic tables in front of the secretary/chair table. But the room was filled with 7 round tables, two of them plastic. Why couldn’t I remember those plastic ones?  Where did they go? 

stove burnerI was dragging the wood ones to the left when I smelled smoke. I ran to the kitchen where a dirty burner or drip pan was billowing clouds of smoke that filled the kitchen. I turned on the fan and propped open the church door, but it was bad. While I was in there, just for fun I spent another minute pushing all the goddam buttons on that bratty piece of shit coffee machine.  Nothing.

At this point, I reached a FML peak of frustration. In my 10 years at Salmon Bay, except at the pandemic’s height, there had always been coffee, decaf, and tea at this meeting. Always. Now, for the first time ever, there’d be none. That and the round tables looked all wrong, too crowded.  I hadn’t even begun to set up the U-shape.

WHY couldn’t I DO this???  WHAT the goddam hell was WRONG with me?!  What a ridiculous embarrassment, to be such an incompetent idiot!  What would everyone think, especially that person who always seems to not like me?  

FML

I heard the door.  Phil, our outgoing secretary, came in. He’s still recovering from a near-fatal episode of a kink in his intestines, so quite fragile, but I don’t think I said hi or asked how he was feeling, never mind remembering he had 10 years sober this month. “I can’t figure out the f*cking coffee maker!” — that was my hello. “What’s with the smoke?” was his answer.

Phil went in the kitchen. He said a bunch of things, pushed a bunch of buttons, and then delivered this Earth-shattering pronouncement: “It’s broken.”

I showed Phil the round plastic tables. “They don’t belong here,” he said. “We can fold them up and put them aside.”

The smoke had mostly cleared out by the time people started to show up. Many tried the coffee machine and shrugged.  Someone poured the smoke-producing but boiling kettle water into an airpot, I set out the tea things, and we alcoholics had ourselves a wonderful meeting — complete with birthday cake.

When I got called on, I told the tale above. “I was going crazy until Phil got here, and then all of a sudden, nothing was a big deal anymore. To me, this just shows how much we need each other.  Alone, I can catastrophize anything.  It just takes one person facing the same predicament to make it okay.”

mara

                The demon Mara

Maybe when Alex gets back, he can show me how to slap up that bitch machine to make it work.  Til then, I’m happy with the magic of AA, shared community, and friendships. I’m even grateful for those 30 tormented minutes, because they reminded me how my whole effing life used to feel before the steps showed me what was broken, what useless buttons I kept pushing in life. Those demons and I, not only did we have tea, but we were joined by every tea-sipping member of my homegroup.  

Happy New Year, Alcoholics!  

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PS: It WAS broken!! We could tell because the following week it was A) spotless B) devoid of the filters normally on top.

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November 13, 2022 · 9:36 am

AA Banquet Talk: Transformative Steps & My Story

I recorded this on my phone last night — and I’m really glad I did.  Speech / elocution-wise, I learned that I’m too shrill and often speak too fast to be understood, so I can work on toning both those things down.  Content-wise, I hope some of you might get something useful from it. Plans to time myself were technologically foiled, so I was shocked when the moderator held up 10 fingers, and the end is hella rushed. But I guess that’s how it was meant to be.

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October 30, 2022 · 6:00 am

Pain Meds IN THE HOUSE!!

A few years ago, my friend Rob, a “purebred” alcoholic sober nearly a decade, injured his elbow and was prescribed Vicodin. In mere weeks he became addicted to opioids and, after a few years, died. Another friend, an engineer with decades of sobriety, likewise hurt his elbow.  He, too, was prescribed pain medicine, left his life to chase street drugs for months, but by the grace of god did not die. 

What we as alcoholic addicts can never forget is that our brains have a haywire switch.  No matter how certain our rational minds are about “not liking pills” or “using only as prescribed,” our addict remains crouched in the back of our minds saying, “Right! You’ve got this!” until the moment it clinches control and says, “Ha!  I’ve got YOU, bitch, and we’re on a run!” I can’t emphasize enough the degree of respect for this demon every alcoholic addict needs.

Last Thursday, a surgeon sliced open my hip crease, popped the ball outta the socket, sawed off the end of that femur, and commenced building me a new hip. That’s a graphic way of saying I underwent an anterior hip replacement. When I came to, I felt wonderful! In fact, I had a moment of intense spiritual clarity — see below — before things got cloudy.

I have no partner, my son’s away at college, my mom is hella old, siblings either distant or dealing with their own ailments. My main “family” is AA, but I have other circles as well.  My friend Keira came to get me 30 minutes after surgery. She’s a chemo nurse, at home in medical settings. When the nurse discharging me noted that, per my request, I’d be prescribed only Tramadol — not Oxycodone — Keira interrupted. To me she said, “Dude, they just sawed through your femur. Get the Oxy. If you don’t need it, you don’t have to take it.”

An hour later in the Safeway the parking lot, my entire thigh was !!!SCREAMING!!! Anger as if someone had … well, just sawed through it. Keira was inside trying to get me the Oxy before the pharmacy took a lunch break. I was doing controlled breathing, shaking like mad, pressing down the panic that wanted to explode as my pain flared higher and higher.

At last Keira opened the driver’s side door. She had the Oxy. Thank god. About 10 minutes later, I could speak again in a normal voice. The pain was managed.

That’s what such drugs are for.

Over the 27 years I’ve been sober, I’ve gotten super comfortable with full-on reality. What used to seem an onslaught of jarring, demanding impressions is now just the flow of what’s happening. I knew this before my surgery. What I didn’t know until the following day was that the converse has also become true: I’m now super UN-comfortable with being fucked up. 

Isn’t that crazy?  What would Pink Floyd, who wrote “Comfortably Numb,” think of that?  Could 34-year-old Louisa, who in 1995 lived for her daily booze and drugs, have even imagined such a mindset?

I was staying with Keira’s family for three nights.  On Day 2, Friday, she invited our friend Sarah over for a card table dinner in the room next to mine.  I was excited!  Both these friends live an hour away from me, so I don’t get to see either as much as I’d like, let alone both together. We three are the Bikini Bitches. We climb glacial mountains and take silly Bikini Bitch photos at the summits, clean, sober, & livin’ large.  That’s us.

Mount Daniel ’19
Mount Baker ’18
Ruth Mountain ’21

I wanted to be fully PRESENT for this little reunion, but I also needed to sit at the table, so I took a Tramadol instead of Oxycodone.  That shit may be one-sixth as strong as Oxy, but it messed me up, hit me like a wave of blur! Sarah showed up and we  all sat down together, but my mind was goofing around on some mayonnaise slip n’ slide. I remember looking at my friends and thinking, I want to BE here! Again and again I struggled to focus, but I couldn’t think of words or keep track of most ideas long enough to speak them.

Every now and then, they’d look at each other. I remember Keira saying with an accepting shrug, “She’s fucked up.”

I wanted OUT of my fucked-upness as badly as I used to want OUT of full-on, clear consciousness.  My friends were there, and I was MISSING it!  But I could do nothing to get my sharpness back. I was half-drowned in stupidity. 

On Day 3, my son surprised me by driving 6 hours across the state, using my shared location to find Keira’s house, and then phoning to say, “Mom, can you look out the window?”  Such a sweet boy!  Sunday, after he’d driven me home, he set up our house so I could live downstairs alone.

He also hid all my meds.

Yup. The Oxy he divvied into stashes — 2 pills, 6 pills, and the rest of the bottle — then found hiding places for them and the Tramadol. I had my ibuprofen and Tylenol. If I needed something stronger, I could call him. My son understands. He grew up around sober friends we’ve since lost to addiction, prescribed or otherwise. He mourns them, and he loves me.

As it turned out, I did need to call him. My stomach rejected the ibuprofen AGAIN and, after I caught my crutch on a gate while letting my chickens out, I stumbled and re-injured my leg, which brought on a 99.5 º fever and heightened pain. “Look in the drone box on my desk,” he told me.  And there were two Oxy, right under my nose!  For two nights, they controlled the pain enough to let me sleep, but I think I’m done now.  I don’t need to ask for more.

What protects me from hunting for those meds is not my will. Addiction’s kryptonite is connection: love, community, and gratitude. An AA friend is coming over today to move my stuff back upstairs. Another will come tomorrow to spot me while I take a (much-needed!!) shower. Neighbors have mastered my chicken routines, gifted me a thermometer, and picked up my new anti-inflammatory meds. My dogs have gone for walks every day — 6 days in a row — with different people. Today they have a play date with the dogs of a former student of mine from 15 years back.

Here is the image I was shown when I first came out of the anesthetic, before my brain came back online to block spiritual knowing.  First, I had to remember what I was doing: I recalled, “Oh, yeah, I’m doing that Louisa business!” Then, on the strip of wall in front of me above a window to the nurses’ station, I saw my life as Louisa. It was a circle at the center of a ring of smaller circles, connected by radiating lines that I understood went two ways. These were all the lives mine touches, all the people connected to me whether remotely or in person. Lean into this, my angel told me. There was more, but I’ll save that for another post. 

I thought, “Wow!  That wall is so awesome!  I’ve got to tell the staff to put some pictures up there for people who maybe don’t have visions!”  Then everything went cloudy, and I don’t remember much.

I’m on a mission here in this Louisa suit to share love and kindness. So are you. But the flipside is, we can give others a chance to do the same.

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August 22, 2022 · 6:00 am

Unexpected Teachers

About two months before I got sober, a voice spoke to me — one I now know as my angel’s (I call him Egnacio).  I’d just driven to my log cabin completely hammered, tearing along winding, woodedNarrow Bridge roads as fast as 80 mph with the radio blaring, seeing quadruple as I bombed through the narrow railroad overpass where I should have died. Instead I reached home, but as I clung to my car door for steadiness and glanced up at the stars, congratulating myself on my badass driving skills, the voice shot through me like a thunderbolt from Zeus, except it was a bolt of telepathy, of knowing, extremely urgent and somehow stern: “This is the last time I can help you.  And you DO know right from wrong!”

In the nearly 28 years since that night, sober all but those first two months, I’ve come to realize that Egnacio’s two brief communications actually contained a template for living, a standard on which to base all future choices and judgments. 

Screen Shot 2022-08-21 at 9.37.50 AMThe first, “This is the last time I can help you,” meant essentially, “If you really want to bash your brains out on a telephone pole or scar your life with paralysis or the guilt of having killed another driver, have at it.”  What he was conveying was this: I (Louisa) am responsible for my own life — for my choices, my outcomes, and the caliber of my character.  The same is true for everyone, and there comes a point when even a guardian angel has to quit trying to help.

The second, “You DO know right from wrong!” was essentially a call for the 3rd step.  At the time, I was letting all my addictions, whether substance or emotional, run rampant. Egnacio asserted that I knew better, that I had the capacity to search within for god’s take on my every thought, communication, and intended action. I can consult Good Orderly Direction on whether what I’m doing is good and right, based in love and truth.  I can also sense if other people’s behavior strikes me as good and right, based in love and truth. But if I think back to communication #1, I must accept that their ways are THEIR responsibility, not mine.

We all encounter teachers in our lives. The teachers we EXPECT are those we look up to: sponsors, mentors in life or work, wise friends, maybe even (if we’re very lucky) parents or grandparents. We look to these people to demonstrate for us how to navigate life with grace and insight. For example, I love and admire my AA/Al-anon sponsor because she’s constantly telling on herself, sharing in AA meetings and recovery conversations all the petty jealousies, insecurities, habits, and worries that fill her thoughts throughout the day.

In fact, she finds herself hilarious! Why? Because she doesn’t identify with the ego that’s constantly churning out these thoughts and reactions. She doesn’t buy into her own thinking. In light of Communication #2 above, she has access to a gauge of reality beyond her own flux of thoughts — her god.  

Similarly, she has fun describing her flaws because her self-worth comes NOT from how she looks to other people, NOT from whether she’s seen as an AA guru (as she comes up on 38 years’ sobriety), NOT from what I or her coworkers or husband or anyone else thinks about her. She knows god loves her, and that’s all she needs. On good days, I can follow her example.

Then then are the unexpected teachers.  All of us have been betrayed by those we thoroughly trusted. Supposed friends, admired mentors, sponsors, family members, lovers — each of us will have the experience of being hurt by such people, and the stronger our trust in them was, the more profound the pain. 

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Among the most important learnings of sobriety is that these people, likewise, are our teachers.  They showcase how to cause pain with our words, judgements, assumptions, indifference, and carelessness. They demonstrate for us the harm these attitudes and resulting actions inflict, and as we smart from their deeds, we learn firsthand how devastatingly they hurt.

In short, UNEXPECTED teachers model for us how NOT to live. Once we understand that, we can view them as assets. We don’t have to analyze exactly what made them choose to do X.  Many of us waste a tremendous amount of time trying, but such thinking has a name: Resentment. We must instead remember that, in light of Communication #1, they alone are responsible for figuring out the machinations of their egos. All we need to take to heart is their EFFECT.  

Step 3 is a core decision, a choice to always run our thinking past our higher power and seek to do right, not wrong.  Via steps 4-9, we gain insights that can increase the honesty with which we perceive our own motives. We can learn to see the ways we are just like our UNEXPECTED teachers, how easily we  inflict the same harms, maybe more subtly. And we’re resolved to continuously strive to do better.  

On the surface that means damage control in not causing harm impulsively — not saying what anger burns to say, not sending the righteous text, calling someone out, acting on the whims of antagonistic emotions. At a deeper level, it means showing up with honor to do whatever we’ve said we’ll do. But at the deepest level, it means trusting, as my sponsor trusts, that we will in time be able to distinguish “right from wrong.”  We pause, if possible, long enough to differentiate our ideals and responsibilities from simply meddling with others.

Egnacio made such a call when he let me go after saving me one last time: “Live blindly, chasing ego’s chimeras, if that’s what you choose!” That’s what I myself sigh inwardly almost every week to the main unexpected teacher in my life.  I’m so grateful to have found another way to live!

Detach with love

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May 30, 2022 · 6:00 am

Alcoholism and Rats

Alcoholism is a master of disguise.  That is how it kills.  It shows up on the doorstep of your consciousness dressed as an ordinary thought — a good thought, in fact, a good idea that seems to be coming from your own free will. So you welcome it in.  It says, essentially, “Hey, a drink is a good idea!” 

It’s nicely dressed.  It’s friendly.  It seems perfectly sensible and justified — justified because, dang it,Good idea you do deserve a drink. Chatting with it, you discover you agree on so many points: all this abstinence stuff is an overreaction. Right?  Other people make such a big deal over something so simple as a [beer / glass of wine / cocktail]!  It’s not their business. Can’t you just do what you want?  Of course you can!  This is your life and… You know what?  A drink is a good idea.  

So skilled at disguise is this visitor that the alcoholic never suspects the truth: its aim is death. Youralcohol death death. It wants you to drink, and keep drinking, to kill yourself while screwing over everything you ever did to STOP drinking, including treatment and step work and soul-searching — all you’ve done to get well.  As long as you still have the strength to raise that drink to your lips, Alcoholism has more work to do: “Fuck that,” it chuckles.  “C’mon, my friend. A drink is a good idea.”

Impulse — that’s what the visitor relies on. Though we vaguely sense that we’re “being none too smart” [36], we pour whiskey in the milk, decide to have a highball, prescribe for what ails us, rebel, say fuck it, or just mechanically take that drink. We are truly defenseless against the first drink.

So are alcoholic rats.

I recently came across this fascinating medical study of alcoholism conducted on rats: https://www.nature.com/articles/npp2017105.

Because it’s rather dry and scientific, here’s a cheat sheet. 

First, the scientists isolated rats like us, that is, “alcohol-preferring rats,” which they call P-rats.  Anrat drinking alcohol alcohol-preferring rat is one that would rather drink booze than water (sensible, right?) until they are quite hammered and, I assume, pass out.  Next, they taught these P-rats to “work for” their booze: when a light went on they had to press an initial lever that would give then access to a second lever which they could press to get booze. All the P-rats learned this. 

Now, here’s the kicker: They started giving the rats painful electric shocks some of the time when they pressed the “seeking” lever — the lever that brings them nothing but an opportunity to press a second to score some booze.  The breakdown was this:

  • 30% of P-Rats greatly decreased use of the “seeking” lever
  • 36% of P-Rats moderately decreased use of the “seeking” lever
  • 34% of P-Rats, the true alcoholic rats, did not or could not give a shit about the shocks. Increasing the frequency of shocks did not deter them. Ten months’ abstinence with no alcohol available did not untrain them. The instant the booze was back, they were back at it, getting fuck zapped out of their little ratty feet, anything just so they could have a drink.

That’s us, guys!  That is us.  I think of the first 30% as normies who love to drink.  I think of the second 36% as hard drinkers who get told by a doctor to decrease their drinking and are able to do so.

But that last 34% of rats  — those the scientists termed “compulsive,” meaning that for them the drive to get alcohol is stronger than any other.  And that is alcoholism in a nutshell.

Were the compulsive P-Rats of a lower moral fiber than the other 66% of booze-loving rats?

Might other rats who loved them have convinced them not to press that seeking lever?

Could they maybe have tried more mental control?

No, no, no.  They were simply alcoholic rats, and they were screwed.

A higher power is our only hope

Back to that master of disguise, alcoholism.  How can we possibly gain the perspective to slam the door in its friendly, affable face?  There are these things called “steps.”

  1. Give up being special. Identify as alcoholic. Know we are no different or “smarter” than anyone else who died of alcoholism.
  2. Open our minds to something greater than us, a power beyond our thinking.
  3. Follow that power. Stop believing our thoughts about anything to do with alcohol and ask instead for help. Make a bone-deep commitment to do what is right and good, no longer what we want. Good Orderly Direction. Group Of Drunks. God as we understand it.  Opening deeply to any of these will let in the light that heals us. 
  4. Complete the next 9 steps with aid of a good sponsor.

Louisa checking in 

I write this today with a heavy heart — crying, actually.  All I write here is what I long to say to one person — one who has never listened.

I love this person very much, though I shouldn’t because he’s an ex who done me wrong.  He is near to dying from alcoholism. Yesterday he checked in to detox and treatment. Ever since one of his relatives texted me that he was “skeletal and shaking,” I’ve stayed mostly in the background, asking sober friends he’s lost touch with to call.  But last night I kept waking and just praying for him to find a higher power. 

It’s unlikely.  His chances of survival are slim not only because he’s one of us 34% compulsive P-Rats but because his right brain is weak. The left brain is the bullhorn of ego and fixing things; the right takes in a bigger picture. People with right brain strokes, relying on their left brain’s assessments, often deny that anything is wrong with them, that limbs are paralyzed, sometimes even that their paralyzed limbs belong to them. I believe the right brain is also the seat of our spiritual connection, without which we cannot get sober.  

Below is a series of photos of George Best, the famous Irish soccer player.

Here he is in 1972 at the height of his fame, enjoying a brewsky.best-in-1972

Here he is in 2003, robust at 57 after a successful liver transplant necessitated by alcoholic cirrhosis.

His liver transplant was so successful and Best felt so great that he welcomed in that friendly visitor, Alcoholism, when it appeared on the doorstep of his mind assuring him a drink was a good idea — “C’mon, George! Just one on a new liver couldn’t hurt!”

Here he is just two years later at 59, a day or two before he died of massive organ failure brought on by alcoholic relapse.

George Best did not mean to commit suicide. His mind was co-opted, and, for whatever reason, he could not reach god to restore him to sanity.

I fear my loved one will follow this same progression. Please pray for him — that he find a way to reach a god of his own understanding that can override the P-Rat compulsion. His name is Gerard.

Thanks, guys. Love is the most powerful force in the universe.

.

Afterword: Gerard did indeed die of alcoholism on July 12, 2023. Drinking enough Indian Pale Ale gave him an unsuspected peptic ulcer which hemorrhaged on what should have been his 60th birthday.

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April 20, 2022 · 6:00 am

Compassion’s Spark: a 12th Step Call*

On a dark, rainy winter’s evening about ten years ago, I found myself in a run-down urban trailer park trying to find a particular trailer. I don’t remember how I was supposed to identify it, but I do remember a man stepping in front of me whose face I couldn’t see in the dark.  “I got some stuff.  You want some?”  trailer-park“No, thanks,” I replied, moving on. By the light of trailer windows, I saw more shadowy figures moving about in the downpour, and I remember holding my AA Big Book in front of my heart like a shield, asking god to keep me safe.  I was on a full-fledged 12th-step call, one of only a handful in my life.

Twelfth-step calls are less common today because treatment centers tend to be a first stop for addicts wanting help, but the woman whose trailer I was seeking had just been released from the most labor-camp-like detox/treatment center in Seattle – Sedrunar.  A friend had called me about her. “Lena doesn’t have a car to get to meetings.  She’s got two kids, and she’s gonna lose them if she uses again.”

I called Lena, though I was going to insist she take the bus to my house.  But Lena, like any addict, was persuasive.  She didn’t know anyone in the trailer park she could trust to watch her kids – who were seven and two.  Could I please come just this once?

The seven-year-old opened the trailer door.  She stared at me from eyes circled with dark shadows, silent as a spook.  I heard yelled from inside: “Let her in!”  I tried to greet the child cheerily, though to inhale the stinky, steamy air in there felt like an assault. On the floor was an old TV with a beanbag chair in front of it – that and piles of clothes.  Bare walls.  In came Lena, the toddler on her hip naked besides his diaper, food all over his face.  Lena was a bit shorter than me and chunky, about 25. She shook my hand, apologizing for the mess, and handed the boy off to her daughter, pretty much barking at her to go in the bedroom and shut the door so she could talk to this lady – me.

We sat down at the yellow kitchen table.  On the stove, mac & cheese dribbled from a saucepan stovein a way that reminded me of vomit, and smeared noodles dotted the table.  Lena sat across from me and folded her hands expectantly as though I were about to recite poetry.

All I could say was, “Does that window open?” I gestured toward a dark pane at the the table’s end, the glass dripping with condensation.

Lena looked perplexed.  “I’m trying to save heat.”

“I’d really appreciate it.”

Reluctantly she rose and slid the moldy aluminum frame aside about an inch.  While she was up she grabbed a sponge and wiped away most of the noodles at my place, apologizing that she’d just fed her son.

I’d made up my mind that I would stay 30 minutes only.  I began as I always do, by asking Lena to briefly tell me her story.  Clearly practiced from treatment, she launched right into it – how she’d grown up picking crops in Yakima in a Hispanic community; how she’d gotten into meth as a teen.  She was proud that both kids had the same father, but he was a drug dealer.  She’d lost them twice to CPS – once for leaving them in the car outside a bar.

“I’m clean, now, 60 days.  The judge told me this is an extra chance with my kids.  I shouldn’t even have them now.  I gotta stay clean.  I gotta stay sober.”  Here she changed, muscles in her face and throat working hard.  She looked right at me and spoke distinctly: “I can’t… lose… my kids.”

“Well, you’ll need to find a sponsor,” I breezed, “but, unfortunately, I’m full.”  This was somewhat true – I had a few sponsees.  But, of course, I really said it to push away all this squalor.  I wasn’t even sure whether this woman should have her kids.  All I knew was that only 21 minutes stood between me and escape.

I sketched my own story briefly, Lena nodding attentively at every phrase.  I explained that I couldn’t not drink on my own, but by working the 12 steps I’d accessed a higher power that had removed my craving for alcohol and kept me sober eleven years.

“Eleven years!” Lena marveled.  “That’s what I want!  I wanna know how you did that!”

I was starting to explain how I’d worked with a sponsor when we heard a ruckus and the squalling toddler, chased by the spooky girl, burst out of the bedroom.  Hardly taking her eyes from me, Lena scooped her son into her lap and held him close.  She gave the crown of his head tiny kisses and asked him if he wanted a bottle.

Right then – that’s when the voice started.  Not really a voice, but an urging:  Help her.  Sponsor her.  Love her.

No fucking way! my ego countered.  ticking-clockI was busy.  She was hopeless.  Just eight minutes and I’d be outta this dump, back to the fresh air and my nice, clean life!

Lena nodded toward her son.  “He don’t talk,” she said. “They told me he’s disabled, but it ain’t true.  It’s just all he been through.”  Watching the boy’s eyes, the way they moved from Lena to me and back again, I sensed she was right.  Meanwhile the spooky girl joined us with a coloring book, promising to be quiet and asking where her crayons were.  Lena grabbed them from the same box that had held her Big Book.

“It’s not me,” I heard myself telling her. “God has given me a life better than I ever dreamed of.”  Some of the people who’d helped, giving me time and guidance, flashed through my mind.  “I’m not the same person I was.”  Lena nodded intently.  She was not begging.  She was not pleading.  But every cell in her body was straining to hear me.

Just help her.  Just love her.

But I was helping, dammit!  I was steering her toward the program, right?  Just not toward me.  Anyone but me.  But, with just three minutes to go, I made a big mistake.  I looked into Lena’s eyes.  Really looked.  I saw there desperation and terror, but even more, a fierce love for her children.  My own son was five.  How were we any different?

The wall crumbled, compassion washing over me.  “Okay, I’ll sponsor you,” I heard myself saying.  Lena’s face lit up.  “But not here!  You’re gonna have to come meet me at a coffee shop!”

The rest of the story is like a fairy tale.  Lena and I met every Friday tobig-book read the Big Book at a Starbucks while a sober neighbor watched her kids, after which I’d drive us to a meeting.  She had a job riding in a municipal truck, collecting garbage, and within a couple of months she qualified to drive that truck.  She moved into a shitty apartment not far from the trailer park, where I met with her for a while until she found childcare.  She bought a crappy car and started driving herself to meetings.  Whenever I showed up at her homegroup, her kids would ambush me either in the parking lot or when I came in – the little girl now beautiful and clear-eyed, the little boy talking up a storm.  Their laughter still seemed incredible to me – a miracle.

In a little more than a year, we’d progressed to Step 9 when Lena, who was apprenticing as municipal gardener, leased a nice apartment too far north for us to keep meeting.  I drove up and visited her there once.  It was near Christmas.  I remember white carpets, a new sofa, pictures on the walls.  I remember the children bringing me a gift from under the Christmas tree and grinning while I opened it, and my own embarrassment that I had nothing for them.  But I had given them something – and we all knew it.

Last night after eight years I went again to that meeting – Lena’s old home group. But she wasn’t there.  Where she’s gone, what she’s doing, I don’t know.  But I’m hopeful.  I sent them prayers.  Today, I’m so grateful that god opened my heart, and that it’s still opening.

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…

Postscript:  I had to find out…  🙂

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Republished from 12 /2016

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March 21, 2022 · 6:00 am

How it Felt to Get Sober

Short answer?  Terrifying.  Terrifying because to live without drinking was unimaginable — like a layer of my identity being ripped from me. I had reached the point where I could not imagine life either with or without alcohol.

Today, at 27 years sober, those days seems distant not just chronologically but because my reality is completely transformed. The only experience I can compare with getting sober is having kids: imagining how it might be to have kids is a world away from actually becoming a parent, supporting the lives of your children in countless ways and loving them more powerfully than you ever dreamed possible.

The same was true for me, but the child in question was my authentic self.  There’s an apt truism that goes like this: You don’t know what you don’t know. In other words, we think what we know must be all there is to know about sobriety because we’re ignorant that a whole different realm exists.

figure-in-bottle

Zealousshadow

I was sure I knew who I was. I was sure I knew the role booze played in my life.  And I assumed I could guess what a life without booze would look like. 

Wrong on all three counts!

Amputating a Limb

To guess at what life would be like without booze, it seemed reasonable to work this equation:

What would it be like, I wondered, to hang out in bars and NOT drink?  Would I still play pool and darts, and, of course, smoke?  How would I sit around on my stoner friends’ couches and NOT get stoned?  What would be the point of hitting up a party if not to get drunk?

And what about life at home?  How would I watch movies without booze?  Cook or work in the yard?  How would I ever relax and chill out?

Subtracting alcohol, I believed, would leave a gaping hole in my life. This void seemed inevitable because I’d lost track of both who I was and what life was about. The goal, I’d come to believe, was always to FEEL BETTER. I knew only two ways to do that: 1) booze and cocaine and 2) esteem from crushes and “cool” people.

Happiness through a heart connection with the inherent goodness of the universe wasn’t even on the table.

Here are some journal entries from my first year:

1 day sober:   “I went to an AA meeting tonight. Was so uncomfortable and out of place and felt I will never, never stop drinking, so why even want to? I know drinking so intimately.  I know me with a glass of wine or a beer better than anyone else in this world. I love to drink. I love it like freedom and happiness.  I want never to stop.”

65 days sober:  “I really do think AA has saved my life.  I couldn’t have done it — stopped the drinking, the downward spiral — alone. I wanted to let myself go, let it end. That’s why crashing my car seemed the best way…  But now I live in fear. I fear every coming minute, every hour of consciousness that I have to get through on my own — just me and the world.  But the good side is, I know I CAN get through it if I just hold on and keep going.  And that is courage. I am rough-riding the world, life, being me. And every moment I do is a triumph.”

222 days sober:  “I’m seven months sober.  I am very messed up.  Even writing doesn’t seem to do any good, because I am so TIRED of being messed up. There’s never a break. Today it got to be too much for me. Sitting in a women’s meeting, this woman told her story, very low bottom.  And while I was moved during it, afterwards my disease started creeping up from the back of my mind, my old love affair with drinking, missing it and the sense of REBELLION and SECLUSION and FALSE SELF-SUFFICIENCY I got from drinking. I missed feeling okay when I was drunk. I started feeling it was too much to say I’d never drink again.

“So I started planning my relapse, peeking at how I could, how the bail money was right there. Just drink.  Drink like before.  I do know I couldn’t control it for long. I drink to get drunk, not for one drink. There’s always further to go and I always want it.”

Notice that in the first quote, I have no faith whatsoever.  Drinking is still my whole world. In the second, I’m courageously pioneering unknown territory. In the third, I finally recognize that I’m up against a disease that tells me I don’t have a disease, one that lies to me about how to fix everything. I know it’s lying, but I’m still extremely uncomfortable.  This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is hourglass-2.jpeg

Time Takes Time

This is another simple truism from the program.  Newly sober people pass through another childhood. When we take away the layers of self-stupefying to “take the edge off” and self-delusion that we can somehow feel what others think of us, we have to learn to live all over again.

Inwardly, we have to learn how to be okay with consciousness, how to feel difficult feelings like awkwardness, tension, boredom, guilt, discontent, uncertainty, jealousy, and so on. We learn that A) they won’t kill us, and B) that instead of numbing them away, we find the courage to change the things we can so we’re able to grow and cope.  Each difficult feeling can serve as a spur for growth.

On the other hand, we also get to taste genuine aliveness, a full awareness of Earth’s beauties, tenderness toward people we love, and satisfaction from accomplishments both humble and huge. When we experience our first glow of true joy — not hyped up giddiness — or our first sense that maybe we DO belong, these experiences can be mind-blowing.  Peace can be mind-blowing.

As we nurture a connection with our higher power, we begin to perceive it not as some deity overseeing the world but as an energy infusing everything, the force of goodness generating all that lives and evolves — not just biologically but (let’s hope) ethically. Through working the 12 steps, we learn that we can align ourselves with that divine unfolding to gain a strong sense of dignity and purpose.

All of these new feelings and awarenesses grew in me at their own pace, as they do for everyone new in recovery. Gradually a secure inward peace replaces early sobriety’s raw vulnerability.  Our new job is now only to become the fullest possible expression of ourselves.  Ours is the work of thriving.

 

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