Tag Archives: addiction

August 18, 2015 · 7:30 am

How Alcoholism Fucks Up Your Brain

A brief overview

I usually focus these posts on the spirituality of the 12 Steps as brewbama path  of recovery from alcoholism and codependency, but today I’ve decided to look at a little medical research on this disease. You already know that chronic alcohol abuse causes brain damage – some of it permanent. Whether your brain can rebuild itself with prolonged abstinence depends upon the severity of the damage as well as correlated factors such as genetics, nutrition, and your life habits in sobriety.

Alcoholism Shrinks Your Brain
This is an indisputable fact. Prolonged abuse of alcohol shrinks all areas of the brain, causing the condition known as “wet brain.” All wet brain really means is that, as the brain tissue shrinks, the vacated areas, known as ventricles, fill with fluid to compensate. It doesn’t mean you become a drooling idiot. (My father developed it late in life and remained quite sharp.) Rather, the condition simply indicates that all functions of your brain have been compromised, so that you’re less aware, less physically able, less emotionally engaged, and less intelligent overall than you would be with a healthy, non-alcoholic brain.

But, hey, no big! The buzz is worth it, right?
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MRI Alcoholic Brain
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Why Does Alcoholism Shrink Your Brain?
Here we encounter competing theories. To quote an article from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (what a bunch of party-poopers!):

According to one hypothesis, shrinkage (i.e., atrophy) of the cerebral cortex and white matter, as well as possible atrophy of basal forebrain regions, may result from the neurotoxic effects of alcohol… Alcoholics who are susceptible to alcohol toxicity may develop permanent or transient cognitive deficits associated with brain shrinkage.[i]

What is “neurotoxicity”? It’s medi-speak for toasts your brain cells. They don’t necessarily die, but the dendrites connecting them are damaged or lost, so the cells occupy less area.   But hey – at least they’re still kind of there, right?

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Gray Matter Volumes

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As you can see, when it comes to brains, plump is better. The graph on the right may seem a little confusing if you’ve gotten bombed enough times – or, heck, even if you haven’t. The straight line represents a normal brain. The blue line shows shrinkage of regions in a young alcoholic brain, and the yellow line shrinkage in an older alcoholic brain. (By the way, who the hell drinks only 20 gallons of alcohol in their whole life? Seriously? Even 625 gallons wouldn’t be nearly enough for my addict!)

Parts of the Brain Most Vulnerable
Everybody knows that when you’re fucked up, you temporarily lose coordination, short-term memory, and sound judgment. But who cares? Not much of a price to pay for not hating yourself for a bit, right? Of course, getting hammered also fries your behavioral inhibitions, emotional intelligence, and the ability to accurately read social cues – none of which can even compare, obviously, with the tremendous relief of no longer feeling terrified to converse with other human beings because you’re suddenly irresistibly hot and charming.

That said, it only makes sense that prolonged exposure to alcohol would eventually damage the parts of the brain responsible for those very functions.

Neuroimaging studies of living brains point to increased susceptibility of frontal brain systems to alcoholism-related damage… The frontal lobes, connected with all other lobes of the brain, receive and send fibers to numerous subcortical structures. The prefrontal cortex is considered the brain’s executive—that is, it is necessary for planning and regulating behavior, inhibiting the occurrence of unnecessary or unwanted behaviors, and supporting adaptive “executive control” skills such as goal-directed behaviors, good judgment, and problem-solving abilities.

In other words, the motherboard of your brain starts to malfunction. drunk-people-grin  As alcoholism progresses, this can lead to the chain of bad choices that screw up an alcoholic’s entire life. Because it only makes sense that as self-restraint abates and good judgment declines, egotism and selfishness jump in to take up the slack.

 Disruptions of the normal inhibitory functions of prefrontal networks often have the interesting effect of releasing previously inhibited behaviors. As a result, a person may behave impulsively and inappropriately – which may contribute to excessive drinking.

In other words, the more you injure your brain by drinking, the more likely you are to say, “aw… fuck it!” and drink more. Other excellent ideas include hooking up with other sick people, engaging in unethical/destructive behaviors, and royally screwing over the people you love.

Because actually, you only kind of love them. To be honest, loving them is only a vague memory. Why is that?

Alcoholics may seem emotionally “flat” – i.e., they are less reactive to emotionally charged situations… Impairments in emotional functioning that affect alcoholics may reflect abnormalities in [the right 48_Withered_Heart_16oo_by_WoodrowShigeruhemisphere or] other brain regions which… influence emotional processing, such as the limbic system and the frontal lobes.

How many alcoholics know that feeling of not being able to feel?  When my grandmother died, when my husband walked away, when my partner shut the door on my begging – I knew I ought to feel something, but I didn’t. Not much more than, “Hmm… that sure sucks!” Who knew my limbic system was screwed up? Really, by the end I could feel only one thing: when I was pouring the drink, when I was chopping the lines, when it seemed I was winning the conquest, I felt, “YES!”

Alcohol directly stimulates release of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is important in emotional expression, and of the endorphins, natural substances related to opioids, which may contribute to the “high” of intoxication and the craving to drink. Alcohol also leads to increases in the release of dopamine (DA), a neurotransmitter that plays a role in motivation and in the rewarding effects of alcohol.

The trouble is, the brain recognizes this overload of pleasure transmitters and tapers its production of each as a result. In other words, you feel like shit without a drink; in fact, severe neurotransmitter imbalances my cause you to develop “seizures, sedation, depression, agitation, and other mood and behavior disorders.”

The brain, of course, isn’t the only organ on the team to get fucked by alcohol. Every organ in the body suffers, but hardest hit is your liver. We all know the liver’s ability to remove toxins from the bloodstream gets compromised as alcohol overtaxes it. But did you know this?

These damaged liver cells no longer function as well as they should and allow too much of these toxic substances, ammonia and manganese in particular, to travel to the brain. These substances proceed to damage brain cells, causing a serious and potentially fatal brain disorder known as hepatic encephalopathy, which can result in mood and personality changes, anxiety, depression, shortened attention span, and coordination problems, including… hand shaking…[ii]

I think I might’ve had a spot of that…

Well, that’s about the end of my rollicking review of alcoholic brain damage. Missing from this account, of course, is the self-destructive spiritual illness that makes us not give a shit whether we’re killing ourselves, because life’s worthless anyway.

The good news is that studies also show all these physical processes can be reversed by long-term abstinence, while the spiritual malady – thank god! – can be cured via the 12 steps.  A healthy body is really just the means to an end – usefulness and the joy of living, which we’ve been granted in sobriety.

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[i] Except where noted, quotations are taken from “Alcoholism and the Brain: An Overview,” by Marlene Oscar–Berman, Ph.D., and Ksenija Marinkovic, Ph.D. See http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-2/125-133.htm
[ii] http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/Hangovers/beyondHangovers.htm

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June 2, 2015 · 7:20 am

What is Goodness?

Words can be dead or alive.  My big, fat Webster’s dictionary devotes a full page to the word good, yet conveys almost nothing.  Definitions range from dictionary“making a favorable impression in terms of moral character” to “wholesome” or “noble and respectable.”    Words – nothing but lexical connections.

Yet words can also be alive when they resonate with what we know to be true.  Years ago at an AA meeting, for instance, I heard these: “Love from the heart is a one-way street.  It goes out.”  The guy saying this gestured from his chest into the room, his hand unfolding from from fist to open.  I knew the truth of what he was saying.  I’d never heard it so succinctly put.

Goodness.  What is it?  Most of us know it when we’re feeling it.  If we’re around a good person, something emanates from them.  A work of art or beauty can evoke the same feeling.  It’s a warmth, a light, a glow – maybe an aura.  But of what?

Love.  Goodness is the product of love.  When that inmost heart of ours, the font of our being, our life energy, reaches out to connect with something in the world, the energy around that connection is goodness. Love has a direction, a flow along the one-way street, while goodness is the product of that connection.  It shows up in any act or effort of integrity and honor that is untainted by selfishness.

A friend of mine experienced a Near Death Experience far more protracted and detailed than mine.  Hers occurred in the seconds before a head-on car crash, which for her expanded to hours of interaction with spirits.  She was a teen at the time, verging on a dark turn of acting out from pain in her past.  An ugly, squat demon at her feet in the passenger’s seat invited her to join him, promising her a chance to “get even” with everyone who’d ever wronged her.  But she declined, and found herself suddenly pulled up out of the car, rushing into the sky with her very serious, earnest guardian angel whom she realized she’d known all her life.  Among the things she was shown was a whirlwind tour of the globe, zooming in on all the pies being made right then.  Yes, pies.  She saw countless homemade pies, all different styles and types, until finally her guide showed her the very best pie on earth at that point in time.

It was a cherry pie made by an older woman somewhere Cherry-Piein Europe. The pie was just coming out of the oven, perfectly browned with woven crust and beveled edges.  The woman loved the pie.  Into it she had poured everything she knew about pie-making, every skill acquired in years of baking – not to impress anyone, but purely to manifest the best of her abilities.  The guide flashed into my friend’s awareness that the same can be true for anything we do in life.  When we care enough to learn something, when we respect the skills involved enough to apply them with dedication, we can bring into the world a work of goodness – even when tremendous faith and courage are needed to do so.

Any time our efforts are powered by such love, they become acts of goodness – an emblem of the plenty we’ve received from god.  They are, in essence, acts of gratitude: “Life is God’s gift to you; what you make of your life is your gift to God.”

Conversely, when they’re powered by the desire to get, which is actually rooted in a sense of lack and the driving fear behind it, which is ultimately a distrust of god, our efforts become acts of aggression.  They devolve to a way of “showing” and outstripping others, of getting even with those we feel have wronged us.  The recognition is all for me.

For these reasons, addiction cuts us off from goodness entirely.  Compulsive use of alcoholalcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, etc., or the codependent urge to steer another’s life – all these keep us constantly in the mode of wanting.  We try to suck from the world whatever we think will fill the gaping hole in our guts.  This time, we’ll get what we need to feel good about ourselves.  We’ll score it from the people we impress, from the places and things that infuse us with status, lend us power.

What we have in addiction is wrong-way traffic.  As long as I’m trying to suck up whatever addiction promises will fix me, I’m incapable of even recognizing goodness.  I’m numb to it entirely.  In fact, as told in my addiction memoir, by the time I neared hitting bottom, I’d quit believing goodness even existed!  It seemed a sickly sweet delusion manufactured by conformists, when the hard core truth was that I had to grab whatever I could from a mean, barren world.

But goodness not only exists, it’s the ultimate expression ofsunshine1 living.  It can emanate from any relationship founded in sincerity – in creativity and playfulness, in compassion and affection.  Whenever I reach to connect my spirit to yours without seeking to get something from the deal, the energy from my heart streams toward you, and I become a channel for god – which is love – to flow through.  God is the source of all beauty, and as soon as we give ourselves over to expressing it, that flow simplifies life radically down to being present in gratitude.  We are complete.  In fact, we have a surplus, because the wellspring of our life-force is constantly flowing, flowing.  So we can try to give it shape, to bring goodness into the world.

That’s why I wrote this, from me to you.

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May 18, 2015 · 7:36 am

On Wreckage and Forgiveness

The ironic thing about forgiveness is that when we truly achieve it, we realize there’s nothing to forgive.  We experience a shift of perspective, a widening of the lens we’ve been looking through.  The person we needed to forgive goes from being a beetle mounted on a card and identified as faulty in various ways to a piece of our own soul – the part of us that also struggles and often fails.

Resentment works by keeping score.  But we can keep score only when we have rules, agendas, and an assumed point to the game – all of which tend to be the work of ego.  To bring about the outcome we would have preferred, the mounted beetle in question should have chosen to do X and Y.  They should have seen and realized how important X and Y were.  Why the hell didn’t they?  What the hell were they thinking?!  Now the outcome is all fucked up and it’s totally their fault!

40803_10150244489590608_8125380_nTwo weeks ago I brought home my boyfriend’s old iPhone and discovered that for two and a half years – ever since we got back together after a one-year break-up – he’s been leading a double life.  He’s had a second girlfriend whom he saw just as much or even more than me, a chunky girl half his age who clearly worships the ground he walks on and matches him drink for drink as they get bombed together.  I had trusted him completely.  I believed he was still the Good Man I fell in love with while he was sober.  Because of this, I gave him ample room to do his own thing (we lived 90 minutes apart) and never checked up on him – ignoring the fact that he was a relapsed alcoholic who merely didn’t drink in front of me – and that active alcoholics tend to lie.

My agenda was as follows: the relationship I thought I had with him was meant to flourish and endure. For this to happen, we both had to be committed and true to each other.  Those were the rules of the game as I saw it, and when I first discovered their porn-style sexting and rendezvous set up around my visits (she sometimes left the same day I arrived), I did very much know the rage of betrayal.  That rage has faded now, but what puzzles me is that it hasn’t morphed into resentment.  Somehow, I’ve jumped straight from rage to forgiveness.  Mind you, I don’t intend to see the man again – his future is god’s business and no longer mine.  But anger I do not feel.

I let go my agenda.  The whole thing.  Clearly this relationship was not supposed to be.  For a woman like me, 20 years sober, to be with a man who drinks in her absence was not a good set-up.  It could not have worked.  Yes – there was a lot of love over the nine years we shared, and the loss of that remains tragic to me.  I’m grieving it.  It hurts.  Further, what my boyfriend did is clearly heinous on a number of moral levels.  You don’t have to be the one cheated on to see that.

beerBut I’ve been there.  I’ve done that.  Okay – I’ve never developed a sex addiction with someone young enough to be my child, but by the final stages of my drinking, I lacked moral sense to an equal degree.  In the fifteen years I was drunk, I cheated on three partners in a row – the first one physically and the second two emotionally.  I developed wild crushes on people while pretending to be in committed relationships and chased down the high of those infatuations regardless of their eventual impact on my partner.  I didn’t care.  In fact, it seemed to me at the time that I couldn’t care.  I needed the fix of the person I was addicted to just as much as I needed my next drink.

In every fifth step I’ve heard, sponsees have felt failed and betrayed by important figures in their lives – often a dysfunctional parent either alcoholic or affected by alcoholism.  Time and time again, the 4th column comes down to the question, “Do you think this person would not have done better if they were capable of it?”  Sponsees struggle with this.  Their minds wrestle with the dichotomy of who they wanted the parent or person to be, with all the power to choose wisely they believed that person possessed, versus the truth of what actually happened – the fact that the parent or person simply did not have the integrity, self-awareness, or the moral resources to show up any better than they did, let alone with honor.

Who wants to be a shitty parent?  Who wants to betray and abuse the partner they’ve loved?  Nobody.  In the case of alcoholics, prolonged alcohol abuse actually atrophies the emotional centers of the brain; we reach recklessly for whatever we think will bring relief.  Compassion shrinks.  We become selfish monsters.  We do shameful things.  It’s part of the disease.

Resentment at these facts can do nothing but harm me.  Nurtured anger traps us in our heads, our stories, our righteousness about what should have been, whereas the sunlight of the spirit is cast only on what is. And it’s only once we accept what is that we can feel gratitude for all reality offers us and try to lead useful, constructive lives, granting others the freedom to seek their own path.  24350_10150106518895608_1574989_nSo forgiveness, really, is just acceptance of a person exactly as they are.  In my case, I also have to accept the toll of addiction.  The Big Book even tells us, “More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life.” My guy was just a late stage alcoholic doing what drunks do best: dishonesty with self and others.  He’s consumed in tearing down his own emotional life and perhaps career, veering obliviously toward alcoholic decline.  None of this will end prettily for him.  My mistake was fighting reality, closing my mind to his addiction, trying to love him as though he were sober.  So much I wanted better things for him!  But when I let go that agenda, it’s all just life unfolding as it should.

 

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March 16, 2015 · 7:43 am

What the Heck is a Spiritual Path?

A number of people dear to me in AA just can’t seem to stay sober.  Their recovery looks hopeful at times: they’ll string together a few months or even a year, but then they go out again.  At some point they drag themselves back looking haggard and beat up and often shockingly aged.  They share about being totally defeated, about knowing they can’t drink, and about their rock solid determination to stay sober this time.  Sadly, though, a few months or a year later, they’re gone again.

The Big Book tells us why: they “failed to enlarge [their] spiritual life” (35).  During my drinking, I very much wanted to be a good person so I could be happy – to be true to my partners (at least in everything they knew about), to be honest (enough), and to contribute to the world (so I’d be respected).  If I had brought that same approach to getting or staying sober – reliance on self – I’d be drunk today.

Here’s the deal: There are two ways to live in this world – by the guidance of ego, or by the guidance of something greater than ego.  Practicing alcoholics, when they look inward, consult with the authority of ego, which has one sole criterion for direction: me.  “What will make me feel good/get me what I (think I) want?”  I may desire amazing personal experiences, or to feel attractive or valued.  I may want money and a sense of importance – the recognition of achieving great things.

The active alcoholic may sincerely wish to live by higher principles because doing so might help goalsthem grab the things they link to happiness – like a career, a relationship, or esteem among peers.  But in all their navigation, the joystick always remains firmly in the grip of ego, whose sole objective is to get what it wants.  That’s why most practicing alcoholics harbor secrets.  That’s why their love is striated with selfishness.  And it’s why they’re never immune from the seduction of alcohol, because ego assures them a drink will feel awesome – or at least bring relief – and they take the bait.

What’s the alternative?  To be holier than thou?  To renounce earthly life and pursue some lofty enlightenment?

No.  It’s to admit we’re irreparably flawed, and to commit to trying every day to be a slightly better person than we were yesterday – not by the criterion of what feels good, but by the light of what, in our deepest heart, we know to BE good.  Pursuit of goodness – however we define it, however faultily we seek it, and whatever that progress may look  like –  is the essence of a spiritual path.

Let’s look at this idea in pieces.  First, admission.  The ego howls againstbroken vase the idea that we are irreparably flawed.  “I can fix myself!” it insists.  “Really!  I know best!”  To admit we’re permanently confused and lacking integrity requires the two greatest forms of ego Kryptonite on the planet: honesty and humility.  This first step is the foundation on which every alcoholic bases a new experience of living.

Next, commitment.  A spiritual path requires that we accept the futility of living by self-propulsion.  Though society at large touts “taking control,” a spiritual path requires relinquishing the claim that we’re qualified to call the shots.  In AA this means we commit to the steps, the fellowship, and service work.  For non-alcoholics, too, some form of spiritual community is often involved, whether a sangha, a church, a yoga or meditation group, or some other family of like-minded people also trying to grow spiritually.  We begin to test our own thinking – which we have admitted to be flawed – against the wisdom of this sounding board.

What we know to BE good is the thing we commit to.  The Big Book tells us, “deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God.”  Unfortunately, many people assume this idea should equate to the God of religion, which may or may not be found anywhere in them – let alone deep down!  My own god has nothing to do the God of any religion – that’s why I forgo the capital ‘G.’

My god is the tremendous power of unconditional love in which all blue-and-white-orchidlife is swimming.  Not everyone needs to go to AA to find and tap this source, but we all need it to get and stay sober.  This power is available to anyone by any name or in any form – as innate goodness or a religious deity or the frickin’ Force from Star Wars: how you conceive of it does not matter.  What changes your life is that you trust its goodness and ask it for guidance in all actions, at each juncture.

Of course ego still elbows its way in countless times, because we’re still flawed.  But our intention remains to shift our point of reference away from ME! to a deeper sense of what is right and good.  We try to pause before we act – especially when we don’t want to – in an effort to discern the two courses.  That is the path – intention and effort.  We hang onto a faith that if we keep earnestly seeking one day at a time, we will be guided.

Ironically, this course usually brings us a richer life than we could ever have imagined. At my home group last night, the chair took issue with the saying, “My worst day sober is better than my best day drunk.”  He pointed out that he’d had some “fuckin’ awesome times” in his early drinking.  But when I was called on, I cross-talked a tad: I recalled that all my “awesome” drunken times boiled down to feeling awesome about ME! Even if I said, “I fuckin’ love you, man!” I really meant, “Wow! – I don’t feel alienated and alone!”  The spiritual path opened by AA has nurtured in me the gift of genuinely loving others – of living for something larger than myself.  That’s what we’re here to do.  And really, it’s a high no glory days can touch.

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February 23, 2015 · 8:28 am

‘Coming Out’ as Alcoholics? The Anonymous People

I finally watched The Anonymous People.  It’s a 2013 documentary on the history and current status of the Recovery Movement – something I, at 20 years sober, had never even heard of.  The “War on Drugs,” I was vaguely aware, has caused drug incarcerations to soar, such that today the vast majority of convicts are serving time for addiction-related crimes.  The film’s creators are striving to get addiction recognized and treated as a disease by the health care and judicial systems.  Such a controversy opens a can of worms way too wriggly for me to address in 1000 words.

What I can talk about, however, is my biggest take-away from the film: that through a misinterpretation of “anonymity”as referenced in the 12 Traditions, many of us alcoholics conceal our recovery from the people we know and thus inadvertently propagate public misconceptions of both alcoholism and AA.  In the long run, this secrecy hinders our goal of helping the still-suffering alcoholic.

marty_mann

Marty Mann*

Nowhere in AA literature are we told to keep our own recovery secret.  The 11th Tradition deals with PR; no one can purport to represent AA.  The 12th Tradition says only that anonymity is the “spiritual foundation of all our traditions.” But way back in the 1930s, Marty Mann busted out in the public eye with Bill and Bob’s blessings, trying to recast the public’s perception of what an alcoholic looked like.  The film hopes to carry on her tradition – as I believe every alcoholic ought.

I’ve been open about my recovery pretty much since I got sober in ’95.  At the time, I’d been very much ‘out’ as a lesbian for years.  I’d seen no reason people who considered me a friend should not know who I was; if they had a problem with my orientation, they had a problem with me.  In the ’80s I used to make a major production of outing myself to my college English classes on the last day of class.  I remember one year I wore a T-shirt under my men’s jacket that read across the back, “Nobody knows I’m gay.”  The class gasped when, after thanking them for the quarter, I turned and dropped the jacket.  One student in particular, I remember, a street-smart African American boy, was absolutely shocked:  How could such a smart, nice teacher be… one of them-?

Copenhagen 91

Teddy-girl me, 1991

That’s why we out ourselves.  We stand up as real people who contradict the phobic stereotypes of public opinion.  All lesbians are ugly shrews who can’t get laid.  All alcoholics are ill-disciplined louts who throw away their lives.  When we out ourselves among people who respect us, we confront prejudice with our human dignity: Look at me and say that.

Flyers I posted on that campus to start up a gay student union were torn down or defaced with hate slurs and warnings about hell.  I’ll never forget walking into that first meeting: the room I’d reserved was far too small.  About 30 kids looked up from every seat plus the floor, tables, and walls, their faces alight with a vulnerable hope.  “We’re gonna show this campus a thing or two,” I told them in my coolest butch tone.  They beamed.  And we did, too.  I left that college after three years, but the group we started still thrives today, 25 years later.

When my son was about two and a half years old, I heard a 5-year-old in the park sandbox scoff at his explaining that he had two moms.  “Who’s your dad?” asked the boy. “Everybody has a dad!”  As bewilderment crumpled my son’s face, I swooped him up, my heart pKeno ounding, and, struggling to remember this other child was also innocent, offered a gentle correction.  After that, I begged my parents to spend a huge wad of my future inheritance to place my son in a pro-diversity preschool where lots of kids had same-sex parents.  By the time he started first grade at a public school, although his moms had separated, he knew firmly in his heart he just was as “normal” as anybody else.  That deep confidence and happy openness about his moms has won friends and warded off bullies.  Even in his absence, I once overheard one of his friends tell another, “Dude, Keno’s other mom’s girlfriend is an awesome cook!”

Keno trout

First trout caught with his AA ‘uncles’; confident boy

My son has in many ways been my teacher. When I directed a writing center at the UW, I was ‘out’ to each year’s team of student tutors about my gay past and current recovery.  Though I’d jumped tracks again and resumed dating men after 14 years (it’s all in the addiction memoir: my lesbian era was something like a geographic), my son still had two moms, so I shared our truth.  The tutors, in turn, came to trust me with issues of their own, such that my desk became something like Lucy’s Psychiatric Help stand in Peanuts.  In the six years since the center closed, one of those students has sought out recovery and several have come out as gay or transgender.  Others have reached out over Facebook asking if we can meet up and talk about life.  A few have even asked me for help with their alcoholic friends.  And one of those friends, I know for a fact, is sober today in part from my help.

In short, I share my recovery with anyone who wants to know me personally.  “I’m so sorry!” some respond.  “Can’t you just have one drink?” ask others.  I keep it simple, but I speak my truth.  I wrote my memoir to share my entire story in hopes that it might help others who struggle with the same experiences and emotions I did.

The rooms of AA have been my “safe school,” where I’ve  learned that alcoholics are individuals normal in every respect but for a potentially fatal disease that should carry no stigma.  Listening to other alcoholics unfold their inner experiences, I’ve learned, too, that all the quirky emotions I’d imagined, in my isolated loneliness, made me terminally unique are in fact just part of being human.  Whatever I’ve done, thought, or suffered has been known to countless others, and we can help each other through it all.  Showing up in our whole truth, without shame or secrecy, is how we change the world.

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* Click here for video on 1930s National Committee for Education on Alcoholism

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February 13, 2015 · 1:43 pm

Enlightened but Dead: Why Alcoholics Need God

Pema Chödrön’s teacher, the venerable Chögyam Trungpa, drank a lot.  Drinking was a staple of his sanga, where he threw big parties among his students, and he was known to carry vodka in a water bottle.  Trungpa explained in one of his spiritual books why his drinking differed from that of an ordinary alcoholic:

“Whether alcohol is to be a poison or a medicine depends on one’s awareness while drinking. Conscious drinking—remaining aware of one’s state of mind—transmutes the effect of alcohol. Here awareness involves a tightening up on one’s system as an intelligent defense mechanism…

“For the yogi, alcohol is fuel for relating with his students and with the world in general, as gasoline allows a motorcar to relate with the road. But naturally the ordinary drinker who tries to compete with or imitate this transcendental style of drinking will turn his alcohol into poison…”*

Sadly, it appears that Trungpa’s liver failed to read the book and appreciate his “transcendental style” of yogi drinking.  Despite diagnoses of cirrhosis and doctors’ warnings that more drinking would kill him, Trungpa continued to drink heavily until it did indeed kill him in April of 1986, when he was just 48 years old.

Trungpa~

Philosopher Alan Watts was considered a sage throughout the ’60s after he rose to prominence with the 1951 publication of The Wisdom of Insecurity – a pivotal text  introducing Eastern concepts to Western society.  The book considers the ego’s dis-ease with the unstable nature of reality and its efforts to create security via constructs of memory and projection coalescing in a story of “I,” which Watts dismisses as unreal: only awareness divorced from self can access reality.  Watts, like Trungpa, was well aware of the futility of escapist drinking:

“One of the worst vicious circles is the problem of the alcoholic.  In very many cases he knows quite clearly that he is destroying himself, that, for him, liquor is poison, that he actually hates being drunk… And yet he drinks.  For, dislike it as he may, the experience of not drinking is worse… for he stands face to face with the unveiled, basic insecurity of the world.”

Unfortunately, identifying this vicious circle did not grant Watts the power to exit it.  Like Trungpa, he often gave lectures while sloppy drunk. He, too, developed end-stage alcoholism that deeply concerned his ex-wife and friends, and died of alcoholic cardiomyopathy – e.g. heart failure – at 58.

Watts~

Both of these men were masters of self-knowledge and the meditative disciplines that yield inner peace.  Both could speak brilliantly on the ills of ego and treasures of honesty.  Yet neither could stop drinking.  And they’re just two examples out of jillions.  Why did they fail?  Why would people so insightful not quit what was clearly killing them?  The Big Book explains:

“If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago.  But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how hard we tried.  We… could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, …failed utterly.” (p. 44)

In Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Trungpa makes very clear that no god enters into his vision.  “Over the past seven years, I have been a presenting series of ‘Shambala Teachings’ [on]… secular enlightenment, that is, the possibility of uplifting our personal existence and that of others without the help of any religious outlook.”

Good for him!  I agree wholeheartedly that self-knowledge is great stuff.  But it will not cure alcoholism.

In a 1968 talk, Bill Wilson, one of AA’s founders, described the initial amazement of the psychiatric community at the unprecedented breakthroughs of AA.  Many alcoholism specialists attended meetings and saw their own alcoholic patients, with whom years of psychiatric work had failed, achieve abstinence and mental health in a matter of weeks.  One suggested that Bill assemble a group of such psychiatrists to testify before the Academy of Medicine about AA’s success. So Bill asked them.

“And not a one would do it! …In effect, each said, ‘Look, Bill. You folks have added up in one column more of the resources which have been separately applied to alcoholics than anyone else… [But] the sum of them won’t add up to the speed of these transformations in these very grim cases… So for us, there is an unknown factor at work in AA.  [B]eing scientists, we… call it the X factor.  We believe you people call it the grace of God. And who shall go to the Academy and explain the grace of God?  No one can.'”

questionSorry, folks!  But the X factor, and that alone, is what saves an alcoholic: Connection with a higher power, to god as we understand it.  We ask god to help us, and we’re relieved of a compulsion that no amount of self-knowledge can touch.

Humility is the key ingredient to receiving grace.  We have to ask for it, accepting that we’ve been defeated.  By contrast, Trungpa, for all his wisdom, exhibited a strong tendency toward hubris.  The true warrior, he explains in Shambala, is both Outrageous and Inscrutable.  “…[H]aving overcome hope and fear, the warrior… fathoms the whole of space.  You go beyond any possibilities of holding back at all…. Your wakefulness and intelligence make you self-contained and confident with a confidence that needs no reaffirmation through feedback.” In other words, I got this!  Screw what anyone else thinks!

Watts, meanwhile, purported to embrace God, but his abstractions reduced it to a mere abandonment of I, which enabled connection with the eternal now and rendered us one with God.  For Watts, there could be no “Hey, god (you) please help (me)!” because the you / I division negated the fact that we are god: “[W]e cannot lay ourselves open to grace, for all such split-mindedness is the denial… of our freedom.”

Reluctance to seek god’s help almost killed AA co-founder Bill Wilson, too.  Relatively unknown in AA culture is the fact that Bill was so deeply repulsed by the God element in his friend Ebby’s solution that he went on drinking for three weeks after Ebby’s visit and landed yet again in a sanitarium.  There, after Ebby had visited him again to recap the spiritual solution, he had this experience:

“And again the despair deepened until the last of this prideful obstinacy was momentarily crushed out. And then, like a child crying out in the dark, I said, ‘If there is a God, will he show himself?’ And the place lit up in a great glare, a wondrous white light. Then I began to have images, in the mind’s eye, so to speak, and one came in which I seemed to see myself standing on a mountain and a great clean wind was blowing, and this blowing at first went around and then it seemed to go through me. And then the ecstasy redoubled and I found myself exclaiming, ‘I am a free man! So THIS is the God of the preachers!'”

Light
In my Near-Death Experiences group, I’ve heard several people describe similar experiences, when the “white light” of love brilliantly illuminated the room around them; but, naturally, many of Bill’s contemporaries considered him daft for insisting it had happened.  In his talk, he attributes this phenomenon not to his own specialness, but to the role it enabled him to play in AA, explaining that the powerful faith most AAs develop over months or years was for him simply crammed into a few minutes: “It did give me an instant conviction of the presence of God which has never left me… And I feel that that extra dividend may have made the difference in whether I would have persisted with AA in the early years or not.”

In other words, Bill was given what he needed not only to overcome a lifetime of harrowing addiction, but to co-create AA and persist in carrying its message into the dark world of his fellow alcoholics.  Why?  Because he asked… and frickin’ meant it.

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PS: I have tremendous respect for both these sages as well as for Buddhism.  By no means am I critical of their legacy or beliefs.  Reading both authors did contribute to my self-knowledge, for which I am grateful, because such insight aids in a lifetime quest for serenity.  My point is merely that self-knowledge, no matter how deep or how keen, cannot arrest this disease, as these two tragically premature deaths testify.  See comments below. 

– Louisa

  • (Heart of the Buddha, p. 153)

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December 20, 2014 · 7:37 am

Freedom: the Gift of Recovery

Got a few resentments in AA?  Certain personalities in meetings annoying you?   Big Book thumpers causing internal eye-rolling?  Somewhere inside, are you thinking you may be able to manage your alcoholism yourself – that it’s really not such a big deal?

Maybe it’s time for a little ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT with the help of this visual aid I lifted from the Wikipedia page on alcoholism.  It’s an engraving from the mid-1800s called “King Alcohol and his Prime Minister.”  Check it.  (It’s enlargeable. )

King_Alcohol_and_his_Prime_Minister

CLICK to zoom: King Alcohol & his Prime Minister, engraving by John Warner Barber (1820-1880) .

In the background on the left, we’ve got the normies drinking with impunity.  A little closer we’ve got the socialites making cocktails look 19th Century glamorous.  But once we get to the Dram Shop, which is the old term for bar or tavern, things ain’t lookin’ so good.  Sure, there’s a pretty barmaid serving, but one patron is looking pretty disheveled, two are brawling on the floor, and another is passed out.  In the foreground the Virgin Mary is seen bumming about it all (at least, I think it’s she).  The anchor could refer to maritime alcoholism?

On the right we see some consequences listed: Poverty, misery, crime, and death.  There’s the jail, the poorhouse to which with someone is escorting a drunk, a cop with his nightstick dealing with another. We see a home gone to shit, a dad passed out while his wife and kids stand by, and closest to us, a rich guy all dressed up but still on his face.  Closer still are the graves, one of them immediately outside the home.  Jails, institutions, and death – as we often hear in the rooms.  The only thing I don’t see is an asylum.

Lastly, check out King Alcohol and his sidekick Death, themselves.  Death’s bottle is corked: he doesn’t touch the stuff, only offers it to recruits.  The King himself looks confused and miserable in spite of his lavish banner.  His face has marks all over it, his brow is furrowed, his hair and beard a mess.  Around his neck what seems an amulet is actually a locked chain, and chains run down his robe in place of royal ermine.  He holds aloft a large goblet, almost like a chalice, but encircled by a snake.  Above it hovers a reference to Proverbs 23, line 32:

31 Do not gaze at wine when it is red,
    when it sparkles in the cup,
    when it goes down smoothly!
32 In the end it bites like a snake
    and poisons like a viper.

Whoa.

If you lived in the 1800s, that would be the full extent of your program:  “Do not….”  Don’t look at booze, don’t drink booze.  Just don’t.  Just stop.  Look at the facts.  Use your willpower.

“Do not…”  If I’d been born during that time, I’d be a perma-drunk or dead.  Because I tried “do not” for 14 years and ended up bombed every night, like my father before me, because the “wine” I would “gaze at” lived in my mind.  As soon as enough of the poison had cleared from the night before, I’d think, “Yes!  I’m talking about just one pretty, perfect cocktail/ beer/ glass of wine!”  Next thing I knew, I was reaching for that snake-entwined goblet, oblivious to the bite and poison.

And I did that again.

And again.

And again…

It cracks me up that at the top of King Alcohol’s barrel list is “strong beer” – as if “weak beer” might be okay.  In other words, even in his desire to capture the entirety of alcoholism, Barber lacked a basic understanding of addiction: the allergy in me – which makes me break out in endless “more!” – can be triggered by as little as a single dose of cough medicine.

What Barber did understand, though, was that we die.  We’ve been dying for millennia, at least throughout the 10,000 years that humans have been brewing alcohol.  Slowly, century by century, those of us with alcoholic genes have been winnowed from those European cultures where alcohol has long been a staple – a fact highlighted by rampant alcoholism among Native American populations where alcohol has been introduced only in modern history.  Why do 10% of Native Americans die of alcoholism, compared to 0.2% of Italians?  Because most Italian alcoholics are already dead!  They died centuries ago leaving fewer descendents.  Still, around the world, how many of us are killing ourselves slowly, blurring our thinking, drowning our love of life?

You might wonder, why did Barber choose to depict alcohol as a king, rather than a slave driver or a warlord?  The answer is in addiction.  Alcohol rules our lives, but at the same time, we venerate it as our savior.  Left to our own human powers, there is no way out.

BUT HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS!  I’m sober!  You’re sober!

In June of 1935, the world of the alcoholic changed forever.  Fifteen minutes is how long alcoholic Bob Smith agreed to talk with that sober guy, Bill Wilson.  Three months is how long they ended up hanging out before Wilson even went home. They had discovered something amazing: the connection between one alcoholic and another when speaking the truth of our condition.  They also put together the physical allergy piece Bill knew with the spiritual malady piece Bob knew and – SHAZAM!!!  For the first time in human history, alcoholics had a way out!

Never again will we as a class of afflicted people have no solution.  Shivering denizens no more, we’ve found a way to overthrow the tyrant with a far greater power – one of love, of life, of goodness.  Whether you live near a slew of AA meetings or it’s just you with your Big Book and computer, you possess two insights that Barber and the dying drunks throughout history never had:  1) That your body reacts differently to alcohol than a normal body does, and 2) that alcoholism can be treated via a 12 Step program of spiritual growth, usually (but not always) in connection with fellow alcoholics.

What I know is this: Living sober has brought me and countless other hopelessly doomed alcoholics a joy of living beyond our wildest dreams.  We are free.

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November 16, 2014 · 12:08 pm

Holiday Parties: 6 Tips for the Recovering Alcoholic

…and why they may be utterly useless

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‘Tis the season when a lot of us get invited to gatherings where the alcohol flows. If we go, we may find ourselves among normies for whom “drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination,” as well as some pre-bottom drunks.  Because they’re outside recovery, chances are they’ll be a world away from understanding that for us, to drink is to die.

young-people-in-clubdrinking-

drinks we see others taking with impunity…        

Normies view alcohol consumption from the perspective of a normal body and mind, which they assume (come on!) we must  have, too – the kind that can moderate alcohol intake at will. Believing this, they may interpret our abstaining, not as avoiding the poison that can bring down in ruins everything we love, but as a party-poopy failure to “join in the revelry.” Even if we say flat out (as I do), “I’m an alcoholic,” some can’t seem to grasp what that means.  They urge, cajole, and act baffled — or mourn for us.  “What?!  We’re talking a single glass of X, here!” (insert spiked punch, spiked eggnog, spiked cider, or plain old booze).

Standing by our own truth in the face of such reactions can be, for the more codependent among us, socially difficult.  What’s more, watching others take drinks with impunity amid all the sensory experiences of alcohol – hearing the ice clinks, seeing it pour, maybe even smelling it – Whoa! – can rouse our addict from its slumber, enabling it to launch a marketing campaign about the radness of just one drink.

drunk-people-grin

…it’s never enough

Yet the Big Book tells us, “any scheme of combating alcoholism that attempts to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure…. So our rule is not to avoid a place where there is drinking, if we have a legitimate reason for being there.”

Everything hinges on spiritual fitness, which I’ll discuss a little further down. Meanwhile, here are six tips that have helped me feel more comfortable at events where alcohol is served.

  1. Go in the spirit of usefulness, not to “get” social points or further your “little plans and designs.”  My sponsor used to tell me to see “what (I) could pack into the stream of life.” I show up to give. I can give others my attention, my humor, my encouragement, and my caring for them.  If it’s a homemade party, I can ask the hosts what I might do to help. What matters is not how these offerings are received, but the spiritual flow they put me in.
  1. Bring a supply of kick-ass non-alcoholic drinks if possible, that is, if it’s not a fancy catered type thing. As above, bring them not only for yourself, but others. “Hey, I just happened to pick up some Reed’s Ginger Beer, Martinelli’s, and this amazing Trader Joe’s whatever on my way over! Enjoy!”
  1. Have a recovery buddy. Either bring a sober alcoholic with you, or arrange to check in with one before and after.
  1. Pray your ass off. Pray before, pray during (in the bathroom or just your mind), and pray again when it’s time to leave. “God, please help me remember what’s truly important, who I am, and that you’re with me” might be a better prayer than “Help me not drink.”
  1. Know your boundaries before you go. Once we get somewhere, it may feel loserish to leave early, but screw that. Know in advance that as soon as people start slurring and discussing their favored sexual positions, or when a certain hour arrives, you’re gone.
  1. Have something cozy waiting at home. This can be reunion with your beloved pets/people or some treat you decide on in advance: a good movie or book, a slice of cheesecake, blankie & PJs, or all of the above – whatever makes you happy.

Now for the spiritual fitness part: None of these tips will be worth jack if you don’t love your sobriety.

As a newcomer, you may not think you love it, but at some level you do, because it’s your core, your truth, your life. You want to grow and thrive, and while your addiction promises you guzzling will accomplish this, you know better.

I love my sobriety fiercely – as fiercely as if it were my newborn child. It’s only as old as today. Some people might bring their newborn to a whoopee party. I do so when I bring my sobriety, cradling it close. Some might set their newborn down on a table and wander off in search of social adventures, forgetting about it. Others may decide partway through the party that toting this newborn around really inhibits their having a good time, so they’re just gonna chuck it in the garbage tonight and cut loose.

Any time a well-meaning acquaintance urges me to have a drink, they’re holding a garbage can under my newborn. They have no idea what deep fury they’re fucking with. My sobriety is the source of my joy, my awakeness, my love for all the beauties of this life – and no dumbass party can tempt me to drop it. I don’t need to vent this at them; I just need to remember my life is at stake.

Yet, dear readers, the inescapable fact remains that I can’t always remember.  Addiction lives inside my brain – the very same brain needing to remember. It can usurp the helm at any time and disguise a drink as a fine idea.  AA’s ‘spiritual fitness’ refers to my connection to a god that, for reasons unknown, intercedes during these curious mental blank spots to let me pause (provided my steps 1, 2, & 3 stand in earnest) until the truth returns.  To the extent that following these tips reflects my commitment to those steps, they may help me enjoy myself in the midst of boozers.

Yet the bottom line remains: Party or no party, tips or no tips, I’m safe anywhere if my god is with me, and nowhere if it’s not.

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where it leads

21 year old girl, drunk, killed family of 4 as well as her two passengers.  Will she continue drinking, no matter how much she wants to stop?

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October 14, 2014 · 9:21 am

Step 9: Mending the Past

I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!  Who the heck wants to read about amends?  Nobody!  I don’t even really want to write about them, but I’m going to trust, and ask you to trust, that taking a good look will reveal their beauty.

Angry-WomanSo here’s the quandary.  You may hear people in the rooms kicking around the question: “Who are amends for?  Me or the other person?”  I recall about a dozen years ago hearing a woman announce with contempt, “I’m not making this amends for her!  I’m doing it for me!”  Something sounded wrong in that, but I wasn’t sure what.

Sure, the steps are our pathway to freedom.  But they work because they’re a pathway to change, not self-help.  Didn’t we try every way of helping ourselves when we were drinking, doing whatever our monkey-brains thought would work best?  And what happened?  As I seem to recall, most of us ended up alone and fucking miserable.  The fact is, self-help refers to motivational adjustments to an otherwise successful model of living, such as, “I’m going to exercise more!” or “I’m going to procrastinate less!” not, “I’m going to quit submerging my entire existence in a cesspool of self-disgust caused by senselessly poisoning myself on a daily basis!”

So, no.  We don’t need self help.  CAM00400What we need is a transformation, a psychic change beyond anything we could engineer ourselves that redirects our energy toward maximum usefulness to god and our fellows.  If Step 3 led us to stake the best 4th step inventory we could, if we’ve read it to a sponsor who’s made clear our faulty thinking, then something has shifted in us.  In Steps 6 and 7, we opened to asking god to render us better human beings.  Now we revisit our past in this new light.

When my sponsor asked me to generate compassion toward those I’d resented, it felt like she was asking for some crazy move of spiritual gymnastics.  But really, all I had to do is acknowledge that I’ve fucked up many times myself, out of fear and pitfalls in thinking.  Let’s say I was trying to protect my beloved A when I accidentally nudged B into the boiling oil.  “Doh!”  Or in reaching after that prized X, I forgot I was supposed to hold Y and let it fall into the mile-deep chasm.  “Shit!”  Maybe I heard the enticing, faint calls of  J through the tall grass and, in stepping toward them, crushed underfoot the tiny, delicate K.  “Oh, no! Poor K~!!”

Such botched moves fill at least 75% of my addiction memoir; they’re the stuff of which all our deepest conflicts are made.  That’s why my double backward flip in the pike position comes about as I accept that you, like me, were doing only the best you could.  Now watch this move in slo-mo: I decide to cut you the same slack I wish others might cut me – the slack to be human.  It may take me days or years to get there, but eventually, your wrongs become moot.  The focus closes in on the behavior I exhibited toward you.  Would I want those wrongs carved on my tombstone?  Do I want to carry them until then?

Oops!
Remember, though, that 9 comes after 8, and “became ready” refers to more than just working up nerve.  In early sobriety, I thought I was working Step 9 by writing impulsive letters to my ex’s and telling them way more than they needed to know. By contrast, when I worked Step 8 in earnest, my sponsor wrested my ways of thinking from old to new.  For each person on my list, she crossed out and scribbled notes all over the accounts of harms I thought I’d caused, eliminating 75% of what I’d thought was the issue.  Each time she had me…

1) highlight ONLY those behaviors and attitudes the person was well aware of, to avoid causing further harm

2) boil down the harms via the rubric of selfish, dishonest, thoughtless/inconsiderate

3) come up with one specific example to illustrate each

I was not to apologize.  Rather, I was to articulate the behavior I’d shown and the ways it was wrong, and to ask what I might do to set it right.  She said, “It’s like you left a turd lying somewhere in this person’s life.  You swoop in, say, ‘I believe that’s mine!’, scoop up the turd, and ask if you got it all.”

doveAmends don’t mean you become buddy-roos with the person.  And some may continue to lob fireballs at you, requiring you to maintain a safe distance.  But when I’ve sat down with people from my past and owned, often with my voice shaking, my very human fuck-ups, I’ve witnessed in almost every one of them the blossoming grace of compassion.  Many have spontaneously confessed fuck-ups of their own.  And sometimes, in the pool of truth we shared for those moments, I would behold in them a dignity and beauty to which our old conflict had blinded me.

The 9th step means taking our new way of life out into the world and trusting god in a free fall.  As I once heard it put: “I make amends to restore that person’s faith in basic human decency.  And when I do that, I restore my own.”

 

peace

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September 30, 2014 · 9:31 am

Not-Enoughness

A worthy life is simply one of honesty with oneself and god…

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I go through phases when I wake up almost every morning with a gut-level anxiety, a feeling of guilt that I’m somehow not doing all I’m supposed to, shame for lacking “success,” and alarm that I’m getting old at a mile a minute.  My whole life, the feeling claims, is a failure.  Before I’ve even sat up in bed, this “not-enoughness” jabs at my mind, perfect lifeprompting vague solutions that pop up like slot machine combos:  “Earn more!”  “Lose weight!”  “Socialize more!”

Whether my not-enoughness, a default setting from childhood, will ever go away I don’t know.  What’s changed is how I respond to it.  Today I understand that it’s just a feeling launched by the part of me that’s still broken.  I return its topspin tennis serve with a quick prayer: “God, please take this away and guide my thinking today.”  While I put on my morning clothes and weigh myself, not-enoughness still chides at me.  I dismiss it automatically and try to focus on the moment: gift of what I am doing, the good fortune of where I am, and the blessings of my reality.  I commit to loving what is instead of lacking what isn’t.

The power for this practice comes from my god, a connection nurtured through many years of working all 12 Steps.  Back when I relied on active drinking and codependency, I believed not only the not-enoughness, but the solutions my mind proposed.  My high school refrain, “Excel more!” gradually morphed into “Be more liked!”  If I could just win your admiration, I’d overcome not-enoughness.  Sans alcohol I was terrified to converse with people, not realizing the main obstacle had to do with the coordinates of my head, which was firmly lodged up my ass.  I could scarcely hear what you were saying, so preoccupied was I with self: what was up with me, what I thought you thought of me, and what I might say to impress you (usually figured out after you left).  Sober socializing was, in short, torture.

Drinking, of course, fixed all that.  It made me smart, funny, beautiful, and worthy.  Glamour drinkSure, I was still biding my time while you talked, but who gave a shit?  I’d get my turn to blab soon enough and, whether you were impressed or not, I, at least, was fine with whatever the fuck I’d just said.  The drunker I got, the wider my range of just fine became.  Maybe you didn’t care to hear about ex-partner’s sexual foibles, but fuck it!  Lissen!  It’s hilarious!

loufinger

Moi, back in the day

The infatuation addiction detailed in my memoir was really just a souped-up version of that same dynamic, with all my need concentrated on a chosen, magical person whose admiration (or even company) worked like cocaine.  Sadly, these worth-seeking projects frequently morphed into real relationships – meaning that the magic one, by committing, lost all magic.  Subsequently, when attacks of not-enoughness struck, I had no “soon things will be different!” to counter it with.  I could only muffle its penalty buzzer with more booze and great ideas.  All I’d end up with was a wreckage of mishaps, huge amounts of money blown, and a hangover like a brain full of puss.

Sobriety has by no means been a picnic.  I spent over two years dry and tortured – fleeing the conversation clusters after meetings with mutters of “fuck ’em!” – before I finally worked the steps and became teachable.  Slowly teachable, that is: I spent nine years in a codependent cocoon focusing all my anxious attention, from the moment I woke, on fixing my partner’s “problems” and ignoring my own.  Really, that morning gong of not-enoughness did not emerge for me as a distinct phenomenon until I found myself waking up alone.  “What is this feeling?” I finally asked.

Self-knowledge may not save us from drinking, but it sure helps with other problems!  The steps have transformed my economics of worth.  The only worth I can feel, I understand now, is self-worth.  I am the only agent who can generate that rebuttal to not-enoughness, no matter what anyone else may think of me.  God has shown me how to cultivate self-esteem by doing estimable works.  It has guided me to grow a loveable life by loving my life.  It has taught me to connect with others more through my heart than my words.

Despite what the zillion ads we’re bombarded with would have us believe, a worthy life is simply one of honesty with oneself and god – whatever that may look like for the individual.  For me, it means I do the best I can with what’s right in front of me Goodmanand trust god that whenever a suitable door approaches, god will not only alert me, but open it.  Why did I start up the small business I run today?  Doors would not open to the 500+ jobs I tried for following my layoff, whereas with just one little ad, the business practically threw itself at me.  Like incremental promotions at a firm called Happiness, Inc., small choices I’ve made have gradually steered my life away from money and prestige toward more time and freedom.  Thrift at home is part of my work.  True, I drive a beater and shop at Goodwill, but I also get to walk my 13-year-old son to school each morning, laughing about this and that.  I get to write instead of wishing to.  I see friends.  I take loads of ballet classes, raise cute hens, and execute my own half-assed home repairs.  Overall, my life today reflects the truth of who I am – a plenitude of what I value and a shortage of what I don’t.  That’s the true test.

In fact, by the time I go to bed each night, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for my beautiful, rich, love-filled life.  My only prayer is, “Thank you, god, for all of it.  I love you.”

Tomorrow, I know, it all begins again.

imagesShare if you like ~ ↓ ↓

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