Made A Decision

If I want to make the most of my life I need to start NOW.

New experiences create new realities.

                                SLOW-briety

Alcoholism is a play in three acts - social drinking, troubled drinking, and merry-go-round drinking.

I went into trouble drinking right out of the gate and only got off the out-of-control  merry-go-round when I stumbled into A.A.

As drinkers we often land in hospitals or jails. We may lose our homes, families, jobs and self-respect. Despite all losses, we can keep on drinking until the final scene lands us in an insane asylum, prison, or the morgue. 

There’s a happier ending though for those who find the way to live in total abstinence from all mind-altering chemicals, including our own deadly drug ethanol.

In sobriety we finally get a shot at living a life in which our children, partners, relatives and friends love and respect us, our employers value us, and our neighbors are glad we live next door. 

Most alcoholics on the abstinence train get on board in A.A., but I recently heard only one in every 26 of us stay for the long haul. And most alcoholics never even get to A.A. at all. 

What about you?

Will you be that one in 26 who holds to their decision to never take that first drink, no matter what?

Will you come to realize the most important possession you have is your sobriety? So much so you'll do whatever it takes to keep it?

That's where "working the program" comes in.

That's when every single day we again make that decision to stay sober.

That's when we do the 12-steps of A.A. recovery, and then do them again whenever a second look is needed; 

and when we carry the message to others;

when we have a sponsor; a home group;

and when we practice, practice, practice "living the program." 

When we do these things changes not only start to happen - they continue happening, day after sober day, week after sober week, month after sober month, year after sober year and decade after sober decade. 

 Toddlers don't learn to walk by giving up the first, second, or even hundredth time they fall onto their little diaper-padded baby butts. They pull themselves up and practice this walking thing again and again.

Top athletes, musicians, artists, dancers, actors, writers, comedians, etc., only get to be the best by practice, practice, practice.

Sobriety gets easier with practice, so we practice living life the way we learn to live it in A.A. Then, just like a rosebud, we will slowly open up, petal by petal, to a new and better life. We become beautiful in recovery (and we smell good, too!)

When we drank and/or drugged for years, or even decades, we shouldn't expect to change overnight those behaviors that got us to our point of desperation. But we often DO expect it and become frustrated when it doesn't happen immediately. Many give up and drink over it.

But when a mega-ton ship going at top speed has to come to a stop, it takes roughly 1.8 miles to manage it. Just like bringing that kind of tonnage to where it can safely change course, it takes us time and distance to be comfortable with our new direction for living. 

There's all that crazed high-speed momentum to deal with for starters. Alcoholics are notorious for living life on fast forward. We are excitement junkies. And in sobriety, when adrenaline is one of the few drugs left to us, we'll often ramp up its use.

Doubt it? 

Do you regularly leave the house five minutes or more later than you should to get somewhere on time, even knowing how long it takes to get there? 

Do you then drive impatiently through traffic, fume at stoplights, take chances when passing other cars  ... and finally arrive right on time after downing shot after shot of that pure adrenaline?

 

Many of us do just that, until we learn that our home-grown adrenaline - just like all the other drugs when abused - is truly bad for us.

We alcoholics are notorious for having a lot of misplaced loyalty, too. It took me years to learn that the word “No” can be a complete sentence. 

My A.A. sponsor taught me we sometimes must weed people out of our lives:

“We are all pulling a wagon full of shit behind us in our lives,” she said. “So every once in a while, maybe once or twice a year, we need to look back and see which people are helping push our wagon or just riding in it and weighing us down. Keep only those who push you forward in life.”

Recovery is not an overnight fix. It takes time to change behaviors that used to work for us, but no longer do. 

It takes time to learn things like how to "become a human being and not just a human doing." 

It takes time to let go of high drama and become comfortable with serenity. 

When we drank, the abnormal became our normal. 

It takes time to undue the practices of a lifetime that landed us a chair in A.A. 

In recovery we do the 12-steps in order, one after another. They become the backbone for our new and sober way of living, but the A.A. lifestyle is a journey with no fixed destination. Members live it just one sober day at a time. There is no timetable to be met, no clock to punch, nobody gets a diploma. 

So just enjoy the journey and keep on doing-the-doing. When we go to meetings, work the program to the best of our ability - and don’t drink - recovery will always prevail.

SLOW-briety!

 

Made a Decision

I now reframe any negative thoughts into positive ones.

  Make Use of What Others Have to Offer

For almost 90 years alcoholics have been finding their way to sobriety inside the tremendous support system called Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Our A.A. literature gives us the perfect blueprint on how to get and stay sober. Those who read the instructions and follow them (and continue to follow them) can be assured of living a sober and adventure-packed life. 

While A.A. doesn't have a perfect record for getting and keeping alcoholics sober, it offers the best option for doing that job. Its track record of success is plain for all to see. But A.A. is not now - nor has it ever been - the only game in town! 

Others have achieved sobriety through active participation in all the major world religions. Some have achieved sobriety through other programs, from psychiatric counseling to self-help groups. 

A.A. isn't threatened by those successes. 

Those who have read our A.A. Big Book and our 12 & 12 know that A.A. supports being involved in our own program while also getting outside help when needed. We are also encouraged to explore the many different spiritual paths where our recovery journey may lead us.

Everything we need to know to stay sober IS in our Big Book. But why allow ourselves merely a one-book library? Reading a wide range of spiritual books adds to our greater understanding and takes us on an ever more fulfilling spiritual adventure.

I've been to A.A. meetings where only "conference approved literature" was allowed and I've been to meetings where readings came from any number of sources a member found inspiring. Clearly they've both worked for me, because neither has derailed my sobriety.

We will accept something when we must, but often then quickly cop the attitude, "This is good and therefore this is good enough." It's a shame, because that's a fear-based decision, one not held by either of A.A.'s founding fathers.

  Both Dr. Bob and Bill W. were highly literate, well-read men raised as Christians, but they remained wide open to the teachings of all religions, psychiatry and varied philosophies. 

Both men found a God of their understanding, but they continued to explore spiritual teachings all their lives and were the richer for it. 

They deplored intolerance and wrote quite a bit about it, 

like this from the Big Book:

"We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone. 

"Every new alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is immensely relieved when he finds we are not witch-burners. A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity."

"... we have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired. 

"If what we have learned and felt and seen means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever our race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try.  

"Those having religious affiliations will find here nothing disturbing to their beliefs or ceremonies. There is no friction among us over such matters. 

Then there's this from The Grapevine:

Today, the vast majority of us welcome any new light that can be thrown on the alcoholic's mysterious and baffling malady. We welcome new and valuable knowledge whether it issues from a test tube, from a psychiatrist's couch, or from revealing social studies. 

We are glad of any kind of education that accurately informs the public and changes its age-old attitude toward the drunk.

More and more we regard all who labor in the total field of alcoholism as our companions on a march from darkness into light. We see that we can accomplish together what we could never accomplish in separation and in rivalry.

As our third Tradition states:  The Only Requirement for A.A. membership is the desire to stop drinking.

Those of us who make it to A.A. know that our having just one drink starts a train of obsessive thought toward getting the next one. Once aboard that train we can't easily get off. 

We all arrive in A.A. propelled there by the same disease. Our fellowship includes people from all religions and no religion and from every race, sexual persuasion, trade and profession. 

There are two common misconceptions people have about alcoholism:

One is that it can be cured by physical treatment. It can't. 

The second is it can be controlled by willpower. It can't. 

Most alcoholics have tried every way they could think of to stop or control their drinking and found none work. Sometimes, in the earlier stages of our disease, we can quit for a time. The problem is, we can’t stay quit, and every time we again pick up a drink our alcoholism progresses.

Remember those old black and white movies where the bartender smiles and says, "Name your poison?" 

For an alcoholic, that's an absolute truth.

Alcohol is poison to the alcoholic - literally - because when an alcoholic continues to drink, they die. 

 It may be a quick death or a slow one, but regardless it's death by poison.

Alcohol - society's "legal" liquid drug -  comes packaged in pretty bottles and sold by clever advertising. A drink or two, or a glass of wine, is an evening ritual in many households. Alcohol isn’t a good healthy choice for anyone, but we alcoholics skip the “by the glass” part and tend to drink it by the gallon.

In recovery, we recognize alcohol poisoned our lives for a very long time. Learning to recognize (and then remember every single day) that all liquor is poisonous to us - is an important part of our staying sober.

As I heard again in a meeting just the other night: 

"We don't suffer from alcoholwasism, we suffer from alcoholism.

 

Made A Decision

Our family doesn't always understand us ... how could they? We defied all understanding when we drank.

                                    Double Winners

     I was less than a year sober when I first heard the term "Double Winners" and learned it meant people who were members of both A.A. and AlAnon. 

Even so, it took this A.A. member nearly 14 sober years before I went to my first AlAnon meeting.

Once there, the members pissed me off so badly by calling me out and telling me the truth, it took me several more years to go back for another meeting. 

AlAnon members have a lot they can teach us, but trust me, they don't play softball. Tough love is their middle name, and it has to be, because they're striving for their own sanity while dealing with us drunks. 

Why did I go to AlAnon in the first place?

I was a sober alcoholic, but I was then in a relationship with a man who drank. (A lot.) I also had a lot of alcoholic family members, co-workers and friends in my life. Some were sober, some were not.

I figured AlAnon - the 12-step program that deals with those who have both drinking or sober alcoholics in their lives - might be able to teach me something. 

They could. And they have. And they continue to do so. But first I had to become willing to be taught.

As part of my morning readings today I include their lovely little book One Day at a Time in AlAnon. I can highly recommend it for all recovering alcoholics, even for those who will never attend an AlAnon meeting.

The book contains gems on not only dealing with other alcoholics in our lives (and with everyone else, too, including teenagers, relatives and partners), it can also teach us how to control our own often volatile temperaments.

Some examples: I will pause and think before I say anything, lest my anger turn back upon me and make my difficulties even greater. I will know that well-timed silence can give me command of the situation, as angry reproaches never can. 

How happy and useful I could be if I weren't carrying around such a load of unpleasant emotional turmoil. No one asks me to, so why do I?

Am I too busy to pray? Have I no time for meditation? Then let me ask myself whether I have been able to solve my problems without help.

Knowing that only complete honesty will bring me to self-understanding, I pray that my Higher Power will help me guard against deceiving myself.

Let me fill this one day with thoughts and and actions I have no need to regret.

And finally this jewel I read just this morning:

Bad habits and compulsions cannot be conquered by determined resolutions or promising ourselves that we won't go on doing this or that. They cannot be rooted out -  for what would fill that vacuum? They must be replaced - with their opposites. The secret is to substitute the positive for the negative - the I will for the I won't.

You may want to add some AlAnon literature to your own daily readings. Remember, our A.A. literature advises us to Make use of what others have to offer.

This includes 12-step programs for other issues if needed, medication on a knowledgeable (about addiction) doctor's advice, spiritual direction from a faith of our choice, exploring other faiths to deepen our understanding, and so much more.

A.A. is the perfect program to keep us sober, but it also encourages us to expand our horizons to become not only assets in A.A., but also assets to our families and communities. 

As it states in our wonderful 12&12: 

Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes, but can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things. 

These are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.

One of the great joys of recovery is learning who we really are and then to share that exciting discovery with others. We all have different and much needed gifts to give. A.A. gives us the platform to deliver them. 

In addition to our important service work for A.A., we can volunteer in many directions like cooking or serving food in homeless shelters; walking dogs at the nearest animal shelter; volunteering at a local hospital; teaching kids how to play chess in an after-school class; coaching a neighborhood sports team; 

… or  join an activist society; get on stage in a community theater (or paint sets or make costumes); do a daily check on an elderly neighbor; host a monthly dinner for neighbors who live alone (when money is tight make it a potluck, where everyone brings a food dish).

 It's the sharing of ourselves that matters - both inside and outside of A.A. As drinking alcoholics we thought mainly of ourselves. We were takers, not givers. A.A. teaches us that the joy in life is found in the giving. 

Recovery gives us a sober life to live and to live it fully. 

Go live your best life today!

 

Made A Decision

Alcohol-I.S.M. - Incredibly Short Memory.  

I.S.M. - I Suffer Me. 

        Our Mostly Unknown Very Common Disease

Newcomers to A.A. often say how baffled they became when they found themselves unable to stop drinking. This is especially true of those who managed on their own to stay sober for a week, month, or even years, and then picked up again.

But the answer isn't complicated. We drank because we are alcoholics. Every pleasure centre in our brains lights up like the dashboard of a giant Boeing aircraft when our brains get a hit of alcohol. 

Non-alcoholics don't get that kind of a hit from our drug of choice. They might get a nice buzz, but we get skyrockets in flight!

We also drank because early in our drinking days we discovered we could self-medicate with booze to block the emotions of fear, anxiety, frustration, isolation, dependence, and over-sensitivity.

And we drank to allow free rein for our impulsiveness, defiance and grandiosity.

Drinking worked for us on many levels, so naturally, we drank. 

Alcohol worked for most of us on all these levels for years and years. 

And then, it didn't. 

That's because ours is a progressive terminal illness that over time relentlessly goes from bad to worse. Every drug that gives us a happy high will soon drag us down to a lower low. Every one of them!

For anyone interested in the science behind this, there is a ton of it available in books and online. If you are a brain science buff, I can highly recommend the book Never Enough by Judith Grisel. 

 It all mainly boils down to our alcoholic brains probably being wired differently. It's that mental illness part of our physical, mental and spiritual illness in action, as described often in our Big Book and 12 & 12.

Early in my own recovery I got a look at the The Jellinek Curve * - an addiction model that identifies the progressive stages of alcoholism - and went on to read more about the three stages of alcoholic progression from other sources.

I learned the first stage takes roughly 20 years, unless we boost the booze with other mind-altering chemicals. Then it can take far less. During those years we look pretty much like most heavy drinkers, but toward the end it all starts getting - and looking - a lot worse. 

The second stage is shorter, usually no more than five to seven years. That's when our liver can't easily process our intake any more and starts to give up the fight. We no longer get hangovers in this stage, in their place we suffer bouts of alcoholic poisoning. 

But I still called mine hangovers when the poisoning hit, because I didn't have another word for what was going on with my body, other than terror. 

The final stage of our disease is when our liver, or brain, or both (along with other important inner bits) can't take the abuse we've been giving it and starts to pack it in. 

When it's the brain that gives up we can experience delirium tremens, imaginary situations as if they are real. 

These can often be horrific blood-curdling visions, but my best friend and one-time drinking buddy, Kathy H., once saw tiny muppet-like demons running around her house, a vision that scared her straight into A.A.. 

Following the DTs there can be a total loss of mental faculties and permanent residency in a little rubber room (wearing adult diapers), all down to a neurological condition commonly known as "wet brain."

Other joys in the final phase include (but are not limited to) agitation, anxiety, screaming headaches, shaking, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, seizures, insomnia, high blood pressure, tactile, auditory, and visual hallucinations (more delirium tremens), fever, excessive sweating, and finally, isolation and loneliness lived in a skeletal body beneath a swollen belly, followed by the relief of a very, very ugly death.

If you, too, are an alcoholic, that’s what the outcome of alcoholism is for those of us who continue to drink. That’s the end game you won’t see in commercials where happy party goers drink booze like it’s soda pop. 

The DRUG ethanol, found in all our alcoholic "beverages" - from beer to those pretty fruity rum drinks - is a killer. It's found in wine, from rot-gut cheap to the most expensive Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. It's really a good idea for anyone in recovery to never forget that.

Hollywood has given us many scenes of addicts climbing the walls, screaming and pulling their hair out during withdrawal, but death from that kind of withdrawal isn't usual. Alcoholics, on the other hand, were often found dead during morning checks in those "drunk tanks" (jail cells) used before and during A.A.'s formative years.

Our disease wants to kill us in the ways described, but it isn't fussy. When we're drunk we feel invincible, so our disease can take us out in a variety of ways .

Here are just a few: 

It will use automobile accidents, falls from balconies, domestic violence, drowning, suicide, and even staggering falls causing our spleens to bleed out. (I’ve had friends die from three of these). 

I've witnessed final stage alcoholism during 12-step calls made to gated communities, the suburbs, homeless shelters, the ghetto, and once to an apartment in my own building! 

Alcoholism - as we’ll hear often in meetings - is truly an equal opportunity destroyer. 

But now - some good news:

While the elevator of our disease descends faster and faster toward the end, we don't have to reach the stage where the bottom drops out to hurtle us downward to our death. We can get off at any floor - and then go upward again via the staircase. Twelve steps up will get us to safety.

If we drank and drugged for years it will take time to build back a better life for ourselves, but we will find companionship, encouragement, love, and a blueprint for living a sober life at our very first A.A. meeting. It's all there for us if we want it. It's our way out. 

Daily working the steps of recovery, prayers and meditation, talking with our sponsors, studying our literature, all take us to a better quality of life. We need to embrace everything A.A. has to offer.

Meetings are our ongoing first-aid - our medicine. 

If you doubt it, start watching the faces of your friends in recovery when they arrive wearing stressed or angry faces. Watch their expressions change over the length of the meeting, first smiles, then even laughter. By meetings-end everyone leaves relaxed and filled with renewed hope. Medicated! 

I recently again heard someone say, "Sometimes my Higher Power needs to have skin on it." Mine does, too. 

While I have many lovely moments of silent communion with the God of my understanding, I only actually hear God's direct messages to me when spoken by other A.A. members in meetings.  

Ours is a chronic, terminal illness. Many cancers are, too. Likewise kidney disease, diabetes, and so many others. But we don't have to have painful chemotherapy, or dialysis, or daily jabs of insulin. All we have to do is get our ass to a meeting for our medicine to kick in and get us through another sober day. 

It doesn't matter if you don't feel like it, if you don't want to go, if you don't like some other members of your group, if you're depressed, if meetings have become boring, if you can't be bothered ... stop giving yourself excuses and just go!

When recovering alcoholics drift away from meetings they risk drinking again. That's a fact. And for us, to drink means to court a fate worse than death - 

or death itself.

• The Jellinek Curve can now easily be seen online with a quick google. 

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