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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Made A Decision

There is only one sure cure for world-weariness and that is turning to a spiritual solution. 

Our Best Thinking ...

I was shaken to my core at a long-ago meeting when I heard someone say: "I used to think I was smart until I realised my best thinking got me HERE."

That speaker sure gave ME something to think about - then - and ever since!

Up until that time I thought myself to be quite a good little thinker. After all, I had a good job and also an alert brain that never shuts down ... or shuts up. The kind of brain, I've since learned, that's common to most alcoholics.

Along with pondering and questioning the need for doing all those steps, that God thing A.A. members nattered on about so much also became a perfect topic to spin my brainy wheels on, over and over again. 

"What is God? 

Is God male or female, or neither? 

Was Jesus God? 

Was Buddha God? 

Who was God? 

What was God?

Should I become Wiccan?

Wiccans are off the wall. 

But it's a Nature religion.

I love Nature.

Maybe I could become a Quaker?

How about an Animist?

Is there a God at all? 

Why should I trust it if there is? 

Where was God when (pick a nasty incident) happened to me?

Why can't I hear or see God ... etc."

That beat went on in my head, ad infinitum, for a very, very long stretch of time in my early recovery.

Our late-stage alcoholic A.A. founders knew who they were dealing with when they offered us a God of our own understanding, but even that open-ended kind of God remains a challenge for many of us.

The fact is - believe this or not - it doesn't matter! 

All we are asked to do in A.A. is acknowledge there is a power out there bigger than we are, something that designed the Universe, created our planet, and then DNA'd elephants, mosquitoes, trees, humans and everything else to enliven it.

Once we can accept we're not THAT Power, and get on with Step Two - followed by the rest of the steps - we're well launched along our sober path. A God of our own special brand of understanding can then be discovered as a bonus for our travels along it. 

Or not, as is the case with our many members who remain agnostic or atheist, but who nevertheless have at some point acknowledged Life is not all about them! 

There is no doubt the chairs of A.A. are filled with some very bright people, but even the most brilliant minds have no defence against the disease of alcoholism. We can't think our way sober. 

Intelligence, after all, is merely one of nature's gifts, along with artistic talent, musical ability, athletic prowess, and all the rest. We can be grateful for any such gifts, and we can develop them to the best of our ability, but we didn't create them.

 (It helps us become a bit more humble when we come to realise and accept that.)

Having a clever brain doesn't make us any better than anyone else. Worse, it can be a real handicap in our getting and staying sober. I can think of - and so can you - dozens of very intelligent writers, actors, politicians, comedians, musicians, and other vastly talented people who have all died drunk from our disease. 

"Too smart for their own good," as the old saying goes.

Neither a high IQ, university degree (or multiples thereof), mathematical agility, scientific knowledge, or any other intellectual achievement will restore us to sanity and give us sobriety. 

It takes a Power greater than ourselves to get that job done, even if the Power we acknowledge is just the power of sobriety found within our own A.A. group. 

Far better to relax and go with the flow. Everything we need to know about our Higher Power will be revealed as we trudge our sober path.

Like any relationship, the one I have with my Higher Power has grown and changed as I have learned more along my spiritual journey. The God of my understanding today bears little resemblance to the ones I've tried on - and discarded - over the years. 

It took time in A.A. to find a God that fit me, but I wouldn't trade my current version for your God - or anyone else's God (or non-God) either. 

I will always marvel at the infinite patience of members in my first A.A. group, people I viewed from my then-lofty perch as being a little too friendly and pretty naive, though I considered them to be mainly nice people. The one thing many of them had that I hadn't been able to achieve (with all my supposed smarts) was long-term sobriety. So even though I thought I had little in common with most of them, I stayed to discover for myself just how they had achieved that sobriety trick.

By staying I got to know, and then slowly to admire many of them. I was told to "stick with the winners,” and I did. I formed friendships within their ranks. I saw first-hand how their use of A.A.'s teachings gave them an easier path through life. 

I wanted what they had and they told me to stick around still longer and I could have it all - and more besides. They were right, along with that special bonus of not having had to take a drink or use a mind-altering chemical ever since.

I arrived in A.A. as an angry (all-the-time) impatient drunk. I'm no longer always angry and I no longer drink, but patience still isn't my strong suit. I can still get anxious over unimportant things (mainly involving computers), but the difference is, with HP's help, I now live a life where impatience and anxiety generally have to work to find a way in. 

I know for sure that my own level of serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance of my own powerlessness in any situation. And if a situation isn't working for me, I can take steps to change it.

Simply put, the Higher Power we find in A.A. works. And - as is often said in the Southern United States - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

 

I would add to that wisdom by saying - "And don't overthink it!"

 

Made A Decision

Swallowing your pride will not get you drunk. 

Powerlessness

The ‘sober’ alcoholic chooses not to drink because he has accepted his alcoholism. 

The ‘dry’ alcoholic, while “not drinking,” is invariably angry and resentful. He finds abstinence

is not exciting because he is not interested in it - he is bored. Father Leo B., A.A. speaker  

The "dry drunk" in the above quote has simply not accepted his or her powerlessness over addiction(s). Total acceptance - with no reservations - is absolutely essential to maintain sobriety. 

It takes utter defeat and utter surrender to go from a raging drinking alcoholic to a recovering alcoholic, one who values their sobriety above all things. 

With our admission we are powerless over alcohol comes acceptance. With acceptance comes the willingness to do what's needed to stay sober.

Acceptance comes hard for us all. Many of us struggled for decades to control our drinking, to drink like normal drinkers, to figure out how to avoid the consequences of our drinking. 

 Some alcoholics (as our Big Book tells us) are never able to admit defeat. They continue to drink, drug, and pursue these controlling behaviors until our disease finally kills them. 

Our A.A. literature explains: . . . the actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.

Those of us fortunate enough to have acted upon our "moment of clarity" - that instant of knowing our absolute powerlessness over our disease - tend to grab hold of what A.A. has to offer with both hands and hopeful hearts. 

Think back to when your own addiction(s) influenced every part of your daily life; when your drug of choice gave you permission to indulge in every kind of behavior.  Coming to the realization that on our own we can do nothing to escape that dark power - other than to surrender to a Higher Power - offers us no option other than total surrender. 

Later, when we recognize we are not only powerless over alcohol, but are powerless over what people think about us, or how other people work their program, and even over the ability to keep our own hearts beating one moment longer than our Higher Power intends for us, we are truly well on our way in recovery. 

That's when we are able to stop getting white knuckles from gripping the steering wheel of our lives so tightly. 

That's also when we find there are things we are not powerless over - like our attitudes - because we can adjust our thinking. It takes plenty of practice, but we can let go of negativity. We can experiment with positive affirmations, different spiritual practices, and we can become a positive influence to ourselves and others, including even giving some care to our battered home planet. 

Our 12 & 12 book tells us: 

We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength. Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.

Our Big Book has plenty to say about it, too:

He cannot picture life without alcohol. Someday he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end.

Step One is a two-part step: 

Part A: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol ...

Part B: … and that our lives had become unmanageable.

Once we've firmly placed the plug in the jug and our cravings for alcohol have stopped (sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly) we can then begin to work on Part B, the unmanageable part. 

Doing so means we must learn to "practice these principles" of A.A in every area of our lives. We will not only stay sober by doing all 12 steps of recovery (and continuing to do them), we will also slowly move away from lives of turmoil and high drama and begin living lives filled with joy, purpose and serenity.

 It all begins with accepting both parts of Step One. 

With surrender comes victory over that mindset where life is too hard to live without an escape hatch. When we stop fighting, being stubborn, arguing and trying to figure out everything - we can begin to relax. The answers we seek will come over time. SLOW-briety!

I used to feel great sympathy for any person who suffered. Today I only commiserate with those who suffer in ignorance, people who do not yet know the transformative purpose of pain. 

Those who have that information and are "bored," or in any way “hurting,” can stop suffering by doing more of the doing of recovery. 

So if you are "bored" in A.A., sit down right now with pen and paper and figure out why. The more common causes are: 

• Not getting to enough meetings, or not going to a lot of different meetings, 

• Not doing any service work, 

• Not attending any Big Book or 12 & 12 study meetings, 

• Not having a Home Group, 

• Not setting aside enough (or any) time for readings and contemplation, or prayer and meditation ... 

• In other words basically coasting along being content with merely staying dry, no more and no less. In the big picture of our recovery that's a very "slippery" place to be.

This A.A. journey, after all, has worked, and continues to work, for millions of people. It will work for you, too - but only if you work it.  

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