Made a Decision 

(69)

           Our Cunning, Baffling, Powerful (and Patient) Disease

"I went to a meeting last night, I wasn’t feeling it. I was tired after my night shift and only having had four hours of sleep, but I’m so glad I went to hear an amazing share from one of our usual gents. He had been sober for 31 years, but seven years ago he went on a one week bender and nearly killed himself. I really needed to hear that ..."

I read that paragraph above recently and was reminded - as I so often am - of the dangers of becoming complacent about our recovery. Taking myself to meetings is an important part of staying vigilant.

In our meetings we are reminded over and over again of the dangers of skipping meetings, no matter how much sober time we may have. Denial being our middle name we need that reminder. And we need it often.

When Covid showed up and we were all suddenly having to go to meetings online, a lot of us old folks didn't like it. I was one of them. I whined about it for a week or two, but soon realized these were going to be our only meetings for an uncertain future, so I learned how to click my way to continued sobriety. A lot of old-timers didn't - and a lot of old-timers got drunk.

But resistance to change is something we drunks are comfortable with and we cling tenaciously to our doubts, fears, self-loathing or hatred of others, because we find security in our old familiar pain. 

Only when remaining stuck becomes more painful than having to change our behaviors do we become willing. Most of our pain comes not from change itself, but from our resistance to change. But change is how we move forward, it's how we grow. When we invite new things into our lives, new joys can arrive, too. 

Step Ten - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it - assists us with changing old patterns. Step Ten calls for daily self-appraisal and self-correcting when we veer off course. This forces us to grow in understanding about our motives and to bring about necessary changes in the way we live our lives.

None of this happens overnight, by the way. AA is our journey of a lifetime and every step of the way we will learn new things that require us to change for the better. To not do so puts us in danger of complacency and complacency is the path to relapse. 

We must always continue to watch for - and correct when necessary - selfishness, dishonesty, fear and resentment. When these old enemies rear their ugly heads we must immediately ask our Higher Power to remove them. 

As our literature bluntly states: 

"We must not rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve, contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition."

And we must also share what we learn about ourselves with others, especially the stuff we'd rather keep to ourselves. That gets - and keeps - us humble. 

Want an example? How about the following written in 1961 by none other than Bill W. himself:

 "I used to be a champ at unrealistic self-appraisal. I wanted to look only at the part of my life which seemed good. Then I would greatly exaggerate whatever virtues I supposed I had attained. Next I would congratulate myself on the grand job I was doing. 

       "So my unconscious self-deception never failed to turn my few good assets into serious liabilities. This astonishing process was always a pleasant one . . . I was falling straight back into the pattern of my drinking days . . . 

 ... I shall forever regret the damage I did to people around me. Indeed, I still tremble when I realize what I might have done to A.A. and to its future."

If you are an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous you can bet that a power greater than yourself chose you to recover to be of service to yourself and others. 

We don't need to know why we were chosen when most alcoholics never even make it through the doors of AA, or stick around long even when they do. We just need to remain deeply grateful.

And to make changes in our lives when changes are called for. It's known in AA as doing-the-doing. 

Keep doing it.  

 

Made A Decision

(68)

                         Letting Go of the Past

The Bible tells us: Sufficient unto the day are the evils therein.

AA tells us: One Day at a Time.

Our Brains Tell Us ... I was such a horrible person yesterday.

So the Bible is telling us to live in, and deal with, what’s happening today.

AA is advising us that living in today, and not in the past or future, will keep us sane. 

And our brains tell us to ignore all that free wisdom and focus on our ego-driven selves.

We can NOT change any action we took yesterday.

 We can make an amend if necessary, if one is needed, for something we did yesterday, but we can not change what we did yesterday. 

For that matter we can't change what we did one minute ago, or one second ago. 

It's done. Finished.

Learning to accept that and let it go is our challenge. And it's not an easy thing for the mentally ill to do. And alcoholism is a mental illness. It's a three-fold illness of the mind, body and spirit. 

We usually acknowledge that alcoholism physically kicked our ass, and we certainly didn't invite God in much for directions on how to live during our drinking days. But we mostly want to slide over that mental illness part.

 "Nothing wrong with my brain, thank you very much," was certainly my attitude when I was first told about the mental illness component of our disease.

I've since not only accepted it, however, I've embraced it. Knowing I am mentally ill explains so much about my behavior, and it helps me to correct it when necessary without beating myself up over it.  

Being mentally ill I am able to have a perfectly lovely day, go to bed for the night and wake up wanting to kill someone - maybe even me.

 That's my mental illness front and center. AA has given me the tools to start my day over (as many times as is necessary) to get me out of that dangerous funk.

Our Big Book, on Page 30 (4th Edition), tells us: 

"The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed."

And then there's depression. Being of a depressive state of mind I can also wake up, and usually do, with negative thoughts pushing and shoving themselves for precedence in my brain. 

My sponsor says that's common, that our brains often wake up with a "Ding, Ding, Ding - You've got mail" message about how useless we are, how better we should be, how we'll never amount to anything, and other such falsehoods. 

The key, as my sponsor explains, "is just don't open the damned mail."

So True!!! 

Now, when those grim early thoughts wake up with me, I just say "Ding, Ding, Ding - Nope, not opening it," and then I choose a positive thought of gratitude to start my day on. Try it if you need to. It works every time for me!

Bill W. suffered from depression for many years even after achieving sobriety, having his last bout of it in 1955. In a letter that year he wrote:

"I used to be ashamed of my condition and so didn't talk about it. But nowadays I freely confess I am a depressive, and this has attracted other depressives to me. Working with them has helped a great deal."

And that, always, is the key. Working with others, sharing where we are, gets us out of our own mental problems better than anything else. When in doubt, reach out to another alcoholic - either for help, or to offer help. 

As for the past. We must leave our past, and the past of others, behind us. Why run bad memories we can't change through our heads over and over again? They are done. Finished. Kaput. 

If we still have an amend to make from our past, we can make it and set ourselves free, and the sooner we do that, the better. We are then able to embrace the day we're in and look forward to a better future.

Today - now - is the only time there is. So live it fully - one wonderful sober day at a time.

 

    Made a Decision

(67)

                    The "Selfish Program" of Alcoholics Anonymous.

AA can get confusing. 

We get told we're "self-centered" and need to think of others - but then we’re advised that AA is "a selfish program" where we need to put ourselves first.

We're told we need to learn to love ourselves, but then we're told we should aim to follow the 3rd step prayer to the letter.

Here it is: "God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!"

I used to refer to the 3rd step prayer in my early meetings as "the Codependent Prayer," and it used to annoy the hell out of me. Which shows where I was at the start of my spiritual journey. 

AA is actually only "selfish" in the sense that its recovery program must come first in the life of a recovering addict. 

Many newcomers think their family must come first, or their job, or their social standing ... but without sobriety all those things (and more) will eventually be gone from the alcoholic's life. 

And if family, career, licenses, respect and hope are already gone, they can - and often do - return after the alcoholic experiences a period of good recovery in AA.

              (Without sobriety the losses just continue.)

The main difference between self-centered and selfish people is that a self-centered person has an excessive interest and concern for oneself, while a selfish person - in addition to that self interest and concern - also lacks consideration for others. 

Shrinks tell us that self-centered folks feel vulnerable, threatened and anxious about other people. There's often a fear of being unable to love or be loved.

If all that's true, then there's a lot of emotional pain wrapped up in being self-centered, and it can take a long old time in recovery to overcome it. 

But it's work we must do, according to our Big Book, because it's vital to our sobriety. Our book makes that crystal clear, stating: "Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles ... above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!"

Big Book also states elsewhere that alcoholism is a disease of self-centeredness. 

Then there's self-will, meaning a person dedicated to sticking to their own opinion and ideas, no matter what. These folks are convinced they are right and are willing to argue with anyone who might disagree.

 Our Book lets us know alcoholics are textbook cases of "self-will run riot." 

Like everyone with a bad case of selfish self-willed self-centeredness, I also suffered plenty of self-delusion and self-pity when I arrived in AA. We pretty much all seem to arrive with that kind of baggage to unpack. And we learn how to do that by doing it. Once we learn, and do the work of recovery, our lives - and relationships - get a lot easier.

Right there in the much-read Chapter Five it states: "Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments or our self-pity? That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate."

In other words: When we sober up physically and emotionally, and stop stepping on the toes and feelings of others, we don't get clobbered in return.

Selfishness, self-centeredness, and self-seeking all crop up throughout our AA literature, from the Big Book to the 12&12, and even in our much-loved AA Promises where we are told "self-seeking will slip away."

All my life before AA, and long-after in recovery, I expected people to do things for me and resented them if they didn't. I thought my wealthier friends should pick up the lunch tab. I thought they should always consider me to be their "best friend," not just "a friend." I thought they should find me monopolizing our conversations as endearing and not annoying. 

Self-centered? Me? Well, yes indeedy I was. To the extreme.

It takes clearing away the wreckage of the past, learning new ways to live, caring for our fellow AA members through service work, prayer and meditation, and a growing self-awareness before we can even see that we were indeed "self-will run riot" in our lives and in the lives of others.

We learn from our readings, our step work, our sponsors and our group members how to win out over our egocentric thoughts and actions. 

And now we’re back to my favorite non-word again: it takes a bit of SLOW-briety.

 

Made A Decision

(67)

                    When the Bad Times Arrive

On that August day in 2010 there were police cars, a forensics van, crime scene tape, people huddled together in the blistering heat and Christy's dogs panting with nervousness on the front lawn.

My head struggled to compute.

I had arrived at the home of my sponsee to house and pet sit for a couple of days while she went on an out of town job interview. 

There would be no job interview. Christy had been murdered.

I remember every detail of that horrible day in technicolor, but I won't inflict those brutal details into your psyche. Just know that those of us in recovery who knew her and loved her didn't drink over our loss. And that included her own mother.

We didn't have to drink because we were there to help one another get through it. In the days following Christy's death we circled our wagons, took care of her beloved pets, dealt with the police, stayed with her Mom, and held one another up. We went to a lot of meetings. 

I spoke at the packed funeral where there were many tears, but there was laughter, too, as we remembered Christy's own humor. We knew what we had lost in the horrible death of our sober friend, but we also knew she would never, ever, want us to drink over our loss. No one who knew her did. To drink would have dishonoured Christy's memory. Instead, because we were sober, we could be there for everything that mattered to her.

Out of every experience of grief or suffering, when our Higher Power seems distant or absent, we discover new strengths within ourselves to see us through. 

We are then better able to help others get through their own tough times.

We all want to live happily ever after every single day of our lives. But sadly, life doesn't work like that.

While it's true that a sober life offers us wonderful opportunities, amazing friends, and "A life beyond our wildest dreams," it also carries with it "life lessons" and some of them can be harsh.

The good news is, when tough stuff shows up, so does our Higher Power, our AA friends, and all the tools for living a good sober life that we've learned in recovery.

We often hear the saying "God never gives us more than we can handle," and while that is actually true, it sure as hell doesn't feel like it in the really bad times. 

But those are our strengthening times, our growth times, our testing times, our opportunities for our greatest service to others. 

A clay pot always remains a clay pot until bathed in fire to become porcelain. 

When we live long enough we experience loss. Loss of friends. Loss of parents. Loss of a job, a house, family members, or a beloved pet. No one gets off scott free. Pain comes to us all. 

The revelation is we don't have to drink over any of it. 

Pain, suffering, grief, fear and loss all drive us to our knees where we, once again, find the Holy Presence to lift us.

 When we are in a situation beyond our heart and mind's ability to understand, we become able to reach a deeper level of spiritual understanding. We surrender to accept - and to learn.

It's the same lesson - force ten - that we had when we surrendered our desire and compulsion to drink to a Power Greater than Ourselves. 

We then can take the understandings that develop and put them to use in service to others. 

I had an interesting day yesterday, one filled with AA friends from all over the world, laughter, a great online meeting, sunshine, a letter from my just-turned-21-year-old grandson, music drifting up from the village festival below this mountain, and news of the death of an AA friend in Ireland.

So my day was one of connection, humor, an AA meeting, being outdoors, family news, music, and loss and sadness. One Day at a Time that's just what life is, a mixture of emotions in which we seek to understand the heart, mind and will of our Higher Power  and of ourselves.

I can't promise you'll stay sober through pain until I've stayed sober through my own.  

And I have. And I will.  And you will, too.