Made A Decision

Just when we think we know who we are ... a new challenge might enter our realm of experiences, shaking up all the understandings that have given us guidance heretofore.

                  Mental Illness Comes in Many Flavors

“AA is a perfect program, but it is filled with some very sick people.”

My first sponsor told me that and she was right. There’s a smorgasbord  of mental

 illnesses to be found in the rooms beyond the 1/3 mental part of our "spiritual,

 physical and mental illness".

Many AA members have “problems other than alcohol. It's a mixed bag that includes addiction to other drugs, bi-polar, autism, autism spectrum disorders, anxiety, cyclothymia, schizophrenia, depression, Asperger's, eating disorders, epilepsy, turrets, tics, restless leg syndrome, chronic insomnia and many more.

Name it, and at some point in your own recovery you will find yourself sitting next to someone in a meeting who has it. Not that it matters, unless the sufferer disrupts the meeting.

I've been in meetings where fist fights erupted, shouting matches were held, and once where police were called after guns were drawn. These disruptions, thankfully, are very, very rare, but given the overall mental health of some members, these things occasionally do happen.

It's also good to remember that all of us in AA are in various stages of recovery from our primary disease of alcoholism, too.

But before you start to get nervous or judgmental about those sitting around you,

 there's an outside chance that you may one day discover you too have another

 mental condition. You may have even suffered from one (or more) such illnesses all

 you life - and never even knew it!

And if you are suffering from an as yet undiagnosed mental illness it can sometimes be hard going while you are still unaware. I know this because that's exactly what recently happened to me. 

More has been revealed!

Some years back I suspected, in addition to being an alcoholic, I might also be bipolar - or manic/depressive as it was commonly called then.  (My middle son, Forrest, at that time told me he didn't care if I was bi-polar, adding,  "I'll still love you. Both poles.") I was eventually diagnosed as having chronic depression instead and received treatment for it. Depression is not uncommon among us. Bill W. himself suffered from depression for many years into his recovery, so I accepted that diagnosis without question.

A grandson of mine was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome as a child and was put

 on medication. He's now a young man in his 20s living a good life. Fast forward to

 now, when recently we confirmed  two of my other grandchildren have Asperger's.

I thought three cases in my nine grandchildren was a bit excessive, so I began researching it. The more I read, the more interested I became, especially learning that Asperger folks love researching things that interest them ... because doing research is pretty much my own very favorite thing in life.

Hmmmmmm?

As more and more "symptoms" of Asperger's dovetailed with my own personal history I eventually went ahead and took diagnostic tests for it, tests I passed with flying colours and high numbers. Who knew? Certainly not me. 

Here I've been trying to comfortably navigate social life for 80 years with a brain far more handicapped than I ever guessed.

I learned it's possible for Asperger sufferers to have additional mental disorders, including being bipolar, or it's milder cousin, cyclothymia. 

I suspect I also have a touch of the latter (based purely on all my "enjoyable research").

I did have a short burst of denial about having any of this, but it was quickly replaced by gratitude at learning about it. Having this information explains so much about so many life choices I've made. 

It also clarified for me my continued low level anxiety, my need to live in the quietest environment possible; my absolute craving for solitude; my daily lists; comfort in having and keeping strict routines; disruptive sleep patterns; obsessive thinking; needing an advance escape route planned in case a social obligation becomes too much; unable to wear clothing with tags at the neck; dislike of bright lighting, my being bothered by music playing in a car, and so much more.

While many like myself apparently function well in society, the inner struggle we have isn't as apparent, mainly because of "masking" which sufferers adopt in childhood to fit in. Instead of displaying socially suspect behaviors, movements that calm them like hand flapping or rocking back and forth (called stimming), maskers substitute less noticeable stimming behaviors like twirling their hair with their fingers, pencil tapping, pen clicking, or chewing fingernails.

In recovery I was eventually able to stop chewing my nails down to the quick (a lifelong habit until then), and I no longer twirl my hair around my fingers, or rapidly click my pen. 

But I still run my hands through my hair a lot. 

(A LOT!)

                   Here's the bottom line in all this:

In recovery we never (ever!) stop learning interesting things about ourselves. It’s one of the best parts about being in AA. (It is the guilty pleasure gift of my sobriety.)

Research into mental health and addiction is ongoing. Scientists are learning more

 about us all the time and that's a good thing. Keeping our mind open while finding out

about these new discoveries is not only interesting, it offers us information helpful for

 navigating our lives.

But statistically - and here's the most important part of this blog - addiction to alcohol is our one big life-threatening problem, and science has yet to come up with a more effective way of treating it than what's offered in Alcoholics Anonymous. Never - ever - forget that! 

Keep coming back!

 

Made a Decision

               

                                       Mood Swingers

We hear it over and over again, that we have a physical, spiritual and MENTAL illness ... 

but we don't want to believe our sanity is suspect.

Despite years of getting into trouble from our drinking (for most of us), 

we continued to believe we could get a handle on it.

That there was nothing wrong with us. That the truly insane

decisions we often made were reasonable.

Think about those mood swings, where we used to (still?)

have a great day, go to bed happy, wake up in the morning

suicidal - or homicidal. Normal?

I used to hear people in meetings talking about panic attacks

and didn't identify. 

Then one day a member actually described her

panic attacks and I realized I'd had them all my life!

I just hadn't named them!

Alcoholics self-medicate their symptoms of mental illness by drowning

them in alcohol. We used it to calm ourselves, give ourselves courage,

to get to sleep, to be able to socialize or otherwise feel comfortable

in ourselves. 

My favorite drink was to pour black rum into black coffee, giving myself

uppers and downers in the same cup. I genuinely thought that this drink balanced

me out! (If thinking is the correct term for this kind of mental gymnastics.) 

Anxiety, after all, was my middle name for most of my younger life

(helped along by my "balancing drink," no doubt) and it can still nibble

around the edges of my sober mental health. 

Had I not had to go out to work to feed my children I'd have made a

great agoraphobic. Even today I feel a twinge of anxiety every time I

have to leave home and connect with the world outside my safe house.

We've all heard the saying, "What goes up must come down," but we

alcoholics can carry that to the extreme. This is especially true of our

moods. We love it when we're way, way up (manic) and we despair

when we are way, way down (depressed). For many of us these

extreme swings in mood feel "normal." 

Spoiler alert - they're not.

But it takes time to even recognize them. Only then can we address them.

And then mostly, with the help of our Twelve steps, defeat them. 

Working the steps clears away the rubble!

Our drinking was only a symptom of the far more pervasive disease of

wanting to escape from our minds.

 Stopping drinking begins the lifetime process of recovery from our unmanageable lives, our unruly emotions and our often distressing relationships with others.

In recovery we learn our "triggers." including our much quoted  "H.A.L.T. -

meaning to not let ourselves get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. 

When we first hear this simple advice we often discount it. But as we

progress in sobriety we come to value it for the wisdom it offers.

Neglecting any of those four triggers can cause our moods to swing -

and not in a good way.  

One day at a time, under the guidance of our Higher Power, the directions

in our literature, and supported by our friends in the Fellowship in working

the steps of recovery, we become healed.

A.A. teaches us to not to be overwhelmed, but rather to accept and understand 

our lives as they unfold, one day at a time. Because H.A.L.T. also stands for Hope, Acceptance, Love and Tolerance.

 

And here's the most amazing part of that healing, we never stop learning!

I have known this for a long time, but I had it underlined very recently

when I got an interesting revelation about my own mental health that

has caused me to think about my entire life in an entirely new way. 

So buckle up, Buttercup, alcoholism is indeed a mental illness and

more will be revealed.

 If that interests you - tune in next week for a

blog devoted almost entirely to that subject! 

 

 Made a Decision

                What About Pot?

Marijuana, also known as pot, weed, reefer, mary-ju-wanna, Mary Jane, dope, grass, head, doobie, bud, ganja, hashish, hash, bhang, burritos verdes, joy smoke, big pillows, and even in some circles as bambalachacha, has been around as an escape hatch for drunks for at least as long as has booze. People drugged on marijuana are said to be  “high”, “stoned”, “out of it”, “whacked” or “off their face.”

What amuses me are the AA puppies who think old timers like me don’t know much about pot. We’re obviously too old to know pot isn’t a dangerous drug anymore. After all, it’s now even legal in many places, so it can’t be dangerous. 

Alcohol, of course, is also legal and therefore also clearly not dangerous, 

unless - of course - one is an alcoholic. 

What about our "saintly" AA Founders - surely they didn’t know much about pot or other drugs? 

Dr. Bob was a DOCTOR. He had the key to his own pharmacy and he used it all during his drinking days. 

Bill W. thought dropping acid might just be the gateway to everyone having a spiritual experience - and he said so.

Often.

Read our AA literature. 

Learn what they actually said about it. 

Cocaine, believe it or not, has been used by people since the 1400s (some experts say even earlier). Heroin has been with us since the 1800s, ditto Morphine. But when AA began in 1935 no one was using them recreationally. Opium was smoked by a few Beatnik types. 

Pot was generally only smoked by a few musicians, actors and comedians until Hippies like me took to it in a big way in the 1960s.

Today, if we choose, we have a smorgasbord of drugs to get high on, including alcohol, pot, nicotine, vaping, coke and crack, heroin, morphine, mescaline, PCB (angel dust), GHB (Georgia Home Boy/Grievious Bodily Harm), khat, kratom, psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and other hallucinogens. 

We also have benzos, fentanyl, ketamine, crystal/meth, ecstasy, roofies, and a plethora of over-the-counter medicines, steroids, synthetic cannabis, prescription opioids and street opioids of many flavours. 

The debate continues over kava which some say is addictive, others say not, but we know for sure it causes liver damage. We also know alcoholics who use it seem to really, really like it a lot, which for me is reason enough to steer clear.

Regarding my own pot knowledge gleaned firsthand during the dinosaur age: 

 

1. I once sold it under the place name of the town (Tucker) where I grew it because my stoner customers always called it: “Tucker Mind Fucker.” I also sold wild-gathered psilocybin (magic mushrooms).

2. I used to hide all my friends' pot and other drugs from the cops when it was decided that I - a married mother of four small children - appeared to be the most respectable and therefore least likely to be raided.

3. I kept a nice little stash of pot for nearly a year after I got sober “just in case” this sober gig got too difficult.

4. I did a lot more than just dance to the tune of “Shot Gun, shoot it for me right now …”

5. And there’s more (lots more) - but you get the idea.

As it happened, I didn’t smoke any of that first year stash of mine. An out-of-town speaker at my home group one evening began his talk by saying:

 “Hi. I’m Tom, and I haven’t had a drink or a mind-altering chemical today …” 

And I thought, “Nooooooooooo!!!”

Up until that moment I had never heard about “mind-altering chemicals” in an AA meeting, but I sure knew pot altered mine when I smoked it (or ate it). Tom went on to talk a lot about "other drugs" as part of his drinking story and I went home after the meeting and got rid of my stash.

I’d like to tell you I went home and flushed my bag of weed down the toilet, but I didn’t. I sold it instead in what was to be my last drug deal.

Our 11th A.A. Tradition states:  “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.”

 It does not say “... at the level of press, radio, films, television, the internet, our smartphones, or any form of social media.” 

Why? Because many of these just hadn’t been invented yet. 

When our founding members got sober, alcohol was the king of all the bad drugs and was the most available drug of the time. So our third AA Tradition reads: “The Only Requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking. Not: “The only requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking, smoking pot, drugging, and otherwise engaging in risky mind-altering behavior of all kinds." 

(I would personally like to see an AA Tradition based on our all using a little common sense over these kinds of things. Fortunately for all concerned I wasn't around when our traditions were written so they are not in the least bit snarky.)

AA approves and produces a lot of helpful brochures about our disease. One of them - The A.A. Member— Medications & Other Drugs - offers  both information and personal experience of AA members. 

You can look it up online by its title and get a PDF. 

But here’s a little of wat it has to say:

 From the earliest days of Alcoholics Anonymous it has been clear that many alcoholics have a tendency to become dependent on drugs other than alcohol. There have been tragic incidents of alcoholics who have struggled to achieve sobriety only to develop a serious problem with a different drug. Time and time again, A.A. members have described frightening and sobriety-threatening episodes that could be related to the misuse of medication or other drugs.

It is often true that these substances create dependence as devastating as dependence on alcohol. It is well known that many sedatives have an action in the body similar to the action of alcohol. When these drugs are used without medical supervision, dependence can readily develop. 

Many A.A.s who have taken over-the-counter, nonprescription drugs have discovered the alcoholic’s tendency to misuse. Those A.A.s who have used street drugs, ranging from marijuana to heroin, have discovered the alcoholic’s tendency to become dependent on other drugs. The list goes on and will lengthen as new drugs are developed.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a program for alcoholics who seek freedom from alcohol. It is not a program aimed at drug addiction. However, some A.A. members have misused or abused drugs, often as a substitute for alcohol, in such a manner as to threaten the achievement and maintenance of sobriety. This has caused many A.A. members to be concerned with the misuse of drugs.

And from one of the many personal stories in the brochure you’ll find this:

I can see now that when I first came into A.A., the first thing I did was to start telling myself that I was different. “Maybe they can’t smoke grass, but I can.” “What do they know about drugs? They never use them.” And slowly, but surely, the pot pulled me back into the very pit of isolation I had seen briefly beyond.

 Like the alcohol, which at first promised to end my isolation, but ultimately turned against me, marijuana led me back into a desolate landscape. 

But today, I’m no different and I’m not alone. Today, I am grateful to be sober in A.A., and 19. I am grateful to the members of my group, who listened to me long enough for me to begin again.

Some people can have one or two drinks of booze in an evening and stop drinking. Some people can smoke pot the same way. They just mellow out and don’t need more than a few hits. These people are social drinkers and druggers. 

These people are not alcoholics. 

Scratch an alcoholic and you’ll find a drug addict. Ethanol, our liquid drug of choice, is found in varied amounts in every single alcoholic beverage, from lightweight wine spritzers to straight dark rum. So using any drug at all - smoking it, popping it, snorting it or shooting it - is the gateway back to eventually drinking it.

I have actually seen people who don't drink, but still smoke pot, pick up an AA sober chip in their "sober birthday" celebrations.

 People who continue to get high on any kind of "mind altering chemical" are not sober. 

Perhaps these poor souls are among those "constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves."

An alcoholic using drugs might not return to drinking right away, but has done so in every case I've known personally - other than one woman who, when her pot smoking got out of control, quit using it and bolted back to the safety of AA. 

(She has since told me giving up pot was harder than giving up booze had been.)

Butch W., one of the best friends I’ve ever had, could never stop smoking pot. 

He put together several three-year-sober totally clean and sober times, but eventually gave in and smoked a joint.

 It was always pot that took him back to drinking and then to the heavier pharmaceuticals.

My still much-missed friend didn’t live long enough to see the arrival of this century. High on pot, and a mixture of other chemicals, he was at the wheel of the car crash that killed him on New Year’s Eve, 1999, just two city blocks from my house. 

Butch W. was 52 years old. 

 

Made A Decision

      

Some History For You Today During AA's Gratitude Week

Our personal escape hatch from hell began in June, 1935, when two late-stage alcoholics met and shared their drinking experiences with one another. One was the New York stockbroker we know as Bill W. The other, Dr. Bob, was a physician in Akron Ohio.

Six months before that fateful meeting, Bill Wilson, sobering up from yet another near-fatal binge, had a sudden spiritual experience following a conversation with a one-time drinking buddy who had become sober after joining The Oxford Group. 

Before AA began many alcoholics had been helped in that Christian fellowship which offered a pattern for living similar to the 12-steps. Bill and his wife, Lois, soon became members, but broke with the group in 1937. 

(Or as Lois put it, they were "kicked out" for focusing too much on alcoholism and not enough on Christ.).

Bill was also helped by Dr. William D. Silkworth, a New York doctor who was able to convince Bill of the deadly nature of Bill's alcoholic obsession for drink, and then for urging him to rely on a spiritual force to help him. 

Silkworth wasn't part of the Oxford Group, but he was convinced they were right about our need for a moral inventory, confession of past wrongs, making amends to those harmed, service to others, and the need for a belief and reliance in God.

The Beginning: 

When just a few months sober, while on a business trip in Ohio, Bill W. was stricken with a powerful urge to drink. Struggling to not give into that craving he had the sudden thought that he needed another alcoholic to talk with - and that the other alcoholic also needed him! 

A series of rapid Godshots found him soon talking with Dr. Bob Smith who had himself been trying desperately to stop drinking. Once seated at the doctor's kitchen table Bill shared with him his experience, strength and hope - and AA was born.

 The date of Dr. Bob's last drink was June 10th, a date we now celebrate as "AA's birthday."

The doctor went on to sponsor countless thousands of other drunks at no cost to them in his effort to safeguard his own sobriety. He found his only relief from his obsessive drinking-thoughts (they lasted for several years after his putting "the plug in the jug") came when he was carrying the message of recovery to others.

AA's founders - fearful that what they had so wonderfully found might just as easily easily slip away - threw themselves day and night into building a fellowship of other drunks around them. 

They took detoxing boozers into their own homes to dry them out. They held meetings in their living rooms. They made calls on alcoholics in hospitals or locked up in mental hospitals and jails. They non-stop walked the walk and talked the talk of apostles to anyone in need of AA's message. Their wives helped the partners and children of the alcoholics they helped, so the program of AlAnon grew right along with AA. 

Medical help was on their side, too. Dr. Bob had hospital access and a friendship there with a nurse, the Catholic nun Sister Ignatia, who became another early influence in the growing AA program. Although neither of our founders were Roman Catholic, both were Christians with an ever-strengthening faith in God as they saw the many miracles daily happening around them. 

Sister Ignatia supported their efforts with her own practical faith. She also knew Dr. Bob shared her reliance on God, noting, "Some people who were on the program for a length of time would come up to him and say, 'I don't get the spiritual angle.' And I heard him say time and again, 'There is no spiritual angle. It's a spiritual program'."

But Bill W. and Dr. Bob also knew their audience. They knew the resistance many alcoholics had to believing there even was a God, much less a God who would help and not condemn them. Many of those early members were dead set against religion of any kind, although most were open (with reservations and suspicions) to the concept of spirituality.  

The "God idea" became a real struggle between AA's earliest members during the writing of our Big Book. The problem, they said, was that even those with faith also had backgrounds in differing theologies, so how could everyone in AA possibly agree regarding religion?

Then Bill proposed to them the concept spoken by his old drinking-buddy-turned-sober during their own earlier life-changing conversation: "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?" 

Slowly, heads around the table nodded. The phrase "God as you understand Him" soon became a key sales pitch for those desperate to stop drinking. 

The word God (or words meaning God) is found 281 times in the first 164 pages of the Big Book. Our Founders gave God full credit for their own recovery. They were strongly influenced in this by the teachings of an Episcopal clergyman, Sam Shoemaker. 

While Dr. Silkworth gave AA important knowledge about alcoholism as an illness, it was Shoemaker who offered our Founders knowledge of what could be done to recover from it. His teachings helped form AA's core program as embodied in our 12 steps.

Or, as it was expressed in the book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (pgs 38 & 39) - One showed us the mysteries of the lock that held us in prison; the other passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated.

There were money struggles in the beginning, too. While some members dreamed big dreams of establishing AA treatment centers, hospitals and even AA communities. Others, suffering from regret over money they had once wasted on booze, fought to keep expenditures and ambitions to the minimum.

Many upheavals over money attended AA's early days until eventually our Traditions got hammered out and adopted. For those interested, just read the section about the Traditions in our 12 & 12. (It won't hurt you to learn stuff.)

During and right after World War II, Dr. Bob and Bill W. continued their virtually non-stop work to keep AA going and growing. They wrote many letters to one another during that time with messages like this one: 

We must think deeply of all those sick ones still to come to A.A. As they try to make their return to faith and to life, we want them to find everything in A.A. that we have found, and yet more, if that be possible. 

No care, no vigilance, no effort to preserve A.A.'s constant effectiveness and spiritual strength will ever be too great to hold us in full readiness for the day of their homecoming.

AA's founders finally started to relax a bit about AA's ability to survive in the 1950s. In a letter at that time one wrote: 

It seems proved that A.A. can stand on its own feet anywhere and under any conditions. It has outgrown any dependence it might once have had upon the personalities or efforts of a few of the older members like me. New, able, and vigorous people keep coming to the surface, turning up where they are needed. Besides, A.A. has reached enough spiritual maturity to know that its final dependence is upon God.

AA has since survived many challenges and changes like its influx of women and drug addicts in the 1970s and 1980s, people sentenced to attend meetings by the courts in the 1980s up till today, younger and younger members arriving in the early 2000 years, and the rapid leap from in-person to Zoom meetings during the recent worldwide Covid pandemic. 

All these have rocked AA's boat, some quite violently, but our  adherence to our Traditions has kept us safe. Unity and service keep AA together. Without it we lose our focus and our ability to fulfill our primary purpose of helping those still suffering alcoholics. 

Or as Bill W. himself once said: 

 The Oxford group wanted to save the world and I only wanted to save drunks.

Long may Bill's goal continue. 

Do your part!

It's so easy for us to take AA for granted and forget that it's one of the most amazing societies ever established. 

There's a political axiom that states, "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it," and without an understanding of what AA's founders did for us we could still so easily lose it.

What? AA is a worldwide organization. Everyone, even non-members, know that it works and works well. How could it ever come to an end?

 AA could end the same way our bodies, groups, religions, or democracies end - when people ignore the signs that dis-ease is setting in and do nothing to try and save it.

In my children's lifetime the women of Iran could go to the beach wearing the modern one-piece and two-piece bathing suits of that time. None on those carefree beach days could have imagined they would soon legally not be able to go anywhere unless covered from head to toe; that their secular country would become an extremist Islamic state.

How easily - and quickly - freedom can be lost!

When I don't vote in an election I disrespect all the women who suffered, even died, that I might be able to vote. When I am not willing to give back what was so freely given to me by those who pioneered our fellowship, the same applies.

When enough of us let others do all group and 12-step work, or can't be bothered to accept any service positions, or don't take time to study our literature, or work the steps, or sponsor others ... we not only put our sobriety at risk, we threaten AA's very survival.

There are some terrific books out there about AA's history beyond what's in our Big Book, including "Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers;" "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age;" "Not God: a History of Alcoholics Anonymous;" the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," and many more. Have a google. You're sure to find a title to interest you. 

You'll also get more than a few chuckles - and lots of identification with our earliest members - when you read any of them. 

      (A personal note: AA's more than two-million members are right now celebrating Gratitude Week in celebration of our fellowship's 1935 June 10th birthday. Nine years after that date I was born, so the hand of AA was just 46 years old when it reached out when I most needed it. I am still grateful those old timers in my first AA group taught me it was my privilege - and my duty - to Pass It On.)