Made A Decision

                                                 Gossip Can Kill

I watched the news last night (always a mistake) and heard the sad report of a teenager who committed suicide over gossip spread about her online. Sadly, I have seen the same thing happen in A.A. when gossip spread online, or on the phone, over a cuppa, or whispered in the back of the meeting room. 

It's called "character assassination" in our literature, but whatever terms we use, gossip is a killer.

Newly recovering alcoholics are as fragile as butterflies. Our skin is as thin as tissue paper. We arrive with the social skills of the age where we first sought escape in drinking, meaning most of us are 40-or-50-something-year-old young teenagers. Some of us are mere tweens. Teenagers are moody buggers and so are we.

 As it says on page 125 in our Big Book:  We alcoholics are sensitive people. It takes some of us a long time to outgrow that serious handicap. 

Teenagers lash out at others when bad moods are upon them. 

We do, too. 

The problem is, while we can dish it with relish, we often can't take it. 

And before we develop coping skills (like those we learn over time in recovery), our first choice for when we "can't take it," is usually to run away. 

Even now when I'm under extreme pressure my mind starts looking for ways to escape. My first thoughts when hurting involve looking for how I can get away. I no longer run (too old to run now anyway), but I still think about it as a first option. 

Some of our “stuff” is pretty hardwired in.

Gossip, however, is part of early recovery. I certainly did my share of it. We talked about one another constantly, as all teenagers do. And that's fine. It's OK to tell another - - behind So and So's back - that we like So and So's new hairdo, or car, or puppy. 

The problems arrive when our talk turns mean, and we do that, too. 

We tell others we think So and So might be drinking or using. 

We tell others we think So and So is sneaking around behind their partner's back. 

We tell others So and So might be the person who took money out of the A.A. clubhouse ... 

It isn’t difficult to make a mountain out of a molehill when we just add a little dirt.

But then - as ALWAYS happens - our targeted So and So hears about the talk we've spread far and wide.

Shock! 

Bewilderment! 

Hurt!

Fury! 

There's an element of panic in that discovery on their part, too, because they have just discovered A.A. is no longer their safe place. 

And if A.A. is no longer safe, there is nothing left for them. They then often leave A.A. and many don't come back. 

Some will die because of A.A. gossip. 

It happens. 

I've seen it.

If we have gossiped about someone we might owe them an amend, too. Our 12 & 12 book calls out our behavior in no uncertain terms:  

Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness.

Sometimes I don't realize that I gossiped about someone until the end of the day, when I take an inventory of the day's activities, and then, my gossiping appears like a blemish in my beautiful day. How could I have said something like that?

Gossip shows its ugly head during a coffee break or lunch with business associates, or I may gossip during the evening, when I'm tired from the day's activities, and feel justified in bolstering my ego at the expense of someone else.

And the book ends with this warning:

Character defects like gossip sneak into my life when I am not making a constant effort to work the Twelve Steps of recovery. I need to remind myself that my uniqueness is the blessing of my being, and that applies equally to everyone who crosses my path in life's journey. Today the only inventory I need to take is my own. I'll leave judgement of others to the Final Judge - Divine Providence

We must always try to remember that ours is a progressive and fatal disease. Running our mouths for the sake of a bit of gossip can be fatal for someone, because for us to drink again is a death sentence. 

And an alcoholic trying to stay dry on their own is like a fish trying to live on dry land. (Yes, there is a fish known as the Walking Catfish that manages that trick, but 99.9 percent of fish can't.) And 99.9 percent of alcoholics can't stay dry without help in our very wet society, either. 

Long term or short term, drinking alcoholics live a life of misery and growing despair. 

Don't you remember??? 

In the horror of that life many chose to end their lives, seeking that long term solution for their temporary problem. 

(Or, as I once heard said to someone who had botched their suicide attempt, "I'm glad you fucked it up. If you had died  you would have been killing the wrong person, because you are no longer that person.")

Think of how you would feel hearing So and So committed suicide perhaps because of something you said about them? Do you really want that on your next Fourth Step? Could you live long enough with that burden to even write another Fourth Step? Something that painful might very well trigger your own escape back into a bottle.

 On occasion I have worked hard to 12-step people into meetings and then saw them leave because of gossip or unkindness. 

In one case, back before cell phones, my newbie had a beeper in case he got called into work. Not turning up for work meant a hefty monetary penalty for him. His beeper went off so he stood up to leave and a know-it-all "oldtimer" - with no knowledge of the newbie's job - took him to task in front of everyone for disturbing the meeting!

 My newbie never returned to A.A.. 

And I hung onto my resentment with that oldtimer for a dangerously long time, because resentment, as we all should know by now, can cost us our own sobriety. And I know this, because a thoughtless "oldtimer" nearly drove me out of A.A. with a thoughtless remark during my first year in recovery.

So I am never intentionally unkind to newer A.A members, 

but I have inadvertently offended more than one with my often blunt remarks, or my inability to always give them the non-stop attention they crave. 

Some have let me know immediately when I have stepped on their touchy toes, but others leave me to learn of my offense second hand. Either way, I always apologise and mostly my apology is accepted, 

but not always. 

That's because, unfortunately, some newcomers are looking for any excuse to go out and drink again. 

We all make mistakes, no matter how hard we try not to, but we can not go wrong by being considerate of every fellow A.A. member. When we fail we must attempt an amend. And, as with every amend, it doesn't really matter how it's received as long as we clean up our own side of the street. Our future behavior is sure to be improved as a result.

I do not speak from any lofty mountain top about gossip (or anything else, for that matter). I once had to quit a job I loved because, despite my prayers and every effort I was capable of at the time, I could not stop myself from joining in the office gossip. I didn't want to do it, but I seemed powerless to stop, so in desperation I finally left. 

It took me a long old time afterward to realize my Higher Power hadn't wanted me to stay in that job.  Pride and selfishness can make us want things that are not good for us. And pride and selfishness can block our ability to be useful to others - or to expect our prayers to be answered. I had a lot of growing up to do before I could possibly have steered clear of all the gossip in that exciting, but toxic, work environment. I might not have been able to stay sober had I stayed. It broke my heart to leave, but I'm grateful today that I was able to walk away. 

  

If there is a problem with gossip in our A.A. group there are recourses we can take:

We can talk with our sponsors. 

When it's our turn to chair we can make the topic "Why we don't gossip in A.A."

 When necessary we can change our meetings and make it our business in our new group to stick with the winners. You'll know them because winners are not the ones sitting around relentlessly gossiping about other members. 

Winners don't need to put others down to build themselves up. When we hang out with them we learn how to do the same.

There will always be people inside and outside of A.A. who will invite you to join them in gossiping about others. 

But it's best for our recovery to guard our thoughts and guard our tongues. 

After all, Gossip can kill.

 

Made A Decision

        Under the Lash of Alcoholism

We sober alcoholics can be quite amusing in our smugness. Cocky in our sobriety, overconfident of our virtues, proud, vain, arrogant and patronizing in our superiority, especially over those "normal" people having no wonderful program of recovery like ours for getting the most out of life.

Don't think so? 

Then stop thinking about what YOU are going to say when it's your turn in a meeting and listen more to what others are saying. 

You'll hear a lot of people in A.A who laugh when they say, "We are not saints," but their subtext is they think they're pretty damned close.

That wonderful book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age has this to say about it: We of A.A. sometimes brag of the virtues of our Fellowship. Let us remember that few of these are actually earned virtues. We were forced into them, to begin with, by the cruel lash of alcoholism. We finally adopted them, not because we wished to, but because we had to. Then, as time confirmed the seeming rightness of our basic principles, we began to conform because it was right to do so. Some of us, notably myself, conformed even then with reluctance. 

It takes most of us a very long time in recovery before we get to the place about which that same book states: But at last we came to a point where we stood willing to conform gladly to the principles which experience, under the grace of God, had taught us.

Yes, we should all celebrate that A.A. is a wonderful program, but we need to also remember we didn't rush to join it. 

And, as long as it took for any of us to arrive here, it also takes a while to not only stay sober, but to manage achieving a modicum of emotional sobriety.

Many of us talk-the-talk wonderfully in meetings, but once we leave we don't make it a city block without flipping off someone in traffic. We continue to try to dominate others, yell at our children, mentally attack (sometimes more openly) those who don't agree with us - and otherwise act out our sainthood.

Believe it or not, all of this is OK, at least in the beginning. As long as we stay sober, better behavior will follow as we learn to use the tools for living A.A. teaches us. We will never, ever, achieve sainthood, but we will absolutely become better human beings. 

It takes time, thought, prayer, meditation, desire and work for our Higher Power to excavate the person we were meant to be from the one we had ourselves created.

Those of us who have earned our seat in A.A. had to first live through some pretty painful life experiences. Our drinking years were the stuff of nightmares, a time filled with fear, worry, guilt, failure, loneliness, struggle and finally hopelessness. Life was a frightening maze where there seemed to be no way out other than unconsciousness - or death.

We remember that time as we celebrate our daily surrender to a Higher Power who then arrives to make us - and all things - new for us. Each new sober day is a gift, given to us so that we may enjoy our lives and help others to find joy in their lives, too.

But none of us escapes occasional temptation to give in to bad behavior, up to and including the temptation to give up and pick up our drug(s) of choice. Sometimes we even dream about giving into it. So we are wise to expect and be ready for it - in all its forms - when it arrives.

We defend ourselves against temptation by paying attention to our thoughts, correcting them when necessary (especially when we don't want to!), and asking our Higher Power to assist us in that. And when it comes to drinking we can never, ever, entertain the thought of it for more than the split second when it occurs to us.

 The drug ethanol found in booze - in beer, wine, hard liquor, and any pretty bottle containing alcohol, or any attractive alcoholic fruity drink - is poison for us. Conquering temptation requires we see that clearly and turn our backs on it. 

We must also guard against dwelling upon the faults of others, which is merely a perverse form of self-satisfaction. That's because when it's "their fault," it can hardly be "our fault," can it? Our Higher Power stands ready to help us jettison that kind of twisted thinking, too.

When we find ourselves struggling with any reappearing character defect(s) we can have a look at Steps Six and Seven again. Not the short form, the long form, as found in both the Big Book and the 12 & 12. 

Acceptance is the key. It is always the key. Accepting who we are, how we live, and the behavior of the people around us - at home, work and in meetings - allows us to achieve a realistic humility about our lives. And a by-product of humility is contentment.

Acceptance doesn't happen overnight. We will have to return to it over and over again during our sober journey as we encounter new situations that call for it. But serenity - its other by-product - is so worth it! We keep on trudg'n and can relax once we know for sure that we are safe in A.A. and have embarked on a lifetime journey of joyful discovery. 

There's no hurry. No one is clocking us.  No one is keeping score. We can learn and grow at our own pace and accept that this process of building back better is going to take awhile. 

 SLOW-briety!

 

Made A Decision

                   Fearless and Thorough

How It Works is read at our meetings and inside that lengthy reading we hear: We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil - until we let go absolutely.

Well, that’s another one of those puzzling messages. I certainly had only a vague idea of what it meant for quite a long time, but it has finally become more clear. 

It means we must get our hands off our problems - and all our old methods of working them out - and hand them over to that greater power, the one that actually knows what to do about them. 

It takes some of us (me for one) a damned long time to learn to do that.

My first sponsor once gave me a mug with these words on it: 

“Everything I’ve surrendered has my claw marks all over it.” 

(My first sponsor knew me very, very well.)

We alcoholics are a stubborn lot. Even in the face of repeated failure we will continue to launch our tried and untrue attacks at situations that never once has yielded to those same old solutions.

The clearest example is for us to remember the way we held onto the idea that WE would ultimately get our drinking under control. 

WE didn’t need help with that. 

WE would eventually be able to do it. 

 Until after years, even decades, of suffering we, desperate for help,  finally - finally -  found WE ourselves unable to do it alone. 

Enter A.A. - where despite oldtimers begging us to be fearless and thorough from day one in our recovery, WE so often continue to keep a stranglehold on the idea that WE will find the solution to whatever is troubling us.

 

Oh sure, I was willing to hand over my problem with alcohol, But only when it became obvious that my Higher Power could actually handle that problem for others so might even be willing to do it for me.

But I wasn't any too sure my HP could or would handle all my other fears and worries. 

So I held onto them tightly, convinced I could work them out on my own despite working one step after another all designed to pry my hands off of them. 

We continue to repeat what we don’t - or won’t - repair. 

“There are two things alcoholics really, really don’t like - 

 (1) the way things are and

 (2) change.” 

Changing ourselves takes effort. 

Being a victim is easy - at first - but it doesn’t wear well. 

So if we want God to remove our character defects we have to stop doing them. We must as some point give up our resistance to growth. 

(Hint: Sooner rather than later works best.)

We are called to change, because only when we surrender our pride and ego can we win. It becomes a bit easier to do that when we begin to realize everything our Higher Power sends our way is for our soul’s benefit. 

We grow when we let go. 

When we let go of our habitual thoughts and behaviors we will finally get onto the path to  becoming who we are meant to be. 

That earlier self-help guru, Norman Vincent Peale, once wrote:  If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.

 

And a quote from an old Grapevine magazine reads: We neither ran nor fought. But accept it we did. And then we began to be free.

I would love to tell you I figured this all out in the blink of an eye just by applying my keen intellect, but if I’ve learned nothing else in A.A., I’ve learned to be honest. I don’t actually suffer from a keen intellect, rather a quite sluggish one. So it took more than one painful and even frightening life “lesson” to get my attention that change was even necessary. 

One was to let go of something I didn’t want to lose. Like most alcoholics I wanted what I wanted, and what I wanted was not what my Higher Power wanted for me. Yet I hung on and on until I actually reached the brink of suicide, that permanent solution to what truly should have been merely a temporary problem. 

It took an A.A. miracle to help me to surrender in that instance and I’ll always be grateful it arrived. But any of us stubborn alcoholics are capable of that kind of behavior when we want something, or someone, that our Higher Power knows will ultimately destroy us. 

I had been a member of A.A. for a good while before I ran headlong into the realization I wasn’t the star of my little life show; my Higher Power is the star. It was my Higher Power who got, and keeps, me sober. It is my Higher Power who sends me the lessons I need to become a happier and saner me.

It is my Higher Power who gave us all the astonishingly wonderful program of Alcoholics Anonymous, our safe place to learn how to actually become joyous, happy and free. Read our literature. Go to Book and Step Study meetings. Learn how to practice our program just the way it was written, and to  keep on doing it exactly that way. 

As a qualified graduate of the school of hard knocks and stubborn thinking, I am now overly-qualified to beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start of your recovery. 

Because living the Program of A.A. is truly the easier softer way.

 

Made A Decision

     Another Year to Beware the Janfeb Blues

The lights, tinsel, baubles and other holiday decorations of our recent holiday season are packed away. Admired gifts are now in use. Thank you letters sent. A few feast day leftovers are tucked away in the freezer as reminders, but good, bad, or indifferent the holidays are behind us. 

For many that's a huge relief. We recovering drunks often view the holiday season as just one big month-long crazed High - with much of it being a bad trip!  

Holidays are filled with excitement, worry, family feuds, parties to carefully steer through, lots of meetings to keep our heads screwed on, gifts to buy, money concerns, dinners to plan, and waaaaaay too much to do in our already too busy lives.

But it's important for all of us to remember - just as leftovers follow the feast day turkey, goose or ham - any time a recovering alcoholic hits a high zone there will be a low zone following along right behind it.

And this year, with escalating political tensions and bigger climate worries added to the mix, the Janfeb Blues may find us feeling even lower than usual. Depression stands ready to settle in for a long miserable visit.

So what's to be done? 

"The key to survival" (as I read just today) "is not in maintaining a stiff upper lip, as we have been told, but to express our vulnerability. We're not complaining or whining when we do so. We're just bonding ourselves to the rest of the human race."

AA meetings are a great place for a bit of whining and a lot of bonding. So stuff these remaining winter months chock full of them as a way of being good to yourself. (I did my share of whining at one just last week. It helped me tremendously). 

We're not alone in these blue feelings at this time of year, but unlike so many people, we in AA have a solution. The good news is right there on page 42 in our Big Book where it says: Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems. So if you haven't yet acquired the habit of daily prayer and meditation, perhaps now might be a good time to start.

It might also be a good idea to set aside that stick you use to beat yourself up with. The ability to realize our past mistakes happens as recovery opens us up to our feelings. But to dwell on them stops us from moving forward. Past mistakes kept current in our heads can crush us.

 I recently read we need to put those mistakes under our feet and use them as a platform to view our new and better horizon. Great suggestion! 

Learning to love ourselves enough to stay sober is the true beginning of our ongoing AA adventure. 

Happily it's still early enough in the new year for making resolutions. Making a renewed commitment to our recovery is one that can never go amiss. 

Without continued recovery from our addiction(s) we stand to lose everything we value - family, jobs, self-respect - so making a plan to do more in, and for, AA - is a sensible resolution to make. 

Our literature tells us over and over again that service to others is the key for getting ourselves out of the doldrums ... in January, February, or any other month. 

If service sounds more like work than fun, try adopting a mind change from - "this is what I have to do," and instead go for - "this is what I Get to do." 

Our entire lives are better because of the gifts AA has given us - and continues to give us - but those gifts actually come with an obligation to extend the hand of AA to others in need. We can take it upon ourselves to carry our fair share of the load, not grudgingly, but joyfully.  

Our lives get better and better when we contribute to the welfare of others and, in so doing, strive to become better people ourselves. 

(Continuing to work the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Steps is a big assist here.)  

                                      Don't ever give up - give back. 

(Your heart and your brain will be better for it.)

As for additional New Year's Resolutions, instead of the annual "lose ten pounds" or "run five miles every day," how about resolving to give:

Forgiveness to an enemy; tolerance for an opponent; our whole heart to a trusted friend; good service to a customer; kindness to all; a good example for children; love and respect for ourselves.

    This year we really can smile more, laugh more, care more, read more, and do more. 

I started by turning off the barrage of bad news provided by the 24-hour news cycle and am resisting the urge to fight back on any of the social media platforms. I'd rather whistle a happy tune and head to a meeting. 

Once there, as I listen to everyone share their experience, strength and hope, I am certain to hear just what I need to lift and keep me safely out of the Janfeb blues.