Made a Decision.

(72)

Are We Having Fun Yet?

Recovery is a serious business. Staying away from alcohol (and all the other drugs) requires a daily commitment. It is the most important thing we can do, because without our sobriety we stand to lose everything ...  family, job, health, life.

But, as our book tells us, "We are not a grim lot." Nor are we meant to be. In addition to being serious business, recovery is also meant to be joyful. 

We wouldn't let our car chug along burning oil, thumping forward on a flat tire or with banging noises in the engine. Just so, we need to pay attention when recovery feels like it is all work and no play.

If we're sober, but depressed. 

Sober, but unhappy. 

Sober, but feeling like it's all a bit boring ... 

It's time for an AA tune up.

Freedom from alcohol and drugs also frees us to enjoy our recovery and every other aspect of our lives. We find those things that make us happy. We find the fun!

In my first year in sobriety, a friend of mine with the same amount of sober time decided sobriety wasn’t much fun - and I agreed. So on the following Friday night we got all dolled up and went out looking for fun. We ate at a nice restaurant, which was nice, but at that point we drew a blank. Our “fun” had always involved barroom drinking, dancing, and flirting. We discovered we had no idea what to do next. 

What we did was end up at the kitchen table of another friend in early recovery where we drank pots of coffee, gossiped happily about every other member of AA, told each other more of our drinking war stories, and laughed hysterically into the wee hours of the morning. 

For many of us finding fun things to add to our lives means going back in time to our childhood to remember what fun looked like then: 

Roller skating? Football? A doll house? Jumping rope? Bike riding? Drawing pictures? Reading? Building a tree house or snow fort? Hiking in the woods? Playing with our friends?

Once we've scoured memory lane for those tidbits we can consider doing some of those things again. We'll probably find we have outgrown many childhood pleasures, but a few might surprise us by still being quite a nice fit.

We can even invite our children or grandchildren to share in our rediscoveries ... or not.  

We can always opt to share our fun, but we also have the right to be joyous, happy and free on our own if we so choose.  

Sad to say, our years of substance abuse took away our simple delight in just being alive, but recovery can restore it. 

 

Many alcoholics are also workaholics. When we find ourselves forced into having some down time we use it sit around worrying. 

Where's the fun in that?

Discovering the ability to leave the job at quitting time, to rest when we're tired, to discover what we most enjoy - from building a house to just pottering around in the one we have - is the best part of having a sober life.

We must always remember we have a disease of perception. How we view our activities can brighten them with glitter or turn them black.

Prayer and meditation center us, educate us, lift our spirits, provide companionship, and offer us a journey of adventure - 

and/or - 

prayer and meditation are just something we do hurriedly (if done at all) as just one more recovery box to tick.  

Perception!

Service work is where we can grow our recovery by leaps and bounds. Becoming active in our home group, taking a turn chairing, serving as a greeter, helping plan and deliver special events can turn out to be some of the most fun we've ever had ... 

and/or ... 

Service work can be a drudgery to nourish our resentments: 

"THEY expect ME to do everything. Wah, Wah, Wah."  Perception!

If "they" aren't doing-the-doing, "they" aren't reaping all the benefits recovery has to offer. 

It's their loss! 

And they put themselves at risk of a relapse by not doing-the-doing. 

Learning the steps, learning how to use them as tools for living a balanced life, offers us the opportunity to get to know who we really are, to discover our strengths, to experience our talents to the full. 

To not do the steps, to not work them, use them, treasure them - all of them - is to deny ourselves all the benefits of a joyful recovery.

Meetings are our ongoing medicine for treating our disease. And getting to our meetings is one of the best parts of being a member of AA. Knowing we'll see our friends there, getting to laugh with one another, getting to help one another through our bad patches, and celebrate our good times together, is hugely important to our recovery.

It's a good idea to ask ourselves from time to time, 

"Am I having fun yet?" 

 

If my answer is "no," I may be taking myself far too seriously. 

Our lives didn't end when we got sober, they got a reboot. 

Recovery is meant to be fun, too. Go find some!

 

Made A Decision

(71)

                                 Balance

"My definition of balance is being able to obsess equally in all areas of my life."

I read that quote above recently and, while it made me chuckle, it also felt waaay too close to the mark. 

That's because the need to create a balanced life has been the one big challenging and recurring theme of my entire time in recovery.

My Higher Power clued me it would be so during the first year of my AA journey, because the word "balance" was everywhere. 

Some examples:

. My laundry detergent offered me a BALANCED washing - with the word "balance" printed in big bold letters.

. The announcer for the high wire circus act on TV stressed how the performers must remain BALANCED.

. A bank statement gave notice of a new and easy way to BALANCE my account.

Fuzzy as my head was that first year, even I couldn't miss that message from my Higher Power on the need for more BALANCE in my life.

So what does a balanced life look like?

 

It looks calm and centered and comfortable. It shows up when we pay attention to developing our spiritual, physical and mental health. 

We do this by making prayer and meditation part of our daily routine, by eating right and exercising (preferably out in the open air), and by attending our meetings to support our mental health.

Plus we need ALL the tools of recovery - from step work to book study groups - to develop and keep our balance. 

Avoiding the busy-ness of ALWAYS doing too much is one component. 

Remembering the AA advice to H.A.L.T. - not allowing ourselves to become too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired - is another.

Alcoholics are too often excitement junkies, creating or seeking stress to boost our built in drug, adrenaline. We use caffeine the same way. Achieving serenity isn't easily done when we're all jazzed up on either.

Balance can be achieved, and it's worth the effort, but it remains subject to change as our conditions change.

We are now - and always - like the high wire walker over a canyon who must maintain balance despite sudden gusts of wind.

Let's say our AA life has restored our family to us, we now have a good job, we have a strong support system in our AA friends and our standing in the community has been restored. All is good! 

But then ...

We are diagnosed with a medical problem; our child overdoses on drugs; we learn an AA friend has gossiped about us; our company goes bust and our job is gone along with it; divorce papers arrive … What then? 

How do we retain balance through any of these scary kinds of situations?

First we check in with the Boss, the Top Guy, Amazing Grace, God, or whatever we chose to call our Higher Power. There we whine for a bit - then surrender the problem and ask for help.

We will also talk to our sponsor and our known-to-be-trustworthy AA friends. We'll step up our number of meetings and talk about what's going on. 

We may whine for a bit to God and our friends, but then must get off our pity pot before it becomes our permanent habitat. 

Besides, by now (after using all our AA tools) we're ready to face whatever facts must be faced - and dealt with - about our changed situation. 

That's our solution for every single life problem we will encounter. That's how we learn to live life on life's terms ... or ... as I prefer to think of it, to live life on God's terms.

Fast forward now, one sober day at a time, when old age arrives with a whole new set of adjustments to be made.

That's when we suddenly find ourselves unable to do those daily tasks that were once so easy we never gave them a thought.

Finding our balance in the strange (and often hilarious) new world of hard-of-hearing, hard to remember, hard to get up from a chair, hard to walk very far, hard to clean the bathtub ... takes a lot of new adjustments.

Finding the balance - when losing it can mean a broken hip - takes a good bit of getting used to!

It's also hard to know just how much of our "hand of AA" is still required of us in our old age. How much should now be handed off to younger members so they, too, can gain what we have from our wonderful program.

Reevaluating one's life while busy living it is never easy, but it's always necessary when we feel out of balance once again. I've spent a lot of time in prayer and thought (and conversation with trusted friends) about this old age balancing act this week. 

I've decided it’s now time to step back from a lot of my AA commitments, but to continue with writing this weekly blog. It's my best way now to continue giving back to our program.

And I will use any free time gained to push forward with a current project to compile all these blogs into book form.

Just writing this down here has already made me feel more balanced.

My work now - as always - will be to keep me that way!

 

Made a Decision:

(70)

When the Honeymoon Ends

Everything about AA is wonderful to many newcomers. The meetings are amazing. The people are without flaw. They make us laugh and they also seem so wise. The program is perfect.

Who knew sobriety could be like this?

Getting free of the compulsion to drink, making new and wonderful friends, becoming involved in our recovery while planning happy days around getting to our next meeting, feels a lot like being on a honeymoon.

In AA it's called being on a pink cloud. Some of us ride it for a very long time, finding real joy in being alive after years of it being hard to even face another day. 

AA gives us a reason for living. We find breathtaking beauty in nature, where it has always been- but went unnoticed when our lives were focused on getting our next drink.

Old timers smile knowingly when an enraptured newcomer sings AA's praises. Some even burst the newcomer's bubble with cynical comments like, "Enjoy it now, you'll fall off that pink cloud soon enough."

Sadly, the cynics are right.

No one stays on a honeymoon forever. One day we wake up back in life as it’s lived by the vast majority of society. This often happens at the nine-month-sober mark, statistically the time of most relapses.

But at any time in our recovery - without warning - our meetings may suddenly seem full of dull and boring people who don't leave us enough time to talk; we see that our AA friends actually gossip just like the people at work; and we discover our lives aren't all that great.

It begins to feel like our lives will never be perfect, even if we're sober. Maybe our problems at home have gotten worse since we quit drinking? Maybe we're realizing we've hated our job for years? Maybe the whole world feels like it is going to hell in a hand-basket? Maybe ...

Hold it right there.

"Alcoholism is a disease of perception."

And it is here where we start to learn that everything in our lives - EVERYTHING - is about our perception.

We make the choice to view things as either good or bad.

My Alcoholism is always a disease of my own flawed perception!!!

My first reaction to a “perceived” difficult situation is always negative. If I don't immediately change my thinking (which takes a good bit of practice) a flood of negative thoughts can rush in to sweep away my chance of finding a solution.  But just like when caught up in a raging torrent, if we can reach out and grasp just one firm thing - one positive thought  - and hang onto it, we'll be able to regain some stability and haul ourselves to safety.  When the going gets tough(er) we call our sponsors, we reach out to our AA friends, we force ourselves to go to meetings, even that one where we know boring old Jabberon is going to talk away half of it.  (Boring old Jabberon's job, btw, is to teach us patience and tolerance).  We become more willing to move forward with whatever step may need a revisit. How well we can recognize that we're headed for trouble, and deal with it quickly, can reveal to us the extent of our own progress in recovery. Just this past week I had to recognize I was in a sudden lesson of my own and had to mutter to myself, "Well, well, well. If it isn't the consequences of my own actions (now arriving at Gate One.)" I am by nature a solitary creature, as are most writers. I am also about as flexible and spontaneous in my old age as your average wall. I have a daily routine that's pretty much carved in stone and my middle name isn't "Letschangeitup." So when a young AA friend said he was coming to see me, and I replied, "Great, you are always welcome," I was shocked when his next email (five minutes later) showed a picture of his boarding pass from the UK. I then spent that day fretting about me, me, me. Me and my routine. Me and the book I'm now working on. Me and getting a blog written with company in the house. Me and ... so it went. Fortunately, I know enough to connect with friends who let me whine a bit when I need to. And I shared about it at a meeting. And I shared it (gently) with my young friend, too, upon his arrival. It's called "honesty" and it's what we non-saints are required to do to stay sober. My visiting friend is incredibly dear to me and has had some big problems in recent months. He felt the sudden need to visit a friend who might offer some encouragement. I hope I have. I know we've had a lovely visit. (For starters, he washes dishes!) Even after long-term recovery I don’t ever react to surprises with emotional sobriety. I must always first flail a bit before remembering my Higher Power has my back in all situations.  When all is going according to MY plan I can start to believe my work is done. But it is in our lessons where we find our continued spiritual awakening. It doesn't matter how long or short a time we have been in recovery, the learning must continue if we want to make more room for more of the gifts of recovery. And I am nothing if not a greedy bugger. I want all the prezzies that can come my way. (Over time we can learn how to climb back aboard our pink cloud for another wonderful ride, too ... at least until our next "lesson" arrives).

 

     

   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.