Month: June 2006

The noise in my head

Being outside in a natural environment can be a powerful way for me to connect with my higher power. I choose to become a biologist partially because it was a way for me to be in places like the desert I have been working in for the past month. I get out early in the morning as the sun is coming up over the mountains. The morning chill begins to leave the air and the shifting sunlight changes the feel of the landscape. A good way to start my day. My morning consists of walking around and recording the data I need for my research. I spend a lot of time looking down at the ground and often get caught up in what I am doing. Then I have a pleasant surprise when I look up and have my perspective change – from one of intently working to my soul taking a deep breath. I suddenly become aware of the beauty all around me and a wave of serenity washes over me.

I used to search for these kinds of frame shifting experiences in a bottle. Today they come as part of living how the steps have taught me to live.

Yesterday morning was a little different. The desert was just fine but my mind was not. I had a meeting with two of my bosses a few days ago and we discussed our summer agenda. I started to lay out a time line in my head about when I would be able to do my projects. Since I work alone, there was little to disrupt my thoughts. I began to worry and before I knew it I was absolutely obsessed with negative ideas.

I have come to learn that the basis for most of my fear is insecurity. I can often trace most of my troubles to a belief that I can summarize as “if everything in my life were in order then I will be fine.” This belief leads me to obsessive behaviors, trying to arrange things (be it writing, making a web page, trying to get my things together when I leave the house, etc.) so they are just right. I am futilely acting out in perfect accord with my faulty belief.
The steps have worked wonders to improve this part of my life. I now understand there are lots of things in my life I cannot manage. My faith does often wax and wane though, as I am still just human. At my best I have a deep knowing that God is with me and all is well with the world. Everything is fine regardless of what I can do or do not do to keep my life in order. Imagine that, I am not in control of the universe! Not surprisingly my fears can be stirred by failing to regularly cultivate my spirituality. It is also true that I can sometimes just have a bad day.

Yesterday was somewhere inbetween, a bad morning and playing in places inside my head that are not good for me to be. Worrying about what “I” have to accomplish and how I will not be able to get things done. It was awhile before I realized my head was dwelling on negative thoughts, which of course was stirring up plenty of bad feelings. I was thinking about all I had to get done this summer, feeling it was not possible (maybe true), and then having all kinds of resentments against my bosses (how can they be so unreasonable!). The reality is that I will get done whatever I can and I need to talk to my bosses about my concerns. They have demanded nothing, other than we talked about what we would like to get accomplished. In realizing what my head was doing I immediately began to work to change things.

Maybe the serenity prayer would help…..God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Five minutes later I realized I was back to my obsessive thinking. I stopped and took in my beautiful surroundings. A few minutes of relief and right back to the land of negativity. Whatever I tried to do to shut it off, it just would not stop.

There is a noon meeting in the city I live in and I realized it would be good for me to leave work in time to get to the meeting. I arrived just as the meeting was beginning. Some of the meeting preliminaries include asking if there is anyone who is within a few days of their last drink. Someone I knew, who had been out drinking for about six months, raised his hand and said he was just coming back. I had not even recognized him when I had sat down and looked around the room. It really made me happy to see this guy. I knew from a few reports from other people that his return to drinking had not been going very well.

When the chairperson asked if anyone had a topic I spoke up and reported what was going on with me. The meeting finished an hour later and I felt a lot better. Most of what had been said in relation to what I had shared were all things I had tried, considered, or realized while I was out in the desert trying to shut off my obsessive negative thinking. Yet hearing it again at the meeting was just what I needed. I also had a living example put in front of me of what is really important. The fellow who was returning after some hard drinking had talked about how bad it was to have gone out.

I have the day off today and feel a lot better. I called my friend that is just coming back and plan to see him at the noon meeting. I imagine things are just as they need to be in the desert this morning and hope that this proves true when I return back to work tomorrow morning.

Wishing you all the best in sobriety,
AAblogger

“he will know loneliness such as few do”

….a little blurb from the Big Book chapter “A Vision for You.” This loneliness can settle in when we are successful enough at withdrawing from life that almost no one can get in the way of our drinking. The latter was something I wanted for years. Ignorance and alcoholism led me down a path where I believed that I would be better off if everyone would just leave me alone. While I was relatively young when I bottomed out, I had managed to do fairly well in cutting myself off from most people.

I had a few friends but did not see or speak with them regularly. I was good at being evasive, being emotionally unavailable, and trusting no one. I had developed a habitat of speaking softly and mumbling my words as I really did not want to talk to people. With the possibilities that drunk driving and blackouts brought, it had become somewhat dangerous for me to go out and drink. I had learned it was safer to get drunk at home, which I usually did alone. All of these things led to a lot of isolation.

It is not inevitable that being alone will lead to loneliness but I had also developed a sense that I was somehow different from other people. This feeling of being apart, actually keeping myself away from others, and the opportunity to drink regularly was a bad combination. My life was like a black hole, sucking the light out of my surroundings in a way that expanded the darkness. The emotional pain I felt as a result of this and other problems was thankfully tempered by my drinking. Like every seasoned drunk, I was a pro at denying or escaping from emotional turmoil. Still this was no way to live and I was truly killing myself a drop at a time.

When I came to AA I was offered an opportunity to try and regain a saner way of living.

The fellowship and my sponsor supported me in beginning to live a life that included budding friendships, attending social functions without being afraid of what I might end up doing, and opportunities to just hang out with a group of people after meetings. All of these activities were emotionally painful. I discovered I had a lot of fear and anxiety that would get tweaked whenever I was around other people. Fortunately the fellowship was consistently supportive and safe. I learned there that my worries and fears were almost all unfounded. This knowledge helped but did not necessarily put an end to my discomfort. Eventually I learned to relax, to speak up and voice my opinion in discussions, and to be more open about how I felt.

Those baby steps I took in AA eventually were put into practice outside of the fellowship. Today I risen all the way to the level of normal in my social interactions. I have friends that I keep in touch with on a regular basis. I rarely feel the need to revert to being a shady con artist that will tell anyone anything to get what I want. I no longer attempt to isolate myself as a matter of course but I do still cherish being alone. It is time I often use to recharge myself spiritually.

Having others in my life is so important that it is difficult for me to fathom how I survived, virtually alone, when I was drinking. AA helped me to escape that insanity and still provides reminders of how bad things had once been. Every so often I have a conversation with a newcomer who is mumbling, talking softly, and very obviously scared out of their wits to be talking to someone. It is chilling to see this as a reflection of who I once was but it also fills me with gratitude that I am sober today.

Wishing you all the best in sobriety,
AABlogger

The great I meets the more powerful we

The first AA meeting I attended had the steps posted on the wall. I read them, as this was about the most comfortable thing I could do. I did not want to talk with or look at anyone. It may have been that very day but if not, it was within my first few meetings, that I realized what these “12 steps” were all about. I had never heard about them, or AA, before this. I immediately realized I could never do the steps. I arrived at meetings as an atheist but surprisingly it wasn’t God that was standing in my way. It was steps five and nine. I knew that I could never tell someone else the true nature of all my wrongs and I could never make amends to even some of the people I harmed.

I was absolutely right. I never did the fifth step and I did not make amends. As a drunk I am of course stricken with a bad case of self-centeredness. There are so many things I cannot do. Like quit drinking. I believed God did not exist therefore it was not possible for me to even guess that I could be provided with enough guidance, strength, and courage to do many things with God’s help that I could not do on my own.

The island that was the great “I” slowly become part of the “we” that Alcoholics Anonymous tells us about. I would occasionally speak up at a meeting. I started to talk with people before and after the meeting (babble on my part, lots of patience and tolerance from someone else!). I asked someone to sponsor me and this man got me started on working the steps. This led to my trying to pray and working on forming a relationship with a power greater than myself….that I totally did not understand.

I was told to work on one step at a time. Don’t worry about those I haven’t done yet. That was fine until I got to step four. Now I could think of nothing but step five – it was coming up right after four!!!!! I thought there was no way I could go through with it so I procrastinated. I was finally forced into one of those put up or I-might-as-well-go-get-drunk places. I had a really, really bad day, went to a meeting, and was too scared and disturbed to talk to someone afterwards. I was a mess as I was driving home. I was thinking how bad it was that I couldn’t ask for help at an AA meeting, which was one of few places I knew was a safe refuge for me. I realized I was screwed up in ways that needed to get straightened out or I was sure to drink again. It dawned on me that taking the fourth step inventory might help in figuring out what was wrong with me. Of course I had read and heard this before but now it made sense and might even be something that was necessary. The fifth step be damned – I had to try to work on step four.

The next morning I prayed for God to help me and within a few minutes my list was started. That experience, and a few others that had come before, provided me with enough faith to eventually have the courage to take my fifth step. My sponsor and God were in the room with me while my sponsor talked me through telling him what was written in my inventory. We did my fifth step, not the great “I” that was incapable of taking this action.

As I made my way through the steps my sponsor eventually helped me to work up a plan of action for making my amends. My first was to be to my mother. I found myself sitting at her kitchen table one day, scared as to what would come of trying to make amends. We were having a normal conversation – as I had not specifically told her I needed to talk to her about making amends – but I just couldn’t begin to do what I needed to. I eventually got up and told her I was going for a walk outside. I made my way to a place where I could sit on a bench and there I began to pray for help, courage, and the words I needed to say. I got up after a few minutes, walked back, and made my amend. Just like my fifth step, there were two people and God there for this. My mother was not as concerned with past events as I was, and just wanted me to be well, happy, and sober. A loving response and very consistent with how my mother always acted towards me. It of course made no sense that I expected this experience was going to be very bad.

While it was not easy to make my amends, for whatever reason getting through that first one proved to be the biggest hurdle. I now knew I needed God there with me as I made each amend. A prayer was all that was necessary to make sure I was not alone.

The steps have changed me into a different man than I was, have taught me how to find the strength and courage to carry out many worthwhile actions that I would be incapable of on my own. I am glad to be a “part of” rather than the the island I once felt it was so important to be.

Wishing you all the best in sobriety,
AABlogger