Category: alcoholism

The Rock

rock-writingI was walking in a state forest the other day and came across this rock. It was along a jeep road trail that led to a lakeside flat. At the flat was a place to hang out and it was obvious this was a place to party. Not to badly littered but there were some broken bottles and trash around. There was also a place in the center of things for a fire.

Boy did this bring back memories. I used to get drunk with my friends in an out of the way place. Along some railroad tracks, behind a bowling alley, near a major interstate bridge overpass. It was a perfect place to hang out where no one else went. On the populated side of the bowling alley was a strip mall and a liquor store. There we would figure out a way for someone to get us alcohol and from there we would retreat to our hideout. We were just kids but we might as well have been looking at what we could become – drunken bums that lived in the shadows, drinking in out of the way places.

Sadly during that time of my life, being at the place drinking was some of the happiest times for me. I felt misunderstood (and a lot of other uncomfortable emotions) and drinking took that away. Besides most of my buddies were nascent alkies too. We were brethren and understood each other. It was a peaceful break from being around parents, other adults, other kids. Today I can see this was the beginning of my flight in to isolation and loneliness.

I do not know of anyone from that group of friends that has gotten sober except for me. There were three of my best friends in high school among that group. One turned out to be a hard drinker that stopped partying once he ‘”grew up.” Another has been living a horrible life for the last twenty plus years. Living on the streets of New York City, in and out of relationship with a women that sold herself to support her drug habitat, he has had aids for years. He may be dead by now, although I always think that and then he has a way of reappearing. When I do see or hear of him it is a chance to look in a strange kind of mirror. If I was still using, and could have some how still managed to not die, this is what I could be.

The third of our tight little click killed himself 21 years ago. I had been sober about a year and a half when this happened. I had seen him a few months before and my friend seemed empty, hollow and sad. I attended his wake and funeral and will never forget the sadness. Many people asked me why would he have done such a thing? I couldn’t tell them that I felt I understood his motivation – he just could not take it anymore. The pain, the loneliness, the everyday struggle with knowing you just cannot escape this inexplicable fate of needing to drink, needing to stop and nothing you do works.

I am so grateful for my sober life.

Our Best Ideas

Will you choose the easier softer way, of try to blaze your own trail?
Will you choose the easier softer way or try to blaze your own trail?

As happens too often, someone that asked me to sponsor them has gone away. Don (as mentioned in this post about sponsorship) decided he needed to try to do find his own way to sobriety. My own sponsor said it best “why do you need to find something else, this works well for a lot of people!”

The thinking and reasoning of this guy was classic. I was almost dumbfounded by what he told me as things were quickly unravelling.

First was Don’s stopping doing some basic things he had told me he would do if I was to sponsor him. I called him out on this stuff and told him he needed to make a decision if he would do those things or not. He said he needed to think about it. Within a few days fired me, saying he did not want to do those things and that he needed to do his own thing.

He explained how he knew some guy in AA that had long term sobriety and worked his “own” program. The steps he didn’t like this guy simply ignored. How well did he know this other guy? Someone else he sort of knew in AA had told him about him. So he was going to go to a meeting this fellow went to and see if he could talk to him.

Great “lets go get drunk idea.” So there are lots of people around that are sober and talk about how the steps brought them sobriety. Out of this, pick one guy that did it differently and say that is what I want to do. What worked for one person, not what is apparently working for a whole bunch of people.

The most crazy thing of all was this one line he told me.

I want to try to find my own way of doing this AA program.

His own way. He called me a few times after he fired me. He was growing increasingly irritable, restless and discontent. Don was also getting more and more scared. At one point he decided he needed to do what I had suggested and said it would be good if I would sponsor him again. That was the next to last day that I heard from him. It has been a few weeks. He is not at meetings. He has not kept in touch. Is he drinking? I hope not but it does not look good.

I am so glad that I once came to the realization that my best ideas were killing me. This was a very important change in my thinking that allowed me to get sober. I was then teachable and open minded. I thought a lot of these AA things would not work but was willing to entertain that I could be wrong. I was. Completely.

Crossing the Line

I have been talking a lot lately with others about crossing over into the world of alcoholism. For me doing so involved adding alcohol to my body. I am certain I am a natural born alcoholic. My body was never able to process booze like a normal person. Other people may not be born that way but do nonetheless reach a point where they drink their way into this state.

Just my layman’s perception of this of course.

Our literature explains that once we have reached this place we can never drink safely again. We have crossed a line where we can never safely use alcohol in any form. The only solution to our drink problem then becomes to practice total abstinence.

Today I read this interesting line that I thought related to all of this. It basically said that someone reached a stage of their drinking where their problems were no longer their problems, their drinking was the problem.

It occurred to me this is a part of crossing that line into alcoholism.

Trying to come out of the other side of this, in other words quitting drinking and chasing sobriety instead of a drink, leaves us screwed up. Most people can’t reason their way out of this confusion:

Instead of realizing that stopping drinking will help us to begin to work on our problems, we instead think that drinking is our real problem and that if we stop we can handle all the rest. Handling all the rest, in some regard, means at some level we (not God) should be able to handle not drinking. It can be a fatal mistake to think this way.

I needed to stop drinking so I could stop creating more of the problems that drinking was causing. With that out of the way, at least on a day to day basis, I could then begin to “clear away the wreckage of the past.” This meant I could start to figure out what my real problems were and learn how to handle them in a way that did not destroy me.

Alcohol was but a symptom.

The solution to the problems that were behind my drinking, not the many stupid problems that drinking too much for too long were causing, was to trust God, clean house, and help others.

Self Esteem

I really need to start a post page where I can add those great little one liners folks in the program share with me. Here is one I heard today:

If you want to raise your self-esteem, do esteemable acts.

Pretty simple really. Yet I found that to be a pretty profound statement. I also went to the dictionary:

esteemable – is just something worthy of esteem, so we have to go and check that out….

esteem:

v. to regard with respect, prize

to have great respect or high regard for (someone)

n. Favorable regard

admiration and respect

I hope this simple statement “If you want to raise your self-esteem, do esteemable acts” will stick in my head for a little while. I like the idea of thinking that I should work a little harder at doing the right thing in order to make me feel better about myself. This is not a difficult concept and surely I do know this is true. Yet somehow, and this is why I keep telling myself I should collect these things in a written form, this little phrase motivates me when I hear or read it. It brings clarity, and makes me want to keep me on the right track.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Hope you are all well and staying sober.

Wishing you all the best in sobriety,

AA Blogger

Death and No Glory

A tale of the past………

When I was first getting sober I was full of fear. So much so that I was afraid of people and hardly ever spoke at meetings. One day someone came up to me after a meeting and asked me if I wanted to go to coffee. This question brought up two opposite reactions – one of wanting to go so badly and the other of wanting to run away. I took a chance and said of course. I followed this fellow to the Marietta Square where we went into a local restaurant and ordered some coffee. It was fun, or at least as fun as anything could be for me while I was literally shaking in my shoes.

After we were there a little while this fellow’s girlfriend showed up. She sat down with us, the conversation lasted for about another 5 minutes, and then she started crying. And not just a few tears. I mean she was sobbing uncontrollably. My friend nonchalantly said that they had to go, more or less scooped her up in his arms, and left with her sobbing away. I was bewildered. One minute I was sitting there trying my best to act normal – I was out at coffee with someone else in AA – how exciting and scary. Then before I barely knew what happened this strange woman who had just shown up had broken down uncontrollably and I was left sitting there by myself.

The fellow that I went to coffee with soon became one of my closest friends. We got sober together and were very close for over a decade. For whatever reason we were just real comfortable around one another. I tended to be kind of quiet and he loved to talk. Whenever we got together it was like walking into a meeting. I relaxed and felt at ease.

When I was thirteen years sober and living in the northeast my friend, whom I had been inexplicably drifting away from for a few years, ended up drunk. Another mutual friend of ours called me one day. We talked about how, for a number of reasons, we were not surprised this guy drank again. His path in life had diverged sharply his last year or two sober. He was not going to meetings, was studying esoteric spiritual things, and was generally pushing himself away from a lot of things that were really good in his life.

My friend was not a good drunk. His going back out was a mess. Thankfully, and in many ways surprisingly, he eventually made it back into the rooms. Yet he was changed and not for the better. He was distant, a little sharper with people, and never regained the warmth and Joie-de-vivre he had once exhibited. He bounced in and out of AA a few times but he did finally stick with sobriety again. Unfortunately we never rekindled our friendship. We did have some strange conversations and meetings together these past few years. The best I can describe it was it seemed like the old him was gone and we both new it. That pink elephant in the room made us both uncomfortable.

and the current news of my day…….

I received a call a few hours ago and was told my old friend committed suicide. He was found this morning in a seaside town in Mexico. He left a note. I do not know what he had to say. Apparently he took a hundred or so xanax. He also shopped around for his own casket a few days ago and told the salesman (undertaker?) he wanted to be buried in Mexico when he died.

This fellow was always cooking up crazy schemes. I guess this was his last big idea.

I pray that he has found the peace he was always seeking.

Goodbye my friend.

The anti-promises

What happens when an alcoholic is actively caught up in their disease, drinking like there is no tomorrow and beyond all human aid? On page 52 in the Big Book is a passage that some refer to as the anti-promises:

“We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people…”

I wasn’t seeking this stuff out when I was drinking but it was part of what I was getting. And the longer I gave into my obsession and activated my craving, the more “side-effects” I experienced.

The point of this passage in the Big Book, as a part of the chapter to agnostics, is to raise a simple question. If these are the results we are getting by running our unmanageable life on self will, shouldn’t we at least consider that spiritual assistance might be something we could try? The spiritual approach is something that others say works. Could it possibly be worse than the anti-promises?

Of course the answer for most alcoholics, most of the time, to trying the spiritual approach is no. Most drunks either believe they are not quite down for the count and can somehow manage their drinking or are so far gone they feel it is hopeless to try to stop. The spiritual approach is as easily pushed aside as anything else that gets in the way of our drinking.

I am blessed to be one of the fortunate recovering alcoholics that is able to spend some of my life sober. No booze put in = an end to the anti-promises. For today at least I am willing to allow God to intercede. I can let him help me to pursue more promising actions and enjoy the fruit these efforts produce.

Wishing you all the best in sobriety,
AA Blogger

Shoe Polish

I was listening to a radio show (Bob Dylan’s theme time radio hour) and heard this awful tale of crazy alcoholic behavior. I am paraphrasing but essentially…..
Delta Blues legend Tommy Johnson was not only a great musician but was also a bad drunk. He was known to drink “sterno and also shoe polish strained through..bread” when he did not have any whiskey.

I never drank sterno but do know people who have. Shoe polish is a new one to me. Yet as crazy as it sounds I guess it is possible. If it works – that is it contains some alcohol and it produces the effect we are after – some alcoholic, somewhere, at some time, will use it. Especially if we have no other supply of booze.

In the southern U.S. bible belt region there are still dry counties and plenty of restrictions on how and when alcohol can be sold. Local laws protecting the good folk from the evils of alcohol were even more widespread in the past. If you lived somewhere in the south where alcohol could not be sold or you traveled around, say playing music, getting your hands on some alcohol often must have been like trying to get illegal drugs is today. And I thought I had it bad when I couldn’t buy liquor on Sunday.

It is never easy being a drunk. It must be doubly awful to need to drink and be in such a mentally twisted state (and probably so damn broke) that your options come down to things like sterno, kerosene, or shoe polish. There are plenty of health problems and deaths occurring in some places today, like Russia, that are connected to people regularly imbibing bad booze or alcohol products that were never meant for human consumption.

The few people I know who drank sterno said it was awful going down and had some nasty side effects (the human body breaks down the methanol in sterno into formalydahyde and formic acid). Sterno can even make you go blind or outright kill you. I can’t imagine shoe polish, strained or not, would be much better for you.

Tommy Johson would supposedly talk about, and be seen publicly practicing, his nastier drinking habitats. The downside of using industrial products to satisfy his alcoholic craving was ironically the subject of one of Johnson’s more famous songs – “Canned Heat Blues.” Part of this title was also the inspiration for the name of the blues band Canned Heat.

Canned Heat Blues
by Tommy “Snake” Johnson
recording of December 1929, Crafton, Wisconsin
from Complete Recorded Works (1928-1929)
Crying,canned heat, canned heat, mama, crying, sure, Lord, killing me
Crying, canned heat, mama, sure, Lord, killing me
Takes alcorub to take these canned heat blues
Crying, mama, mama, mama, you know, canned heat killing me
Crying, mama, mama, mama, crying, canned heat is killing me
Canned heat don’t kill me, crying, babe, I’ll never die
I woked up, up this morning, with canned heat on my mind
Woked up this morning, canned heat was on my mind
Woke up this morning, with canned heat, Lord, on my mind
Crying, Lord, Lord, I wonder, canned heat, Lord, killing me
Jake alcohol’s [ruined me, churning] ’bout my soul
Because brownskin women don’t do the easy roll
I woke up, up this morning, crying, canned heat ’round my bed
Run here, somebody, take these canned heat blues
Run here, somebody, and take these canned heat blues
Crying, mama, mama, mama, crying, canned heat killing me
B’lieve to my soul, Lord, it gonna kill me dead.

I have been told time and time again that my drinking experiences include those horrible things I have already done and those things I just haven’t done yet. When drinking, anything is possible for me. Since I do not want to end up with the Canned Heat Blues…….I think it might be a good idea for me to try to keep following the straight and narrow path I’m on. Trust God, clean house, and help others.

All the best in sobriety,
AA Blogger