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.

Saturday August 9, 2008

In one week I will be getting married. I’m forty-three and so glad I waited this long – first I needed to find God, then find myself, and then find the person that I will spend the rest of my life with. I don’t see anything wrong with having things be different for other people. For me this is what had to happen. I simply could not see me with someone as wonderful as my wife to be is had I thought I needed to get married – in essence, forced my hand – sometime before it was time for me to meet her. I do believe I needed to become so much better and healthy to be able to attract someone with her personality and qualities.

I’m reaping a lot of benefits from pushing myself to go to more meetings (and why should this be any kind of remarkable revelation?). I am meeting AA people around where I live, getting phone numbers, speaking up and out about what I think and feel about AA, and even getting some surprises. Yesterday I man that seemed vaguely familiar. In other words I know I have seen him a few times around the rooms. He came up to me after the meeting and said “hey short timer.” I was puzzled and said so. He said, well you are getting married next week, right? I was stunned. I had only mentioned my upcoming marriage once in meetings around here and it was weeks ago. This man not only remembered but he kindly, in a friendly sort of teasing way, wanted to acknowledge this big event in my life. I did ask him his name and I am sure I will not forget it.

Here I am sober twenty years. And it touches my heart that someone remembered me, had listened to what I said, and was thoughtful enough to say hi to me in the way he did. I have felt for a long time that it is so important how you act and treat other people. It is none of my business how I help or do not help someone. It is important that I try to be kind, thoughtful, considerate, and so on. My now new friend had no idea that I was going to have such a positive reaction to his being nice to me but he was just being nice anyway. And in doing so he made my day.

Be well,

AA Blogger

AA 101 – prayer

I had a big problem. My uncle has been dying of cancer for awhile. A few weeks ago he was told he could not be treated anymore as there was no use in doing so. My father talked to me the other day and told me I should call him. The unspoken part of the conversation, which I only recognized a few minutes after I got off the phone, was that my Uncle does not have long to live (this post is not about how no one in my family ever talks directly about things, as if it might keep something bad or sad from happening if it isn’t stated).

I feel fortunate I had seen this uncle about out a month ago even though he lives hundreds of miles from me.

The next day I agonized over picking up the phone. I can’t recall the last time I called this uncle on the phone so the whole thing was strange to begin with. I of course was mightily uncomfortable with the idea of what to say to someone who is not far from death. Goodbye? Sorry? I hope your Ok? I talked to my fiancee about my dilemma. I was fishing for someone or something to save me from something I was scared to do. It was this last thought that saved me and helped me to dip into my AA toolbox.

There is nothing I need to be ready to say, or can say, to deal with the real enormity of what is going on with him. I simply needed to ask God for help to have the courage to pick up the phone and to ask for guidance in saying whatever was appropriate.

I picked up the phone right away, dialed his number (my Uncle’s of course, I don’t have God’s number in my speed dial), and he answered the phone. We talked for about 5 minutes. During our conversation I was able to tell him that I had heard he was not doing well and that he was in my thoughts and prayers. It was a surprisingly light conversation. I of course felt much more comfortable than I would have thought. I got off the phone and cried. As I am doing in writing about this phone conservation.

I am grateful to have been graced with the courage to call. I felt better for having had this experience. My uncle was sincerely happy to hear from me and seemed touch that I called.

It still amazes me that I can so easily tap into a power that can have me go beyond my simple set of conceptions that set off fear, retreat, and shying away from doing the right thing. Left to my own devices I used to always miss my chances to act responsibly. I lacked the wisdom and self assurance to reach out to others with love. Such behavior, I have come to learn, is living in a way that is like trying to grow a plant without water.

The strangeness of feeling grateful for being able to handle dying, death, and sad events is something I have gotten used to over the years. There are many situations that come up as part of being responsible adult that leave me and plenty of others feeling like “what I am supposed to do here!” and “I don’t want this to be happening!” Getting through those situations – by facing up to them, feeling humbled by playing my part and role in whatever I am supposed to be doing, and even feeling grateful since I know I never would have been able to do such things before – is a much better way to live.

Wishing you the best in sobriety,

AA Blogger

Friday August 1, 2008

Why not.

Joe Pool Lake I think I need to just start writing a bit more freely to allow me to post more regularly. Don’t even waste any mental energy on coming up with some catchy title to the idea I want to expand upon. Just hammer out the date and go from there.

A few weeks to go until my wedding date. Man, it is just so exciting. I’m not so nervous about getting married as much I am purely filling up with a lot of pent up wanting-to-have-it-all-happen. I generally have it come up in my thoughts before I fall asleep and as soon as I wake up. What is all this going to be like a week from now? How about the Wednesday before the big weekend?

I spoke to one of my old sponsees for a long time on the phone last night. I had to ask him if he would read the Prayer of St. Francis during the ceremony. It was great to talk to him about so many things but a lot of it was of course about the wedding. It was a great conversation and I realized, in blabbering so much on the phone, that I have more nervous energy than I would have ever imagined.

After talking to my friend I realized we need to try to have a meeting the Saturday morning of my wedding day. There will be at least 7 AA folks by then at the place we are having our weekend wedding party.

And that’s that. Some random thoughts for a Friday evening.

Ciao

A lack of meetings

I have been having trouble getting to meetings with any regularity for some time now.

My list of excuses has three main themes. Together they form a set of ideas that have real power to keep me away from meetings. The reality is that this is just silly drivel that seemingly justifies not getting myself out of the house and into the proverbial chair I have paid such a high price to earn.

Here are the big three:

  • I don’t know many people/meetings here – I moved to my present house about 9 months ago but have been coming and going (foreign and domestic trips, from months to weeks at a time) so much that I still feel like I just moved here.
  • I am so busy – My main work, my upcoming marriage, developing my own business.
  • My back issues – It had been real uncomfortable, for much of the time I have been in my new home location, to get around and even to sit down.

All of this may be true but it is pretty weak. I am a drunk and if I want to remain a sober one then my alcoholism and God need to be my two biggest priorities. One outward sign of this commitment to keeping- my-ducks-in-a-row is attending meetings. Going to meetings is really so easy – it should be a no brainer. It can also serve as a serious underpinning of supporting so many other things I can do to maintain my sobriety. Meetings will of course not keep me sober but can help me, and allow me to help other people, in a a myriad of ways.

Another part of this is how easy it truly can be for me to get to a meeting where I now live. I am just outside of a major U.S. city. There are many meetings within miles of my house that are taking place morning, noon, and night.

One of my old sponsees, now living in another part of the country, pointed something out to me about my not attending many meetings. He said I was able to begin to help him because I consistently attended my home group. After watching and listening to me this fellow showed up at that meeting one day and asked me to sponsor him. If I wasn’t there I never would have been given the gift of helping to take him through the steps, to see him get sober, and to remain a part of his still improving life. I know from experience with him and with others that being so deeply involved in someone’s recovery is one of the most gratifying experiences I can have. So why go to few meetings and decrease my chances of connect with new people?

Another aspect of this is I need to be much more active in getting out to help others. It is one thing to be at meetings and somewhat passively attract others to the idea of being sober. The steps have taught me I need to be proactive in spreading the news about recovery from alcoholism. I need to get plugged into and become part of that group of local AA folks that are doing the real AA footwork – going out on the front lines of alcoholism, as the big book puts it. I’ll come across these dedicated people at meetings. They are not going to show up at my doorstep while I’m sitting at home working on my next big project.

So let this post serve as a warning and sounding shot – to me! Get off my rump and go claim my seat. Find out who I need to be around to best position myself to find the next poor drunk that needs God to work through me (or perhaps that poor, newly sober bastard needs to teach me a thing or two!). Get back in a position to be able to tell folks what this program of action has to offer. Find more like minded friends and once again be a part of a fellowship I enjoyed in those places where I was more a part of AA, rather than the newly sober drunk or the new guy in town.

Last week was a good start. Three meetings, rather than one or none. I need to build on that but realize a new week is beginning. The here and now is what matters.

A Fresh Start

I finally made took some action on a decision I made a long time ago. I needed to move my blog to a new wordpress theme. I was having trouble doing so because I could not update my server with the latest wordpress and database versions.

I just had to manually enter all my posts into this new site location (I moved the domain to a new server and moved the location of the blog within the domain). A pain but it was necassary to just get it done.

The hope is the fresh start will do me, and you, well. Now I can work with comments again where before I was getting hammered by spam so bad I had to shut them off. The newer tools available for handling such problems can better deal with such things.

Well…..here we go…..

Opportunity

Getting sober allowed some important changes to take place. These changes collectively allowed me to have an opportunity to face and deal with my life. This does not mean that I do deal with my life better, just that this is now possible. I did not have this opportunity before. My perspective before was like seeing the world as a blurry black-and-white picture. I was not only unable to see things clearly, my ability to know what I should do in my dealings with others went from bad to worse. Self centered fear, a lack of clarity, and increasing isolation were a recipe for decline – not growth.

Change came with working the the twelve steps. Attending meetings and not drinking of course helped. I couldn’t have the former without the latter but the converse was not true. Not drinking and going to meetings did not bring about the change I needed. It merely cleared some ground to allow me to begin heading down the path of sobriety.Today, twenty years on, much of the time I am able to see reality for what it is. The unfocused, misguided, distorted viewpoint is now atypical. At times I do lose my improved perspective and yet more often than not, because of practiced what I have been taught, there are people around me that will tell me that I have lost my focus.

Seeing reality for what it is, being sober, and having been more carefully schooled in understanding right and wrong I can approach most situations in my life with an opportunity: do the best or right thing, knowing fully well what that is and what the situation calls for – or – take the wrong or self centered action, which is what I seemed to always know to do before. The promises spell this out “we will intuitively known how to handle situations that used to baffle us.” The rub today is that I don’t always do the right thing. Why? Because having the opportunity to do the right thing does is not the same as doing the right thing.

Still, just having the chance to do better in many situations does lead me to taking better actions. For that I can be thankful. When I do the wrong thing, well that is another reason I needed to have my sponsor take me through the 12 steps for the first time. By taking the actions I did then I learned through experience how to begin to start handling my life. Do the work that can help me to try and do and better and, when I fall short, to understand that nature of my screwups and do what I have to do to clean up my messes. And I still need help with this, and the steps, today.

Wishing you all the best in sobriety,
AA Blogger

Freedom from the mental obsession

At my meeting today the discussion was about having the obsession to drink lifted from us and how, once lifted, it can remain so provided we stay on a spiritual path. It filled me with gratitude to recognize that my life has been free of the desire to want to drink for so many years. Yet this program is a day at a time and my current state, not even being able to imagine a situation where I would want to take a drink, can be replaced by the insanity that was once surely killing me. I am fairly certain I will not revert back to who I was provided I keep doing what I have been taught – trust God, clean house, and help others.

One of the benefits of continuing to go to meetings on a regular basis is seeing, hearing, and watching others demonstrate for me how seemingly simply decisions that can lead me away from my sobriety are so easy to make. It seems there is no end to the number of people that want and need to stop yet return to drinking. One common thread in so many of these cases is an inability to keep sobriety as the number one priority. I have spent countless hours with people who have gone back out and heard them describe how life was just too difficult, how they felt so much pressure, and how they just couldn’t handle life on life’s terms. They are not able to see with any clarity how their perception of life’s problems allowed them to lose sight of remaining steadfast in doing whatever they could to stay sober.

I too can find my thinking going down this path from time to time. Up until this point though I have always somehow been brought to recognize that my thinking was misguided and wrong. Relationship woes, dealing with work, physical challenges regarding my health, unwanted changes, financial worries, or whatever are just not that big a deal. Staying on the path of guarding my sobriety, regardless of how life is, must always trump everything else. If it does not, the thought of a drink and the obsession could return. My change in perspective that knocks life’s “big deals” down to size is not brought about by the same consciousness that created it (the self-centered and defeatist part of my mind that just never seems to get totally squashed). The realization that whatever my current troubles are, whether they be real or imagined, are relatively unimportant in light of staying sober is brought about within me by what I have learned in AA and by my connection with God. It can come to me as a result of prayer, going to a meeting and hearing just what I need to hear, talking to another drunk, or reading the big book. Much of what I have learned has so permeated my life that it does not even need to be an AA thing per say that changes my attitude.

This morning for instance, riding my bike home from the meeting, I passed a few homeless fellows that were helping each other dig through a dumpster. I see these two guys just about every day and this morning I thought, there but by the grace of God go I. And with this thought I could put my life into a proper perspective. The obsession to drink, which had brought me to the very brink of death, is something I have not struggled with today. Every thing else really is gravy and knowing this is true, I can enjoy the many blessings I have rather than worrying, being fearful, or not appreciating this day.

Wishing you all the best in sobriety,
AA Blogger