Out of Control

If you've ever been on a camping trip with me, you know that there is a certain amount of, uh, direction that you are going to get. Put the tent here. Make it face this way so you get the morning sun/sunset/moonrise. Put this kind of yogurt on your granola. Use this hiking pole. Walk behind me. Walk in front of me. Choose a color of napkin. But don't choose the green one, that's mine. Any other color. Here, choose blue. Do you know why witch hazel is called witch hazel? Well be quiet while I tell you. Let's go on this trail until I decide to not be on this trail, then we will go on another trail and then later I will lament not finishing the other trail. When you sign up for a camping trip with DG, you sign up. You actually get a dossier with menus, itineraries, nearby sights, star charts, moonrise schedules, hiking options, printed maps, etc, etc. Be ready for near-daily e-mail updates regarding our upcoming adventure. It's a lot. A friend once called a trip we were on "a really well-planned, well-catered death march."

I get why I do it. It's all about control, an issue I have struggled with a lot. Even in social situations like dinner parties, I tend to go into "dance for Grandma" mode, where I try and be the "glue" that holds everyone together. It's not usually necessary; everyone in the room knows each other. But I want to control what's going on in the room, even if it isn't my party.  And sometimes that takes a lot of, uh, fuel.

One of the contradictions of the rehab process is this whole control thing. When I made the decision to go, I thought "oh, I am making this decision to be in control of my life." And then the first thing I noticed when I was there was that a large number of lessons and activities were about me relinquishing control, surrendering. The way those two conceptions of control brushed up against each other was eye-opening and it's something I'm working on. I am consciously avoiding social situations where there might be more than two or three people present out of fear that I'll start the darling pet monkey routine. I can't make the lady in front of me at the red-light go any faster when the light turns green. I just can't get upset about things I cannot control anymore.

So here's the thing. Let's say we go camping together sometime this fall. We might finish up our dinner and let the fire die down and lie down on our sleeping bags and look up at the night sky. I will know that we are looking at Camelopardalis the Giraffe and Auriga the Charioteer and Cassiopeia, the Queen of Ethiopia. You can just look at them without me telling you in excruciating detail what you are looking at. Unless you ask. I will have a star chart in the car.

We Are Family, IfyouknowwhatIamsayin'

You meet a lot of interesting people in rehab. Sure, there's a large contingent of spoiled frat boys who partied too hard for too long, and there's a particular group of house-husbands who all seem to come from the same place (hello, Kentucky!), but there are doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs too. Real estate agents, college professors. Welders, writers, waiters. All types, all sizes, all of whose very best thinking led them to addiction and then to rehab. Me included. But during my time out at the ranch, one gentleman rose above them all: Tony the Enforcer (name changed to protect anonymity. And maybe my safety).

There was a lot of lore surrounding Tony the Enforcer, a lot of whispered hubbub. The general consensus was that he had been an, um, employee of a certain type of capital-F Family, if you know what I am saying. He was intimidating, terrifying and completely charming. He became the Den Mother to almost everyone under the age of forty and for those of us longer in tooth, he became a very bizarre and unlikely role model. We all either wanted to be him or be close enough to him that we could steal some of his stories and pass them off as our own. (By the way, remind me to tell you about the time I had to get rid of an eighteen-wheeler full of hot potted meat.  Oh, wait, uh, ssshhhhhh.)  He could remember everyone's name and that's saying something for a drug addict in a room with sixty-five other people. But if you were very very lucky, he would bestow a nickname on you. On Day 8 of my stay, my nickname was granted: Señor Bashful. (Bashful, eh, I know. Hey I didn't say he was a genius at figuring out personality traits accurately). For the next week, I could rely on a hollered "Hallllo, Señor Bashful" echoing across the common spaces at all hours of the day or night. Getting a nickname from Tony the Enforcer was the second-greatest thing I accomplished out there.

I collected my 30-day chip today. I had delayed picking it up for a day so that I could do it at a meeting along with some other people from my time in rehab who have stayed in touch and helped each other with meeting attendance. I really wanted to get the chip in front of people I knew...or rather, people who knew me. I met my friends outside and when we walked in, there he was! Tony the Enforcer! Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, he walks into mine. And best of all, the part that made me almost explode with happiness, was that he was getting his 30-day chip as well. Just the two of us! Entwined forever, Tony the Enforcer and Señor Bashful. 

So don't fuck with me. I know people now.

New Math

The arithmetic of recovery is mind-boggling. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Everywhere I turn, numbers. Blood pressure: 144 over 85. 120 over 80. 188 over 135. Pulse: 100. 96. 72. Weight: plus 4, minus 11. 5 days of detox. 3 days of detox tapering. 3 roommates. 14 days. 13 days. 12 days... 3 months to 2 years before dopamine levels in the brain behave normally again. 5 weeks of outpatient rehab, 20 sessions. 1 sponsor. 12 steps. 12 traditions. 1 dollar bills in baskets. A bill for $6.88 for 1 pill not covered in rehab.

Everything in medical terms measured in milligrams. 200 milligrams. 100 milligrams. 50 milligrams. Peeing in a cup 2 times a week. List 20 consequences. List 10 more consequences. List 10 reasons to stay sober. Meditate for 4 minutes, minimum, and please don't slam the door if you leave early. Be on the porch at 7 to catch the bus to a meeting with 12 other guys.

Rate the headache pain on a scale of 1 to 10. No, "ow" is not a number, we need a number please. So: 6.  Meetings at this location are at 8, 12, 5 and 8. 90 meetings in 90 days. 2 meetings in 1 day counts as 1 meeting; don't try and cheat it. Medical can only dispense 1 ibuprofen every 6 hours, and only before 9 and after 8. 3 people in each room, 6 to a bathroom. We are moving you from Room 205 to Room 206. Lights out at 11.

Another number popped up today. 30. 30 days. That's how long I've gone without a drink. Don't feel like you have to comment.  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30. It takes a long time to count to 30. But not as long as it took to get there! Now let's see how 40-60 treat me.

The Souvenirs of Rehabilitation

Rehab has a gift shop, you know. Mine had an actual store you could go in and buy inspirational recovery books and t-shirts and some uplifting sayings carved on rocks sorts of things. There were also practical things that the inmates, patients, residents (I never figured out what to call us) might need: pens, pencils, legal pads, fudgesicles, lanyards (to hold our must-be-visible-at-all-times ID badges), wristwatches (an extremely popular thing to have; there are not a lot of clocks in treatment, but you have to be ON TIME to everything, so you feel set up to fail right off the bat until you figure out to just follow everyone else, since everyone is doing the exact same thing you are at the exact same time and then you don't feel like such a failure).

There were also various stickers you could purchase for your car - "Friend of Bill W." or that weird little triangle in the circle thing that I never knew the meaning of until now; I always thought it was something Masonic. Someone on the smoking porch told me to not get one, though. He said those stickers were "cop bait" and if I put one on my car, I'd get pulled over daily by some hopeful cop with a quota picking all the low-hanging fruit. I thought it would be funny if they had a sticker that said "My Child is an Honor Student in Alcohol Rehab" but on the whole, I have found that early recovery stuff isn't big on the jokes. Anyway, I resisted all of these things. I went into rehab with a ten dollar bill and a roll of quarters and managed to spend almost all of it on M&Ms and Cokes. I came home with change.

But I did come home with some souvenirs, all of which are way better than anything that was in the gift shop:

There was a sweet, unusual kid from Chattanooga who roomed with me for one night who spent all of his free time making origami. I was never sure how he talked the Powers That Be into letting him have his origami paper and the instruction book, since almost everything not recovery-related was forbidden. But he spent his time making boats and frogs and cranes, one of the latter of which he gave me.

Another roommate who was a bank president left a clean, neatly-folded handkerchief on my pillow when he left while we were all in group one day. He had seen me struggling with allergies.

I came home with a copy of a Jose Saramago book that arrived quite unexpectedly; again, surprise that something made it past the censors. Sure, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ" sounds like an inspirational title, but it's pretty clear they didn't thumb through and run across the juicy bits.

I also have some natural bits and bobs: a rock from the trail that rings the property and a flower nipped from a vase-full that a friend sent me. I pressed it between some journal pages and gave the sweet nurses in medical the rest of them.

All of these things seem like the right things to have; all personal and connected to real people and a real, particular place. I've boxed them all up - along with all the letters I received and my rehab journal - in a little box labeled REHAB BOX and maybe when I am feeling unsafe or vulnerable or if things get a little shaky, I'll pop the lid off and rifle through all of those things just to remind me of the comfort and safety of the bubble of rehab and then get back to my real life, assured for another day by a rock, a crane and a handkerchief.

On 'and.'

One of the things that has recurred over the past few days is people asking me "and?"  Like, ok, DG, you are doing this recovery thing. But then what? And? 

It's a good question: What does come next? What is the thing that comes after the thing I am doing now? It's a bit of a puzzle because it's never really going to be done; it'll always run along the edges of whatever else is happening in my life, piping around the edges of big piece of cloth.  But I also get the meaning behind the question. It can't just be this. It has to be for a period, but eventually (to stick with the fabric metaphor), my recovery will need to be strands woven through my larger swath of fabric.

So I have been pondering "and."

There's a lyric in the musical Into the Woods that I've always loved:

Must it all be either less or more,
Either plain or grand?
Is it always 'or'?
Is it never 'and'?

I love that final line, that plea for compromise or open-mindedness or in-between-ness. It's about multi-tasking and not controlling things and letting other things crowd in without sacrificing the larger things that matter or freaking the fuck right out when they do crowd in. We can have "ands" in our lives and still have lives.

A few years ago, I got involved with a project called "Skin." It's a short story written by Shelley Jackson that only exists as a series of single-word tattoos on the bodies of people who volunteered to receive a word at random from Jackson. There were some ground rules: you had to get the tattoo in a typeface that might appear in a real, published book and if you got a word that was a body part, like say "hand," you could not get the tattoo on that body part. Then you were supposed to take a picture of yourself and the tattoo and send it to Jackson, who would then send you a typewritten copy of the completed story. But nowhere would the story actually be published or readable for anyone not involved with the project...that is, only the "words" would ever know the whole story.

Needless to say, I jumped right on it and sent an application to Jackson and was accepted. I've had the reply hidden away in a box for years, waiting for the right time to get the tattoo (there's no time limit). I was never really sure when that right time might be, but I think it's finally here. I'll choose some upcoming anniversary - my 47th birthday or my 60-day-sober mark, something like that. I wonder if you've figured out what word I got back in 2005. Eight years ago.

The Spiritual Thing

I knew when I decided to enter rehab that I was going to hit a roadblock pretty early on - I was sure the "spirituality question" would trip me up.  Most successful rehabilitation programs involve a spiritual component, and this particular one was no different.  I fretted over it, having never really been at all religious (and not ever being a believer in the Christian brand of it at all), but I decided to dive in and see what people more successful at being non-drinkers might have to say about it.

I needn't have worried too much; it's really not a "conversion" program, though if what you're looking for is a group to read scripture with, you can find that pretty easily in any corner of any room. There's as much Official God Talk as you could ever want. But I had more than one conversation with more than one counselor/advisor/case manager where there was plenty of support for and approval over the idea of a non-traditional higher power.

A few years ago, I had a chance encounter with a bear when I was on a solo hike in Calaveras Big Trees State Park in the Sierras of California. The bear came crashing noisily through the thicket of ferns to the right of me, stepped into the path directly ahead of me and froze, staring at my face for a second. He shook his head as if to clear a thought from it and then continued down to the left of me toward a stream, where he was headed for water. I finally thought to breathe and continued on my way, sure that I was safe from any danger. And I was safe. Nature did not have it in for me that day. Nature was just trying to get water to the bear; that's the only reason the bear was put in my path.

I thought about this encounter a lot the first few days before I entered rehab and the first few days I was there - I was trying to put my finger on the thing, the power that was higher than me, that I could turn my unmanageable life over to. And it finally occurred to me that I was spending a lot of time trying to define this nebulous, abstract thing and not a lot of time going and looking for it.  I only had to walk outside and watch the snake of morning fog lifting up from the river hidden just past the first row of distant trees to know there was something larger than me, and I didn't have to figure out what the fuck it was called. It was right there and that was enough.

I pick up a chambered nautilus and look at how it's formed and I recognize Math as a higher power. I watch a leaf trace a Jacob's Ladder arcing back and forth through the air as it falls from branch to ground and acknowledge Architecture as a higher power. I think of a particular alpine lake fed by a glacier in eastern Nevada (yes, Nevada) and I know the possibility of snow in July signals the presence of a higher power.  I remember that yards from that same lake, I held a ten-thousand-year-old bristlecone pine cone in my hand and acknowledged the existence of a higher power too abstract for me to attempt to articulate. I string these little beads of acknowledgement together and that strand of beads becomes my higher power: The Natural World.

I have known all this for a long time, but I allowed my alcohol abuse to veil my senses for years and now each day that I am another step away from it,  I catch the scent of something I forgot about - the strange allure of a faraway skunk or the sweet, funky smell of mountain galax - even if it's just a memory. And each time that happens, I know that there is a power higher than me.

One thing I learned about spirituality in rehab is that I don't have to go form a church about it; I don't need any converts to agree with me. I can just have it. And now and then I do get a little jealous of the people with a lot of organized religion under their belts, because it's easy (and acceptable) for them to start going on about Jesus or Buddha or Whoever and they can quote things chapter and verse to prove their connection to a higher power. And I'm sometimes not sure how to "prove" mine. Should I just rustle up a campfire right there in the middle of the table at group therapy and say "SEE?! It's called FIRE!"? But I know I don't really have to do that. I should, though. That would be funny.

Coincidence and Metaphor

If you ever enter a rehab program, one thing you will need to pack is your suspension of disbelief because coincidences stack up like firewood pretty quickly. 

One day when I was there, I had to list a few trigger things that might have contributed to my current condition. One of the ones I listed was the death of a friend a while back. Within five minutes, I discovered that the person I was sitting with in a grief group was the person who had been cutting my friend's hair for the last year or so of his life.  On the third day, I learned that one of my roommates was married to my sister's high school math teacher. And just last night, in my outpatient therapy session, my counselor played a cover of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" to point out a lesson. If you scroll back just three posts in this blog, you'll see I'd already cited it as a favorite thing a few years ago, before I put this blog on hiatus.

But there were dozens of them; my little rehab journal is full of coincidences, and I wondered quite a bit about the nature of them. Were all of these little frissons random? Or had they been happening all along and I was just too drunk to notice? Was my new-founded mental clarity responsible for me seeing the patterns that were working behind the scenes all along?

Another thing I noticed quite quickly while I was there was that the language of rehab is largely built on metaphor. Almost everything they say and do means something more than you think it does. "You have to drive your car all the way to the bank." "You don't get off the donkey until you get to the top of the summit." We stumbled blindly through a rope maze.  We held taut ropes until we were able to "let go" of one end.

 And everything you see takes on meaning that might not even be there. On the final day, I was sitting on the porch watching the sun push up over the heights across the river and I noticed a little bird hopping around in front of me. It had tiny, fluffy useless wings, obviously fallen from some nearby nest. He struggled and struggled to fly but just couldn't do it. I watched him for about twenty minutes, the whole time thinking "no wonder this place costs almost a thousand dollars a day!" I mean...training baby birds to hammer home the recovery point on my last day! It was too much to think about.  Do I even need to tell you that by lunchtime the baby bird was flying around just fine? No, I do not. You wouldn't believe me.