Well, August 12 came and went. Again. I managed to orbit around to another mid-August, another year sober. That anniversary was yesterday, accompanied by shooting stars and the streaking space dust of the Perseid meteor shower. I navigated the tricky asteroid belt of early summer, with both old and new rocky obstacles in the mix: the usual early summer anxiety about past behavior, once again a difficult death anniversary and now a dog-shaped hole. Summer will forever be marked by those constellations, however much time manages to try and dim them.
It seemed to be a year of occasionally noticing missing things -- not like "oh, how I miss that!" but actual things gone missing. I opened the china cupboard in the dining room one day and saw little clear rings on the dusty glass shelves; it took me a few minutes to realize that they were left there by a set of little short Moroccan glassware when my house was "cleaned up" while I was off at the nervous hospital. Wine glasses removed, corkscrews taken from drawers, that sort of thing. Left behind, these little perfect circles, to remind me of how imperfect things had been before.
I was in Memphis last weekend; it was a funny place to be so close to the anniversary of my sobriety. Memphis was where my drinking career began in earnest -- I never drank in high school, but things ramped up pretty quickly the day I got to college. I still remember very clearly the freshman orientation party -- I could find the very house in Hein Park if I tried, I know I could -- and the ivy-bound brick patio and the giant metal barrel of Everclear and Kool-Aid and this dumb girl named Vanessa who dove headfirst off a picnic table into the bushes and my hangover after and then the repeat of the whole miserable cycle (though with less picnic table-diving) for almost thirty years after that. I joke frequently that I could never live in Memphis again because of the heat, but what I really mean is that I could never live there again because of the constant reminder of alcohol. Last weekend, every street corner I drove past held a story and almost every one of those stories held some modicum of regret, no matter how hard I tried to remind myself to move past feeling that way. It was an uneasy weekend, but probably necessary. The next time will be less wobbly.
This second year felt steadier, though, more level than the previous one, with fewer extreme peaks and valleys; a drive across a flat, sober Kansas. It occasionally seemed less miraculous than the previous year, less astonishing somehow. It just took me time to figure out that what was happening at last was a return to normalcy, perhaps the most astonishing thing of all.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
A List of Mabels
One of the things you hear over and over in the early days of recovery -- and there are many -- is "The good news is: you're sober. The bad news is: you're sober." It's an irritatingly accurate assessment of what those early days feel like, when you're re-learning how to feel things in a normal way. You're thrilled about the highs, the way you bounce out of bed and not throw up in the sink, the way food tastes and exercise feels. You're also cut to the quick and the first to cry over a casual insult or a red light that doesn't turn in time or a cloud that isn't puffy enough. In other words, you feel completely exposed all the time. That feeling gradually fades as your life proceeds whichever way it proceeds and you learn to deal with the highs and the lows and everything flattens out a bit. But occasionally a knife pokes through and rends the fabric so thoroughly that it stops you short, and you really think you won't be able to recover. That protective fabric got torn this week when my sweet little dog Mabel was unexpectedly taken from me.
Mabel came into my life in late 2009, as I was beginning my long, final slide into rehab -- it took a few years before I got there, but she was a witness to all the worst of it. We were instant best companions, me working from home at the time and Mabel staring at me from the other side of the desk until she loved me, after which she would never leave my side. I took her camping, I took her for drives and walks and hikes and she went canoeing a time or two. I would sit at picnic tables -- "camping," you know -- and drink glass after glass of wine while Mabel would drowse under the table, waiting for instruction. Or maybe she was just napping, not waiting for anything. She seemed perfectly content to just share my space, no matter how messy and drunken it got. And she was looking out the door when I finally got in the car to go get some help.
I promise to not go all Marley & Me with this, but Mabel figured into my recovery in two very significant ways and I want to define and explain them before the color starts to drain away from the photograph. I don't want to forget this.
Here's the first way: The first few days of rehab are medically-oriented; all of your time is spent being monitored and poked and prodded to make sure that you are beginning to leave behind the physical aspects of your addiction in as healthy a way as possible. I struggled early on with high blood-pressure, as a lot of alcoholics do. It went on for a few days, keeping me from getting the coveted white ID (rather than the caution-yellow one I had) that would allow me to walk the trail that skirted the facility woods or participate in any physically-oriented experiential therapy experiments that I knew were coming. No rope climbing for me! No trust falls! (And you know how I love a trust fall.)
Several times a day, my blood pressure was checked. Several times a day, I was denied the white ID. My BP just would not go down. I tried visualization, imagining the calmest, most beautiful vista I could summon up. I would think of being inside a snow globe. Eating ice cream. I would think of a swimming pool. Nothing worked. It was frustrating and upsetting and the fretting over it just sent the numbers that much higher, getting me further and further from the goal. If I couldn't get this little physical thing under control, however would I begin to tackle the mental and emotional pressure ahead? I was completely defeated by these stupid numbers.
About a week in, friends and family brought me a couple of little care packages full of things I had asked for: a copy of Walden, a clickable Sharpie, a wristwatch. One friend threw in a photo of Mabel. It was that last that did the trick. I took the photo with me every day (every four or five hours, actually) to the blood pressure test and each time that my numbers were too high, I would ask them to try it again and I would just stare at the photo of Mabel and "talk" to her in my head, and each time my BP would come down five, six, seven, eight points. Every time, the medical tech would say "look what Mabel did!" And she did do it. The thought of seeing her again, the knowledge that she was even in the world, was enough to literally make me healthier. Pretty quickly thereafter, I got the white ID card and I walked the trail and was able to begin to focus on and think about the possibility of forward motion, of work to be done outside of the clinical environment, work that didn't involve a fabric cuff around my bicep.
The second, much larger, way that Mabel affected my recovery had to do with the concept of "gratitude." Gratitude's a tough thing to get a hold on in the early days of recovery (especially for a cynic) -- there's a tremendous amount of blame and resentment when you're in an environment that's basically designed to make you face up to the problems that you yourself created. Even the people in your life who did their very best to help you come with complicated strings -- someone is mad at you, someone will never forgive you, someone will always think of you as a failure. That's how your mind works, whether any of that is true or not. (I should stop saying "your." That's how my mind works.)
One of the earliest exercises, though, was to take a piece of paper and list ten things for which I was grateful. It was not easy in those first days. So many of the things and people I thought of were still prickly by association; the people who loved me most were also the people who had just dropped me off at rehab with a pillow and a pair of pajamas. It was all so... complicated. It was a bit like trying to pull a single fish hook out of a bowl full of them (that phrase is someone else's, though I wish it were mine). The only 100% motive-free person or thing I could think of, the only one completely free of any emotional land-mine, was the face I remembered looking out the doorway as I left for rehab. Mabel. So I wrote her name ten times.
1. Mabel
2. Mabel
3. Mabel
4. Mabel
5. Mabel
6. Mabel
7. Mabel
8. Mabel
9. Mabel
10. Mabel
One thing -- ten times -- that I could be certain of, grateful for. Over the weeks that followed, that list changed. I got better at identifying the things in my life that were there by sheer chance, things I did nothing to earn but that had shown up and remained anyway. Some of the Mabels came off, replaced by things like "sister" or "mother" or "art" or "mossy path in the woods" or "new Woody Allen movie" or whatever. The list constantly changes now; it gets longer, it gets shorter, some of it is in ink, some in pencil. I've figured out how to be grateful for things. But Mabel stays on the list, steadfast and true, like she has been from the very start.
I wish with everything I have in me that I hadn't lost her this week. The bad news is indeed that I am sober and have to feel all the feels, as the kids these days say. But the good news is that I had thousands of hours of time with her, many of which I spent thanking her for coming into - and saving - my life. Yesterday on the way to the vet to say goodbye to her, I tried to make sense of it -- how could it happen? how could this happen? -- and I suddenly remembered that list of Mabels. It had worked before -- I had listed her name ten times and begun to learn how to be a more complete human just by the doing of it. So I did it again, right there in the car. I listed her name ten times.
1. Mabel
2. Mabel
3. Mabel
4. Mabel
5. Mabel
6. Mabel
7. Mabel
8. Mabel
9. Mabel
10. Mabel
I'll keep listing her that way, like an incantation, until it hurts less to do that, until other things crowd onto the list again. The presence of her in my life saved it; the absence of her reminds me of how sweetly to value it. She'll stay on my gratitude list forever, my sweet Mabel. At various times just a photograph, an idea, a panting presence in the rear view mirror on the way to the woods, but always a dog with a heart that made my own heart that much bigger and my entire life that much richer.
Mabel came into my life in late 2009, as I was beginning my long, final slide into rehab -- it took a few years before I got there, but she was a witness to all the worst of it. We were instant best companions, me working from home at the time and Mabel staring at me from the other side of the desk until she loved me, after which she would never leave my side. I took her camping, I took her for drives and walks and hikes and she went canoeing a time or two. I would sit at picnic tables -- "camping," you know -- and drink glass after glass of wine while Mabel would drowse under the table, waiting for instruction. Or maybe she was just napping, not waiting for anything. She seemed perfectly content to just share my space, no matter how messy and drunken it got. And she was looking out the door when I finally got in the car to go get some help.
I promise to not go all Marley & Me with this, but Mabel figured into my recovery in two very significant ways and I want to define and explain them before the color starts to drain away from the photograph. I don't want to forget this.
Here's the first way: The first few days of rehab are medically-oriented; all of your time is spent being monitored and poked and prodded to make sure that you are beginning to leave behind the physical aspects of your addiction in as healthy a way as possible. I struggled early on with high blood-pressure, as a lot of alcoholics do. It went on for a few days, keeping me from getting the coveted white ID (rather than the caution-yellow one I had) that would allow me to walk the trail that skirted the facility woods or participate in any physically-oriented experiential therapy experiments that I knew were coming. No rope climbing for me! No trust falls! (And you know how I love a trust fall.)
Several times a day, my blood pressure was checked. Several times a day, I was denied the white ID. My BP just would not go down. I tried visualization, imagining the calmest, most beautiful vista I could summon up. I would think of being inside a snow globe. Eating ice cream. I would think of a swimming pool. Nothing worked. It was frustrating and upsetting and the fretting over it just sent the numbers that much higher, getting me further and further from the goal. If I couldn't get this little physical thing under control, however would I begin to tackle the mental and emotional pressure ahead? I was completely defeated by these stupid numbers.
About a week in, friends and family brought me a couple of little care packages full of things I had asked for: a copy of Walden, a clickable Sharpie, a wristwatch. One friend threw in a photo of Mabel. It was that last that did the trick. I took the photo with me every day (every four or five hours, actually) to the blood pressure test and each time that my numbers were too high, I would ask them to try it again and I would just stare at the photo of Mabel and "talk" to her in my head, and each time my BP would come down five, six, seven, eight points. Every time, the medical tech would say "look what Mabel did!" And she did do it. The thought of seeing her again, the knowledge that she was even in the world, was enough to literally make me healthier. Pretty quickly thereafter, I got the white ID card and I walked the trail and was able to begin to focus on and think about the possibility of forward motion, of work to be done outside of the clinical environment, work that didn't involve a fabric cuff around my bicep.
The second, much larger, way that Mabel affected my recovery had to do with the concept of "gratitude." Gratitude's a tough thing to get a hold on in the early days of recovery (especially for a cynic) -- there's a tremendous amount of blame and resentment when you're in an environment that's basically designed to make you face up to the problems that you yourself created. Even the people in your life who did their very best to help you come with complicated strings -- someone is mad at you, someone will never forgive you, someone will always think of you as a failure. That's how your mind works, whether any of that is true or not. (I should stop saying "your." That's how my mind works.)
One of the earliest exercises, though, was to take a piece of paper and list ten things for which I was grateful. It was not easy in those first days. So many of the things and people I thought of were still prickly by association; the people who loved me most were also the people who had just dropped me off at rehab with a pillow and a pair of pajamas. It was all so... complicated. It was a bit like trying to pull a single fish hook out of a bowl full of them (that phrase is someone else's, though I wish it were mine). The only 100% motive-free person or thing I could think of, the only one completely free of any emotional land-mine, was the face I remembered looking out the doorway as I left for rehab. Mabel. So I wrote her name ten times.
1. Mabel
2. Mabel
3. Mabel
4. Mabel
5. Mabel
6. Mabel
7. Mabel
8. Mabel
9. Mabel
10. Mabel
One thing -- ten times -- that I could be certain of, grateful for. Over the weeks that followed, that list changed. I got better at identifying the things in my life that were there by sheer chance, things I did nothing to earn but that had shown up and remained anyway. Some of the Mabels came off, replaced by things like "sister" or "mother" or "art" or "mossy path in the woods" or "new Woody Allen movie" or whatever. The list constantly changes now; it gets longer, it gets shorter, some of it is in ink, some in pencil. I've figured out how to be grateful for things. But Mabel stays on the list, steadfast and true, like she has been from the very start.
I wish with everything I have in me that I hadn't lost her this week. The bad news is indeed that I am sober and have to feel all the feels, as the kids these days say. But the good news is that I had thousands of hours of time with her, many of which I spent thanking her for coming into - and saving - my life. Yesterday on the way to the vet to say goodbye to her, I tried to make sense of it -- how could it happen? how could this happen? -- and I suddenly remembered that list of Mabels. It had worked before -- I had listed her name ten times and begun to learn how to be a more complete human just by the doing of it. So I did it again, right there in the car. I listed her name ten times.
1. Mabel
2. Mabel
3. Mabel
4. Mabel
5. Mabel
6. Mabel
7. Mabel
8. Mabel
9. Mabel
10. Mabel
I'll keep listing her that way, like an incantation, until it hurts less to do that, until other things crowd onto the list again. The presence of her in my life saved it; the absence of her reminds me of how sweetly to value it. She'll stay on my gratitude list forever, my sweet Mabel. At various times just a photograph, an idea, a panting presence in the rear view mirror on the way to the woods, but always a dog with a heart that made my own heart that much bigger and my entire life that much richer.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Chestnuts
A lot of recovery is corny. I spend a lot of time listening to long-past-shopworn phrases and breaking them down word by word to ascertain their meaning and then reconstruct them in ways that don’t make me cringe when I say them aloud. I’ve come to expect the old chestnuts in meetings or anytime a group of sober people gathers together (what should that be called, a group of sober people? Crows get “murder,” walruses get “pod”… what is a group of drunks called? Oh, probably a “waitstaff,” now that I think about it), but when I’m trying to pin down and articulate how I feel about something in a one-on-one conversation — or trying to type it all out here — I really do try to sidestep the obvious bumper sticker sort of syntax that so much of the recovery industry (and there definitely is one) relies on. I suspect it’s a game I can’t win, but I try regardless.
That urge to express something uniquely has cropped up in a different context this week. I’ve been in the Appalachians, huddled with my dog, Mabel, in a tent for two rainy nights, with two clear ones still ahead of me. My notebook has been open the whole time, the pen loaded with ink, awaiting all-new amazing insights to just tumble down the jumbled mountain stream right outside my tent door. I could kill Henry David Thoreau for saying everything about trees first. Fuck John Muir for getting to mountains before I could. And I’ll slap Annie Dillard just for good measure; I’m sure she got to all of what was left long ago. I certainly now know how Mary McCarthy felt when she lamented about the impossibility of writing about Venice because everyone else had already said it all.
I didn’t take up the outdoors until I was forty and, already long-mired in drink and delusion, I was happy to drop everything and go sit in the woods alone on the spur of the moment. Since then, the motivations for doing so have shifted. Originally, it was all about isolating. I could stock up and drink alone for two days, sleep well into the third one, hop up and return to my life, still slightly dulled but with newly-inspired vocabulary to tell everyone that I was in some way “restored.” Now it’s about pure solitude, which might seem like just a semantic difference, but it’s really quite the opposite. My being alone in the woods isn’t about not being with people or hiding from them; it’s about being with myself, completely and utterly present and engaged with whatever task I have at hand: hiking a trail, setting up camp, cooking food or perhaps just sitting and being quiet for a little while.
A lot of those earlier, isolating trips are lost in a particularly, uh, damp fog. The first thing I’d do when I got to a campsite was have a few glasses of wine; I’m still not certain whether I ever set up my tent correctly…I know I never started a fire the right way. All of the memories and photographs from that time have a particular kind of off-kilterness to them, like the separate color plates have been printed slightly out of registration. After I sobered up, I hesitated to jump back into camping and hiking expeditions; “camping trips” was frequently just code for “drinking trips,” and I was keenly aware of possessing the peculiar skill of being alone in the woods and knowing exactly where the nearest liquor store was, almost like I was a wine-soaked divining rod. But I should’t have worried about returning to the woods. I’ve managed a handful of trips over the last year and all of them have only furthered my conviction that it’s a right, necessary, thing to be doing and each time I go, the final color image that I take home and keep gets clearer: the C, the Y, the M and the K of it all seem to align perfectly and display a perfect twin of my present being and mood.
Yesterday, I spent a good deal of the morning trying to hunt down an adult American Chestnut tree, one of only a few of the post-blight species left alive in North America; it’s supposedly quite nearby. It’s the sort of thing that I always thought sounded like “a very DG sort of thing to do,” but would never go actually do. I didn’t find it, but I have two more days here. Trust me, I’m almost embarrassingly conscious of how clichéd that sounds, tracking down the remaining trace of something long thought extinct. It’s what I’ve been doing for the past fourteen months, and no one is rolling their eyes reading this as much as I am while writing it. So I can’t be John Muir this time around, I can’t stake any territory Thoreau didn’t get to. But I can find this chestnut tree and press a leaf from it between two pages in the analog version of this blog and move on to the next “very DG sort of thing” that just two years ago I thought I’d never be around to do.
That urge to express something uniquely has cropped up in a different context this week. I’ve been in the Appalachians, huddled with my dog, Mabel, in a tent for two rainy nights, with two clear ones still ahead of me. My notebook has been open the whole time, the pen loaded with ink, awaiting all-new amazing insights to just tumble down the jumbled mountain stream right outside my tent door. I could kill Henry David Thoreau for saying everything about trees first. Fuck John Muir for getting to mountains before I could. And I’ll slap Annie Dillard just for good measure; I’m sure she got to all of what was left long ago. I certainly now know how Mary McCarthy felt when she lamented about the impossibility of writing about Venice because everyone else had already said it all.
I didn’t take up the outdoors until I was forty and, already long-mired in drink and delusion, I was happy to drop everything and go sit in the woods alone on the spur of the moment. Since then, the motivations for doing so have shifted. Originally, it was all about isolating. I could stock up and drink alone for two days, sleep well into the third one, hop up and return to my life, still slightly dulled but with newly-inspired vocabulary to tell everyone that I was in some way “restored.” Now it’s about pure solitude, which might seem like just a semantic difference, but it’s really quite the opposite. My being alone in the woods isn’t about not being with people or hiding from them; it’s about being with myself, completely and utterly present and engaged with whatever task I have at hand: hiking a trail, setting up camp, cooking food or perhaps just sitting and being quiet for a little while.
A lot of those earlier, isolating trips are lost in a particularly, uh, damp fog. The first thing I’d do when I got to a campsite was have a few glasses of wine; I’m still not certain whether I ever set up my tent correctly…I know I never started a fire the right way. All of the memories and photographs from that time have a particular kind of off-kilterness to them, like the separate color plates have been printed slightly out of registration. After I sobered up, I hesitated to jump back into camping and hiking expeditions; “camping trips” was frequently just code for “drinking trips,” and I was keenly aware of possessing the peculiar skill of being alone in the woods and knowing exactly where the nearest liquor store was, almost like I was a wine-soaked divining rod. But I should’t have worried about returning to the woods. I’ve managed a handful of trips over the last year and all of them have only furthered my conviction that it’s a right, necessary, thing to be doing and each time I go, the final color image that I take home and keep gets clearer: the C, the Y, the M and the K of it all seem to align perfectly and display a perfect twin of my present being and mood.
Yesterday, I spent a good deal of the morning trying to hunt down an adult American Chestnut tree, one of only a few of the post-blight species left alive in North America; it’s supposedly quite nearby. It’s the sort of thing that I always thought sounded like “a very DG sort of thing to do,” but would never go actually do. I didn’t find it, but I have two more days here. Trust me, I’m almost embarrassingly conscious of how clichéd that sounds, tracking down the remaining trace of something long thought extinct. It’s what I’ve been doing for the past fourteen months, and no one is rolling their eyes reading this as much as I am while writing it. So I can’t be John Muir this time around, I can’t stake any territory Thoreau didn’t get to. But I can find this chestnut tree and press a leaf from it between two pages in the analog version of this blog and move on to the next “very DG sort of thing” that just two years ago I thought I’d never be around to do.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Enough Rope
When I was going through my rehab souvenir box last month on my sobriety anniversary, there were few surprises. A skimpily-used sketchbook, the folded daily schedules, a menu for one of the weeks, a rock, a piece of origami...all things I still had pretty vivid memories of. But one thing that I had forgotten about jumped out at me: a black lanyard.
Upon admission to the nervous hospital, I was issued a photo ID. It came encased in one of those folded pieces of plastic that then clipped onto my shirt collar or pocket...the kind you might get if you were an attendee at a business convention. My ID had to be worn any time I was outside my room, which meant pretty much all the time, because every day was a long work day -- 7am to 9pm every day unless your mother was visiting. I got used to checking for my ID at the end of every session, after each meal, before I left my room in the morning, after running around a grassy field with a blindfold on (don't ask)...always patting myself down to make certain I had my ID.
Newcomers were recognizable by whether or not they had made it to the campus bookstore to purchase a lanyard. IDs could be clipped to the lanyard and worn like a necklace, rather than randomly clipped to wherever it would clip. I made fun of the lanyards for a few days; I thought it was a silly way to establish myself as a "longtime" resident. But I kept losing my ID. It didn't want to stay clipped to my shirt pocket and I had to go wait in line to get another one each time -- it was like going to a DMV for incredibly fucked-up people. So by my fifth day there, I was ready to part with three of the precious twenty dollars that I had brought with me and get a damned lanyard. I dutifully purchased a black one -- there were several color options, surprisingly -- and never lost my ID again.
At the end of my time there, I was required to give back my ID. I thought about passing the lanyard itself on to another person, someone new, to save him the trouble of navigating the first few days lanyardless, but in the end I decided to keep it and into the rehab box it went, un-thought about for a full year, until this past August 12.
I went out to visit my rehab alma mater a couple of weeks ago. Every Friday, everyone who is currently under care divides into loose groups and all alumni are invited to attend the groups as well, where they answer questions about life after rehab. I've been to a few of these and am usually too stage-frightened to say much, though I've noticed that I don't mind fielding the questions about day-to-day processes rather than the loftier ones about spiritual matters. If someone asks "what should I do if I'm invited to a wine-tasting?" my hand shoots right up.
This visit went the same as the others; I answered a few general questions about how and where to find meetings, how to train your car to not drive to the liquor store (the answer is "get a new car") and how to navigate meeting friends after work for a drink. The time went quickly -- it always does at these -- but it didn't take long to feel like I was where I was supposed to be, among the people I was supposed to be among, doing what I was supposed to be doing. At the end of the hour, I stood up to leave and touched my chest, checking, of course, for my lanyard. It wasn't there -- as a visitor, I wasn't wearing one. But I also knew that it really was there, and it was there forever, a piece of rope connecting me to the people in that room and all the people in all the rooms just like it from here on out.
Upon admission to the nervous hospital, I was issued a photo ID. It came encased in one of those folded pieces of plastic that then clipped onto my shirt collar or pocket...the kind you might get if you were an attendee at a business convention. My ID had to be worn any time I was outside my room, which meant pretty much all the time, because every day was a long work day -- 7am to 9pm every day unless your mother was visiting. I got used to checking for my ID at the end of every session, after each meal, before I left my room in the morning, after running around a grassy field with a blindfold on (don't ask)...always patting myself down to make certain I had my ID.
Newcomers were recognizable by whether or not they had made it to the campus bookstore to purchase a lanyard. IDs could be clipped to the lanyard and worn like a necklace, rather than randomly clipped to wherever it would clip. I made fun of the lanyards for a few days; I thought it was a silly way to establish myself as a "longtime" resident. But I kept losing my ID. It didn't want to stay clipped to my shirt pocket and I had to go wait in line to get another one each time -- it was like going to a DMV for incredibly fucked-up people. So by my fifth day there, I was ready to part with three of the precious twenty dollars that I had brought with me and get a damned lanyard. I dutifully purchased a black one -- there were several color options, surprisingly -- and never lost my ID again.
At the end of my time there, I was required to give back my ID. I thought about passing the lanyard itself on to another person, someone new, to save him the trouble of navigating the first few days lanyardless, but in the end I decided to keep it and into the rehab box it went, un-thought about for a full year, until this past August 12.
I went out to visit my rehab alma mater a couple of weeks ago. Every Friday, everyone who is currently under care divides into loose groups and all alumni are invited to attend the groups as well, where they answer questions about life after rehab. I've been to a few of these and am usually too stage-frightened to say much, though I've noticed that I don't mind fielding the questions about day-to-day processes rather than the loftier ones about spiritual matters. If someone asks "what should I do if I'm invited to a wine-tasting?" my hand shoots right up.
This visit went the same as the others; I answered a few general questions about how and where to find meetings, how to train your car to not drive to the liquor store (the answer is "get a new car") and how to navigate meeting friends after work for a drink. The time went quickly -- it always does at these -- but it didn't take long to feel like I was where I was supposed to be, among the people I was supposed to be among, doing what I was supposed to be doing. At the end of the hour, I stood up to leave and touched my chest, checking, of course, for my lanyard. It wasn't there -- as a visitor, I wasn't wearing one. But I also knew that it really was there, and it was there forever, a piece of rope connecting me to the people in that room and all the people in all the rooms just like it from here on out.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Suddenly, August
I'm not a fan of July anymore. The angle at which the Limelight hydrangeas droop from a neighbor's yard over my backyard fence; the peculiar way the light of each day drags on so late into what should be night that the sky never quite gets black enough to call "night" before it starts lightening again; the insistence of last-of-the-season straggler fireflies lighting up with warning signals meant just for me; all of those things combined crowd my senses and cloud my thinking, all pointing back to a year ago, to an entire month of summer-perfumed regret -- a month where I could feel my own internal barometric pressure changing, of being keenly aware of looming danger.
I've been warned about sobriety anniversaries. Warned that along with a sense of achievement, also sometimes comes a deep sense of shame. August 12 is my sobriety date, and the last forty days has been the toughest so far. I don't want to drink, no worries there. But July of last year was a truly terrible time and the first few days of the thicket of last August were even worse. And every one of these past forty days has been saturated in deep embarrassment over my behavior then -- I remember more and with each tiny spark of memory comes another shadow of shame. People who have been quite successful at recovery tell me all the time to not live in the past, to not regret any of it. But that's impossible; I wake up every day convinced that everyone remembers every tiny bit of misbehavior on my part. "Oh," they're thinking, "today's the anniversary of the day when DG drank a bottle of Fireball before noon and got too drunk to cut his steak." They're not really thinking that, of course. But it's hard to convince my brain of that, to get rid of the hilarious need to put myself in the middle of everyone else's universe.
Yesterday was when the earth rotated back around to the exact point where it was last year, when it got as bad as it could get, and as I took every sip from each bottle that day, I knew it was the last weekend of it, one way or another. I was perfectly happy to drink myself to death...or to stop drinking and not die. I somehow couldn't make the decision, though. I was very lucky to have the right combination of people working behind the scenes trying to figure it out for me, and everything fell into place as I've documented here over the past turn of the wheel. It could have gone the other way. It didn't.
Will next July be the same? Will I refuse to bring one of those cut backyard hydrangeas into the house because they remind me of a vase of them that sat on my dining room table that horrible weekend? Will I avoid going to the funny little marina steakhouse with foil-wrapped baked potatoes because I'll remember too much about the night I behaved so badly that I rendered five other people awkwardly silent for the better part of an hour? I don't know. I can't see into the future. I can barely see into the right now. But every day after August 12th will be the anniversary of a day when things got better. Every day after August 12th is a year-plus-whatever further away from the worst days of my life.
I have a friend who is thinking about giving up drinking. I don't know what her reasons are, and to be honest, I kind of give terrible advice. I am clearly not official sponsor material quite yet. But I'm always ready to answer direct questions about the whole experience and when she asked me outright "what does sobriety look like?" I only had to think for a second: "it looks like a styrofoam coffee cup most of the time." That's the glib answer, but then I do like a good line. The real answer isn't much more complicated, though. What does sobriety look like? It's six feet tall, with thinning hair and it's forty pounds overweight and it needs to run spell check on this post just as soon as possible.
I'm going to get past August 12th and then I'll see you next year. All of it.
I've been warned about sobriety anniversaries. Warned that along with a sense of achievement, also sometimes comes a deep sense of shame. August 12 is my sobriety date, and the last forty days has been the toughest so far. I don't want to drink, no worries there. But July of last year was a truly terrible time and the first few days of the thicket of last August were even worse. And every one of these past forty days has been saturated in deep embarrassment over my behavior then -- I remember more and with each tiny spark of memory comes another shadow of shame. People who have been quite successful at recovery tell me all the time to not live in the past, to not regret any of it. But that's impossible; I wake up every day convinced that everyone remembers every tiny bit of misbehavior on my part. "Oh," they're thinking, "today's the anniversary of the day when DG drank a bottle of Fireball before noon and got too drunk to cut his steak." They're not really thinking that, of course. But it's hard to convince my brain of that, to get rid of the hilarious need to put myself in the middle of everyone else's universe.
Yesterday was when the earth rotated back around to the exact point where it was last year, when it got as bad as it could get, and as I took every sip from each bottle that day, I knew it was the last weekend of it, one way or another. I was perfectly happy to drink myself to death...or to stop drinking and not die. I somehow couldn't make the decision, though. I was very lucky to have the right combination of people working behind the scenes trying to figure it out for me, and everything fell into place as I've documented here over the past turn of the wheel. It could have gone the other way. It didn't.
Will next July be the same? Will I refuse to bring one of those cut backyard hydrangeas into the house because they remind me of a vase of them that sat on my dining room table that horrible weekend? Will I avoid going to the funny little marina steakhouse with foil-wrapped baked potatoes because I'll remember too much about the night I behaved so badly that I rendered five other people awkwardly silent for the better part of an hour? I don't know. I can't see into the future. I can barely see into the right now. But every day after August 12th will be the anniversary of a day when things got better. Every day after August 12th is a year-plus-whatever further away from the worst days of my life.
I have a friend who is thinking about giving up drinking. I don't know what her reasons are, and to be honest, I kind of give terrible advice. I am clearly not official sponsor material quite yet. But I'm always ready to answer direct questions about the whole experience and when she asked me outright "what does sobriety look like?" I only had to think for a second: "it looks like a styrofoam coffee cup most of the time." That's the glib answer, but then I do like a good line. The real answer isn't much more complicated, though. What does sobriety look like? It's six feet tall, with thinning hair and it's forty pounds overweight and it needs to run spell check on this post just as soon as possible.
I'm going to get past August 12th and then I'll see you next year. All of it.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Tethered
This week marks a truly terrible anniversary. I hate using that word - anniversary - to mark tragic things because it's a word I always associate with party hats and clever, designed invitations and passed trays of finger foods. But I looked in the thesaurus and there's really no other word for it. It's the anniversary of my great friend Jay's accidental death. I don't really know the specific date he died offhand; I only know that we all heard about it on the Monday following Father's Day. So that'll always be the day that feels the longest and the worst: the hot, stupid Monday after the second Sunday every June.
Jay and I became friends as waiters over two decades ago. We worked together for years. I was his manager for a while; later, he was mine. Then neither of us was the manager, back to being just waiters. He was a good drinking friend. Though he never drank like I eventually did, he could certainly keep up when the situation warranted back in those early days. We discovered together one evening that there is indeed a limit to how much chartreuse should be consumed by two people. We drank it from the bottle cap, one glowing green sip at a time. Until we, uh, undrank it all over our friend Marleen's picnic table as the sun rose.
Time passed and he opened a restaurant with his partner and I worked for them for a while. I worked as a host and I did it for the free wine. I'm sure I got a paycheck too, but the constant glass of wine in my hand was the real payoff. I stayed there for a couple of years, drinking more and more...and then I just sort of drifted off. It was easier to drink at home, easier to drink alone. Less risky.
And then Jay died in a freak accident. A few days later, I wore a black wool jacket on a fucking hot June afternoon and I cried a little, I hugged his sisters, I wore a little pallbearer boutonnière and helped carry the casket from the hearse to the grave site in a country meadow and watched it lower into the ground. A group of us stood there in stony silence while the gravediggers filled the hole back up. They stomped the earth perfectly flat and practically stitched the grass back together over the rectangle of soil. After just a few short minutes, there was virtually no trace of Jay left...the headstone wasn't due for some time. Part of the funeral party drove to a nearby friend's house and drank well into the evening. Some people came from hundreds of miles away, all friends and co-workers. I wish I could remember any of that part, any of those people who drove in that day, any of it at all.
I did all the things I was supposed to. All but one: I completely, even willfully, neglected to sober up long enough to grieve my friend. A year later, when the first anniversary of his death rolled around, I was still drunk, still not facing the fact that he was gone. It was just simpler not to.
In the ten months since I quit drinking, I have bumped up against this unprocessed grief more than once. At times, it feels like a trap; at others, like an excuse. I am still uncertain about why I've been so unable to move past it. A tiny part of me thinks it's about the drink, that that's the thing that keeps me tethered to him because that's the thing that connected us for so long, especially in the early years. We worked in a drinking environment, we got off work, we drank. I wonder if I am worried that the longer I stay sober, the further I move away from our shared past, the further I move away from our friendship. Grief is complicated. There's your bumper sticker for the month: grief is complicated. I'm beginning to suspect that it's never over, either.
I miss my friend.
Jay and I became friends as waiters over two decades ago. We worked together for years. I was his manager for a while; later, he was mine. Then neither of us was the manager, back to being just waiters. He was a good drinking friend. Though he never drank like I eventually did, he could certainly keep up when the situation warranted back in those early days. We discovered together one evening that there is indeed a limit to how much chartreuse should be consumed by two people. We drank it from the bottle cap, one glowing green sip at a time. Until we, uh, undrank it all over our friend Marleen's picnic table as the sun rose.
Time passed and he opened a restaurant with his partner and I worked for them for a while. I worked as a host and I did it for the free wine. I'm sure I got a paycheck too, but the constant glass of wine in my hand was the real payoff. I stayed there for a couple of years, drinking more and more...and then I just sort of drifted off. It was easier to drink at home, easier to drink alone. Less risky.
And then Jay died in a freak accident. A few days later, I wore a black wool jacket on a fucking hot June afternoon and I cried a little, I hugged his sisters, I wore a little pallbearer boutonnière and helped carry the casket from the hearse to the grave site in a country meadow and watched it lower into the ground. A group of us stood there in stony silence while the gravediggers filled the hole back up. They stomped the earth perfectly flat and practically stitched the grass back together over the rectangle of soil. After just a few short minutes, there was virtually no trace of Jay left...the headstone wasn't due for some time. Part of the funeral party drove to a nearby friend's house and drank well into the evening. Some people came from hundreds of miles away, all friends and co-workers. I wish I could remember any of that part, any of those people who drove in that day, any of it at all.
I did all the things I was supposed to. All but one: I completely, even willfully, neglected to sober up long enough to grieve my friend. A year later, when the first anniversary of his death rolled around, I was still drunk, still not facing the fact that he was gone. It was just simpler not to.
In the ten months since I quit drinking, I have bumped up against this unprocessed grief more than once. At times, it feels like a trap; at others, like an excuse. I am still uncertain about why I've been so unable to move past it. A tiny part of me thinks it's about the drink, that that's the thing that keeps me tethered to him because that's the thing that connected us for so long, especially in the early years. We worked in a drinking environment, we got off work, we drank. I wonder if I am worried that the longer I stay sober, the further I move away from our shared past, the further I move away from our friendship. Grief is complicated. There's your bumper sticker for the month: grief is complicated. I'm beginning to suspect that it's never over, either.
I miss my friend.
 |
| After I left the nervous hospital last summer, I had an out-patient counselor who suggested that major grieving was perhaps too big of a hurdle to try and deal with during early recovery. But he did assign me grief-related homework over the six weeks of out-patient therapy, one of which was to create a visual manifestation of this very specific event. It seemed like a tall order, and an impossible one, but here's what I made. |
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Places, Everyone
Whoa, June. See, I wasn't kidding at the end of last year when I said I thought about time in a different way. How has five months passed since my last post? I'll tell you: soberly! A few weeks past nine months now; I could have had a baby and you never would have known. Well, maybe you would have, because it does seem like if I had a baby that might be somewhat newsworthy and would probably show up on the news or whatever, but still. Nine months. Hmmm.
Last December, I was preoccupied with capital-T Time and since then, it seems to be Place that's kept my brain busy. I've lived here a long time and it was inevitable that I would eventually end up in a place that held some awkward, embarrassing memory, or one where perhaps some sort of marker dedicated to my historic misbehavior might be erected.
I attended one meeting in a cinder-block room that shared a wall with a bar where I worked for a few years. The space was positively vibrating with recollection -- at first it seemed like I might need to leave; I couldn't reconcile the new feeling with the old memory of the space. Even parking my car on the street felt funny -- why, right there was the parking meter I used to chain my bicycle to and then later each night, unchain it and drunkenly pedal it the few dark blocks home. Did the parking meter have any memory of me? Was it steeling itself for a good haranguing if I couldn't get the bike lock open the first few tries? It sure heard enough of that back in 1990.
On the opposite end of that spectrum, I attend a meeting pretty regularly that takes place in the same non-descript strip mall space where I attended my post-rehab out-patient therapy. It's jammed between a Subway and a laundromat. It's not my favorite meeting but there's something about the space, the way it's only been completely and utterly a safe one for me, in which there is no shuddering of vision when an old bad-behaviored-ghost creeps into my peripheral vision, that keeps me going back to it. No one in that meeting ever remembers my name and I think they even think it might be Gigi, but whatever. Other than having a chip on my shoulder about being mistaken for a French can-can girl, it's a pretty solid healthy hour of my life.
The thing these places -- any places, really -- have in common is that they are only as nerve-wracking or as calming as I can make them be. The spaces themselves are inert; they don't really remember me, or even exist to offer me anything other than an escape from the occasional late-Spring thunderstorm. I'm discovering that the latitude and longitude of my sobriety is not a fixed point. I bring it with me wherever I go.
Last December, I was preoccupied with capital-T Time and since then, it seems to be Place that's kept my brain busy. I've lived here a long time and it was inevitable that I would eventually end up in a place that held some awkward, embarrassing memory, or one where perhaps some sort of marker dedicated to my historic misbehavior might be erected.
I attended one meeting in a cinder-block room that shared a wall with a bar where I worked for a few years. The space was positively vibrating with recollection -- at first it seemed like I might need to leave; I couldn't reconcile the new feeling with the old memory of the space. Even parking my car on the street felt funny -- why, right there was the parking meter I used to chain my bicycle to and then later each night, unchain it and drunkenly pedal it the few dark blocks home. Did the parking meter have any memory of me? Was it steeling itself for a good haranguing if I couldn't get the bike lock open the first few tries? It sure heard enough of that back in 1990.
On the opposite end of that spectrum, I attend a meeting pretty regularly that takes place in the same non-descript strip mall space where I attended my post-rehab out-patient therapy. It's jammed between a Subway and a laundromat. It's not my favorite meeting but there's something about the space, the way it's only been completely and utterly a safe one for me, in which there is no shuddering of vision when an old bad-behaviored-ghost creeps into my peripheral vision, that keeps me going back to it. No one in that meeting ever remembers my name and I think they even think it might be Gigi, but whatever. Other than having a chip on my shoulder about being mistaken for a French can-can girl, it's a pretty solid healthy hour of my life.
The thing these places -- any places, really -- have in common is that they are only as nerve-wracking or as calming as I can make them be. The spaces themselves are inert; they don't really remember me, or even exist to offer me anything other than an escape from the occasional late-Spring thunderstorm. I'm discovering that the latitude and longitude of my sobriety is not a fixed point. I bring it with me wherever I go.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
The Lateness of the Hour
So here I am at the end of this year, which I have alternately called my annus horribilis and my annus mirabilis, depending upon what part of the year I'm talking about. Spare me the annus jokes. The lateness of the hour will keep these notes short, but I wanted to get them in before the turn of the calendar year.
The calendar year. That's a funny way to think of time now, because for weeks and weeks now, everything's measured not from January 1, but from August 12 - when I decided to not drink again. That's New Year's Day now; that's the midnight I look forward to clanging in with a pot and a wooden spoon. So just pray that you're not my neighbor late next summer.
But time in general feels so different now; it's all measured in ways I never measured it before. Lots of sixty-minute chunks, or days in multiples of thirty. The big cliché is "one day at a time," but just last week I found myself needing to live life one minute at a time for a bit...which worked out so well that I turned around and offered it as advice to a friend in turmoil. That's not a deep thought or anything; sorry for the bumper stickeryness of it. I'll try to keep the aphorisms to a minimum from here on out.
I do feel like big-T Time is adding up in my favor, that I'm gathering more of it each day, that more of it ends up in the plus-column. All that time dedicated to my addiction -- to looking for the money to pay for it, to figuring out how to keep that money secret, to going to get the wine, to drinking the wine, to passing out and sleeping poorly through the best hours of the night -- is now time I'm not quite sure what to do with. It seems to be pointing back to art-making and ha, that would be funny after all this time of thinking that part of my life was over. Arts and craft hour at DG's! Come on over and bring your yarn and popsicle sticks; we'll make those spinny twirly things. And there's more time to go on a hike, or go somewhere and pitch a tent and start a fire and watch the night sky spin. I'm still figuring out what to do with it all. I haven't had a drink; that much I can tell you. And I can tell you exactly how many days it's been: one hundred and forty-two.
Toward the end of fall, when the weather still showed signs of clemency, I made a habit of rising earlier than usual to let the dog out. Mabel would sniff out traces of nighttime rabbit frolics in the front yard while I sat on the porch and thought about different things, practicing my new morning meditation. My brain was usually docked in that in-between place, where I was thinking about whatever dream I had just had and the mechanics of the day I had ahead and I loved it if I could extend that feeling just a little longer, if I could keep my dream and the day ahead intermingled for as long as possible...sort of a mental salt point. Eventually the time wore on and the fresh water of morning would arrive and the day would open up before me. But this was time I never had before, so every one of those autumn mornings surprised me.
It's colder now, of course. I've been run off the porch by the season's sharp frosts and I've been run out of the woods whenever I thought it would be a good idea to go spend some time there. Frozen fog and rime are no friends of the tent camper. But I can look ahead at the calendar and make some marks and some little penciled promises to get back out there when the weather turns again, when all this time I've found adds up to a day or two here, a day or two there. For all of the manic drunken panic during my frenzied drinking life, all the worry and stress that things wouldn't, couldn't get done, it turns out there is just loads of time. Twenty four hours of it every day.
The calendar year. That's a funny way to think of time now, because for weeks and weeks now, everything's measured not from January 1, but from August 12 - when I decided to not drink again. That's New Year's Day now; that's the midnight I look forward to clanging in with a pot and a wooden spoon. So just pray that you're not my neighbor late next summer.
But time in general feels so different now; it's all measured in ways I never measured it before. Lots of sixty-minute chunks, or days in multiples of thirty. The big cliché is "one day at a time," but just last week I found myself needing to live life one minute at a time for a bit...which worked out so well that I turned around and offered it as advice to a friend in turmoil. That's not a deep thought or anything; sorry for the bumper stickeryness of it. I'll try to keep the aphorisms to a minimum from here on out.
I do feel like big-T Time is adding up in my favor, that I'm gathering more of it each day, that more of it ends up in the plus-column. All that time dedicated to my addiction -- to looking for the money to pay for it, to figuring out how to keep that money secret, to going to get the wine, to drinking the wine, to passing out and sleeping poorly through the best hours of the night -- is now time I'm not quite sure what to do with. It seems to be pointing back to art-making and ha, that would be funny after all this time of thinking that part of my life was over. Arts and craft hour at DG's! Come on over and bring your yarn and popsicle sticks; we'll make those spinny twirly things. And there's more time to go on a hike, or go somewhere and pitch a tent and start a fire and watch the night sky spin. I'm still figuring out what to do with it all. I haven't had a drink; that much I can tell you. And I can tell you exactly how many days it's been: one hundred and forty-two.
Toward the end of fall, when the weather still showed signs of clemency, I made a habit of rising earlier than usual to let the dog out. Mabel would sniff out traces of nighttime rabbit frolics in the front yard while I sat on the porch and thought about different things, practicing my new morning meditation. My brain was usually docked in that in-between place, where I was thinking about whatever dream I had just had and the mechanics of the day I had ahead and I loved it if I could extend that feeling just a little longer, if I could keep my dream and the day ahead intermingled for as long as possible...sort of a mental salt point. Eventually the time wore on and the fresh water of morning would arrive and the day would open up before me. But this was time I never had before, so every one of those autumn mornings surprised me.
It's colder now, of course. I've been run off the porch by the season's sharp frosts and I've been run out of the woods whenever I thought it would be a good idea to go spend some time there. Frozen fog and rime are no friends of the tent camper. But I can look ahead at the calendar and make some marks and some little penciled promises to get back out there when the weather turns again, when all this time I've found adds up to a day or two here, a day or two there. For all of the manic drunken panic during my frenzied drinking life, all the worry and stress that things wouldn't, couldn't get done, it turns out there is just loads of time. Twenty four hours of it every day.
That's cider in those glasses.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Three Little Things
I'll hit 90 days this Saturday. Three months. I've had wine without that much age on it. I'm settling into the day-to-day of it all, how to live a regular life with this as a part of it. The things that happen now are smaller, the revelations come at a slower pace. I'm fine with that.
So just small things this time around:
Shakespeare. Y'all know I have a Shakespeare thing, so of course he's all over recovery - and now I see some Shakespeare things through recovery-tinted glasses...The Henriad in particular strikes me as a recovery story. But anyway. He shows up a time or two in the Big Book and "To thine own self be true" shows up on a handful of sobriety chips. A lot of people think that quote is biblical or Aristotle-ian or whathaveyou, but nope, it's Shakespeare - from Hamlet, to be precise. It's a strange thing to have on a chip in my pocket, since the quote is spoken by the conniving Polonius, who ends up stabbed behind a curtain. They leave those details off the chip, by the way. And like most Shakespeare quotes taken out of context, it doesn't quite mean what it seems like it should. But it works for people, so I have no objection to it. When I read Hamlet aloud last month, though, I was keenly aware of the 30-day chip in my pocket with Polonius' words on it.
The Lord's Prayer. When I started this whole deal, I promised to be honest about it all with myself. Part of that honesty is to not embrace any specifically Christian dogma -- the things that I am willing and eager to embrace spiritually have absolutely zero to do with any of that. So I found myself in a sticky wicket when I found that the prayer a lot of meetings close with is the Lord's Prayer. I said it - mumbled it - for a while, until I realized it was counter-productive for me...dishonest. I've quit reciting it recently. I just look around while other people bow their heads and say it. I was surprised to see several other people opting out, so now I feel less weird, less "other," about it. Someone told me that it's a Southern thing - that you don't run into it at as much outside of the South.
The Meeting I Hate. I've been going to one particular meeting every week and I just can't stand it. It's a little puzzling, since some of the people there overlap with two other meetings that I like just fine. But there's something about this one...some strange one-ups-man-ship, where one war story follows another, each tale featuring increasingly feverish and dire circumstances until you half expect a committee of judges to start handing out ribbons. It feels a little like an audition...and I didn't even prepare a song! And I find this meeting a little scolding - when anyone with less than five years of sobriety attempts to engage, there's a definite feeling in the air that some horrible crime is being committed. So I've been struggling with how to deal with that - it seemed so weird to me that here I was in a program designed to help me deal with Resentments with a capital R and here the meeting was creating one! Well, sobriety hasn't made me much smarter because it took me a month to figure out I could just go to a different fucking meeting and never think about this one again. So! Problem solved.
So just small things this time around:
Shakespeare. Y'all know I have a Shakespeare thing, so of course he's all over recovery - and now I see some Shakespeare things through recovery-tinted glasses...The Henriad in particular strikes me as a recovery story. But anyway. He shows up a time or two in the Big Book and "To thine own self be true" shows up on a handful of sobriety chips. A lot of people think that quote is biblical or Aristotle-ian or whathaveyou, but nope, it's Shakespeare - from Hamlet, to be precise. It's a strange thing to have on a chip in my pocket, since the quote is spoken by the conniving Polonius, who ends up stabbed behind a curtain. They leave those details off the chip, by the way. And like most Shakespeare quotes taken out of context, it doesn't quite mean what it seems like it should. But it works for people, so I have no objection to it. When I read Hamlet aloud last month, though, I was keenly aware of the 30-day chip in my pocket with Polonius' words on it.
The Lord's Prayer. When I started this whole deal, I promised to be honest about it all with myself. Part of that honesty is to not embrace any specifically Christian dogma -- the things that I am willing and eager to embrace spiritually have absolutely zero to do with any of that. So I found myself in a sticky wicket when I found that the prayer a lot of meetings close with is the Lord's Prayer. I said it - mumbled it - for a while, until I realized it was counter-productive for me...dishonest. I've quit reciting it recently. I just look around while other people bow their heads and say it. I was surprised to see several other people opting out, so now I feel less weird, less "other," about it. Someone told me that it's a Southern thing - that you don't run into it at as much outside of the South.
The Meeting I Hate. I've been going to one particular meeting every week and I just can't stand it. It's a little puzzling, since some of the people there overlap with two other meetings that I like just fine. But there's something about this one...some strange one-ups-man-ship, where one war story follows another, each tale featuring increasingly feverish and dire circumstances until you half expect a committee of judges to start handing out ribbons. It feels a little like an audition...and I didn't even prepare a song! And I find this meeting a little scolding - when anyone with less than five years of sobriety attempts to engage, there's a definite feeling in the air that some horrible crime is being committed. So I've been struggling with how to deal with that - it seemed so weird to me that here I was in a program designed to help me deal with Resentments with a capital R and here the meeting was creating one! Well, sobriety hasn't made me much smarter because it took me a month to figure out I could just go to a different fucking meeting and never think about this one again. So! Problem solved.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Lost in Thought
For the past few weeks, I've been meditating. Not sitting around on my porch or anything....I mean going to organized, guided meditation. I've been going once a week for ninety minutes, about half of which is Buddha talk and since that's not really my thing, I meditate extra during those parts. I'm sure I'm doing it wrong, but I'm finding it helpful. I'm not emptying my mind, if that's what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm just re-arranging the things in it and prioritizing them, and that's good enough for me right now.
I'm not certain if it's part of the "official" meditation instructions, but each time I've been, as the leader of the group guides us into wherever it is we're headed as we're sitting there with our eyes closed, he says "nothing needs to be done right now." Every time he says it, I can feel hot tears pressing against the inside of my eyelids. Because recovery is hard. Really hard, like full-time job hard. I spend a lot of time thinking about meetings - which ones to go to, which ones I like, which ones I don't...and that's on top of my regular job. One of the recurring things I hear in meetings is "if you work a tenth as hard on recovery as you did on drinking, you'll make it" so I must have been working REALLY hard all those years.
Like any normal person with a job, I do find it hard sometimes to find the time to do the things that help me re-set my life when things get a little messy and history shows that if I don't do that, the consequences get ugly. So I'm taking a few days and going to the woods to unplug, to sit and be quiet, to breathe in and out and be conscious of my breath. Nothing has to be done right now.
I'm not certain if it's part of the "official" meditation instructions, but each time I've been, as the leader of the group guides us into wherever it is we're headed as we're sitting there with our eyes closed, he says "nothing needs to be done right now." Every time he says it, I can feel hot tears pressing against the inside of my eyelids. Because recovery is hard. Really hard, like full-time job hard. I spend a lot of time thinking about meetings - which ones to go to, which ones I like, which ones I don't...and that's on top of my regular job. One of the recurring things I hear in meetings is "if you work a tenth as hard on recovery as you did on drinking, you'll make it" so I must have been working REALLY hard all those years.
Like any normal person with a job, I do find it hard sometimes to find the time to do the things that help me re-set my life when things get a little messy and history shows that if I don't do that, the consequences get ugly. So I'm taking a few days and going to the woods to unplug, to sit and be quiet, to breathe in and out and be conscious of my breath. Nothing has to be done right now.
Monday, October 14, 2013
Weight, Loss
What is the weight of a single resentment? Of a particularly nagging fear? Of months of sadness and grief? What does the physical presence of those things look like?
These things come up because I'm starting to do the part of all of this that involves looking at fears and resentments and my part in them all and if you think that sounds like something you would like to do...well, have fun. It's hard, and I'm struggling with it and would rather be doing almost anything else. But I'm not. I'm doing this, because I can't do the rest until I do. It's not all sixty-day chips and free coffee, apparently.
At the same time, I am losing weight like crazy. I'm down twenty-plus pounds in just over a month. As each pound disappears, it's hard to not imagine it walking off hand-in-hand with whatever particular resentment or fear I'm trying to rid myself of. Ohhhh, that lady cut me off in traffic! Let it go, let it go. Oh look, there it goes, in tandem with a half pound from my left side. I've started thinking that the more I clear my brain and heart of dark things like fear and anger, the skinnier I'll be. So that's my new fad diet idea -- look for it at a bookstore near you soon.
I don't think it's nuts of me to make those connections. People say it all the time: I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off of me. Well that's what it's like: every time I get rid of something bad, my back gets straighter, my shoulders go up, and the dial on the scale inches counterclockwise. Some of the things that were weighing me down were easy to get rid of...one of my biggest triggers in the past was that I was incapable of saying "no" to invitations. I would say "yes" (and mean it) to every e-mailed invite that came my way and then as those dates neared, I'd look for ways to cancel. I mean! I could drink at home! Right? And then that would start a whole cycle of resentment: whoever I stood up would be mad at me for canceling and then I would be mad at them for being mad at me and then I would drink and eat until I needed to go put on my fat pants. Well, that's all over now. I've learned to say "no" in the damned first place and to be honest, I find it very slimming.
But some are harder. Grief, for instance. I'm not ready quite yet to deal with some of it head-on, but I am allowing myself to nibble at the edges of thinking about it. At a meditation session last week, I used almost the entire time to meditate on my lost friend and put in order the different things he was to me over time. Acquaintance, drinking buddy, co-worker, friend, confidant, not a friend, friend again. It was important to put them in the right order so I could deal with losing each one of those people. I'm not dealing with it yet, but I'm getting ready. That's all I can do for now, other than look really skinny for him.
These things come up because I'm starting to do the part of all of this that involves looking at fears and resentments and my part in them all and if you think that sounds like something you would like to do...well, have fun. It's hard, and I'm struggling with it and would rather be doing almost anything else. But I'm not. I'm doing this, because I can't do the rest until I do. It's not all sixty-day chips and free coffee, apparently.
At the same time, I am losing weight like crazy. I'm down twenty-plus pounds in just over a month. As each pound disappears, it's hard to not imagine it walking off hand-in-hand with whatever particular resentment or fear I'm trying to rid myself of. Ohhhh, that lady cut me off in traffic! Let it go, let it go. Oh look, there it goes, in tandem with a half pound from my left side. I've started thinking that the more I clear my brain and heart of dark things like fear and anger, the skinnier I'll be. So that's my new fad diet idea -- look for it at a bookstore near you soon.
I don't think it's nuts of me to make those connections. People say it all the time: I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off of me. Well that's what it's like: every time I get rid of something bad, my back gets straighter, my shoulders go up, and the dial on the scale inches counterclockwise. Some of the things that were weighing me down were easy to get rid of...one of my biggest triggers in the past was that I was incapable of saying "no" to invitations. I would say "yes" (and mean it) to every e-mailed invite that came my way and then as those dates neared, I'd look for ways to cancel. I mean! I could drink at home! Right? And then that would start a whole cycle of resentment: whoever I stood up would be mad at me for canceling and then I would be mad at them for being mad at me and then I would drink and eat until I needed to go put on my fat pants. Well, that's all over now. I've learned to say "no" in the damned first place and to be honest, I find it very slimming.
But some are harder. Grief, for instance. I'm not ready quite yet to deal with some of it head-on, but I am allowing myself to nibble at the edges of thinking about it. At a meditation session last week, I used almost the entire time to meditate on my lost friend and put in order the different things he was to me over time. Acquaintance, drinking buddy, co-worker, friend, confidant, not a friend, friend again. It was important to put them in the right order so I could deal with losing each one of those people. I'm not dealing with it yet, but I'm getting ready. That's all I can do for now, other than look really skinny for him.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Dates of Birth
So this program is really birthday-focused. When I first started going to meetings, I noticed that there was a lot of birthday talk. "Please fill out an index card and put your birthday on it!" I kept hearing that and I thought, "oh, that's nice. They give you a little party on your birthday, how sweet." But even though I was going to the same scheduled meeting over and over, I picked up on the fact that that there wasn't ever any cake. It took me longer than I am comfortable admitting to realize that they meant sobriety birthday and that it was tied to the chips that I had seen handed out like Yellow Pages. So, whew, there's a bullet dodged...me declaring my 47th birthday just two months out of rehab.
As luck - or coincidence - would have it, my 47th birthday is this Thursday, the same day as my 60th day of sobriety. It's not really a sobriety birthday ("birthday" is only for years), but it's still funny that they ended up on the same day after I almost made a fool of myself over the whole birthday thing. A few people have asked me what I have planned for my actual birthday, and you can tell that they are kind of disappointed when I say "Nothing. I am going to get my 60-day chip and then I am going home to bed." And I can't fucking wait.
Birthdays in the past have been celebrated in epic fashion - dozens of friends gathered around sizzling hibachis at one of those silly cook-two-shrimp-in-front-of-you clip joints, all of us posed like Leonardo's "The Last Supper" - me in the middle, like Jesus. Or ten people bowling in progressively drunken fashion over the course of three or four hours, coming up with equally progressively stupid team names (the winner: "I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter"). In past years, October 10 signaled the beginning of The Haze, a season of near-constant drunkenness that rounds up each fall and winter holiday and doesn't end until January 2. But I need this year's birthday to be the opposite of those prior; I need a new tradition for this day. This isn't the year to figure it out exactly; I am, uh, otherwise engaged with larger issues. But I do want to make a point of breaking the birth-day cycle of the past. So, early to bed, with a plastic chip on the bedside table.
I thought about what my gift to myself would be as well. I ran through all the bumper-sticker ideas - "I'll give myself one day at a time!" "I'll take it easy!" "I'll blah blah blah and be grateful about blah blah blah until I blah blah blah!" Then I decided that I had kind of given myself enough stuff over the past couple of months. I gave myself time, I gave myself some confidence and - crucially - I gave myself peace. All of that seems like enough for this year.
Except....I have a friend from out-patient therapy who - one night when we were comparing war stories about our drinking pasts - said "sometimes, the greatest gift of all of this recovery stuff is being able to brush the back of my tongue without throwing up in the sink." I could not agree with him more. So happy birthday to me! And happy birthday to me.
As luck - or coincidence - would have it, my 47th birthday is this Thursday, the same day as my 60th day of sobriety. It's not really a sobriety birthday ("birthday" is only for years), but it's still funny that they ended up on the same day after I almost made a fool of myself over the whole birthday thing. A few people have asked me what I have planned for my actual birthday, and you can tell that they are kind of disappointed when I say "Nothing. I am going to get my 60-day chip and then I am going home to bed." And I can't fucking wait.
Birthdays in the past have been celebrated in epic fashion - dozens of friends gathered around sizzling hibachis at one of those silly cook-two-shrimp-in-front-of-you clip joints, all of us posed like Leonardo's "The Last Supper" - me in the middle, like Jesus. Or ten people bowling in progressively drunken fashion over the course of three or four hours, coming up with equally progressively stupid team names (the winner: "I Can't Believe It's Not Gutter"). In past years, October 10 signaled the beginning of The Haze, a season of near-constant drunkenness that rounds up each fall and winter holiday and doesn't end until January 2. But I need this year's birthday to be the opposite of those prior; I need a new tradition for this day. This isn't the year to figure it out exactly; I am, uh, otherwise engaged with larger issues. But I do want to make a point of breaking the birth-day cycle of the past. So, early to bed, with a plastic chip on the bedside table.
I thought about what my gift to myself would be as well. I ran through all the bumper-sticker ideas - "I'll give myself one day at a time!" "I'll take it easy!" "I'll blah blah blah and be grateful about blah blah blah until I blah blah blah!" Then I decided that I had kind of given myself enough stuff over the past couple of months. I gave myself time, I gave myself some confidence and - crucially - I gave myself peace. All of that seems like enough for this year.
Except....I have a friend from out-patient therapy who - one night when we were comparing war stories about our drinking pasts - said "sometimes, the greatest gift of all of this recovery stuff is being able to brush the back of my tongue without throwing up in the sink." I could not agree with him more. So happy birthday to me! And happy birthday to me.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Floodgates
One of the biggest things that happened to me during my days out on the rehab ranch was that somewhere along the way, my guard lowered. I know that sounds like a completely positive thing - and in most ways, it was...I was able to talk about ways of feeling that weren't just anger or frustration, two emotions that had been kind of dominant for a long time. I was able to discuss grief and sadness and regret and happiness and joy, and I was able to discuss how I wanted some of those and didn't want others. But a lowered guard is a little like a compromised immune system: bad stuff can get in too. I discovered that I am a little bit of a "fixater," especially if I find out that someone likes me for any reason. Even a total stranger who laughs at a joke of mine can become an object of my fixation. It's not stalker-y...I don't mean it that way. It's more like the way you really admire a pair of shoes and can't stop thinking about them until they are part of your shoe collection - even though you have plenty of shoes and will probably never wear this pair. So maybe "fixater" is the wrong word; perhaps I am just a collector. Whatever it's called, it's a distraction and once I noticed it, it kind of embarrassed me...not that I could in any way control it. Other bad things crept in too: my competitive streak ("I want to get an 'A' in rehab!"), my jealous streak ("why is the counselor paying so much attention to that idiot over there instead of me?"), my mean streak ("oh, this guy might as well get a rehab punch card").
Worst of all is sadness. I did a good job of keeping it at bay while I was out there, and I've fenced it away toward the back of my brain as much as possible, but a few days ago, I could detect a few drops of black ink in the clear water surrounding me. It wasn't too tough to pinpoint why...a friend's relapse, some job stress and the impending end of my out-patient therapy. This last was particularly distressing; I absolutely loved my out-patient therapy and had been feeling anxious about its end. The final session was last night. I was predictably teary and more than a little upset later in the car on the way home. I took the long way so I could just cry it out, but when I got in the driveway, I was still churning out big fat tears.
But I did not drink. Which is how I normally deal with sadness. I just drink until I am not sad anymore. This has gotten me in a significant amount of trouble - I still have to deal with a tremendous well of grief from an event about a year and a half ago. But I'm not going to drink over it. I'm also not really ready to deal with it realistically so I am back-burnering it for just a while longer while I concentrate on the rest of me for a bit.
What I can do now is work on raising the wall a little - not all the way back up to be full-on on-guard, but just enough to slow some of the bad things down, to tamp down some of the sadness until it's a tiny pile of embers rather than a full-on fire. Otherwise I'm like a baby, reacting to things completely based on emotion rather than stopping and thinking them through before deciding how to process them. I am a lot of things, but a baby is not one of them.
Worst of all is sadness. I did a good job of keeping it at bay while I was out there, and I've fenced it away toward the back of my brain as much as possible, but a few days ago, I could detect a few drops of black ink in the clear water surrounding me. It wasn't too tough to pinpoint why...a friend's relapse, some job stress and the impending end of my out-patient therapy. This last was particularly distressing; I absolutely loved my out-patient therapy and had been feeling anxious about its end. The final session was last night. I was predictably teary and more than a little upset later in the car on the way home. I took the long way so I could just cry it out, but when I got in the driveway, I was still churning out big fat tears.
But I did not drink. Which is how I normally deal with sadness. I just drink until I am not sad anymore. This has gotten me in a significant amount of trouble - I still have to deal with a tremendous well of grief from an event about a year and a half ago. But I'm not going to drink over it. I'm also not really ready to deal with it realistically so I am back-burnering it for just a while longer while I concentrate on the rest of me for a bit.
What I can do now is work on raising the wall a little - not all the way back up to be full-on on-guard, but just enough to slow some of the bad things down, to tamp down some of the sadness until it's a tiny pile of embers rather than a full-on fire. Otherwise I'm like a baby, reacting to things completely based on emotion rather than stopping and thinking them through before deciding how to process them. I am a lot of things, but a baby is not one of them.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Poles
Someone once told me - and I really wish I could remember who, because I have talked about this before - that in the hiking world, there are really only two types of hikers: Destination Hikers and Journey Hikers. It's easy to figure out which one you are: if all you can think about is the magical waterfall at the end of the six mile hike and then the parking lot going the other direction, you are a Destination Hiker. If you stop and look at every fucking leaf on every fucking trillium and oohhh and ahhh over the pattern of the bark on a tree and hike for six hours and only go a hundred yards, you are a Journey Hiker.
For years and years, I was a Destination Hiker. I was the first one out of the car, barking orders and getting everyone to line up and making sure we all had film in the camera so that when we got to Ohmygod Falls, we could all pose for the identical picture that everyone else who had ever hiked there had also taken, which was also available as a postcard in the gift shop. The hike would begin and I would set the pace and god help anyone who happened to be interested in lichen along the way.
That did gradually start to change, but not because I was having any big revelation. It changed because I got seriously out of shape and getting to Ohmygod Falls started to be more of a concept than a reachable goal. Many hikes were abandoned mid-trail, many friends disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm over the very hobby I had gotten them all interested in. I did manage to complete one whopper of a hike, 14.6 miles at the famous Fiery Gizzard, but I should also tell you that I had a Percocet at about Mile 11, so I'm not sure I can say I well and truly completed it. But my poor health did make me more of a Journey Hiker. I didn't have much choice - I had to pay attention to what I was seeing along the way because it was fairly obvious I wasn't going to see Ohmygod Falls. "I'll see you back at the car," I would say, and peel off from the end of the hiking column and head in the reverse direction.
This whole recovery experience has been kind of similar, I think. I'm definitely now a Journey Hiker, this time by choice, though I don't think there's really a Destination Hiker option, because I don't think there's anywhere to get. The journey is the hike, it's the point. I take note of things I didn't before, even dumb small things. I climb into the linen envelope of my bed each night and notice how it all feels, smooth and cool and soft and designed to help me rest. Before, I just fell down on it and sozzled off to sleep until it was time for breakfast wine. But every little thing matters differently now, or they all seem to have different meaning, anyway.
Last weekend, I bought a new hiking pole. I used to have two of the fancy expandable ones but they both broke. So I replaced them with a hand-made wooden one, turned in some hillbilly's woodshop up in the foothills of the Smokies. It feels better in my hand than the metal ones did, friendlier and warmer. I can use it in the physical world to find balance, to poke my way across a boulder field, to ward off snakes or - if such a gift were mine - even divine water.
Today is the final day of my out-patient therapy. After this, I have to proceed along this particular trail on my own, with meetings and the help of a sponsor. But there are no more requirements; I don't have to collect any more signatures or add up hours spent in conference rooms or turn the pages of worksheet assignments. It's all me from here on out. I think, though, that recovery is allowing me to do in the abstract world what my new hiking pole is doing in the physical: to balance. To poke my way across a boulder field. To ward off snakes. To - if such a gift were mine - even divine water.
I'm ready and willing to use either pole. I guess it depends on the journey.
For years and years, I was a Destination Hiker. I was the first one out of the car, barking orders and getting everyone to line up and making sure we all had film in the camera so that when we got to Ohmygod Falls, we could all pose for the identical picture that everyone else who had ever hiked there had also taken, which was also available as a postcard in the gift shop. The hike would begin and I would set the pace and god help anyone who happened to be interested in lichen along the way.
That did gradually start to change, but not because I was having any big revelation. It changed because I got seriously out of shape and getting to Ohmygod Falls started to be more of a concept than a reachable goal. Many hikes were abandoned mid-trail, many friends disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm over the very hobby I had gotten them all interested in. I did manage to complete one whopper of a hike, 14.6 miles at the famous Fiery Gizzard, but I should also tell you that I had a Percocet at about Mile 11, so I'm not sure I can say I well and truly completed it. But my poor health did make me more of a Journey Hiker. I didn't have much choice - I had to pay attention to what I was seeing along the way because it was fairly obvious I wasn't going to see Ohmygod Falls. "I'll see you back at the car," I would say, and peel off from the end of the hiking column and head in the reverse direction.
This whole recovery experience has been kind of similar, I think. I'm definitely now a Journey Hiker, this time by choice, though I don't think there's really a Destination Hiker option, because I don't think there's anywhere to get. The journey is the hike, it's the point. I take note of things I didn't before, even dumb small things. I climb into the linen envelope of my bed each night and notice how it all feels, smooth and cool and soft and designed to help me rest. Before, I just fell down on it and sozzled off to sleep until it was time for breakfast wine. But every little thing matters differently now, or they all seem to have different meaning, anyway.
Last weekend, I bought a new hiking pole. I used to have two of the fancy expandable ones but they both broke. So I replaced them with a hand-made wooden one, turned in some hillbilly's woodshop up in the foothills of the Smokies. It feels better in my hand than the metal ones did, friendlier and warmer. I can use it in the physical world to find balance, to poke my way across a boulder field, to ward off snakes or - if such a gift were mine - even divine water.
Today is the final day of my out-patient therapy. After this, I have to proceed along this particular trail on my own, with meetings and the help of a sponsor. But there are no more requirements; I don't have to collect any more signatures or add up hours spent in conference rooms or turn the pages of worksheet assignments. It's all me from here on out. I think, though, that recovery is allowing me to do in the abstract world what my new hiking pole is doing in the physical: to balance. To poke my way across a boulder field. To ward off snakes. To - if such a gift were mine - even divine water.
I'm ready and willing to use either pole. I guess it depends on the journey.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
East Wind
I used to have a big tree in my backyard, a giant river maple that was about fifty feet high. He shaded half of the yard for a season every year and dropped leaves into it for another and then just stood there for another, arms raised. I never really thought about him much. Not a particularly beautiful tree - I think river maples never really are - but a tree nonetheless, and one that broke up the grassy monotony of the backyard.
One late summer during a particularly vicious Tennessee summer storm, all howling straight-line winds and singing electric wires, I sat on the back steps and watched the wind do a number on the river maple. Nothing it couldn't really handle, but it certainly wasn't very interested in hanging onto its leaves for a while. Then, quite quickly, the wind changed direction and came from the east, a very unusual occurrence. So unusual, in fact, that you could smell it - it was a different wind, from somewhere other than Arkansas or points more westerly. And within a minute of the wind changing direction, there was a deafening twist and crack and whopping whumph! as the tree was uprooted from its very base and knocked over with such a force that mortar fell from between nearby bricks and the strings of the wind-up clock in my living room shuddered and vibrated a minor chord for a full minute. Fascia board was ripped from the house; phone poles were brought down on the back property line, a fence leveled. All that drama and damage simply because the wind changed direction.
I am thinking of this tonight because at a meeting this evening, a friend from in-patient therapy told me that another friend from in-patient therapy, T, had relapsed and returned to the rehab facility, this time for the longer, 30-day stay. To say I was surprised would be a massive understatement - I was so distracted by this information that I didn't hear a word the speaker who spoke for thirty minutes said, nor did I listen to a single other person who raised his hand the other half of the hour. All I could think about was T and what his relapse meant. T was the alpha male of our group while I was in rehab. It was an elastic group in number - anywhere from ten to sixteen at any given time, depending on intake and discharge dates - but there was always a core of eight or so who all got there at roughly the same time, and T was large and in charge the time he was there. He took it very seriously; he had a lot to lose if he couldn't make it work.
One of the things a counselor told us - and we were never sure if it was a scare tactic or the truth - was that only one in six of us would succeed. One in six. It seemed easy to look around the room or listen to what people said during group discussion and know which five wouldn't make it. People are either ready or they're not; the timing has to be right...sometimes the first time through, sometimes the third time through's the charm for people....sometimes they have to leave in the middle of the night and get picked up by the police after committing eight felonies within six hours of leaving. But I was convinced T had it, so to hear this evening that he didn't quite, not just yet, was a little bit of east wind stirring up and heading my direction. A momentary swaying, a creaky branch here or there, leaves swirling all whichaways.
But no up-rooting. I took deep breaths and thought about the positives - T knew to check himself back in the next day after his relapse, this time for a longer and more rigorous program. He has a supportive family and a job worth keeping. I am still certain he is the one in his six. I am the one in mine, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.
But I would like the jet stream to behave itself for just a while longer.
One late summer during a particularly vicious Tennessee summer storm, all howling straight-line winds and singing electric wires, I sat on the back steps and watched the wind do a number on the river maple. Nothing it couldn't really handle, but it certainly wasn't very interested in hanging onto its leaves for a while. Then, quite quickly, the wind changed direction and came from the east, a very unusual occurrence. So unusual, in fact, that you could smell it - it was a different wind, from somewhere other than Arkansas or points more westerly. And within a minute of the wind changing direction, there was a deafening twist and crack and whopping whumph! as the tree was uprooted from its very base and knocked over with such a force that mortar fell from between nearby bricks and the strings of the wind-up clock in my living room shuddered and vibrated a minor chord for a full minute. Fascia board was ripped from the house; phone poles were brought down on the back property line, a fence leveled. All that drama and damage simply because the wind changed direction.
I am thinking of this tonight because at a meeting this evening, a friend from in-patient therapy told me that another friend from in-patient therapy, T, had relapsed and returned to the rehab facility, this time for the longer, 30-day stay. To say I was surprised would be a massive understatement - I was so distracted by this information that I didn't hear a word the speaker who spoke for thirty minutes said, nor did I listen to a single other person who raised his hand the other half of the hour. All I could think about was T and what his relapse meant. T was the alpha male of our group while I was in rehab. It was an elastic group in number - anywhere from ten to sixteen at any given time, depending on intake and discharge dates - but there was always a core of eight or so who all got there at roughly the same time, and T was large and in charge the time he was there. He took it very seriously; he had a lot to lose if he couldn't make it work.
One of the things a counselor told us - and we were never sure if it was a scare tactic or the truth - was that only one in six of us would succeed. One in six. It seemed easy to look around the room or listen to what people said during group discussion and know which five wouldn't make it. People are either ready or they're not; the timing has to be right...sometimes the first time through, sometimes the third time through's the charm for people....sometimes they have to leave in the middle of the night and get picked up by the police after committing eight felonies within six hours of leaving. But I was convinced T had it, so to hear this evening that he didn't quite, not just yet, was a little bit of east wind stirring up and heading my direction. A momentary swaying, a creaky branch here or there, leaves swirling all whichaways.
But no up-rooting. I took deep breaths and thought about the positives - T knew to check himself back in the next day after his relapse, this time for a longer and more rigorous program. He has a supportive family and a job worth keeping. I am still certain he is the one in his six. I am the one in mine, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.
But I would like the jet stream to behave itself for just a while longer.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Summer Song
You know how every year there seems to be a sort of unofficial "summer song"? Like the song that is on everyone's radio or iPod, whether they like it or not? I always like to review the summer and think what song it might have been, even if it's a type of song I would normally loathe. I remember the year of that TLC "Waterfalls" song and lord, I sang that thing in the privacy of my shower until tiles fell off of the wall, even though I hated it (sorry, Left-Eye!). Sometimes, it's a really terrible song like Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl," but you still go with it because somehow a particular song hits all the Zeitgeist buttons and there's no sense fighting it. And there's no use trying to be ornery and pick something obscure to be your summer song; you will fail. I love you, Uncle Tupelo, but nobody ever chose any of your songs to define a summer of throwing themselves down a Slip 'n Slide in the backyard. Nope. That was time for "I Want Your Sex."
I've been thinking about what this past summer's song was because the tail end of my summer was spent in rehab, where there is virtually no music at all. I was not allowed any music player - no iPod, no phone, and no access to television (except for a single monitor that played Hallmark Hall of Fame's My Name is Bill W. in an endless loop. Someone told me that they used to alternate it with another movie but that another someone stole the other movie, which upon investigation turned out to be....Robert Altman's Popeye, the very idea of which is so deliciously strange that I kept meaning to look into it).
Anyway, music was hard to come by. There was a morning meditation that - depending on who was running the show that day - would sometimes be accompanied by music, but it was almost always some sort of whale-bleating twiddly-twee-ing to make my mind go elsewhere from the place I was. Frankly, it made me want to go to a gun shop. There was one weekend counselor who would play interesting things during meditation, but even that was only for three minutes or so. Other than that, no music.
A few times a week, some of thepatients residents would be rounded up and volun-told to go on the bus that would cart us to various recovery meetings around town to get us used to the idea of attending meetings. So thirteen people would cram into a short-bus and the first thing that would happen was the radio would get turned on. No talking! We were listening to music! And it was invariably the really bad kind of country music, that weird sub-genre that is always about pickup trucks and rope swings and dirt roads and Sundrop and cut-off jeans and, oh, I don't know, hookworm. And with those songs, you are never more than one verse away from a big bottle of something or other, so it was always funny to me that we'd be a baker's dozen of alcoholics careening down a two-lane road in a bus singing boozy love songs at the top of our lungs. I mean...I didn't think we should be three-part harmonizing "Bringing in the Sheaves" or anything, but it was, well, weird.
There was one song, though, back at the ranch, that did turn out to be the official "summer song" of late August...or at least the time that I was there. For some odd reason, one morning the meditation song was Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine." It was an unusual selection, what with it having little to do with sounding like the mating call of a lovesick whale, but it actually engendered pre-meditation conversation. We were asked in advance how many times Withers sings the words "I know" in it. Think about the song for a second and you'll remember the part - he repeats " I know, I know, I know...." and let me tell you: he sings it 26 times. 26! That's a lot of "I know"s. But somehow the song stuck in everyone's mind and for the rest of my time out there, I couldn't escape the song. I'd hear it late at night on the way to get my last iced tea of the evening, or someone would whistle it while peeing on the seat in the bathroom or it'd jump from lip to lip in the lunchroom line. One night a couple of people who could really sing dug into it and sang it on the smoking porch so loudly that it echoed down the field and bounced across the bluffs across the river - you could hear it twice if you paid close attention.
I still wasn't sure why that song cropped up in meditation that day, so when I got home I looked it up on unimpeachable Wikipedia, and this is what I found:
Who knew all that shit was going on in that song? None of that got explained that day, so I wonder if the person who picked it even knew. If not, it's yet another astonishing coincidence. If so, well, maybe they know what they're doing out there. They're sly.
I've been thinking about what this past summer's song was because the tail end of my summer was spent in rehab, where there is virtually no music at all. I was not allowed any music player - no iPod, no phone, and no access to television (except for a single monitor that played Hallmark Hall of Fame's My Name is Bill W. in an endless loop. Someone told me that they used to alternate it with another movie but that another someone stole the other movie, which upon investigation turned out to be....Robert Altman's Popeye, the very idea of which is so deliciously strange that I kept meaning to look into it).
Anyway, music was hard to come by. There was a morning meditation that - depending on who was running the show that day - would sometimes be accompanied by music, but it was almost always some sort of whale-bleating twiddly-twee-ing to make my mind go elsewhere from the place I was. Frankly, it made me want to go to a gun shop. There was one weekend counselor who would play interesting things during meditation, but even that was only for three minutes or so. Other than that, no music.
A few times a week, some of the
There was one song, though, back at the ranch, that did turn out to be the official "summer song" of late August...or at least the time that I was there. For some odd reason, one morning the meditation song was Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine." It was an unusual selection, what with it having little to do with sounding like the mating call of a lovesick whale, but it actually engendered pre-meditation conversation. We were asked in advance how many times Withers sings the words "I know" in it. Think about the song for a second and you'll remember the part - he repeats " I know, I know, I know...." and let me tell you: he sings it 26 times. 26! That's a lot of "I know"s. But somehow the song stuck in everyone's mind and for the rest of my time out there, I couldn't escape the song. I'd hear it late at night on the way to get my last iced tea of the evening, or someone would whistle it while peeing on the seat in the bathroom or it'd jump from lip to lip in the lunchroom line. One night a couple of people who could really sing dug into it and sang it on the smoking porch so loudly that it echoed down the field and bounced across the bluffs across the river - you could hear it twice if you paid close attention.
I still wasn't sure why that song cropped up in meditation that day, so when I got home I looked it up on unimpeachable Wikipedia, and this is what I found:
Withers was inspired to write this song after watching the 1962 movie Days of Wine and Roses. He explained, in reference to the characters played by Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, "They were both alcoholics who were alternately weak and strong. It's like going back for seconds on rat poison. Sometimes you miss things that weren't particularly good for you. It's just something that crossed my mind from watching that movie, and probably something else that happened in my life that I'm not aware of."
Who knew all that shit was going on in that song? None of that got explained that day, so I wonder if the person who picked it even knew. If not, it's yet another astonishing coincidence. If so, well, maybe they know what they're doing out there. They're sly.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Each part and tag of me is a miracle. - Walt Whitman
Rehab out-patient therapy is a completely different thing than in-patient therapy. In-patient therapy has a clang to it, like a really heavy metal door slamming behind you (for better or worse) and you spend a lot of time staring at the door, thinking of ways to get the door open, or learning to make a key out of soap or whatever. Out-patient therapy is more casual, like you are on probation, picking up trash on the side of the road and your mind can wander a little bit but then you get to the end of the day and you think "oh, look, I just cleaned up five miles of garbage."
That's not to say I disliked in-patient treatment. It was a little bit like a slightly sad, all-inclusive cruise ship that didn't serve booze, but ended up being fun anyway, even though there were a lot of power-point presentations about STDs. But I ended up being sort of sad when I left.
But out-patient is completely different. In a lot of ways, you have to focus more because Real Life precedes and follows it every day. Wake up, eat, work, run errands, REHAB, get dinner, sleep. So you have to change gears and get all selfish and egotistical for a few hours right there in the middle of the day, which is - no pun intended - sobering. Nothing like a good sob-fest in a strip mall on Donelson Pike. There's a Subway next door.
I was in a session the other night and somehow, we started adding up time. Lots of different kinds of timetables - time spent drinking, time spent throwing up, time spent trying to figure out how the Shoney's Big Boy ended up on the roof of the house. But I started adding up my actual time spent in active recovery since August 16, when I entered rehab. I was in a 14-day in-patient program, but I subtract the first day and the last day, because they're mainly paperwork days. Subtract another day for detox (if you're lucky, just the one) and then subtract two more for Sundays, which are usually family days and you either hang out with your family or you sleep. So that original 14 days is now 9 days of actual brain work.
Now let's move on to out-patient therapy. Twenty sessions, three hours each. Sixty hours. So two and a half more days. Let's add that to the in-patient time. Eleven and a half days. THAT'S IT. That tiny amount of time is what I got to figure out how to reset the clock on my life. I know, I know, meetings forever, that's where and how I get more time. But still.
My out-patient counselor says all the time to people who are wavering in their commitment to recovery, "don't leave five minutes before the miracle happens." Well, you know what? Me sitting in that chair, feeling the way that I do right now and being able to clearly see a path through the brambles after that tiny amount of time is fucking miracle enough; if there's another one coming, bring it.
That's not to say I disliked in-patient treatment. It was a little bit like a slightly sad, all-inclusive cruise ship that didn't serve booze, but ended up being fun anyway, even though there were a lot of power-point presentations about STDs. But I ended up being sort of sad when I left.
But out-patient is completely different. In a lot of ways, you have to focus more because Real Life precedes and follows it every day. Wake up, eat, work, run errands, REHAB, get dinner, sleep. So you have to change gears and get all selfish and egotistical for a few hours right there in the middle of the day, which is - no pun intended - sobering. Nothing like a good sob-fest in a strip mall on Donelson Pike. There's a Subway next door.
I was in a session the other night and somehow, we started adding up time. Lots of different kinds of timetables - time spent drinking, time spent throwing up, time spent trying to figure out how the Shoney's Big Boy ended up on the roof of the house. But I started adding up my actual time spent in active recovery since August 16, when I entered rehab. I was in a 14-day in-patient program, but I subtract the first day and the last day, because they're mainly paperwork days. Subtract another day for detox (if you're lucky, just the one) and then subtract two more for Sundays, which are usually family days and you either hang out with your family or you sleep. So that original 14 days is now 9 days of actual brain work.
Now let's move on to out-patient therapy. Twenty sessions, three hours each. Sixty hours. So two and a half more days. Let's add that to the in-patient time. Eleven and a half days. THAT'S IT. That tiny amount of time is what I got to figure out how to reset the clock on my life. I know, I know, meetings forever, that's where and how I get more time. But still.
My out-patient counselor says all the time to people who are wavering in their commitment to recovery, "don't leave five minutes before the miracle happens." Well, you know what? Me sitting in that chair, feeling the way that I do right now and being able to clearly see a path through the brambles after that tiny amount of time is fucking miracle enough; if there's another one coming, bring it.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)