Saturday, April 30, 2011

"Been To Hell, Thanks"

I'm at Asilomar, a state beach down just south of the Monterey bay here in California. Most of the year, it's cold and clouded over, but this weekend there's nothing but clear skies and a mild wind. The green-blue ocean sends waves to crash over protruding rocks, shallow tidepools, and a gray-white, sandy beach. Across the ocean road is an area of protected sand dunes covered with local flora. A mile-long boardwalk winds through the dunes. Along the walk are many benches facing out to the ocean, and it is there that I have parked myself to blog. It's beautiful here, and a great spot to get centered. 'Cause I gotta tell ya, I'm still an addict and my brain still does some weird shit sometimes.

There's a conference center here, and a conference is going on this weekend. It's a business session for the northern California / Nevada churches for the demonination I grew up in. Undoubtedly I know many, many people there. I'm sure a lot of them would be glad to see me. But I'm not here for the conference, I'm here to play piano for a church service tomorrow. And besides, I need to get my head straight before I even attempt to walk through the world of all those people I used to know. There are a few people here this weekend, too, that I owe amends to, but even that isn't what's troubling me.

Strange, that I should write about prayer and meditation as a way of getting my head straight. It used to be firing up a bowl or a joint--that was getting it together. Now, it's the need to be more spiritual, check in with what's going on inside, instead of ignoring the feelings and squelching them. I got into town last night and felt great. Even this morning when I woke up, I was fine. Then, all of a sudden, insecurity hit and it came like a crushing blow. I remember earlier in my sobriety, when serenity was becomming the norm. I would have moments where it would disappear, vanish, and my brain would once again be awash in all the addict insanity. I always hated it. Today has been like that, except it's the self-confidence issue.

I know many addicts in Recovery who are gregarious personalities. The friend I'm staying with this weekend is like that. They naturally put themselves out there; they're friendly, funny, the kind of people others are drawn to. Folks who are like that, and who suffer from this disease of addiction, often find one of their main challenges in Recovery to be the reigning in of their egos. For an addict like myself, who was plagued by his insecurity, I have the opposite challenge. I have to work on not selling myself short, on standing up for myself, being present in conversations with others and in my life. I have to remember that I am enough--no matter what the bullshit I carry around in my head might try to tell me.

I've made great, amazing strides at improving my self-esteem. So much so that I now consider myself as someone with a higher than average self-confidence. I've done the work. I've looked at the past and done what I could to make amends for the wrongs I've caused. I've looked at myself and deliberately worked to build up my self-esteem in healthy ways. I'm aware of my character defects and know that, with God's help, I can live life without acting on them. I have learned to accept myself for who I am as I am. An addict may be what I am, but it is not who I am. Working the program has given me the opportunity to learn and change and grow.

For whatever reason, today the brain kicked down this bullshit 'Zach, you're worthless' crap. And now I've got to work through it. I've got the tools, thougth, to do so: pray, meditate, try and help someone else. I've got the knowledge and experience now to recognize what is going on, to know that what the disease is telling me isn't truth. It's just a tv show Uncle Steve is watching. It's just a feeling. It won't kill me, and it will pass. Because all things do.

It's not an unfamiliar or unexpected feeling for me, either. I'm not involved in church anymore. This place I'm at, right now, is a deeply spiritual one for me, a place I went to often during the time when I was involved in the church. I know I have program business to do--the amends--and that can be scary stuff. Mostly, though, I'm feeling a touch of less-than because I don't really fit in with these folks anymore (if I ever really did). I don't want to go on a long diatribe about why I don't participate in church these days. Maybe the best way to simplify it is to say that I went to church all the time growing up, but never did I see God there. I don't recall hearing about how to let God work in my life. It wasn't until I got into the rooms of Recovery that I truly saw God working directly in people's lives.

In meetings, we sit around and discuss the harsh realities of our lives. That feels far more real to me than sitting in pews or chairs at a church service. Church is a social place where polite conversation is had. I've never been to a church function where people talked to each other about the horrors of abuse, of being homeless, of not feeling comfortable in their own skin. Those kind of conversations fall under the Too Much Information banner, it seems. The things we deal with in the rooms are the issues polite society doesn't discuss, either because they condemn us or because they flat-out have no idea what to say or how to handle it.

I need the Real that we talk about in meetings. I need to hear the stories of being raped, of being strungout, of being passed-out drunk in jail. I need to hear others talk about their emotional pain--feeling lonely, desperate, and hopeless--because it's how I felt for so long. I need to share and talk about my own trauma, too. I need to have a spiritual practice, a fellowship, with other people who I can talk to about what it's like to be me, listen to them talk about what it's like to be themselves, and where we all nod and understand because we can relate. We truly do understand. It's right there in the literature: the theraputic value of one alcoholic or addict helping another is without parallel. Only we truly know what we go through.

They say religion is for people who don't want to go to hell; 12-steps is for people who've been there.

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