“What I Have Learned”

As I sit down and start this entry, it is March 13th of 2013. That gives me 1,665 one days at a time—roughly four and a half years—of doing this sobriety/recovery thing. I’ve learned some powerful tidbits along the way. I’ve learned about myself, about other people, and about the world around me. Probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that however much I may think I know, there’s so much more that I don’t know, that I can pretty much claim to not know nuthin’. Statistically speaking.

I’m going through a very… interesting time right now. Interesting in that old Chinese proverb of “may you live in interesting times,” way. I guess some might call it a crisis of faith. More and more time goes by. I see more and more people come in and out of the rooms. More and more friends I’ve met in Recovery have relapsed or gone out and not returned. I watch as more and more bullshit gets thrown by addicts and alcoholics ostensibly living a spiritual life. Life doesn’t ever stop being what it is. People outside the rooms, people inside the rooms, people living clean and sober or not, are all still people. Life is still easy for some, hard for others, fucked up and filled with justice and yet not—all at the same time.

I find myself wondering more and more if maybe… just maybe… I have learned all that I am going to learn from 12 steps? And if so, what have I learned? What knowledge have I gained from walking this particular path? I’ve worked the steps multiple times. I’ve worked them the AA way, the NA way, the way my little sub-program does it. I’m not someone who gave up on the steps and said, “fuck this shit.” I’ve worked the program. A lot.

Hmm. It almost sounds like I’m claiming bragging rights. I don’t know about that, but I will say this: most people don’t work the steps. Most people don’t work the program. Regardless of whether or not I have bragging rights, what I do have is the perspective of someone who has not only worked the program but who has spent a number of years truly doing what he could to ‘practice these principles’ in all his affairs. I’ve had sponsees. A reasonable argument could be made that I created a new Area, or District. So what have I learned? A lot. No list could ever be exhaustive. But here’s a few things which come to mind:

• One of the hardest things about leading the spiritual life is the letting go of those others who don’t.
  I am responsible for me. No one else, just myself. I can’t make anyone do, think, or say anything. If someone doesn’t want to grow and to change and to better themselves, that is their right and their choice. I can’t make them choose differently, and every attempt I make to do so just causes them to become more entrenched in their insistence not to. People are going to be who they are. This is hard enough for when it comes to dealing with everyday people in everyday life, but it's particularly difficult when I’m faced with someone I care about who is hell-bent on a self-destructive pattern.
• The world does not make sense. And that is okay.
  When I was a kid, I would often insist that life wasn’t fair. My dad would always reply that life is basically unfair. This gem was somehow supposed to explain everything. It didn’t. It still doesn’t. I don’t know why I continue to think that my life should be a certain way, or that the world should be how I expect it, I just know that it’s not. No matter how hard or how often I try to make sense out of the world, I fail. The idea that reality simply does not make sense is one I come to not through deduction but overwhelming empirical evidence. I’m not really at peace with this conclusion, but I won’t deny it. Acceptance is something I keep working on, here. I know there are those out there for whom life, the world, reality, what have you, does make sense. I am not one of them. The best I can do is to accept that nowhere is it written that the universe must conform to my ideas of what it should be like.
• When I lean on God, my life goes better.
  I’m not a big fan of the ‘G’ word, but it’s convenient to use and I’m not interested in getting into a huge, long discussion about how I perceive my higher power. The important thing isn’t so much what God is like anyway, it’s that by letting go and trusting in God, my life goes better. As in, beyond my wildest dreams better. When I pray, meditate, work on that conscious contact with the unseen spiritual force that is out there (and inside me and others), my life goes better. When I try to run things, it goes to shit. When I let go and let God, amazing things happen.
• The people in 12-step rooms are just like people outside.
  There are all kinds of people in the world. No one is purely bad or good. We are all of us some mixture of both. Folks in the rooms of AA or NA or any of the other programs aren’t any better or worse than anyone outside the rooms. They aren’t worse because they’re addicts or alcoholics or for any of the things they’ve done as a result of being that. And they aren’t better for trying to improve their lives. Sure, you can find some of the most spiritually profound individuals in the rooms, with wisdom that would make the Dali Lama smile, nod, and say, “that’s a good one.” And we have rapists, murders, thieves, and child molesters. But you know what? You can find all of the above outside the rooms, too. What I learned in the rooms is that, at the end of the day, people are just people.
• People really can change.
  There are a lot of folks who believe it isn’t possible for people to change. My experience tells me otherwise. What’s usually missing from the soundbyte above is that A) it takes a lot of work, B) you have to remain committed to doing it and keep at it, and C) it takes time—sometimes a very long time. But it is possible, it really is possible for people to change. I used to be a stoned-24-hours-a-day kind of guy. That was years ago. I used to rage so hard I’d punch holes in doors. That’s no longer the case. I used to walk around and pass judgment on everyone from my high horse. That is… better than it used to be. Seriously though, and all kidding aside, it is possible to change. It just take a lot of work. A lot. A whole fucking lot.

I don’t know when I’ll be back here to this space, so this is something of a ‘goodbye’. But for what it’s worth, I know not a lot of people have read ‘Thoughts On The Disease’, but I know that there are those who have. They’ve read it all over the world. There have been those who have written me over the years to let me know how much it’s helped them. And that’s all anyone in Recovery could ever hope to achieve.

Peace be with you all,
Zach W.

“Hurt”

Regardless of all the people who’ve hurt me over the years, I’ve hurt myself the most. This idea comes up somewhat when doing step work in AA, but I like how it’s explicitly in the readings at NA meetings. It’s easy for me to do stepwork, clean up my side of the street, and call it ‘good’. Much more difficult is recognizing that the work on myself, of making up to myself the harm that I have caused myself, never ends. It would be a never ending story to list out all the ways I’ve hurt myself over time, but some general examples do jump out.

The literal self-harm—burning myself with cigarettes—comes to mind first. Even though it’s been a number of years since I’ve done that, the scars are still there and I can still remember how it felt. I remember being asked once why I did that to myself. I’d answered about how it gave me something else to focus on besides the pain I felt. I can see why the person I told that to didn’t understand. What sense does it make to say that I hurt myself to avoid feeling pain? None at all, unless you’ve been there, in which case you know all-too-well exactly what I’m talking about.

There are all the opportunities I’ve missed out on in life, ones I either turned away from or wasn’t open to, choosing my addiction instead. How many jobs did I not even bother to apply for because it was more important to me to be loaded all the time? How many relationships—romantic and friendships—have I failed or let fail because it was more important to me to be fucked up? Or because of my deeply insecure raging egomaniac of a shackled self-esteem I couldn’t—wouldn’t--bring myself to admit it when I was wrong?

In some ways, though, I think the most damage I have done to myself has been in my own mind. I’ve shared in meetings that I don’t need anyone to verbally abuse me, I can (and do) do it to myself all the time. How many times have I told myself I was worthless? Or that I didn’t deserve something I wanted—like love, kindness, or being happy? And even now, today, I still struggle with this mental game the Disease plays with me. I get so exhausted from all the imaginary conversations, all my attempts to control others by creating scenarios in my mind where they say what I want them to, or life happens the way I think it should. And why is that so particularly harmful to me? Because it’s a denial of who I really am and how I really feel.

I don’t burn myself anymore, and I’m pretty good about seizing opportunities when they come up now, but this mental game is still a challenge for me. Fighting the Disease in my mind, fighting back against this vicious force that loves nothing more than to tear me down and tell me I am a worthless sack of shit, that battle still rages. Maybe it always will; maybe not. Maybe the making amends to myself is nothing more than continuing to get better and better at not listening to that voice which keeps insisting I am worthless.

And there’s one last thing, to: all of this is not to say that making amends to others, owning up to the wrongs I’ve done and making it up to them (where possible), hasn’t been an important part of my recovery. It has. My point here is what good does it do me to make amends to others if I continue harming myself?

“Dee-FENCE! Dee-FENCE!!”

I continue to work on this issue of my defensiveness. It’s a struggle, naturally. Separating out my part in things can be really hard when I feel justified in my actions, thoughts, or emotions. Let’s say someone I know is constantly fucking with me; I feel I’m justified in being pissed off at them and reacting like an asshole. Or maybe I’m feeling on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop at work because my boss is erratic; then I think I’m justified in adopting a siege mentality—no matter how exhausted and crazy it makes me. Or take an older example, like when my ex-wife would push and push me until I exploded at her. “See? You have anger issues,” she would say.

Well, yes. Yes, I did have anger issues. And yes, yes I have issues with defensiveness. I’m working on it, just back off already! ;-)

It helps to try and laugh at myself. It helps, too, to remember that I didn’t become this way by accident. As it is with other character defects, even the Disease in general, who we are is who we had to become in order to survive. I wasn’t born defensive, I became this way as a result of what I’ve been through in all the different parts of my life.

The head-shrinkers who practice cognitive-behavioral therapy would say that what happened in the past isn’t nearly as important as what our actions are in the present. If you want to change a behavior, you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about why you behave that way. The action is changed first-period. If you change the action, the thinking will change as well. I’ve taken enough psychology classes to know that this is true, thoughts follow action far more easily than the other way around. For myself, though, I still like to know the why behind the what.

For me (and maybe this is because of my spotty memory more than anything else), I like to know why I am how I am. I want to know the reasons behind what I do. That helps me to change. Understanding how I got to where I am, seeing how I developed a character defect—in this case, my defensiveness—helps me to change. I can look at my life now, see how the circumstances are different now than they were before. This defense mechanism I’ve got, which served its purpose and has now outlived its usefulness, is easy for me to deal with the more I know about it.

There’s something in here, too, about feeling caught off-guard. I hadn’t realized to what degree this issue was a problem, and maybe that’s leading me to overreact to the issue. So, I find myself in the absurd place of feeling defensive about the fact that I’m defensive. This Disease of ours is so sick.

And it’s all compounded by some very unclear boundaries. What if someone likes to push other people’s buttons because they’re childish or have poor personal boundaries of their own? Someone’s erraticism might not be a tool to manipulate, but instead is borne out of their own insecurities? And the need to push someone until they explode can come from a discomfort and inability to deal with emotions in general.

So I have my stuff, other people have theirs. But I’m not responsible for other people’s stuff, just my own. Right…

That’s one thing that’s making this difficult. For some reason, the defensiveness is really tightly interwoven with my boundary issues. As in, I’m thinking that I learned to be defensiveness as a coping strategy, and part of that was learning to be acutely observant of those around me. Or maybe they’re even the same thing. To use an analogy, a child who gets abused learns to be hyper vigilant, watching for signs that another round of abuse is coming.

Hrm. It suddenly occurs to me that I’m writing this with the unspoken assumption that I’m going to reach a conclusion of some kind. But I’m not LOL. This is ongoing work. And it’s good to have the opportunity to do it.

“Breakthroughs and Breakdowns”

Here’s a funny story.

The other day, I was working with my sponsor. As an aside in conversation, I talked about my music and how I don’t play live shows. I said that the reason why is mostly because I feel so vulnerable, how when I play music, I’m opening myself up to others, and that I have a really hard time taking criticism when I do that. I can get really defensive. The slightest critique gets blown way out of proportion; I usually take it way too personally.

My sponsor thought this interesting and came back at me with questions about that same response playing out in the rest of my life. I told him I didn’t see it in the rest of life, just music. He pressed me on the point, and very soon I felt like my back was up against the wall. Before long, I had to admit that he was right. To an outsider, the conversation could very easily have seemed like this: me—“I don’t take criticism very well”; my sponsor—“yeah, you do tend to be a bit defensive”; me—“what-are-you-talking-about-I’m-not-defensive-at-all-how-could-you-suggest-such-a-thing!!!!!!”

*Sigh* Most of us don’t like looking at our character defects. This particular one of mine might very well be the one I dislike the most about myself. I dislike it so much that (more often than not) I’m in denial about its even existing. I’m often blind to it when it’s happening. I think that happens with those of us in the program too—denial is so second nature to us, we truly depend on our fellows in the program to call us on our bullshit.

I won’t speak for anyone else, but I absolutely love my bullshit. I love the rush I get when I feel self-righteous anger. Oh yes, the thrill of being Right. And of course I’m right! How dare you question me? Don’t you know who I am?! I can sit in that and stew in it and just eat it up all day and night. And does it ever stink!

Having my sponsor not just point out this defect of mine, but really make sure that I looked at, was ego-bruising for sure. It may hurt, but I know it’s what I need. I can’t work on what I don’t know is a problem (or what I refuse to admit is a problem). I’m not saying it’s easy, not by a long shot! Even acknowledging this particular fault of mine filled me with intense feelings of failure—almost to the point of tears.

Fortunately, this is what the program is all about: giving us a way to deal with ourselves. As it’s said in the rooms, “we’ve got a step for that!” I know right off the bat what a big chunk of this particular character defect of mine is about—it’s fear and insecurity. I can look into my past and see where it comes from.

It’s important to remember, as we do the work on ourselves, that who we are didn’t come about by accident; we are who we are because it’s who we had to become in order to survive. It’s not our place to pass judgment, even on ourselves. Looking at our defects, asking a higher power to have them removed is a continuing process of Humility. And we don’t do it just for the heck of it, we do it because these defects, the way we have lived, no longer works for us and we need to find a way to live differently.

“The Addict Response”

In the fall after I turned 20, I went through a series of unfortunate events that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Before those events, I would occasionally smoke a cigarette. After going through all that I went through that fall, I was a full-blown smoker. One time, not long after, I was dating a woman; then met another and realized how unhappy I was with the one I’d been seeing. So I got drunk. And there was another occasion where I remember very specifically thinking about how life was going to fuck me over no matter what I did, so I might as well be loaded.

These examples from my early 20s are just a few examples of the Disease playing itself out in my life. In general, I could fix/use/get loaded for any reason, good or bad. But I definitely did it in response to discomfort. (Hm... that’s a really sterile word to describe feeling that life is going fuck you over no matter what you do). I remember thinking how that was what people did. If shit happened, you got fucked up and that was how you dealt with it.

Almost as an aside, here, I want to admit that I really have no idea where I got this crazy impression. No one in my home used growing up (this is not to say the Disease wasn’t present, but that’s another story). I wasn’t around any active addicts or alcoholics that I noticed. I don’t remember anyone ever telling me that that was what you did. Maybe I got the idea from TV or movies?? I really don’t know.

But it makes sense to me now that I should think this way. This is the addict response to life. An inability to accept life on life’s terms. Something happens that I don’t know or don’t want to deal with? Get loaded; escape. I’m feeling a way that I don’t like or don’t want to feel? Get loaded; escape; get out of self. Whatever it takes, just don’t actually do anything about the situation or the feelings. Definitely don’t accept them and follow through on the ramifications. Ignore. Deny. Find a way to blame somebody or something else, whatever it takes!

And even now, I know the Disease is still with me. Every once in awhile someone will ask me if don’t sometimes feel like just having a drink or two. Don’t you feel like just getting loaded once? Just one more time? I always have to laugh at that, because no—no, I don’t feel like that. I don’t want to have a drink or two—I want to get hammered. I mean, that’s why people drink, right? No, I don’t want get high one last time, just have a quick hit, or whatever—I want to get fucking blasted and I want to be blasted 24/7.

That yearning to reach for any substance (the specifics aren’t important) to avoid dealing with life or take me out of my self, to escape what I’m feeling or what’s happening, that yearning never really goes away. I may not physically reach for the stuff, but my brain still does. I don’t think about getting just a little tipsy, I think about getting righteously plastered. That’s how I can know without a doubt that the Disease is still there. Because getting a little altered doesn’t make any sense to me. At all.

“November Thoughts”

This recovery thing is interesting, to put it mildly. As time goes by and I continue to work the program, I find new things about myself to discover. There are still issues which need addressing. The layers of the onion keep peeling. The work on ‘me’ is never finished. Something that’s been a struggle lately for me is feeling bad.

It feels weird just to write that. After all, once upon a time I spent every waking moment feeling this way—a wretched emptiness, the god-shaped hole, as some call it. Like so many others who suffer from the Disease, I sought escape from my own feelings in a substances-induced stupor. I doubt I will ever forget the release that being intoxicated brought. At long last, I felt good. Or was it that I just no longer could feel the bad? It didn’t matter.

Then came recovery. With my mind no longer under the influence, I had to learn how to deal with all that I’d been suppressing and repressing for so many years. The ‘bad’ feelings came back with a vengeance, but by working the program I found a way to deal with my feelings. By working steps, going to meetings, and becoming a part of the fellowship, I found a way to allay the long-reigning emptiness. I began to actually deal with me, with my life, who I had been. I discovered, too, that I could forge a new me. And bit by bit I began to stop feeling bad and began feeling good. It’s even reached a point where I feel good more often than I feel bad, and on those times when I do feel bad I have ways of dealing with it that are healthy.

Still, I won’t claim to enjoy feeling bad. In fact, I’ll go ahead and stake a claim right here: I still really hate it. A lot. It’s been a learning process to understand that life has its ups and downs. There will be good times and there will be bad times. And sometimes, the bad will persist. And persist. And persist. And I can do all the 12-step program working in the world and STILL the bad feelings will stay because that just happens to be what life is doing. Did I mention the part where I still don’t like it?

* * *

We talk often in recovery about the aching emptiness that goes hand in hand with the Disease. What many call a ‘god-shaped hole’ inside themselves, I prefer describing more simply as loneliness. God has never been far from my life. In recovery, I pursue my work of increasing my conscious contact with my higher power frequently throughout each day. I am not one of those who turned against god or felt that god had turned against them. Being in the program, I have worked to foster my relationship with god, increase it, deepen it. I consider myself fortunate to have a higher power that works so forcefully in my life. And yet, the hole inside me has not been filled by god; it is filled when I am in communion with others.

When I sit in a meeting and listen to others share the deepest part of themselves, whether its pain or joy, that’s when I feel connected and that’s when I feel the emptiness inside myself lessen. It’s when I’m having dinner or coffee with fellow members after a meeting, and we’re talking about our lives, noting the similar things we think and feel and experience—that’s when the loneliness subsides.

* * *

I’ve written before about how it seems that, no matter how I might progress in my recovery, I always still feel ‘different’ from other people. It’s like a comment I heard another member say once at a book study, that they keep on waiting to feel like they’ve ‘made it’. It’s more than just how life takes work. It’s more than my experiences in life have separated me from others. It just feels like there’s something different about me. This isn’t a feeling I particularly enjoy, either, by the way. It’s lonely, isolating. Sometimes I don’t feel it. Sometimes I do feel it and I don’t mind. Right now is one of the times when I feel it and it bothers me. It hurts.

I have not had a lot of friends in my life. Real friends, people I’ve felt truly close to, have been few and far between. There have been those times, too, when I thought I was close to someone and it turned out the relationship was mostly in my head, or that the relationship had been deliberately fabricated—that I’d been taken advantage of, manipulated, for one reason or another. Those have been some painful experiences. I imagine they are for everyone; no one likes to feel used, or to learn that they were deceived by someone they took the risk in trusting.

And as I think about these things, my thoughts turn also to relationships I’ve said ‘no’ to, times where I chose instead to let go. I think about these and remember my reasons why. Perhaps because my trust was betrayed, or because the relationship had proven itself to be a risk to my self or my sanity. Maybe my integrity was threatened, or I was just plain unhappy and it didn’t strike me as fair to string someone else along. I don’t know; I think I’m waxing philosophical on all this. I’m not even sure I have a point, except perhaps that being lonely is not something I enjoy, and how strange that is considering how much of my life has been spent feeling lonely.

* * *

I’ve been writing on this blog off and on for over three years now. It’s not a record of my recovery journey, exactly, just as it’s not a public journal or diary of my life experiences. There are elements of both, of course. I have been told, strike that, accused of keeping a dairy in this space, that this blog is very personal. People have expressed to me how impressed or amazed they are at how much I reveal here.

I always find these comments somewhat strange. It’s the same way with people who tell me how much they appreciate the depth I share in meetings. I’ve learned to not look at folks like they’re crazy when they say these sorts of things, but that hasn’t changed my inner response.

For me, I may reveal much here or in meetings, but there is so much more inside that doesn’t get shared. Sometimes it feels as though my consciousness is bursting at the seams. Sometimes I think it is in this way that I am different; sometimes I chalk it up to my home environment as a child and the lack of boundaries so familiar to the family structures of those of us who grow up with the influence of the Disease.

(Almost as an aside, I wonder: was isolating something I learned from parents who were themselves isolators, or was it instead a solution I discovered in my attempts to find separation from a home where boundaries weren’t present or respected?)

* * *

In the end, I suppose this space here is little more than my own place for letting out what I think and how I feel. Does that make it a diary/journal? Perhaps. The traffic to this site has always been light, and I’ve never tried too hard to increase it. I’m not a psychologist or an addiction therapist. This space is mine where I get to say what I think. Occasionally, it helps someone else. And so after all this long documenting of what’s been rolling around in my clean and sober noggin lately, what is the point?

Where is it written that I have to have one?

But here, for those who have made it through this diatribe, I offer a condensed version to takeaway: I’m still clean and sober; I still feel loneliness and it still sucks when I do; and I still feel different from others.

Be well.

“Integration”

I’ve been wracking my brain for a couple days now, wanting to blog, but drawing a total block on a topic. Then, as I was cruising social media, I saw some friends who were no longer friends of mine, but were still friends of my friends. Confused? No matter; it isn’t important to the story. This got me to thinking about how the people in our lives change over time. True, deep, long-lasting relationships are few and far between (at least, in my experience). People come into our lives, they go out. Sometimes someone will be in our lives a long time as just a mere association, then will rise in prominence. A casual acquaintance becomes a best friend; a friend becomes a lover.

Thinking about these things lead me to reminisce on opportunities I’ve had here and there to join in certain social circles, to go deeper into a fold, and the times and reasons why I chose not to. I know I’m being a bit vague, but this is a blog not a book. At those times, the reason I didn’t immerse myself more deeply into their group is because I felt different from them. What I’ve been through in life, the things I’ve seen and what my experiences have taught, give me a certain perspective. And sometimes that perspective interferes with my ability to have deeper relationships.

I’m not referring to the common theme of how those of us who suffer from the Disease have been through such trauma in our lives that we have intimacy issues. What I’m talking about here is how it’s hard for me to just ‘hang out’ with a bunch of people who don’t understand some of the deeper, darker, realities of life. I have a hard time relating to folks who haven’t been through or at the very least peered out into the black. I dated a woman once who very quickly came to understand that I was someone who ‘swam in the deep end’ as she called it. I think I made some comment about how the shallow end couldn’t hold my attention after having been in the deep for so long.

There is an important aspect to Recovery, that of rejoining the larger society. Some of us never leave—further proof of the importance of anonymity. Some of us struggle for years. But for those who are successful in walking the spiritual path, we ultimately find a way to rejoin. The ‘moment’ where we do can be different for each of us. For some, it’s getting a dream job (or a decent paying one). For others, it’s a new car. It can be getting married. It can be almost anything.

I’ve had moments along those lines in my life, but I still retain this feeling of separateness. No matter how I might pass as a normie, I still feel that separation. Not that I think I’m better or worse than those who haven’t seen what I’ve seen, just that what I’ve been through in life has changed me. Recovery from the Disease has changed me further. It’s not a change I would ask to be undone, and I can’t imagine ever wanting to go back to sleep, living my days awake as I do now. But still, there is the fact of who I am, and where I’ve been.

No matter how well I might re-integrate into society, the experiences of my life stay with me. That’s not good or bad, it just is.