"For Further Reading..."

Yesterday, I stepped into one of my favorite shops. It's a local Recovery shop within walking distance of my apartment. They have books for every program there, chips and medallions for clean time, and a plethora of other spiritual items. I get the chips for my homegroup there, have bought many books, and even picked up a wall scroll once with a Chinese proverb about peace that now hangs in my living room. When I wandered in this time, it was to buy myself a nice 2-year medallion. Someone once taught me the importance of rewarding yourself.

While there, I found myself glancing over the Al-Anon books. I ultimately took home a copy of 'Paths to Recovery', which is their 12-and-12. One of my sponsees lives with an alcoholic. Someone I love has alcoholic parents. My mom grew up with an alcoholic father. I figure I will meet plenty more people in my lifetime who have a loved one who suffers from the disease, the least I can do is educate myself.

I don't go to Al-Anon, but everything I hear is that it's a good program. As I've started reading this book, that opinion has been reaffirmed. They talk about the disease. They talk about how it affects the people around the person who suffers from it. Even just the section on the first step is loaded with good Recovery. It talks about the futility of trying to control drinking, or the person who drinks in order to stop them drinking or at least lessen it. But what I like best so far is the emphasis on how the disease affects others. A quote:

"Unlike diabetes, alcoholism not only exists inside the body of the alcoholic, but is a disease of relationships as well. Many of the symptoms of alcoholism are in the behavior of the alcoholic." (Pg.8) Boom. Just like that. It's something I talk about in meetings, and it's something I stress to my sponsees. The disease is about so much more than just getting loaded.

A lot of people hear words like 'control' and 'manipulation' and think about these words with a purely negative slant. They think that these things are done with bad or evil intent. But someone who tries to get a loved one to stop their drinking isn't acting malignantly; they're trying to help. Sometimes we keep things to ourselves--secrets, thoughts, opinions--because we know or are afraid of the reaction that voicing them might or will provoke. We don't want someone to be angry, so we don't say things we think will make them angry. We think we're doing good, and maybe we are, but it's still a form of control. We are trying to control someone else's reactions.

The program of Recovery is very, very clear on this: we can't. We can't control other people. We aren't responsible for other people, for their feelings, for their reactions. They are responsible for themselves, and we are responsible for ourselves. This doesn't mean we go through life saying whatever we feel like whenever we feel it. We think of others, we consider others as we go about our lives. What it does mean is that we don't cancel ourselves out in an attempt to cause others to behave in a way we think they should.

It's not up to us how others live their lives. So we learn to speak our truths with love. Some people adopt an 'I don't give a fuck what you think' attitude when it comes to other people, but I don't subscribe to this theory because it omits a very important spiritual element: compassion.

The danger in caring so much about what others think, feel, say, and do, is that we can end up neglecting our own selves in the process. Breaking through denial and accepting what is can be a terrifying prospect. It can mean we have to say things we might not want to say (because we fear others' reactions or worse). It might mean taking actions that terrify us--like moving out and away from a loved one who isn't yet ready for Recovery.

Regardless, the path of the Real, of accepting life on life's terms and not living in the world through a fog of denial, is always the better course. It might not seem like it at first. Ask any newcomer trying to get clean and sober if it feels like it's worth it and they will probably tell you 'no'. But with time, the rewards present themselves. It's true whether we are giving up our addiction to a substance or our attempts to control others. What we lose is insanity and unmanageability. What we gain is our real selves as we were created to be.