“Are You Done Yet?”

One of my favorite quotes that I’ve heard in the rooms of Recovery goes something like this: “Religion is for people who are afraid of Hell; 12-Step programs are for people who’ve been there.” I’m not sure why this quote comes to my mind today, but it’s at the forefront.

Another bit that I’m contemplating right now is a very familiar passage from the AA Big Book, read aloud in most meetings: “…If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it…” (emphasis added)

And still a third thing that’s swimming around in my brain is this: “Pain is the price of admission.”

As someone who feels that the disease is the disease is the disease, I don’t have any problems with saying “My name is Zach and I’m an alcoholic,” when I’m at an AA meeting, or introducing myself “My name is Zach and I’m an addict,” at NA meetings. At my homegroup, though, where I am most comfortable, I occasionally say this: “My name is Zach and I still suffer from the disease of addiction.” Oddly enough, this feels like the most truthful statement I can make.

The program teaches us honesty, but I am always conscious of whichever room I am in to be respectful of that particular meeting. After all, I am just like everyone else there; I am not so special as to warrant a specialized introduction. A big part of my Recovery has been getting over myself and letting go of the idea that I am so special and unique. In the rooms, I am an addict and/or an alcoholic, just like everyone else there. It’s not a coincidence that I tend to use that last intro at times when I am not doing so well.

I’ve heard it said by some that one of the most amazing things the Program has done for them is relieved them of the burden of self. This is mostly true for me as well, but there are days when my sense of self marches to the front and demands it’s ego be stroked: I am special. I am unique. I am different from all of you and I demand respect and special treatment. Ah, Uncle Steve… he tries so hard. If only he could look in the mirror and see the little two-year-old he all too often acts like.

This disease, the sick insanity it causes in our lives, it never quits. We can treat it through working the Program, but it is always there. Like someone who is diabetic but takes their insulin, or someone who has manic depression who takes psychiatric medication—they don’t stop being diabetic or bipolar, but the damage caused by their diseases can be minimized. The damage caused by the disease of addiction can be minimized, too, but only if we choose to minimize it. Only when we choose to treat our disease, live according to the spiritual principles of the program and by the will of our higher power instead of self-will, does the insanity, chaos, and wreckage begin to stop.

Many of us have learned the hard way that when we let self-will run our lives, the consequences are disastrous. It’s not called ‘wreckage’ for nothing. We find ourselves in situations we never thought we’d be in, doing things we’d never thought we’d do. And when we are stuck in self-will, our ability to see our part in things, our ability to understand why we are where we are, why we’re doing what we’re doing, how we got there and why we’re stuck, can be almost completely impaired. It takes a crash to shake us out of it, and when the crash comes it is far too often more painful than we ever thought it would be. We have to bottom out. We have to be in so much pain that we become willing to go to any lengths to change. If we're lucky, we can get to a point where we choose to live by the principles of the Program because we don't want to be in that pain anymore.

The disease is insidious. It sneaks up on us. It disguises itself, cloaks itself, comes on us sometimes rapidly, other times gradually. The gradual times are the worst, because the progression is so slow that we don’t notice it. Everything seems normal, and ‘normal’ can be a real bitch because, as addicts, our sense of normal is horribly warped. When the disease is at the helm, when self-will is running our lives, that’s when we create wreckage. We destroy friendships, hurt loved ones, and hurt ourselves.

We have to check ourselves constantly. The tenth step can be an invaluable tool. But even without it, we still have others. The spiritual principle of the first step—Honesty—can be all we need. Being honest with ourselves is more often harder than anything else, but we can do it if we choose to. We can ask ourselves the hard questions: why have I chosen to not follow the advice of those who have always given me good advice? Why am I choosing to compromise my principles? What exactly am I afraid of? What am I trying to control?

Sometimes we aren’t able to be honest with ourselves. We can become locked into the disease; it’s at the helm and we are completely unable to wrest our fingers off the steering wheel of our lives. We then must follow the course through, let our self-will run things until they once again get so bad that we are in so much pain that we again become willing to go to any lengths for our spiritual recovery. We are human beings; we aren’t perfect. Sometimes creating more wreckage is the only way we learn. Sometimes losing things that are precious to us is the only way we are able to clue-in to what we have been doing or how bad our disease is. Sometimes, we have to lose everything before we become willing to let go and make the change and do things differently. Sometimes, we have to experience deep pain before we can be done.

Being 'done' doesn't refer to just using or drinking. We can be done, too, with creating wreckage. We can be done with causing chaos in other peoples' lives. We can be done with losing our jobs, our family, and our friends.

I had a discussion not too long ago with some guys in the program whose time was in the 5-10 year range. They were talking about sponsorship and how you shouldn’t waste your time trying to sponsor newcomers who aren’t willing to follow suggestions. “Help someone who is ready,” they advised. “Find someone who’s done.”

"Action"

When I was active in my addiction, passivity was the norm. I could go on and on about how unfair life was, rage for hours or even days and weeks about some wrong that had been committed against me. Rarely did I ever do anything about any of it. I thought that there was no point in taking action. There had been so many times when I’d tried to do something where I was unsuccessful, I’d reached a point where there seemed to be no point in trying. Wallowing in inaction, of course, only served to make me feel worse about myself, which in turn lead to more inaction.

Nowadays, I’ve discovered that taking action has the opposite effect. When I do take action, I feel better about myself. I have a lot of uncertainty in my life right now concerning my job. The other day I cold-called a company that a coworker had told me about and gave them my resume. I don’t even know if they’re hiring, or that I would want to work there if they are. It doesn’t matter. It was the act of doing something made me feel better. I struggle, too, with not having a girlfriend in my life, but instead of sitting at home and moping about it, I take action. I go to places I like to go to, do the things I enjoy doing, and talk to the people who are there. Maybe nothing comes of it, but I’m far more likely to meet someone I have something in common with if I’m out doing the things I enjoy than if I simply stay home and feel sorry for myself.

A lot of us come into Recovery being people of inaction. The only action we knew how to take was to pick up--and we could go to such great lengths to make that happen! How many times was that action insanely unmanageable? I remember a share at a meeting once of someone drilling through ceiling tiles to break in past a locked door. I myself have driven obscene numbers of miles to an out-of-town connection because my regular connections couldn’t be reached. These two examples are, of course, mild in comparison to some others. We knew how to take action to feed our disease, but in other areas of our lives, we were paralyzed.

The Steps teach us better ways of taking action. Action is a skill that is learned and cultivated, not some innate ability we are born with. Certain steps are specifically referred to as ‘Action Steps’. It is my belief that each and every one of the twelve steps are action steps. When we work any step, we are taking action in treating our disease; we are taking action in our Recovery, defying the odds, and allowing ourselves to care about us and the people around us. We can become better people through working the steps, and that in turn has a positive effect on the people around us. Positivity spreads every bit as much as negativity does.

Even going to a meeting is taking action. Any time we treat our disease instead of feeding it, we are taking action to keep ourselves healthy and be the better part of ourselves. When we act from our best selves, we feel better.

“Just For Today”

It’s another one of those days where hope seems to have flown out the window. The mindless monotony of day-to-day life would be better. All the negativity seems to be engorged like hideous balloons, obscuring any vision of things that are good. All the usual mind tricks lose their potency, and bit by bit I find myself sinking into something of a survival mode. Don’t get loaded… don’t get loaded… don’t get loaded…

I open my toolbox. Play it through: if I get loaded, it doesn’t solve anything; it’s just an escape, and all the problems I’m facing will still be right here afterwards. Find some gratitude: think of others who are less fortunate, recognize the good things in my life, focus on what I do have, not what I don’t. Stay in the real: I haven’t lost my job yet; I might not lose it at all. Each one turns the bolt only ever so slightly before popping off because it’s the wrong size.

A memory comes to my mind: a time in my life before my active addiction was so active. There was a time when I was a casual user, before I was loaded all day long, every day. The thoughts of feeling that nothing would ever go my way were rampant. I was never going to fit in, I was never going to have stability in my life. Life was never going to give me the peace I craved that I felt I’d somehow, somewhere, long ago been promised. So I made the decision to just be loaded all the time. I felt that, if I couldn’t have any of those things that so many others seem to get so effortlessly, then I’ll just be loaded. It was the giving up point. The point of no return on the ‘fuck-it’s, and not unlike the suicidal thoughts that have plagued me over the years.

In a sick way, it was a compromise. Life was always going to give me this constant stream of bullshit, well since I can’t control that, I’ll just be loaded all the time. I couldn’t deal with life, and that was my solution—to deliberately refuse to do so. To stop trying. To alter myself and perceptions to the point that who I was became lost. The world had rejected me, I felt, and so I rejected the world.

I pray. I pray a lot. Today I’m asking for guidance. I can’t find it in me to ask for strength. I’m not sure I want strength right now. I’m not freaked out about losing my job, I’m freaked out about being unemployed and not being able to pay my rent. I feel, once again, that I have tried to play the game the way it’s supposed to be played, and once again have been cheated by life because I didn’t cheat at it. And through it all, I feel as if there is something I am missing, some crucial ‘ah-ha!’ moment that escapes me somehow. Some key bit of knowledge, or something I have been unable to accept, that if I somehow knew, if I was somehow aware of or able to work on or fold into my being, that then somehow life would go smoothly. This seemingly constant starting over would end.

I remember hearing a professional author once speak to students who were considering being writers themselves. The advice given was this: if you can find anything else, any other career, any other way to make a living, do it. Do. It. Don’t go into writing unless it’s something you absolutely have to do and can’t live any other way. Why? Because it’s hard. It starts hard, gets worse, and there’s no improvement, only the occasional brief respite where things seem like they might be okay one day before they go back to being constantly difficult.

Recovery is like that. When I hit my one-year mark, a number of folks told me, ‘now the hard part begins’. My sponsor talks about the sophomore slump. I think they’re right. Once you pass the one-year mark, there's no more parade of birthdays to aim for. The pink cloud has long-since faded. The pace of change lessens, tapers off. Life must be lived. There are no more carrots to bait you, only the stick of cold, hard reality. And you have to keep going.

I have to work to remind myself that getting loaded isn’t the way out. I have to work to remind myself of how far down I’d been, the disaster that my life was, the hollow shell of a human being that I used to be. Then I have to work to remind myself that, yes, I really go back to being like that. Maybe not instantly, maybe not even within a few months, but eventually it will happen. And I will go back to being the man I used to be--the me that hated himself, that treated others and himself so badly.

Recovery doesn’t make me not an addict, it only gives me a way to live without active addition—something I desperately needed. And I have to remind myself of that, too, of how it felt to be new to sobriety, the freedom, the power of working the steps and hearing others’ shares. It’s so easy to become wrapped up in the doldrums of the dark moments.

‘This too shall pass’ keeps coming to my mind, and I have experienced enough difficulties in this sober living thing that I do to know it to be true. I know there is an end to the tunnel, even if I can’t see it. Sometimes, it just takes a little longer to reach. Sometimes I have to take baby steps to reach it. Sometimes, I really do have to take it down to those old thoughts from the very first days, where it felt like nothing more than white-knuckling it: don’t get loaded… don’t do it… Just for today. Don’t. Get. Loaded.

“Inherently Unlovable”

I do a little performing, here and there. These days, it’s stepping up at a poetry event or open mic night to speak words from the spiritual principles album I’m finishing. It’s a whole other animal than when I’d play piano or was playing keys in someone’s band. When I was up there behind a set of black and whites, I never got stage fright. Standing before a group of strangers, when it’s just me and just the words I have to speak from my heart, it’s nerve-wracking to say the least. Sometimes I hide one leg behind the other so that no one can see it shaking.

It begins with Honesty…

I didn’t know how to speak from the heart before I got into Recovery. All I knew how to say was what I thought other people wanted to hear. If I had something I wanted to say that was mine, I’d beat around the bush, talk as far around it as possible, because I always felt like I wasn’t allowed to have something of my own to say. I thought it would be burdening other people. I thought I was a burden. This still shows up from time to time when I find myself struggling to call someone else in the program. Especially if it’s late at night and I’m struggling. In some ways, it’s almost as though the worse I feel, the less I’m willing to make that call and get the help I need—the more of a burden I think I am.

When I chaired an NA meeting recently, I found myself with a similar kind of nervousness. I sat at the front of the room and nearly forgot that I had every right to be there. I forgot for a moment that my experience, strength, and hope is every bit as valued and valuable, and that even if I was only able to help one other person in the room that night, that was all that mattered. I pushed through it, just as I do when I perform, and talked with my sponsor about it afterwards. He laughed.

He laughed for the same reason so many of us chuckle during a fellow members’ share: because he understood completely how I felt and had felt the same way himself many times. He joked, wondering tongue-in-cheek about how low a group he would have to be addressing before he himself wasn’t concerned about what they thought of him. “Hello, hello, and thank you for welcoming me to the triple-murderer’s annual convention!”

Feeling like I am not enough, that there is something inherently wrong with me, is not a feeling that has gone away. It ebbs and flows, and on the whole things are much better than they used to be, but all I have to do is address a room full of strangers with the intent of speaking my own piece of truth, and it all comes back in a flash: the nervousness; the fear; the feelings of lack of worth. I find myself right back in that place I was before I started my Recovery. In some ways, it’s even earlier than that. During my using career, I suppressed and repressed all those feelings.

I’m thinking of when I hit six months clean time and stumbled upon the jolting realization of how I didn’t love myself. It was like something I had always known, but had never truly understood, and in that moment I finally did. I finally could see how it was because I didn’t believe in myself, because I did not yet know or believe that I was enough, that so much of my life had been the way it was. Because I thought of myself as worthless, I allowed others to treat me as such. Because I thought I didn’t deserve for good things to happen to me, good things didn’t happen. On the rare occasions when they did, I usually found some way to sabotage it because I couldn’t bear the thought of things actually going well. It didn’t fit in with my concept of the world or of myself. I may have wanted for good things to happen to me, I may have wanted for people to treat me well, but the reality was that I didn’t honestly feel I deserved any of it. And because that was the honest truth at the heart of my being, that was what was borne out in my life.

Speaking at a meeting where I’ve never been brings up all those old issues. Performing in front of a crowd of strangers does, too. But I need these experiences. It’s important to remember where I’ve been. It’s important to remember those dire, desperate feelings of inadequacy. There was a time—and not nearly as long ago as I would care to admit—where those feelings were how I felt all the time.

“The ‘Death’ Part of Jails, Institution, and Death”

The disease kills. Period.

Different fellowships and different meetings focus to different degrees on this undeniably true fact. We can overdose. We can be so loaded that we do something that gets ourselves killed. We can kill others while loaded. We can kill ourselves while struggling with sobriety. It is this form of death from the disease, this particular shape of it, that is the one I have the most experience with.

I’ve struggled with suicide at numerous times in my life. It’s a very dark place to be in, to make a gross understatement. And it seems to be an issue that keeps coming up. In a way, it’s like a small town I grew up in that I never seem to get entirely away from. My first sponsee committed suicide. I've heard others in Recovery talk about their attempts and their ongoing struggles. It boggles my mind to think that there are people out there who not only have never contemplated killing themselves, but haven’t ever had a conversation about it with someone who has.

Given my job situation lately, I’ve been feeling plenty of despair and I admit those thoughts of ending it all have been circling, like vultures waiting for a starving creature to die. But the more I focus on what I am feeling, the more it strikes me not so much as despair, but a feeling of powerlessness. Specifically, the inability to accept my powerlessness. Hmm . . . I seem to be one-stepping all over the place today ;-)

That’s what I remember most from being in the mental place of suicide contemplation, the feeling of being powerless. The thing with possibly losing my job is about how I’d thought the endless starting over would be at an end, thanks to my Recovery. The darkness tells me that, no matter what I do, I will always be starting over, that nothing in life is certain, and that there’s really no point in trying anyway. This just so happens to not be true, but when the clouds gather and when the rain pours, it can be so easy to lose sight of that.

Feeling so powerless is a difficult thing to accept. Committing suicide is like the last desperate attempt to control—I may not have any control over my life, but I can control whether or not I choose to end it.

Turn the wheel . . .

The flipside is that I can choose to keep it going as well. A good friend of mine in Recovery talks a lot about doing the Step 1-2-3 waltz, and I’ve heard it said before how the first three steps can be simply broken down: I can’t do it; maybe God can; I think I’ll let him.

As addicts, we have an inherent difficulty in accepting the things we are powerless over, the things we cannot change. It is when we try to control the uncontrollable that our lives become unmanageable. Acceptance is key, the beginning—the honest admission that we can’t do it by ourselves. From there we find hope that something greater than ourselves can help. And from there we move to action; we make the decision to have the faith to let that which is greater than us help.

If you are ever in that dark place, where it seems like there will be no way out, get to a meeting. If you can’t do that, pick up the phone. Call someone else in Recovery. If they don’t answer, hang up and dial again. Keep dialing until you reach someone. If you get off the phone with them and don’t feel better, call someone else. That’s what Recovery means: that we don’t have to suffer alone ever again.

“What Does It Mean To Be Special?”

When I was a kid, I was enrolled in a program at my elementary school called G.A.T.E.—Gifted And Talented Education. It was one of the public schools’ attempts to keep smarter students from being obscenely bored. I remember having such high hopes at the start of it. Finally, a challenge. Finally, something that would hold my interest. Finally, a place where the fact that I thought about larger issues than just the mind-numbing drudgery in front me would be acknowledged, accepted, and embraced.

Reality, as is so often the case, failed to jibe with my expectations. The real kicker, though, was what the program ultimately proved to be. It seemed that the teachers assigned to carry out this program, whether they weren’t too bright themselves or because of their own general lack of understanding, didn’t quite know what to do with us. In the end, the program was nothing more than excess busy work. What I learned was that being smart, being gifted, being special, meant doing twice as much of the same old crap as the other students. Being special was a curse, not a blessing. Being special was something worthy of punishment, not reward.

All of us are deeply insecure, raging egomaniacs.

In my Recovery, there have been times when I felt as though I was special, as in, different from other addicts. Experience has taught me this is definitely not the case. Each time I chair a meeting, there are plenty of people who come up to me afterwards, thanking me for all the things I said that they could relate to. When I listen to others chair, when I hear people share in the meetings, I still hear things that speak to me. My disease is really no different than any others’.

I struggle, still, with this concept of being ‘special’. On the one hand, I fight to tell myself that I am a person of worth, that I am enough, in those times when I feel like I’m not. On the other, I fight to remember that I am not particularly unique, that I am more like others than I want to admit. It is a balancing act of sorts, finding the line between accepting myself as important, worthy of love, and knowing that I am not unusual in other regards.

It’s possible that I’m comparing apples to oranges here, but it all seems to be different sides to the same coin. Am I so special and unique that the rules don’t apply to me? In my jobs, I don’t progress up the ladder; I can’t claim to have anything resembling a career. Is this because I don’t play the game, or refuse to? And what is the game, really? For me, it’s always felt as though the game was to pretend I am not a person, that I am in fact the cog in a machine that so many people are treated as. And yet, if I insist on my own personhood, it’s as though I’m singling myself out as special, different. Uppity. How dare I think that I’m so special that I deserve to be treated as a human being and not a mindless robot?

Some people say that maturity is coming to terms with the world around you, making peace with authority. For me, I often feel that I took enough shit growing up to last ten lifetimes. I’ve had enough of being treated as less-than. But it does beg the question: what makes me so special? Who am I exactly that I don’t have to endure what most others endure? Being judged by others is a part of life. I do handle it better these days than I used to, this much is true, but I still have a line which I can’t seem to let myself cross.

It’s always possible that all of this is simply a distraction. Recovery teaches us Acceptance. I am who I am. I don’t need anyone else’s approval to be me. When I pretend to be someone I’m not, that’s disrespecting God, who after all created me as I am.

I do some philosophy reading from time to time. One of the schools of thought out there is called existentialism. The gist of it (as far as I can tell) is that there is no deeper meaning; life simply is. Thinkers along these lines have made some pretty profound statements, and here is one I find myself pondering lately: there are no answers, only choices. Going with that line of thinking, then it would seem that the choice is mine whether I ‘play the game’ or not. The choice is mine how I allow myself to be treated, and how I allow myself to react to that treatment. Maybe I’m groping for answers when none exist.

Maybe I’m special in some ways, and just like everyone else in other ways. It reminds me of something a Recovery friend shared with me recently. He was feeling not a part of, that he was the most different of the different—even among those of us in the rooms who are already ‘different’. I told him that I won’t argue it with him, because it seems to me a valid perspective. I reminded him, though, that he is also the same of the same and told him that he can choose which he wants to focus on. And a popular Recovery slogan comes to mind:

Listen for the similarities, not the differences.

It’s up to us how we conduct ourselves in the world. We can choose to focus on how we are different, or we can choose to focus on how we are alike. They are both true, and often all at the same time. We get to choose how we look at it. Positive? Negative? Being a part of? Being separate than? And in this measure, within this choice, is where our true freedom lay.

“A Different Perspective”

At a recent book study meeting, we went back to the beginning: the first step & tradition. Powerless. Unmanageable. Some good things were shared. A number of folks talked about their last days, the last time they got loaded, and the welcome they felt their first time in one of the rooms. I heard someone speak about how the traditions can be applied to your daily life every bit as much as the steps can, and that was a great thing to have shared.

For me, the first step stopped being about powerlessness over just my addiction a long time ago. What it’s like for me now, is I am powerless over everything I have no control over. This is one of the most basic aspects to those of us who deal with this disease: an inability to let go of the things we can’t control; the extreme difficulty we have sometimes in accepting the things we cannot change. Thanks to my Recovery, I have gained some skill in this area and continue to learn and grow and to let the Program shape my thinking. I understand now that it is my attempts to control the uncontrollable that creates unmanageability in my life.

Working my program, doing my steps, seeking the guidance of my sponsor, have all been powerful experiences in my life and have helped me to gain a new perspective and peace over things I never thought I would be able to. This gift continues to show up in sometimes unexpected ways. The tools of the program continue to work for me, and each time they do, I am filled with gratitude.

I’ve recently learned some pretty upsetting news. My job, which I had always thought of as safe and stable, might be in jeopardy. The announcement came not from within the company, but by reading about it in the local newspaper. It’s been hard, definitely, but not hard to deal with. All kinds of feelings have come up from this: anger and fear, to name a couple. Uncle Steve has discovered a new channel on his TV where management types are assaulted, have their homes broken into, etc., and I have been shaking my head at him just a little bit, understanding completely why he’s watching that show and at the same time grateful that all he’s doing is watching the TV.

Seeing myself deal with this news, though, has been an amazing illustration to me that the Program really does work. I can feel my feelings, accept what I’m going through, and know that—whatever happens—it will all be alright. Or, as one of my favorite Recovery authors, Melody Beattie, writes, “It’s okay now.” When I was new to sobriety, Just For Today was about not getting loaded. Now, Just For Today is a powerful tool that applies to my current situation: I don’t know the future; for today I have a job, and just for today I will do it as best I can.

I’m not positive how the old Zach would handle this situation, but I have some suspicions. I’m guessing he would at the very least be complaining about how upper management is always shitting on the employees lower down the ladder; he would probably be making lots of snide remarks; and I know he would definitely be figuring out all kinds of ways to get retribution, along with a healthy dose of whining about how life is so unfair.

My Recovery has given me an entirely new perspective. I might lose my job, true, but even if I do, it won’t be the end of the world. To make an understatement, times are tough. There are many people out of work right now. The city I live in has an official unemployment rate of 15%. Who knows how high the actual rate is. There is unemployment assistance. I have a loving family who could help me if the need arose. Worse comes to worse, I could move back in with my parents. No matter what happens, I won’t be homeless; I won’t starve. There are millions who are; there are millions that do.

It’s odd, actually. The thing that has bothered me the most (so far) is the people telling me that it will be alright. Granted, when we’re in a bad mood, that can be the last thing we want to hear. In the darkness, the world can seem like it’s coming to an end. For me, being told ‘everything will be fine’ smells like denial, a place I do my best not to go to. After all those years of suppressing and repressing my feelings, it’s a blessing now to be able to feel what I feel—good and bad. If I’m angry, I’m allowed to be angry. If I’m sad, I’m allowed to be sad. Thanks to the tools I’ve learned working my Recovery, I don’t have to stay stuck in those emotions. I call my other friends in the program and share with them about what I’m going through. I call my sponsor. I don’t keep things bottled up, I feel my emotions now and express them in healthy ways. I remember that this, too, shall pass.

And I remember that, no matter what, I don’t have to get loaded—ever. No. Matter. What.