Seven Years

Seven years ago today, I was broken. I was neither willing nor able to think about conquering anything. I was unwilling to face myself, the man I had become and the life I had thrown together for myself.

I was ashamed.

I was beaten and weak.

Seven years ago today I stopped drinking just so I could eat something. Seven years ago, I didn't know I was planting my flag - I was just trying to stop shaking.

I was in utter disbelief about my predicament. I couldn't lie my way out of it and there was no talking myself into feeling positive about my direction because I didn't have one. I knew something had to change but had not yet landed on what that should be. I wasn't ready to admit any wrongdoing and I wasn't willing to accept that I was the root of my problems.

I wasn't taking a stand. I was cowering beneath the weight of my situation,

I wasn't righting the ship. My ship had no rudder, no sails and no anchor.

I wasn't walking the path. I was just trying to make it - anywhere that wasn't there, where I really was.

I wasn't empowered. I was powerless. Over alcohol. Over drugs. Over my self-pity and my self-loathing.

Before I could gain a sense of self-worth I had to let go of who I had been; that version of myself was no longer who I wanted to be. I had been driven by fear, guilt, shame and dissatisfaction. Dis-ease. Along the way, something began to change. Something clicked and I knew I had found something worth keeping and a version of myself worth being. It was a gradual shift and sometimes that pace was excruciating, but at least I was moving forward.

The man I am today is the sum total of my experiences and I wouldn't change any of them. I am worthy of happiness, love and peace. I've found that in my weakness, I've gained strength and in my pain I have found healing. In the discord I've found harmony and the dissonance has shown me resonance. This journey hasn't been easy and I have no expectation that it will become so. It has, however, been worth every second.

My story - the good, the bad and the ugly - isn't so much a weapon that I brandish as a drink of water that I can offer a weary traveler. My pain showed me my purpose. My struggle is my gift to the world and the path forward is my gift to myself, my loved ones and my future.

Seven years later, I still only have today. Seven years later, every moment of every today is worth living to the fullest.

Perception? Reality.

As humans, there are very few things which are actually in our control. This doesn't mean that we are cursed to drift through life as mere victims of circumstance. On the contrary, we do control the one thing on Earth that can change our circumstances: our outlook. Our attitude and the resultant perception with which we view things is firmly within our control and doesn't exist outside of our mind.

We think how we choose to think, (with the exception of people operating with serious mental or emotional illness) which causes us to live life as we view it through the lens of our perception. This can be an amazing catalyst for good things and it can also be a stifling trap composed of limiting beliefs. With some obvious exceptions, we are often just as free as we choose to be.

For the addict this can also mean that as our perceptions shifts, we shift into different mental obsessions. For me, this often translates into obsessively expecting the very worst to happen in a given situation - my default is to expect that and if I am not careful I will rapidly make myself and everyone around me miserable as a result. I almost without fail choose to immediately view myself in the worst possible light and as the lowest common denominator that ties together my reality. I then have to make the conscious choice to shift out of this perception of myself into the truth, which is that I am complete- worthy of good things and capable of being a light in this world. There is beauty within me that I can accept when I choose to witness it.

My perception is the color of the lens through which I choose to view the world. If I choose, I will see darkness, hatred, indifference and a place not worthy of redeeming. I can choose to see a million fake Facebook & Twitter crusaders who take no real action elsewhere and a billion more live bodies whose actions only perpetuate the horrors of hatred, ignorance and violence. The sad truth is that I often do only see the world this way and with this view comes soul-crushing hopelessness. There isn't much I can understand and almost nothing I can bring myself to love.

I can also choose to see the world for what it can be if people can become enlightened to the beauty and the power within themselves. I can choose to see the wonderfully generous spirits taking unnoticed actions every day to bring love to their fellows. I can see the world and all the souls within it as possessing brilliant and beautiful light and radiating it to all those who are willing to embrace it. I can see a world worth believing in and a world that is worthy of being loved. I can choose to see the best (or the worst) parts of myself in the world around me. I find that my reality is most often a reflection of my self-perception; if I can change the way in which I see myself, I can change the way I perceive the world around me.

Your perception is yours. How will you choose to shape it, and consequently shape your world, today? 

Why Not Now?

Change comes in life irrespective of your levels of preparation or desire for it - a matter of "when," not "if." It is often scary, typically difficult and frequently represents a serious mental mountain to be climbed. It is natural to make more of it than it actually is and it can be an even bigger misstep to underestimate the totality of it.

The inevitability of change also represents your typical lack of control over it, as most folks find comfort in routine and the familiar spaces of consciousness. That it will happen cannot be denied, but the way in which we respond to it is a reflection of our resilience and strength of spirit.

At times, it happens when you seek it. I submit to you that it nearly always happens when you need it, although you can't typically see that when it has arrived unexpectedly. That kind of change is a call to action and an undeniable motivator.

Self-authored change is the focus of this post, entitled with a question that's worth asking frequently:

Why Not Now?

That question is perhaps best accompanied by a series of follow-ups including (but not limited to) the following: How might it serve you to wait? How might it serve you to proceed as soon as possible? What will it cost, and what might you gain? Why have you waited? Why would you move forward with the change? And, the bottom line: Is the pain of changing greater than the pain you'll experience by staying the same?

Too often in this life, we wait to act until circumstances force our hand when we could author our own change if we're willing to see in an honest way how life is unfolding all around us.

For the addict, it seems that everyone around us can see our lives crumbling (sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly) yet we refuse to admit that truth until destruction is imminent or has arrived to visit its wrath upon us. We have to suffer the consequences before we can admit to ourselves that something's gotta give.

What if, by honesty, open-mindedness, willingness and courage we could set our own rock bottom? I believe wholeheartedly that we can do just that, as long as we are willing to humble ourselves enough to admit that our way isn't working - as addicts, our own best plans most often aren't in our best interests. Why test the limits of our resolve unnecessarily when in this case it is a life-or-death proposition?

I freely admit that it's pretty easy to look back from this side of the bottle and think of how obvious it was that for me, something had to change. It wasn't so clear at the time and some other things that happened prior to what is thus far the climactic event in my drinking and drugging could've or perhaps should've been the thing that catalyzed my sobriety. All that to say that what could be your bottom if you chose it won't really present itself as such in the moment. The insanity of the disease of addiction will speak as an internal voice saying that it isn't that bad and that you're still in control.

The final truth is that it will get just as bad as you're willing to allow. It will lower you into places you don't want to imagine and your descent won't stop until you take a stand or die. This disease only plays out in a few ways- you either change or you end. You either find and utilize the cure or it consumes you and you perish. Make the choice. 

Dad

The truth is that I miss you Dad.

For as long as I am alive I will miss you. I don't think of you every day anymore, but I do think of you often. When one of my many "days" rolls around I remember that you aren't here to commemorate it and in fact, you have been one of my "days" for fourteen years now.

There's so much you haven't been here for and seven years from today you will have been gone from my life for as long as your earthly body was in it. I have so many memories with you, but as the years have passed I have experienced more without you and for a few of those years I hated you for it. I said goodbye to you only months after my 21st birthday and only a year after I'd almost died in my wreck. Things had only begun scratching the surface of normalcy for me when you got sick, and you were dead a few weeks later.

It hurts. The part of my heart where you are aches from all the ways I've missed you and from all the things we've missed out on. You didn't see me (finally) finish college. You weren't able to rejoice with your daughter the day she married the love of her life. You weren't there when I hit my bottom and decided that I had to pick myself up from it. You weren't there for my fight in Louisville. You weren't sitting beside me the first time I got to go to a Vikings game in Minnesota. You never met Erica. We can't talk about how different life is for me today and you won't meet the children we hope to someday have.

There are some things I am glad you weren't here to witness, such as my arrest and subsequent 5 day stay in the county jail or the behaviors that led me to being fired from three jobs in the span of 6 years. You weren't around either time I had to move back into your house to find shelter from the messes I'd made. You didn't have to live through the loss of your Mary Sunshine and for that I am grateful.

I'll always treasure the time we had together and I hope someday I can fully reconcile all the time we've spent apart. Until then you are always with me in my heart.

I miss you, Dad.

Irritable? Restless? Discontented?

There are some dangerous mental places for an addict to be: extremes of anger, sadness, happiness and guilt are but few of the many. For this addict in particular, normalcy and routine can lead to some pretty bad ways of thinking.

When life feels too normal, too stable or predictable my mind starts crawling like lava over rocks with an intense, seething itchiness. I become very irritable, restless and am discontented and it is not a healthy place for my mind to be. Thankfully my thoughts only like to take vacations in those places rather than more permanent residence. This is a result of my experiences in recovery and the self-awareness that those times have cultivated in me. I know what it feels like, so I am able to pick up on it and take actions to remedy the situation.

The tough part is that the part of my brain that craves chaos and reckless instability defaults to goading me into taking extreme measures in response to these feeling of bored, boiling angst. I want to not just take action, but take the most reckless action possible to really stir things up and make life interesting.

My urge to do something so alarmingly foolish has fortunately been checked so far by the other, louder part of my brain that screams "DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING!" That's not to say that it always will be shouted down in this way. There is a nearly ever-present longing for doing the wrong thing; it's as though the part of me that loves a challenge wants self-sabotage so blatant to occur so I have the chance to show the word how else I can come back from the brink of ruin or death's doorstep.

It's certainly much more of a cry for attention and/or recognition than a cry for help. I don't know that help is what I need as much as saving from myself. In times when this pattern of thinking has taken hold, it is most crucial to get outside of myself and talk with someone who can understand what I'm thinking. That can only be another addict. To the non-addicted it seems to be no more than impulsive insanity, while to the addict it is just another truth spoken in our language.

Oftentimes when I'm mentally ill-at-ease, something more consistent and deep is happening and I've glossed over it. A more long-term feeling of dissatisfaction or hurt I've buried bubbles to the surface in the form of this grimy, oozing discontent. Times like these call for a pause to reflect for self-examination. I've got to get to the root of what's happening before I go so far as to decide to take a drink or pick something up.

I haven't gotten that far but have been much closer than anyone reading this will realize. Sometimes the only thing keeping me from saying "screw it all" is the knowledge of how many people I'd be letting down if I did. Consider it a sort of socially pressurized control, and know that I'm okay with it if that's the only thing standing between me and a drink or drug in the heat of the moment. I can't reside there too long, but I'll stay sober by any means necessary in the short-term.

Fear

As I've previously expressed in this space, basically any post I make refers to a topic with which I am particularly struggling at the time. This is no different, but has a special kind of relevance for me today.

Fear is not a thing I often give myself permission to feel.

Pain, hurt, anger, joy, rage, love, gratitude? Sure- often each of those comes into play more than once in the course of my day.

But fear? Not so much. Even if I feel it, it's usually immediately translated into something else (most often anger) or dealt with and eliminated swiftly. I don't often acknowledge it in my own mind when I do feel it, much less let anyone know about my experience.

Today is different. Now I know that when I acknowledge, uncover and tell my world  about something, I am empowered to confront it in a healthy way. Lately I have been experiencing fear in a way I haven't in many years.

My father died of a rare and incurable lung disease when I was 21 and he was a month shy of 56. In hindsight it was easy to see how long he'd probably been sick but in the moment we just knew something wasn't totally right, but figured nothing was terribly wrong either. We knew he wasn't quite himself and that his health seemed to be different, but didn't know that he was dying. We took him to the hospital in late July or early August with what we thought was pneumonia for the second time in six months or so. It took the about three weeks and two hospitals to diagnose the true problem and the news was grim: he had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and that wasn't curable with anything short of a lung transplant. They figured it out just in time to tell us they couldn't do anything to stop it or treat it and he died a bit less than a week later.

I have been dealing with my own health issues, and while they aren't related to my lungs they are unable to be completely and accurately diagnosed right now. I was told in December that I am anemic (at times severely so) and they aren't certain if it is due entirely to internal blood loss (although that is happening) or intestinal issues causing my body to be unable to properly absorb nutrients (probably part of it, and also due in no small part to my years of alcoholic drinking and drug use) or that my blood is in and of itself just iron deficient (also actually happening to some degree as well) OR ALL OF THE ABOVE, or maybe some of the above with other, different factors at play.

I am frightened because my quality of life has somewhat diminished (although not disappeared by any stretch of the imagination) and there are no solid answers, resulting in no distinct plan of action regarding treatment. I am frightened because my addict brain is telling me that it has to be the worst possible scenario and that I am going to turn out like my dad.

As stated in an earlier paragraph, when I experience fear it turns very quickly to anger and often that escalates almost immediately into rage. I have spent a lot of time being very angry lately, and this to me was the sign that something else was actually going on- these days I am not an angry person, so I knew it had to be a reaction to something more. Upon some honest soul-searching and inventorying, I uncovered the truth of the matter: I am being barraged by fear and it may not be entirely unjustified. I refuse to cower in front of this and I will not become paralyzed by it, but acknowledging it helps me greatly- it's the first step towards overcoming it. I recognize it in myself and now you can take me at my word that I am dealing with it rather than stuffing it away, as is my default.

I can only do this one day at a time (like everything else) and I ask for you to show me the patience I am so often incapable of showing myself.

This is my truth, and now that it has been expressed it is a thing that I can overcome. For me, it cannot be dealt with while it is hidden inside of me. Now that it is in the light, I can confront it, conquer it and not be ruled by it.

Of Course It Doesn't Make Sense

When I was in college, I saw a shirt for a fraternity or sorority that said "From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. From the inside looking our, you can't explain it." This is a pretty effective way to both pique curiosity and project exclusivity. It's also a fairly apt description for many things in this life that hold mystery to those who aren't members of a particular group, and non-addicts looking at addiction from the other side of the proverbial glass are no exception.

For most normal folks, the concept of never being satisfied is something to which you aspire. This way of being can propel you much further than the alternative in most all of your endeavors. Never being satisfied is the double-edged sword held to the throat of the addict. We can't be satisfied - one is too many and a thousand is never enough, remember? For us, that unsolvable problem has potentially deadly consequences. We chase the unmet satisfaction even as the chase is killing us.

By definition, alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol. An addiction is characterized by a lack of control - the compulsion is so strong that when active, it is outside of a person's capability to resist. In active addiction, you have no control of and no power over this compulsion to act directly against your own physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. You cannot stop it and you cannot hope to contain it. If you have any true grip on your action related to an unhealthy substance or activity, you may be in the early stages of addiction and have the opportunity to deal with it before the issue takes over.

There are plenty of behaviors in or characteristics of addiction that don't make sense.

- Why can't you just stop? If I could stop I would, buddy.
- Are things really so bad in your life that you have to drink yourself straight into oblivion? I'm an alcoholic- they don't have to be. Good, bad or indifferent I feel the urge to drink until I don't know my own name.
- Aren't you afraid of the consequences? Nope. Not as afraid as I am of being sober, anyway.
- Don't you love yourself enough to want better for yourself? Nope. The capacity for loving oneself is reserved for someone who isn't such a screwup/loser/idiot/disappointment.
 - That seems like a good enough reason to have a drink, so why not? Fact is, I don't need a reason; I'm an alcoholic.

You see, I don't have control after the first whatever- drink, drug or other vice. Without consistent effort I have no defense against the first whatever, either. In and of my own capabilities, I may be able to make it stop for a bit, but I can't keep it that way. I know this because I tried more than once without success. If I could do it on my own, I would've done it on my own a long time ago and saved myself the embarrassment.

If I am able to continue to do the right thing and ask for help when I need it, I've been granted a measure of power back. I have to bear in mind that the price of that power and freedom is eternal vigilance, to coin a paraphrase.

If that doesn't make sense, maybe it doesn't have to. It just has to work for me, for today.

Rock Solid?

The kind of guy you can set your watch by. Rain, sleet, snow or hail, he's there.

One trait that has become important to me in sobriety is that of being dependable; I was difficult-to-impossible to count on consistently in my active addiction and I feel the need to offset that now as often as I am able. It feeds my soul to be a man upon whom your can count to be there and to get the job done. I may not be on time (frankly, I'm often late) but you'd have to cut my head off before I would no-show, and even then I'd probably show up with my head tucked under my arm like a football, ready to rock and roll.

This dependability is a great thing on many levels, except when it is coupled with my tendency to never say no to helping. It's a fact that I feel indebted to this world for my years of acting like a donkey, and I've programmed myself to take advantage of every single opportunity to use my experience to try and benefit others. I over-commit, dance my dance and at times wind up feeling a bit worn thin and unappreciated. Let's face it: I'm pretty much an all or nothing guy, which is owed to the central condition of my addictive nature.

I am of the high-output, high burnout sort; I give and go and give some more and at times wind up bitter and battered before I decide to de-commit and withdraw. I am often driven by a fear as old as I am: that of not leaving a significant enough mark on the world to be remembered, much less worth remembering. This fear was only magnified during those time when I realized just how mortal I was- my wreck, my dad dying young and just by paying attention to the goings-on in the world around me. I have one chance to be significant and one opportunity to leave my mark in a way that matters, and I will often drive forward towards that at the expense of my health, relationships and happiness.

What I seek now is the middle ground, because I can't continue to pour out so much of myself while being poured into by others so little. It isn't possible to sustain. I get sick and tired of being sick and tired, much in the same way I was by the end of my drinking and using days. I must admit there's a high I get from feeling needed, but the comedown is pretty unforgiving. I love to feel useful, but hate feeling used and those unfortunately go hand-in-hand far too often.

In truth, there's a powerful tendency in my mind towards self-destruction. It's SO TEMPTING to just start blowing stuff off and being irresponsible just to shake things up. My status quo has become being Johnny on the Spot, and my mind rages against status quo and routine because I get bored and grow restless. My mind has started crawling with a boiling sort of itchiness, so I want to screw it all up to make things interesting. Think of it as that part of my identity wanting to commit suicide so the rest of my identity can re-invent itself again. I'm restless, irritable and discontent- hallmarks of the addict alcoholic - so I desperately want to do something destructive and insane to turn it all on its' head.

I am saying "no" to far too many valuable things most every time I say "yes" to something without weighing the cost. I owe it to myself, my sobriety and semi-sanity, my wife, our marriage and happiness to consider things in a different way than I have. Something has to change for me, and it has to change inn a way that doesn't just nuke all the progress I've made in just over 6 1/2 years of sobriety.

Challenge accepted.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

If nothing changes, nothing changes. Simple, practical truth.

In addiction recovery, it is often strongly recommended that you change your "playmates, playgrounds and playthings," which is a reference to changing the places where and people with whom you spend time on a regular basis. This is a sound strategy, because you obviously cannot keep doing the same things the same way with the same folks and expect anything to be different. That's not to say that you have to totally turn your back on everyone from your past, but you do have to be mindful of both how and how often you are spending time with people with whom you used to "run around."

External influences can also be triggers; people, places, circumstances and experiences can all cause the proverbial switch to flip, and then that old familiar craving kicks in and you find yourself with only a few options for how to proceed. The more you can recognize those things and minimize their occurrence, the better your chances of avoiding a confrontation with your darker impulses.

The rub is that no matter where you go or who you are with, it is still "you" that you're ultimately having to deal with and keep in check. Your thought, words and actions are your responsibility and you are accountable for them. You are the constant in every situation in your life; with this in mind, you have to be willing to look to yourself first if things aren't going the way you think they should.

You also are the first (and last) line of defense against your own unhealthy thinking and have to be both self-aware and ready to self-correct. You have to be even more vigilant in this pursuit than you are in the effort to stay out of potentially difficult circumstances, because the key to surviving those circumstances clean and sober is right between your ears.

If you have yourself in the right mental and spiritual condition, you don't have to fear going into places or being around people that made your heart skip a beat in the early days of your recovery. If you don't, you must realize there's no place that is safe enough to save you from yourself. Your first responsibility is to yourself and your sobriety and you must act accordingly every time you're able.

Taking Inventory

It is a valuable thing in this life to be willing to consistently take a look at oneself in the mirror and honestly, earnestly evaluate where the person looking back at you stands.  It is both a difficult and worthwhile exercise and one that we far too often do not undertake. We get busy and things are going well and everyone loves us so why mess with a good thing, right?

For an addict, this regular self-evaluation is a necessary component of a healthy recovery. It is often gritty and grimy and difficult; it requires rigorous honesty and a dedication to seeing our own roles in any situation, especially when we feel we have been gravely wronged and couldn't have possibly been a contributor to the negativity. It's much easier to blame and get upset at others for perceived injustices and allow that to turn into a resentment. That resentment will simmer, fester and boil until it spills over and we are left to clean up the mess- 99 times out of 100 the "cause" (I use that term loosely, because we are almost always the cause of our resentments because we don't address the issue immediately) has moved on so far and fast that the aftereffects couldn't be further from their minds because they aren't aware of our wound in the first place.

It is comparatively more natural to look at ourselves when things aren't going well, when others have seemingly abandoned us and success feels out of our reach. It is often these times which bring us back to our roots and compel us down a path of right thinking and acting, but one has to question whether or not these trials could've been avoided by simply being more diligent about checking in with ourselves. Had we established a routine of regular, honest self-evaluation, it is reasonable to think that we very well may have been able to head many of these situations off at the pass.

I can say from my own experience that the period of time when I finally made the decision to get a sponsor and work the steps brought about the most freeing thing I have experienced in recovery: the opportunity to sit down with my personal inventory and go over it with said sponsor. It was as though a ten-ton weight had been taken from my head and I felt as joyous and alive as I ever had. It felt like my slate had truly been set back to zero and that I was free to truly move forward unencumbered.

It would be reasonable to ask, then, if that experience had such a profoundly positive effect on me, why I am not more enthusiastic about having a smaller version on a regular basis by taking my own inventory frequently? There are answers to be sure, but nothing that rightly justifies my lack of diligence. It is too easy to let things of this nature slip when life has me running and gunning, and it is not the least painful process through which a person might go. There is reward on the other side of the discomfort and of that I am certainly aware.

What keeps you from looking honestly at yourself? What would you gain by doing it more often? How would your perspective change if it was more often influenced by honest self-evaluation and reflection?

Courage

All credit due to Brene Brown for inspiring this post. If you’ve not read any of her work on guilt, shame, fear and courage you should consider doing exactly that. The insight she offers may just set you free in a new and beautiful way.

In my younger days, I might have defined courage as more of a physical expression of a person’s lack of fear, like being willing to do something reckless in spite of danger. Now that I have a bit more living under my belt I know that real courage is typically something very different; I believe that true courage comes in many forms and most of the time has nothing to do with anyone’s willingness to do something foolish without regard to the consequences (although it could at times be part of the equation). Courage and vulnerability are strange-but-true bedfellows. What greater courage than to step forward at your most vulnerable? You know the risk, yet step forward anyway.

In the life of an addict, we are at our most courageous when we allow our true selves to emerge in all of their vulnerability and we are at our strongest as we own our weakness. We gain courage by reaching our bottom and deciding that enough is enough. Reaching bottom is not a requirement for sobriety necessarily, but for a great many of the worst cases that’s what it takes for us to decide to change.

At no time in the life of an addict is he or she more vulnerable than at his or her lowest point, after all the things it took to get us there have forced our surrender.  It takes courage to make the decision to say “ENOUGH,” as well as to follow through with all the changes that must occur afterwards. We must not only retool our way of thinking, we must begin taking steps to rebuild our life in a way that will enable us to stay clean and sober- learn a whole new way of life.

Courage is facing ourselves at our worst without giving up on the man or woman in the mirror. Being at our worst isn't necessarily a statement about our physical condition as much as it is our mental, emotional and spiritual state. Courage is continuing to fight that battle after we've been hardest hit - smacked by guilt, shame and remorse over our choices. Courage is indeed getting up when you've been knocked down, but addicts have to take it a few steps further and acknowledge that we're the ones who knocked us off our feet- our choices and behaviors got us here. Courage to face self when self is the problem- that's something with which addict and non-addicts alike struggle daily.

Do you or I have the courage to face ourselves, our greatest fears, worries and insecurities? Maybe not at all or maybe not today, but when we know we are not alone it can help to bridge that gap. We are all in this fight, and just like with the rest of life, we are all in this together. Take heart, take courage and take aim at your opportunities.