Right and Wrong?

As many have written and talked about previously, life can be looked at as a series of choices. The right and wrong choice is sometimes clear and sometimes muddled, and often we have not only right and wrong to weigh but other varying degrees of more-or-less-right and more-or-less-wrong choices in the middle to ponder. I’d like to explore a bit about the right to make your own choice and live your own values and the duty to respect that right in others. This is especially applicable in recovery and sobriety because as a recovering addict I cannot afford to often be caught in the trap of taking another’s inventory or trying to impose my own values on anyone else.

There do exist scenarios in this life where right and wrong are clear-cut and indisputable, but they are few and far between. Theft? Rape? Abuse? Murder? In a traditional sense these crimes against other humans are not defensible, but in our society the line has become so blurred even in all of those cases that there no longer exists an absolute and concrete idea of any of them, it seems. If we are fortunate, in the course of a typical human life we won’t be directly faced with these situations often if at all.  

Bigotry and hatred? That's a bit of a different story. If I am wrong it is only due to ignorance, but I am not aware that any belief structure or group ideology that enables or encourages this type of thought and action belongs to any group that is worthy of any respect or subscription. That is to say that no one, right, left or in the middle (with most of us) has the right to perpetrate hatred upon his or her fellow humans. The basic human right to live free from bigotry, persecution and the spiritual sickness of hatred is the fabric that makes up this post. 

Our struggles exist between the extremes in the day-to-day living with our fellow humans. We bicker, judge and pontificate from our side of the fence and spend more time obsessed with why “the other guy” is wrong than we do with our own right living. We obsess over our witty, "quippy" online image more than we attend to our daily interactions with other humans in the physical world. After all, if I can one-up the other side with my fanatical re-posting of social commentaries, then I’ll eventually bombard them into conversion, RIGHT?!

We all basically feel that we are right in our beliefs and (at least some of the time) in our actions; since wrong is the opposite or right, anyone who doesn’t agree with us has to be wrong, we surmise, and that is as far as many of us ever get. But what if I was to tell you that what is right for me might not be right for you (and vise-versa) but that doesn’t make me (or you) wrong (or right)? My truth is mine, yours is yours and they can both be right for us and not right for each other.

If your truth doesn’t harm me, then how does it hurt me to let you live it without trying to convince you with endless barrages of words (written, spoken, sung, re-posted, Tweeted or texted) to change? In truth, my actions are the only voice you should ever hear. If my actions convey to you that I live a life of fulfillment and happiness and you are interested in how or why, I’d be happy to share that with you. If not, I’d be happy to just be happy and let you do your thing.

Now, this isn’t to say that everyone is right and no one is wrong; this is to say that you and I are not in a position to impose our personal values and beliefs on others in the form of judgement. Understand that this judgement comes from all sides, although society is most quick to point out the judgement of the religious due to centuries of feeling beaten down by extra-doctrinal and controlling dogma. It would be inaccurate to say that even the irreligious don’t have their own brand of belief and can be just as caught up in pointing out how wrong and unintelligent they think the religious types are as those religious types can be in condemning them to an eternity in Hades.

It would seem that social commentary today doesn’t inspire thought and change so much as rage and separation. If we all become too busy being on a side to just love each other, before too long we will all only be on our own “side” and life will be wasted in joyless isolation. For the addict, this isolation will quickly lead to misery and death.

Right or wrong, we are all in this together. Step away from your computer, your pulpit or podium and be too busy living rightly and loving fully to obsess about how wrong everyone else is. What might you do if in the course of the day you somehow find yourself to be wrong in a situation (you will)? Promptly admit it and get right. Then, do the right thing the next time you get a chance.

Simple. Peaceful. Right. Together.

Who Wants to be Normal?

Normal

Adjective

Conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural.

Normal. What does that even mean in practical terms? What would it mean to be a normal person? Is a normal person mostly happy? Do normal people make good citizens? Does a normal person hold a steady job, pay bills on time and enjoy the occasional movie? Have a normal life? Live by normal means in a normal world, with normal struggles and normal triumphs to which they react in a normal fashion?

To answer my very first question, me. Sometimes.

Some days it pains and angers me without end to know that I’m just not normal. To be honest I don’t really know what normal is (or even if normal really is even normal) but I know that, if even only for one day, I would like to be it.

You see, to an alcoholic addict normal means someone who can drink like a normal person. A normal person can have a drink or two and not have it soon take over their life. He or she can basically take it or leave it without a second thought. This person can drink without losing jobs, homes or families and can drink without ending up on a booking log. He or she can drink without alienating friends and loved ones and without ever even considering the morning drink.

I can’t in truth do any of these things. I can’t ever have a drink or a drug again without convicting myself once more to a living death. I can’t ever use any mood altering substance of abuse without it eventually ending in my untimely death. I can’t even make it through a single day without having a thought the nature of which will cause me to wonder what in the world is wrong with me.

I remember too that I never wanted to be normal. I never wanted to be typical or walk down the middle of the straight and narrow path.  As a young man I didn't often use the word “average” without prefacing it with the modifier “pathetically,” although this was most often to flash the hubris that eventually would help me to be humiliated into humility.

Sometimes I curse my own existence and wonder why it has to be exactly as it is; I then remember that it is exactly as it must be for me to be alive and to contribute to this world in a meaningful way. My life has been abnormal to an unbearable level at times but I wouldn't trade it for another. If I’d lived a normal life right up until this very moment I would have no real story to tell and I don’t know that I would have any real love to give. I may not have any true compassion and I’d probably not be as passionate about the things in which I believe. Loyalty wouldn't be so important and I would never feel driven by having something to prove. I simply wouldn't be me and there would not be as much of myself to give.

Normal? Upon further review, I’ll stay out in the ether and on the fringes. Maybe I will see you there. 

The Weight

Acceptance is the key.

Those in the rooms of recovery who are making a genuine attempt at sobriety oftentimes live by this mantra, and everyone who has entered one of those rooms has heard it. It is part of our new way of thinking and it is a cornerstone of that new and mentally health mindset. It is one of those statements whose meaning you begin to grasp when you look for the way to live “normally” and try to deal with life’s issues in a constructive way. For me it has meant peace and balance in the worst of times and an anchor in the rest.

A philosophy of acceptance can lead you many good places, but acceptance without due time and attention to processing and grief can provide only a temporary respite from the storm. By itself it can keep you sober, but if that is as far as you get you might be setting yourself up for relapse when the unresolved junk bubbles back up to the surface. It is the first step but truthfully should not be the only one taken, much like stopping the drinking, using or acting out behaviors is the required beginning of your walk down the path of sobriety but that alone is simply not enough.

Acceptance with no follow-up can be a temporary victory. As many of those in my life are aware, I've seen my share of difficulty both in and outside of the context of addiction or recovery. I have dealt with tragic loss and my own physical and mental limitations. It is only very recently that I came to realize that I had a great deal of anger and hurt that was seemingly lying dormant inside; these negative emotions popped back up in full force because I’d not allowed myself the space to work through feelings and emotions that resulted from some difficult circumstances.

That energy doesn't just go away. You have to respect your own need to think, feel and process in order to work through the difficulties and trials you will inevitably face.

A few days ago I heard something profoundly powerful in a twelve step meeting: sometimes you just have to sit and hurt. In dealing with the roller coaster of beginning a new career and learning of my sister’s death within an hour of each other, I haven’t ever really just allowed myself to sit and hurt because I am deathly afraid of getting stuck there. As with most things, I see it as very all-or-nothing and struggle to find moderation. I didn't really acknowledge my own feelings and by extension didn't really deal with them.

In this sense I have not progressed that much from my days as a raging alcoholic and ravenous drug abuser who was running from the pain of losing my father barely more than a year after I myself nearly died - I have still been avoiding my feelings and emotions rather than dealing with them.

Progress, not perfection.

This is another mantra of sobriety, and it may just be the one that gets me through today.

Panic

Many of the readers of this blog know that it's as much a valuable part of my recovery as it can be for anyone else's. I utilize my posts to help me process through sobriety’s challenges or insights shared in rooms of recovery. I like to be vulnerable in my posts in order to feel liberated from some struggles and to also hopefully help someone feel as though they are not alone. The theme of this post is a bit different than my usual but no less important and maybe even more applicable to those who aren't in some phase of addiction.

Several months ago I experienced something that left me pretty confused and more than a little alarmed. Driving one morning on my way to Nashville to work out of the office I began having difficulty breathing and my heart began racing. I started to feel myself about to black out. In and of themselves, these symptoms are cause for concern; I also happened to be going 70+ miles an hour down the interstate.

I pulled over on the shoulder and breathed deeply until I felt myself calming down and beginning to feel normal. Naturally it scared me, but not knowing exactly what had happened or what had caused it I didn't really seek help or tell may people. I truly wondered if I’d had a heart attack or a stroke. This was a powerful incident that I hoped would never repeat itself, but my addict instinct took over and I figured that if I ignored it, it would go away.

A few Saturdays ago I ventured out into the pouring rain and thawing icy snow-slush to head to Nashville for a commitment I had made earlier in the week. I got up early for my 9:30 appointment and waited until about 8 to leave so that the rain might melt as much of the snow and ice as possible. On my way on I-24, I hit several spots of standing water and my vehicle hydroplaned a bit.

I felt myself slipping into another one of those crazy “episodes” and this time the panic nearly won out as due to the snow and ice there was no place to pull over. I drove about twenty miles in some stage of this whatever-the-heck and pulled into a gas station parking lot just on the outskirts of downtown Nashville. I sat in my car for ten minutes or so just trying to collect myself; I then pulled into a parking spot, went inside the bathroom and threw up. Twice.

I proceeded (with caution) to my commitment and fulfilled my obligations. On the way home, the weirdness started to happen again so I stopped at a gas station, grabbed some food and water and sat until thought I might be ready to drive without risking my brain flipping out and it causing me to wreck. I managed to make it home and was in no rush to leave my house for the next few hours. Or days. Or maybe even a week.

Upon doing a bit of research I figured out that I had been having panic attacks; truth be told upon making this discovery I almost wished it had been a heart attack. I saw panic attack and immediately thought: “But, I don’t panic about stuff. I don’t freak out and I don’t really even allow myself to feel afraid often. What the hell? Does this mean I’m really a fake? Does this mean I've turned into a sissy? Who have I become?”

I questioned many things about myself before I allowed it to sink in that this was a reaction over which I had zero control. I remembered that some years ago after my (horrible, awful, no good very bad) wreck I was diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress and that it was something that could maybe pop back up sometime.

I sought out a bit of additional support in the form of therapeutic treatment - it goes without saying that medication is not an option that as a recovering addict I will readily take (if there is no other choice I will at least give it some more thought before I say no) but therapy is something in which I believe and I know that it works for many people. I am in the very beginning stages of wading through the layers of what may be going on, but I feel good about our direction and the topics we are addressing.

Believe me when I say that our first hour-long session brought up more than one topic that could be the basis of a future post, but for now I will keep them where they are and continue the work in front of me.

Friendship

The path of friendship can be especially winding for an addict and at times morseo once in recovery. You see, we are told quite often that we have to change our “playmates, playgrounds and playthings,” meaning we must not simply return to life as normal while attempting to no longer drink, drug or act out. We must change our way of life along with our way of thinking and neither task is either easy or painless.

If our drug of choice is alcohol, we pretty obviously cannot regularly go hang out in bars and you typically find pretty quickly that the “friends” who accompanied your “good times” aren’t too interested in watching movies or going for a run. They may or may not have the same drinking problem you do, but your change in lifestyle requires the same of no one else. Some folks will stay and many folks will drift out of your life; they leave with no malice but they probably feel that they don’t really have much in common with you any longer.  

The parallels with any other manifested addiction are obvious – many of the people who partook with you probably won’t want to hang out with you after that partaking is out of the picture, and that is fine. It is their choice and there is little that can be done about it shy of using or acting out again, and then their reborn loyalty will not be enough to shield you from the inevitability of consequences.

You begin to make new friends who are both fellow recovering addicts and “normals.” It is a unique day indeed when you realize that you have an entire segment of friends that have never known you as an active addict. It can also be scary - those folks have only a limited appreciation of how far you have come and can often laugh off your “war stories” as hilarious hijinks more of a comedic nature than the blood and bone desperate sickness that it truly belies.

It can be hard to be close to many people. It is difficult to begin a new life as an adult and make a whole new set of friends. The beautiful thing about this new life is that we are no longer strictly self-seekers whose selfishness smothers our every good impulse. Much like in most of our sober undertakings, an addict makes a heckuva great and loyal friend. It is in our new nature to be of service, humbly grateful and to be rigorously honest.

It is an amazing gift for new people to be willing to become our friends in spite of our past. The gracious warmth of understanding, unconditional friendship is almost overwhelmingly good. It is humbling and means an untold amount to us. Most days I still cannot fathom what so many of my newest old friends see in me but they are truly among my life's greatest blessings. While they may not have known me as the self-destructive force of yesteryear, they might in fact know me as my truest self. I am not a lying, manipulating ball of self-loathing falsity. I am genuinely who I am, and I'm pretty okay with that today.

For those who were able to weather the storm of our insanity and remain our true friends in our sobriety the payoff in gratitude is unable to be quantified. You stuck by our side when we least deserved it and you will never truly know what that means. You saw us walk through the fire and come out transformed on the other side of our awakening.  Your willingness to stick with us is probably one of the fundamental things that made this all doable.

Humankind was meant to live in community. The addict is not different and like most things for us the need is probably magnified. Thanks to all the old and the new friends for being willing to walk this winding path beside us. We never know where it may go, but the fact that we aren't alone makes all the difference.

I Can't Go Back

Everyone in recovery, from that newcomer who picks up their 24-hour chip at a local AA meeting to the seasoned “Old Timer” with 20+ years of clean time has their moments of craving. I’ll grant you that they become less frequent over time, but for the addict they never completely disappear. There will always be the memory of the fun and the escape and sometimes that memory is enough to drown out the screams of logic that remind you of the days after, the legal fees and the shabby employment record. 

When we lose track of the things that brought us to the breaking point we can lose sight of how much different things have become. We forget the day-to-day, minute-to-minute misery of the spiritual malady we sought to cure with the main thing making it worse.

If I told you today that I never had fun drinking and drugging I would be lying, and lying isn't in my MO any longer. I have memories of some very fun misadventures and hilarious stories for days. I have my moments today of considering just how much fun it could be to drink or use again; some days it’s as though I can taste the whiskey and cocaine and it actually makes my heart beat a bit faster. The smallest segment of my consciousness tries to tell me that I could do it again.

Then the weight of everything that comes with picking up and acting out comes crashing down upon me. I remember once more just how sick I was- I hated myself and most everyone else nearly every waking minute. I had a laundry list of failings and hurts that were all your fault and I complained about them to anyone who would even act like they were listing. I became a terribly negative person and I was truly spiritually dead. I didn't really live for the moment as much as I lived for the buzz. I was grateful for nothing and resentful of everything. Envy, anger and guilt were my closest friends and were with me every moment.

I was empty. I had fun but I had no happiness.  I had friends but I had zero self-worth. As much fun as I might convince myself another drink or drug may be, the cost of returning to that old way of thinking and living is far too much to pay. I had no hope. I had no purpose. I had no joy and felt no love that could compare with that which I feel today. When viewed through that honest lens, the choice makes itself.

I am blessed to be living the life I’d always imagined and I do what I must today to stay here. That involves not picking up or acting out as well as paying specific attention to my gratitude, spirituality and mental and physical health. I must be of service to my fellows and I must do the next right thing every time I get the chance. When I am wrong or do wrong, I must admit it and set it right as soon as possible. I must be sure that I am not the center of my own universe and I must love others even when they are unlovable. If I do all of those things today, I may just make it.

I must do all of those things because I simply can’t go back to the way things were. 

Death and the Addict

Addiction and death are by no means an odd coupling. For so many of us, our path to this end is accelerated by our all-consuming addictions. While not a great mystery that everyone at all times is moving towards our eternal home, the trip can be greatly accelerated by the physical, mental and emotional destruction of unchecked active addiction.

For many active addicts death is the peace we tirelessly seek and never find. Many an active addict has longed for death while lacking the wherewithal to make it happen; we've sought death without ever fully opening the door to welcome it ourselves. There is shelter and comfort somewhere if we can just leave this life behind, because anything has to be better than living like this. We don’t want things to stay the same but we feel that we lack the strength to change.

Wading through the pain of death in our immediate circle often brings the wish that it had been us instead. We beg, plead and cajole with whatever is out there listening for things to somehow be different, for us to somehow switch places with the loved one lost. It is SO CLOSE; that rest from the weariness of self-loathing and abuse for which we long. We are tortured by wishes to share fates with the departed. We get so lost in the “what ifs” and “whys” that we never take the time to accept and make peace with what is.

We then settle into a more determined pattern of self-destruction under the guise of getting over it. Our coping mechanism is in reality a determined avoidance behind the mask of whatever buzz we can create. We tell ourselves that if we don’t think about it, it won’t be able to hurt us. We bury our heads in the sand and do our best to maintain the façade of “dealing with it the best way we know how” which, of course is to not deal with it at all.

At some point the walls come down and we grieve and attempt to process through things; predictably the active addict becomes mired in the abyss of use and abuse and the recovering addict does what it takes to avoid this at all costs. The drugs, drinking and behaviors are our go-to hiding place; we don’t develop the effective means of dealing with adversity because we run to our coping mechanisms and away from what we feel.

As with most everything, the key for the addict is acceptance (not resignation). We must accept that things are exactly as they are and as our program tells us, they are exactly as they should be. We must accept that we might not know why and that we don’t have to in order to accept what has happened. We must accept that life must move forward and that death is simply a part of life, regardless of the timing.

Every time we become aware of the death of another we are touched by memories, and if we choose to allow it haunted by regrets. Every ounce of our reaction to any of life’s happenings is a choice. We always have a choice.