Don't Start

As an addict there are things that we aren’t equipped to stop doing once we have started. The first drink, snort, fried pie or video clip sends us down into an irreversible tailspin from which there is a very real threat of never recovering. The fact is that we don’t have to concern ourselves today with the 12th shot of whiskey or the last dust off the eightball because our primary issue is with the first ANYTHING. We’ll never reach a blackout if we don’t get started.

We have to realize that with anything we cannot stop, we must not start. The first is worse than the last because our last doesn’t exist without our first. The insanity of the first _____ is something that for years we couldn’t avoid, but now dodging it is the most necessary of all the things we do. We cannot reach the part of our recovery wherein we may repair our lives if we never fully stop the behavior. How can we hope to see the end of the tunnel otherwise?

How does one avoid the first ______ ? It starts with self-awareness. I know that my sobriety neither requires nor necessitate anyone elses’ and I don’t expect others to modify the way they live on my behalf- my sobriety is my responsibility and no one besides me can keep it or jeopardize it. I have to know when something doesn’t feel right and act accordingly.

At times it means “keeping gas in the car and air in your tires”- you have to know when a situation becomes one that you must leave immediately. Sobriety is the foundation for everything in the lives of recovering addicts and as such it must be carefully guarded.

For everyone in recovery the exact answer is different, but for many it involves speaking with or getting around our fellows. We must be so in-tune with our own thinking that we recognize when it is just time to pick up the phone or get our butts to a meeting or other recovery fellowship. You do what you must to get where you must be.

A relapse never sneaks up on anyone, although many or most don’t see it until they have the benefit of hindsight. When you aren’t “taking your medicine” you will get sick and it is your responsibility alone to be sure you do what you know you need to. There are certain elements that are absolutes when it comes to sobriety and while everyone has a different relapse prevention plan, it all will always involve avoiding “the first” by any means.

Towards or Away From?

For me, the decision to change my life and get sober was one made out of necessity; I knew I was going nowhere fast and I had to either make a drastic change or risk dying young after I’d shaped a legacy I couldn’t respect. I was honestly moving away from mediocrity more strongly than I was towards a new life. I was tired of the guilt and shame, perpetually underachieving and being the ultimate “If only he would” guy.

I was also scared to go backwards, because I had a strong feeling that I knew what was waiting for me if I did. In those earlier days that fear was at times all that kept me sober - if it comes down to it, I’ll gladly stay sober only out of fear today if that is all that stands between me and the next drink or drug. I’ll take it if that’s all I’ve got because it beats the heck out of the alternative.

On my best days I have transformed into a man who is moving towards the life of my dreams rather than running away from my living nightmare. I am drawn by hope and the promise of a life worth living rather than being repelled by remorse and the realization that if I go “back out” I may not live long enough to make it “back in.” I am convinced that I stand a 99% chance of not surviving a relapse if it ever happens, and today (thankfully every day so far) I can’t reconcile with that thought.

I have changed my way of viewing things in sobriety and the most noteworthy evidence of that is a shift in the way I view sobriety itself. It’s not about what I’m not doing any longer; sobriety is about who I am NOW. It’s where I’m going rather that where I’ve been, although my best shot at making this life keep working includes never forgetting where and why it changed.

The sober mind of an addict is hard at work trying to convince us that the bad times weren’t so bad and that the fun times made it all worth it. Wouldn’t it all be worth it again? Perhaps it would, if only I hadn’t realized that the fun was temporary and not genuine; I was looking at an illusion through the lens of a bender. I felt good only because of the chemicals in my body, and today I choose to feel happy because of something more lasting.

Fear is a powerful motivator and can often drive positive change. I consider fear to be a negative emotion and as such it isn’t really something that I choose to acknowledge often in my life these days. I certainly do have things that I fear but I don’t dwell in that space. I prefer to be motivated by the fulfillment I seek as opposed to being driven by fear I seek to escape.

Is fear motivating you into moving away from something today? I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, although I believe that it ceases to be positive if that becomes your normal. I would encourage anything to find something good to move towards as a replacement. For me it means a happier and better life, and that may become your reality as well. Give it a chance, because it will make a difference.

Staying Right-Sized

One concept of recovery that doesn’t seem to have as much emphasis or discussion is the idea of “staying right-sized.” What exactly does it mean and how does a person go about it? Why isn’t it spoken about as frequently as “first things first” or “one day at a time?” This saying has been on my heart and mind lately, which to me is an indication that I need to take steps to process through it and begin to apply it.

Staying right-sized to me refers to the idea of not allowing yourself or your role to become too big or too small in your own mind. After all, it is our mind that can effectively ensnare us or cause us to take the first steps towards freedom. Our mindset is key on many levels, addict or not. Each of us is a powerful, capable and dynamic force. None of us can control another person’s thoughts, feelings or emotions. We exist in the median between the mundane and the spectacular, neither as insignificant nor as vital as we sometimes begin to feel. The false ego of the addict touches both ends of that spectrum as we project our greatness while grappling with crippling insecurities.

While it may come to pass for a moment in anyone’s life that we hold space on one extreme or the other, the most likely scenario involves our being big enough to matter, yet small enough to stay connected to reality. The fact is that our lives are but a blinking of a whisper of a trail of dust when compared with the grandiose size of all that is, was and will ever be. Our lives have value, but the significance is lost entirely when we live only for ourselves. Our lives simply don’t stretch out enough for them to be worth living if our aim is self-aggrandizement.

We are valuable and our worth is most directly reflected in the lives of those whose suffering is abated by ours. If we cannot reconcile the past and use it to help others, then all the trauma was for naught. We addicts must face our wrongdoing, forgive ourselves and pivot around into usefulness on behalf of our fellows. If we can’t make good on all that our experiences (should have) taught us, then that struggle was for naught. Our time getting wasted was wasted time if all it gave us was a collection of regrets, and honestly our time as sober, productive humans is just as empty if we are only helping ourselves.

Our time on Earth is woefully short. We must make it mean something or we are no different from the grass, birds or plankton, and even those beings seem to somehow understand that a life well-lived is lived in service of others.

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.