Carrying the Message

I've thought about my worldly legacy from a much younger age than would be considered normal. Even as a small boy, I was convinced that I would do something that really mattered- that was much larger than a lifetime could contain. In those early years, I used to think it would be sports, (believe it or not) and later that changed to singing, (seriously) or the law or government or almost anything- anything that would make me bigger than my hometown, my age, my past or my damage.

One of the things I have found to be critical to my recovery is being willing to carry the message to others- to share what I've learned and how I've grown with folks who may just need to hear it. I've been through a fair amount of junk, and I know that if I don't use that as a vehicle for helping others than it was all for nothing. The pain I felt and the pain I caused would just leave scars with a story, but lacking value.

I take every chance I get these days to help - to share my story of to live my life in a way that leverages those lessons into  opportunities. One of the many unfortunate side-effects of an addictive personality is that almost nothing good is ever enough. Used for good, this insatiability is powerful and driving and uncompromising; however, when it manifests in an unhealthy way, it swallows me in the shadowy aspects of all those adjectives. Enough is never good enough and too much is a myth as I struggle forward unrelentingly into the chasm of impossibility of "satisfaction." I am haunted by a dream of a life that just isn't large enough to matter.

The idea on which I have focus is the fact that one task well done is worth ten half-measures (I know if you look at that mathematically it's not accurate, but the math is never quite the same when applied to matters of the spirit). If I truly give myself completely to dancing in the moment when the moment arrives, I am carrying much of my message out into the world. The message isn't just delivered when I'm speaking to a friend, to a group or to a crowd- it's delivered when I am rigorously honest. It's delivered every time someone knows they can count on me. It's delivered every single time I do the right thing; every time I hold a door open for another or smile at a stranger I am giving freely of what I have been given. I carry the message by living rightly and by living rightly I am creating my legacy.

For me, sobriety is the best of life, coupled with the strength to get through the worst and the perspective to know the difference. Today. Every day.

The Might of (Doing the Next) Right (Thing)

When I was in my active addiction, I wasn't terribly worried about doing the right thing.

Without fail I knew what the right thing to do was in a given situation, but in nearly every instance I didn't care whether or not it was what I did. I definitely didn't always do the wrong thing, but I didn't place much importance on doing the right thing - it simply didn't matter enough, and my alleged "values" would warp in an instant if ignoring some of them meant I could get what I wanted. I had a finely tuned sense of right and wrong, but doing the wrong thing only bothered me if I had nothing to gain from it. Doing the wrong thing became fully acceptable if it got me what I wanted.

This manipulation of reality happened as I justified any and every action so I would be okay with doing what it took to become satisfied. I wasn't acting in a way that used my "values" as a guide - I was quite often acting in opposition to them. That created all the more turmoil within me, because the guy who down deep inside I longed to be was so different from the jerk that I was. I had my moments of goodness, to be sure, but they were as few as they were fleeting (and I made sure you knew about all of them) and it was juuuuuuust enough to keep me from being thought a total degenerate.

Upon entering into a life of sobriety, I looked for ways to heal my heart and soul and quiet the guilt and shame that had consumed me for years. The first part of this was a moral and spiritual housecleaning, but the process couldn't stop there because that only addressed the past. My progress would be halted quickly if I didn't move forward in a way that didn't set me up for failure and an emotional "guilt and shame relapse." I had to figure out how to do this, because setting an impossibly high standard of personal behavior would be just as self-defeating as not trying at all.

It was important that I set myself up for battles that were big enough to matter, yet small enough to have a very good chance to win. I started by breaking down this big-picture effort into smaller and more manageable chunks based on some advice from my counselor in rehab: I decided to just work on doing the next right thing whenever the opportunity arose. It seemed simple enough that I felt good about my chances of being successful; our lives are at their most basic made up of a series of choices we make every day, with some being of little consequence and some being of grave importance. The thought of being "perfect" forever was even more overwhelming than the idea of never drinking or getting high again, and if the one day at a time mantra eased my mind about the booze and drugs, I figured the one choice at a time philosophy could do the same regarding my daily life.

So far, it has made all the difference. Life seems manageable when I do the right things. If I do the wrong thing, I have to admit it, own it and set about making it right as soon as possible. This keeps my conscience clear and the twin terrors of guilt and shame at bay, thus increasing my chances of staying clean and sober exponentially. 

There is immense power in doing the right thing, and when you make life as simple as it can be (when faced with a choice, choose to do the right thing as determined by your values) it really is as simple as it should be.

And amazing. 

It's every bit as amazing as it should be as well. 

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.