Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Ramblings

Lets talk about the singleness of purpose. The fact that AA is intended for people who want to recover from alcoholism and or job is to carry AAs message to other alcoholics. Ya know, people who actual drink. Even if I think all addictions are the same I should still understand that I joined AA and this was the requirement for membership. I needed them and not the other way around. So if for example my buddy isnt an alcoholic but he is a drug addict I shouldnt suggest he just go to AA anyway because they have a bigger fellowship and more meetings in our town than NA. What if there is no NA at all? Well its still not anyones right to go against AAs traditions. When AA started there were plenty of towns with only one member. They searched for another drunk to carry the message to and eventually a fellowship grew up out of that work.

What if someone is mostly a drug addict but has alway drank and drinks like an alcoholic if no drugs are available? The AA literature says we welcome drug addicts who are also alcoholics. If someone thinks they are alcoholic and “has a genuine history of alcoholism” then they are welcome.

What is someone calls themselves an addict in an AA meeting? I have seen groups ask that people not do this. I have also seen other groups confront people who do this. My personal belief is we give them the bennefit of the doubt and assume that maybe they have alcoholism but identify more as drug addicts and maybe they learned to call themselves this at some treatment center who preaches that its all addiction so why dont we just call ourselves addicts and not worry about the substances. I guess my feeling is just because someone calls themselves an addict doesnt mean they dont have alcoholism. I would maybe talk to them later as a home group memeber and see what the deal is.

What if someone openly defies the membership requirements? Well thats a home group issue. AA has traditions which are not enforcable but the homegroups who rent the facilities have the right to say who can and cannot attend their meeting. If they ask someone to leave and they refuse they certainly have the authority to have them removed by the police. Most groups I assume would opt for “aggresive diplomacy” before it came to police involvement though.

Sanity is the miracle. The notion that we are not sane when it comes to alcohol and/or drugs is the explanation for why we cant stop based on bad consequences. The AA big book illustration of the jay walker covers this. As long as I have gone to meetings nearly daily and have placed AA as my top priority I have managed to be sane in respect to alcohol. When tempted I am able to understand the outcome and have the power to turn it down. Ive seen many seemingly devoted AA members drift away from the programs into what they consider normal life only to lose this sanity and try to have a drink as if they were not alcoholics. Fear and immersion in AA kept me sober at first. Since then it has been recovery and being restored to sanity AND (most importantly) staying immersed in AA. See the common thread? Immersion in AA through meetings, fellowship, service, and step work.

Im sober over 12 years and I still go to a lot of meetings. I even go to a particular meeeting that I dont really enjoy most of the time.  First lets look at why I dont enjoy it. Its a very large 100 person type meeting that happens everyday at noon. Even though its so large and well attended there is a group of about 10 people who dominate the talking time. Some of them have very good things to say most of the time but I find it hard to get past the fact that they insist on speaking daily.  There are so many people that would talk if they were given a small pause to get up their courage. While some of the talkers have good experience to share, some simply want us to know how smart they are. They either launch into a lecture on the book or they give as their opinions about life as an alcoholic. They begin almost every sentence with “I think….”. There’s one guy who generally talks about how grateful he as he points out all the cripples and blind people that let him know how good he has it.  So why do I go?

Well its the closest meeting to my work so only getting an hour for lunch is a factor BUT…. There are other reasons.Sometimes I treat it as an exercise in patience.

No matter whats said its always nice to see people I do like. I wish they would share more though. I dont like to share often myself because Im always late and usually leave early because of lunch. I have shared in there before about the spirit of rotation and participation from the 12 concepts of service.  My mighty words had no effect on any egos as far as I could tell.

Another reason is there are a good many newcomers who pick up desire chips. In fact this was the first meeting i wento after my last drink. It took me a little longer to put down drugs but putting down booze was a big deal for me.

So I guess when I break it down I need to go to even the bad meetings and when I put other ahead of me and when I can put principles before personalities I do ok. When Im not doing good though sometimes I leave that meeting cussing and swearing never to come back (rarely where other can hear me).

“When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there is another kind of hangover which we all experience whether we are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday’s and sometimes today’s excesses of negative emotion–anger, fear, jealousy, and the like. If we would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainly need to eliminate these hangovers. This doesn’t mean we need to wander morbidly around in the past. It requires an admission and correction of errors now. Our inventory enables us to settle with the past. When this is done, we are really able to leave it behind us. When our inventory is carefully taken, and we have made peace with ourselves, the conviction follows that tomorrow’s challenges can be met as they come.” - pg.88 in 12 Steaps and 12 Traditions

This has been an important concept in my recovery path. Many times I find myself in a depression or having anxiety after a bout with anger. It seems like unfounded and ungrouded fear but in truth it is an emotional hangover. What goes up must come down. When I indulge in the powerful feeling of anger I must eventually swing down to the helpless feeling of pure fear. Patient persistence with the daily rituals of meditation, meetings and continued step work have always brought me through these times and realizing when this was actually happening has also drastcally eased the turmoil.  “Understanding is the key to right principles and attitudes, and right action is the key to good living.” - pg. 125 in 12 Steaps and 12 Traditions.

I was only going to be at that party for about 20 minutes. My friends had to be home by 11:30 and we had been out skateboarding all night. We rode with a friend of a friend who was from out of town and needed people to hang out with. This out of towner would turn out to be my best friend. We were 15 and 16 then and are still best friends and both of us are in recovery. So anyway I get to this party and the fridge is packed with beer. I decided to drink. I drank the first 16oz., then the second, I started to feel great. I drank the third and the fourth. Now I’m actually wasted. I am falling all over the place. I felt like a god. In 20 minutes I profoundly changed the course of my life.

Before that party I was a skater kid. I was addicted to it. My parents would take my board as punishment and I had spares hidden away. I used to get up every now and then a couple hours before school and go skating in the pitch black morning time. I was also a rebellious little punk trying to get away with everything I could. My parents were not drinkers. They were middle class government employees. Mom knitted and Dad exercised allot. They divorced when I was 13. The party was in the summer between 9th and 10th grade. I went to one of the top magnet public schools in the country. We were intellectuals and artists so the skater kids were very popular unlike many schools where the athletes reigned supreme.

After the party I became a very dedicated drinker. I would tell my parents I was spending the night at so and so’s and so and so would tell his parents he was staying at my house. We hung out on the street outside of the pseudo hippie, counter culture bars. We all had strange hairdos and mohawks. There were potheads, skinheads, just plains heads (short for headbangers), and skater punks everywhere. My night was usually finding a bum to buy drinks for me and my friends and me vomiting allot. I would reach a point after about a year of drinking that I rarely vomited even though I blacked out and passed out.

I was a weekend drinker once 10th grade started. I still went skating but the drinking after was more important. Especially if there was a punk rock music show. I got into these. My friends and I eventually started a band that I would be in for 7 years. We did break up once when the bar we were playing at gave each of the band members 4 drinks each and me and the drummer drank everyone’s before they got there and were way drunk for the gig. They said we broke up but then everybody but me got back together under a new name. Lol. Any way that’s how it went for the next 2 years. Drinking as much as possible, chasing freaky girls, and skating.

So I did start having a few drinking consequences. At the beginning of 11th grade I switched to a regular public school. I was failing all my classes. I didn’t want to work as hard as the magnet school demanded. I did drive my Dad’s car off a large curb and crack the radiator. I had some rather large and sensitive girls problems. In 12th grade I got a DUI. A few months later I got another DUI. This would be the beginning of the end because I would have to go to treatment and meetings. Of course the end took 5 years but I takes allot of things to happen to get an alcoholic to the point of saying that’s enough.

After high school I went to college. I moved in with some friends and a week later I got the second DUI and had to move out. I stuck them with way more bills than they could handle. I was going 95 down this road and would’ve been going faster but that’s as fast as my truck would go. When I got out of the truck my friend fell out of the passenger side into the ditch. Obviously the right person was driving. I didn’t feel drunk so on the way to the station I started spitting in the cops floor board because I thought I would have a better chance of passing the breathalyzer. I eventually moved back in with those guys even though I didn’t have a car. I would in fact be without a car for almost 2 years because I got caught the very first time I drove under suspension. I was 5 days away from getting my license back from a full year’s suspension when I woke up with the wrong girl in my bed and had to get her out of there before my girlfriend got there. So that got me another year suspension.

Eventually I got my license back and moved in with my girlfriend. I was trying to normalize my life. I had been living with other maniacs. We would drink and drug all the time. Sell drugs. My roommate would sell to anyone. Sometimes I’d come home and the whole apartment would be filled with people getting loaded and I didn’t know any of them and my roommate would hardly know anyone either. He was on his own crash course. We would stick him in treatment shortly. I’m happy to say he is sober in Alabama now. His story is way better than mine and I will be sure to get him to submit it.

So I’m living with my girlfriend and I’m learning that I can’t not drink. I would do things that angered her and promise to lay off but I couldn’t. I would lay down to go to sleep with her and just lay there going nuts. Eventually I would have to get up and drive to a bar. I would tell her I just wasn’t tired and I was going to go have one drink. I actually did manage that feat once or twice. The nasty feeling of having just enough alcohol to kick off the craving and not satisfy it is horrible. I like to call it alcoholic blue balls.

Sometimes I would manage not to get too out of hand go a little while but then I would go on these worse benders. I used to try to mellow out by switching to pot. It did mellow me out for periods but I would always get drunk and stay drunk eventually.

In 1994 I decided I would leave my girlfriend. I decided I was unhappy with our relationship. I went crazy. I was like a kid on spring break. I let myself drink and drug and party. I hung out with other people who nonstop drank drugged and partied. It felt great for a little while. The reality of the situation would come clearer than ever soon. Something happened to my drinking. I began to see how sad I was. The alcohol stopped working quite the same way. I started to see myself as a sick person during my drinking. A miserable person. I wasn’t escaping myself.

I had flirted with trying to quit drinking before. Control my drinking. I think most alcoholics and addicts have points during the consequences when they decide out of self preservation and total necessity they have to quit. The only problem was I always missed it and went back. Sometimes quicker than others. Sometimes before the heat was off even. But this time I hit a really good bottom. My last night drinking I picked up a girl that I had sworn off so many times. She was a junkie and an easy target. We went back to an apartment I was “borrowing” and we did coke all night. I unsuccessfully tried to have sex and was rather humiliated. The effect of going from being drunk to being wired only brought me to this point of despair and desperation to change my life like I had never known.

I ended up in a noon meeting of a recovery group. I took a desire chip. (A chip and a chair)(for all you players out there). I remember after the meeting this one lady asked me if I need to go to detox. I said no. Then the next guy I talked to suggest in so many words that I try not drinking and only smoking pot. That sounded reasonable.

So I weasel my way back with my girlfriend. I’m going to meetings now. I’m smoking pot. I got a job in a government office through a family friend. I went back to school. Things seemed good to me. I didn’t miss the life. Instead of going to bed and then sneaking off to go drink I just stayed up and watched TV and smoked weed till my eyes cracked like baked mud. When I woke up in the morning first thing I did was smoke pot. I was never not high. I had another friend who felt the same way so we just sat around gambling and getting high all the time. He had money from this big insurance business deal and was so generous. He could care less if I ever had weed. It was so funny when he would come over to my house and I actually had weed. He’d roll up the biggest joint and just dare me to say something even though he knew it was killing me to be smoking up my weed. Hell I needed that for medicinal purposes not to get everybody else high.

But something started to change about 6 or 9 months into my marijuana program. I had quit going to 12 step meetings because I sorta figured out that they weren’t doing it they way I was. The weed just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I was just smoking to feel normal. I wasn’t getting any good feelings go with it. Plus I was feeling so paranoid out in the real world. My office job with all those fluorescent lights was so scary. I lost the ability to hold simple conversations with people. I was thinking about drinking allot. I was very depressed. I started to add crushed up pills to my pot. Any way I just pretty much holed up in my music room and smoked pot and practiced guitar scales over and over. I was in the same band I’d been in since I was 15. We would play one or two shows a year.

I remember being at band practice and we were passing my one hitter pipe and dugout around. Nothing particularly different going on other than the storm in my head. I remember thinking to myself how I couldn’t live this life anymore. I remembered going and playing golf with the recovery guys. They were happy. They enjoyed each others company. They weren’t crouched over some table waiting for their turn to hit a pipe and making sure someone didn’t get more than the next guy. They weren’t sitting in there rooms alone all the time thinking about drinking (Only some of the time as I would find out later. Apparently they weren’t cured but had to work at staying sober).

So I decided right there to get completely sober and turn it all over to the recovery way of life. The next day. That night I smoked all my pot with my friend who got me high for the first time in my life. I went home and scraped all the resin out of my pipes and smoked it all. I was so contented and hopeful. I was truly at peace with the decision.

The next day I went to a noon meeting and picked up my desire chip. That was 1996 and I am still sober today in 2006. That contented peaceful feeling went away real quick by the way. There is a reason I never stayed sober before. It’s damn hard. Cant sleep. Can’t stop my brain from racing. Can stop obsessing about finding a chemical way out of the way I was feeling. Meetings helped. So soon enough I was in 3 to 4 meetings a day.

I didn’t get a solid sponsor right off the bat. I don’t feel like I have ever had a great relationship with any of my sponsors even to this day. I started into the steps myself. I figured out that it was important to conform to God’s will. Well I felt so bad in early sobriety that I started trying to do that to the extreme. I kept trying to cut God a deal. I quit smoking so I would get good enough for God to make me feel better. Boy did that not work. The feeling better part that is. I did actually quit smoking. I decided I should marry my girlfriend. But I didn’t have time for all that legal stuff so I made her say the vows and then do the legal stuff at a later date. I figured the vows were the important thing. Actually I think being in love rather than feeling indebted to someone and wanting to make myself feel better would’ve been even more important. We got married for real a year later almost to the day. I don’t think we would have ever got married had I not went head first into those vows at 4 months sober. Who knows though.

So I never did feel that much better. At about 9 months sober I decided to give the steps a good solid try. I went through the book one line at a time and did what it said if I could and if I couldn’t I wouldn’t move on. When I had questions I asked a sponsor or a group. I went to allot of book meetings. I got snagged on the 3rd step and almost gave up. I sought some spiritual help from some nice churchy people not in recovery and it really helped. They just suggested some prayer and we prayed. It opened up my mind to making the decision. I came to understand that I really blamed God for allot of my pain so it was hard to make the 3rd step decision.

About 16 months into sobriety I made some very humbling amends. I felt different after those. The random unexplainable thoughts of drinking really left. They have never come back in the same way. I have thought about drinking in painful times but have never come close to actually drinking. The way I see it is it’s natural for me to think about drinking because of the relief it once brought me but I am sane now and a sane person does not do insane things.

Being restored to sanity is the gift of the steps. If I don’t stay involved with the recovery fellowship, the steps and this way of life I will be restored to insanity and will drink again. The fact that I understand the nature of alcoholism right now will mean nothing if that happens. I think alot of people think its all over once they finally see and internalize the destructive nature of their alcoholism but we forget that self knowledge avails us nothing.

So that’s it. The 8 or 9 years that follow are just life. Most of the time a good life. Divorce, kids, true love, marriage, financial success, financial failure, and on and on and on. Staying in recovery and having more revealed to me.