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Weakness for Destruction
I’m Hooked
Last Friday i got lucky. (No, the other kind of lucky.)
i went to a meeting i don’t usually go to, that starts at 10:30 pm and finishes at 11:30. When i got there, there was only one other person.
We had a small meeting, just the two of us, and in that meeting she said we alcoholics have a “weakness for devastation”.
i loved that expression because i understood it on a deep level the instant i heard it. i was the kind of alcoholic who drank because i had a crush on destruction and drinking was the fastest way to get into destruction’s panties and screw it up.
We got on this subject because i realized something in our tiny meeting.
Here in Yeaman–because of some fluke alignment of religious and war holidays–i had a 5-day weekend last weekend and, even better, my ex had the kids. i had 5 days left to my own devices and there was a time a few years ago that my own devices would’ve been bottles of wine and cocktail inventing, fast food binges, internet porn, no sleeping no showering no leaving the apartment…i would’ve viced out.
Sharing with this young lady, i realized that i’d been to an art show, two movies, discovered a cultural walk here in Yeaman, written some good stuff, started riding bicylces, wrote fiction on café terraces with a founatin pen, cleaned, ran several errands i’d been putting off, woke up at 6:30 on a day i didn’t work to go to an 8am AA meeting and then hit a 10:30pm meeting that same evening, just because.
i didn’t tell her that then and i’m not saying it now to get pats on the back or collect brownie points…it’s just sometimes i forget how far i’ve come in 2 years.
i got lucky that i decided to go to a meeting just for the hell of it, because talking with another alcoholic in recovery helped me see that my life, while far from perfect, keeps getting better all the time.
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Best Event of the Day
Support Network
When i was 18 i started a journal, but the problem was i went into so much detail that i was writing more than i lived. So i decided that to save time i would only write down three sentences at the end of the day: 1) My best event of that day, 2) my worst event of that day, 3) something that i learned that day. i’ve been doing this for over thirty years, and do it with my children as well, stopping only momentarily with my son after he reached his 18th birthday until he asked me to continue a few weeks after.
i went to an AA meeting yesterday and saw my sponsor there. After the meeting we were in the hallway talking about some Step 8 & 9 stuff and when we were through he asked me for a hug. He told me that sponsorship was a two-way street and that working with me helped his sobriety because he saw how much i’m getting out of mine. He said that i inspired him.
It’s like the above picture…who is helping whom?
Guess what i wrote down as my best event of the day last night…
HoPe On
Screwed Over
i know a guy more sober than his 5 years. During a more emotional than usual share, he described the relief he felt upon desperately entering the program, saying through his tears, “The difference between a sliver of hope and no hope is huge.”
That you have chosen to visit this blog shows you have not given up. Your reading this proves you still have hope, and this is huge.
Now, continue to do the next right thing.
i’ve never been to a bad meeting, but…
[Thanks to ITSB for the picture!]
i’ve never been to a bad meeting. i have never been to a meeting where i left thinking, “Wow, that was a royal waste of my time.”
i’ve never been to a bad meeting, but last night was pretty damn close.
Last night (not an AA meeting–it was for anther 12-step fellowship) we spent the larger part of our hour reading the procedures and the bylaws and the 12 & 12 (AA’s 12 Steps and 12 Traditions) and then we took turns reading aloud from a dense book. It was late and i was tired from a full work day and most of the readers were foreigners who had a less than perfect grasp of English and one guy is a recovered stutterer who took long pauses while he tried to reign in his tongue and my mind was wandering and i was beginning to wonder if i wouldn’t have been better off at home.
But i wouldn’t have been. Partly not because it was useful for me to sit with others who share my sickness, and to be reminded that i am sick and that i to need to stay humble. Also, in the space of an hour, i can relax from every kind of temptation.
But mostly i would not have been better off at home because my presence helped others. The chair was an inexperienced woman, so i spoke up when she hesitated and supported her decisions. Having 2 years of sobriety gave me confidence so that, when i shared, my voice was stronger and steadier than many of the newcomers who were there, staring at their fidgety hands. i helped simply by showing up.
At the end of the meeting, as i was walking out of the door, the young man who stuttered asked if we could exchange numbers.
Sometimes the help i receive at meetings is the help i give others.
Raising the Bar
What kind of messed up freaky blogger friend am i? The kind that will set up a meeting with me in a bar! It’s a long story but not really.
While on Christmas breaks back in the States i went to a bar for the first time since i can’t remember when.
Not that i’m afraid of bars– i’m more sure of my sobriety than i am of many things in my life–but the thought of spending 4 hours trapped in a room full of people acting like i did when i was drunk is the opposite of appealing. Still, this time i was hanging with my oldest and best friends, one of whom is my sobriety hero (having been on the wagon for well over 20 years), and it was a sports bar so i could watch pro football on the big screen if i got bored and plus of the 7 of us there, only 2 were drinking beer.
i had a great time. i wasn’t even tempted to drink and i was still able to joke around with my buds like i used to in my drinking days. While i have a hard time being sober around acquaintances, i learned i can have a blast around people who know the real me.
To top it off, i met a reader! L / Working On It / 1jaded1 happened to be driving past the city i was in on her way to her home city, so we emailed each other and she googled her way to the bar. i felt bad asking a reader working to stay sober to meet me in a bar, but it was a calm afternoon and she and i only had the briefest of exchanges before she had to hit the road again. Still, it was so nice to put a face to the name and to meet someone who has been such a big supporter here.
All in all, i’m kicking 2013 off right!
Drunk Bar Rag
What do you think?
What’s your position on those of us in recovery going to bars/lounges? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below and join the discussion!
2012 in review
The WordPress stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog and i thought i’d share it with you. AlKHallics Anonymous did nowhere near as well as my main blog (1,400,000 visits in 2012!), but this blog is a labor of love for me and i’m more concerned with who comes here rather than how many. Because of that, i’d like to thank you faithful readers for your visits and especially your voices and i hope you’ll keep coming back in the months and years to come.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 18,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals
Good for you, it’s good for you!
It’s The Little Things That Mark You
Everyone knows that every Friday my work has an all-you-can-drink cocktail party. When i was drinking, Friday was a regular reminder of what kind of binge drinker i was because no matter how many promises i made to myself, my wife, even my kids, i always got sucked back into the eddy of “just one more”. After that came phone calls and apologies and walking unevenly home and the only thing buoyed me other than the beers i always stole from the office and carried in the deep pockets of my trench coat was the knowing that when i stumbled late into wherever i was supposed to be that there would be some more alcohol there.
Last night i made plans to eat some fast food and see a movie with my 17-year-old son. To meet him at the restaurant, i had to leave work at 5:45 (the cocktail party starts at 5:30, unless you start at the all-you-can-drink wine lunch)—i left 5 minutes early. i did not try to pound as many beers as i could fit into 15 minutes only to end up unable to tear myself away from free booze and calling him with promises i would make it up later. i did not stand him up and i did not let him down.
After our fast food dinner, as we sat waiting for the movie to roll, i realized all i’d done was make and keep an appointment with my son, something most (non alcoholic) people take for granted. It’s such a little thing and yet it is really such a huge thing when i think about it. And i do. A lot. And i’m not the only one.
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Just a little shout out to my sober buddy Drunky Drunk Girl, whose blog post inspired this one.
PS i hate the title of this post but like it too much to change it. Just so’s ya know.
SOS: Save Our Sobriety
Don’t Get Hammered
A few weeks after i began my recovery (over 20 months ago!), i had a problem, freaked out and ‘had to’ take a pill to sleep. i should say here that, oddly enough for someone who is addicted to everything else, pills never did it for me. They took too long and were never strong enough for me to develop an affinity for them. Anyway, immediately after taking the sleeping pill, i realized i should have cleared it with my sponsor first. When i told him about the incident at our next meeting, he was angry that i hadn’t called him and called it a slip.
Why hadn’t i called him? Simple, i didn’t even think about it. Ironically, one of the factors that led up to my suicide attempt was the same thing: i am incapable of asking for help—i perceive it to be a sign of weakness.
Last Sunday, i had a coffee with my sponsor and while discussing all the issues i’ve got going on at the moment, i began to feel better, calmer, more together. As he gave me advice, I started thinking more clearly. i especially understood i should have called him earlier rather than let myself sink lower and lower.
Then, one of the pieces of advice he gave me was to reach out to a friend in recovery in the States. Being told by someone helping me that i needed to ask for help was finally direct enough to drive the message into my brain.
Asking others for help is a tool in the Toolbox.
We’re In The Same Boat
Here i am, back in Yeaman after a fun 3 weeks with friends and family at what i previously dubbed Camp David Hasselhoff. i tried 4 times to find the backwoods AA meetings i’d attended last year but to no avail. Either i had the wrong day, time or place, but i missed the meeting in more ways than one. Still, here i am, back in Yeaman and still sober.
Be Smart – Get In The Same Boat
While i have your attention, i’d like to point you towards my brother from another mother’s, In The Same Boat’s, new blog “Bleatings of ITSB“. ITSB has been a regular reader, incisive commenter, and guest posting patron of this blog since it’s inception and has so many good things to share that he created a space to say it. You’ll be doing yourself a great favor if you check out his bleatings.
