The holidays are often a tough time for addicts and alcoholics; whether using, or in early recovery. Or sometimes, not-so-early recovery. It can be a tough time of year to have to hear about giving gifts to loved ones when one has lost or damaged the relationships with those who should be closest to them, or maybe is having a hard time paying the mortgage.
Every December, my last Christmas that I used on comes to mind, as I expect it does for a number of people.
I was twenty years old, living with my mom. Having such a full and vibrant social life (in other words, spending every cent I had on drugs), keeping my car running had temporarily eluded me. A lot of thing seemed to be eluding me at that point.
Unfortunately, I'd made such an asshole of myself that I couldn't spend the night at home. I was going to have to figure out alternate accomodations. So, I decided to spend the night in the office I worked at. While this plan may not seem so bad on the surface, there were several points that made it memorable.
First off, there was the issue of getting to the office. My car wasn't running, and neither were the buses that evening; I'd have to walk the four miles. Which wouldn't have been an epic journey, but it was made unpleasant by the fact that replacing my shoes with ones that didn't have holes in the bottoms was on the list of things which had temporarily eluded me. Unfortunately, I wasn't as good at eluding the snow and slush on the ground.
This made for a very contemplative walk.
When I got to the shop, I pulled a bunch of chairs into two rows with the seats facing each other to form a makeshift bed.
That was Christmas 1987. I've never had to spend any holiday so profoundly unhappy since. In fact, on the average, they've been pretty good.
-M
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Mahatmaganja
So, how did I come by the name for this blog?
Well, pull up a chair; fill (or refill) your cup of coffee, and I'll tell you all about it... in the form of telling you the story of the telling of a story. It was in an MA meeting, where I coined the term to describe someone I met the first time I got high.
As the story went, I had just started high school; had been there for a day or so, when a kid I'd met over the summer told me he could get me some weed. It'd be five bucks; come and meet him in the parking lot after school.
The end of the school day rolled around, and I met my buddy in the parking lot, where he introduced me to a friend of his. We all piled into his friend's Volkswagen squareback, and drove off campus.
The guy with the car pulls out a sandwich baggie full of weed, and trades it to me for five dollars. This was not a bag of buds, mind you, but a bag of leaf.
Anyway, to commemorate my first purchase, the driver pulls out another bag, and a red, plastic bong. He loads up a bowl full, and passes it to me, in the back seat.
I smoked it all the way down, until the ash pulled through the stem. Then, he loads one for my friend, and then one for himself. Then another for me, another for my buddy, another for himself...
I don't know why I was keeping count, but we each smoked twenty-six of those bong loads of his leaf.
Then he pulled out some bud, and we all took a toke or two of that, and another toke or two each of some hash he had.
To say I got stoned would be an understatement. I literally couldn't sit up, and was giggling like... like I was on drugs or something. I've had a few epic smokeouts, but that one has always taken the cake.
Anyway, my friend and I took our leave, and ended up visiting another friend of his, who had a little apartment in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood. When we went in, I was introduced to my friend's friend, who not only had a drawing of Bugs Bunny with a bong in his hand, but also gave me some advice about smoking pot.
Now, I expect that everybody can point back to places in their lives where they can say, "wow, I should have listened when..."; this is one of mine.
The guy with Stoney Bugs told me that if I was to look to smoking pot, or using other drugs to find inner peace, that I'd be screwed. It would turn on me. The only way to inner peace was to achieve inner peace by itself, and then I could enjoy smoking some pot or drinking some wine without it taking me over.
Flash forward a number of years to the meeting where I was describing this. I was describing what I was thinking while this guy was attempting to enlighten me. My comments were along the lines that I had wanted this guy to "shut up with the hippie bullshit; did he think he was the 'Mahatmaganja' or something?"
A bunch of people laughed, and 'Mahatmaganja' became one of a number of names given me.
-M
Well, pull up a chair; fill (or refill) your cup of coffee, and I'll tell you all about it... in the form of telling you the story of the telling of a story. It was in an MA meeting, where I coined the term to describe someone I met the first time I got high.
As the story went, I had just started high school; had been there for a day or so, when a kid I'd met over the summer told me he could get me some weed. It'd be five bucks; come and meet him in the parking lot after school.
The end of the school day rolled around, and I met my buddy in the parking lot, where he introduced me to a friend of his. We all piled into his friend's Volkswagen squareback, and drove off campus.
The guy with the car pulls out a sandwich baggie full of weed, and trades it to me for five dollars. This was not a bag of buds, mind you, but a bag of leaf.
Anyway, to commemorate my first purchase, the driver pulls out another bag, and a red, plastic bong. He loads up a bowl full, and passes it to me, in the back seat.
I smoked it all the way down, until the ash pulled through the stem. Then, he loads one for my friend, and then one for himself. Then another for me, another for my buddy, another for himself...
I don't know why I was keeping count, but we each smoked twenty-six of those bong loads of his leaf.
Then he pulled out some bud, and we all took a toke or two of that, and another toke or two each of some hash he had.
To say I got stoned would be an understatement. I literally couldn't sit up, and was giggling like... like I was on drugs or something. I've had a few epic smokeouts, but that one has always taken the cake.
Anyway, my friend and I took our leave, and ended up visiting another friend of his, who had a little apartment in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood. When we went in, I was introduced to my friend's friend, who not only had a drawing of Bugs Bunny with a bong in his hand, but also gave me some advice about smoking pot.
Now, I expect that everybody can point back to places in their lives where they can say, "wow, I should have listened when..."; this is one of mine.
The guy with Stoney Bugs told me that if I was to look to smoking pot, or using other drugs to find inner peace, that I'd be screwed. It would turn on me. The only way to inner peace was to achieve inner peace by itself, and then I could enjoy smoking some pot or drinking some wine without it taking me over.
Flash forward a number of years to the meeting where I was describing this. I was describing what I was thinking while this guy was attempting to enlighten me. My comments were along the lines that I had wanted this guy to "shut up with the hippie bullshit; did he think he was the 'Mahatmaganja' or something?"
A bunch of people laughed, and 'Mahatmaganja' became one of a number of names given me.
-M
Friday, December 24, 2010
A challenge:
Attending a meeting this evening, a member detailed an interesting instruction given him by his sponsor: mark every direction in the book with the letter D.
It sounds like a very useful exercise; I think it's easy to overlook the fact that this book is a set of instructions, as opposed to merely being an intellectual enterprise.
But, along with those instructions, we are given descriptions of what we may expect as we take action.
So, I'd like to pose the following challenge: find me one page between 1 and 164 in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous (aka 'the Big Book') which doesn't contain at least one promise. Either directly stated or implied. Because, I'm not sure it can be done.
-M
It sounds like a very useful exercise; I think it's easy to overlook the fact that this book is a set of instructions, as opposed to merely being an intellectual enterprise.
But, along with those instructions, we are given descriptions of what we may expect as we take action.
So, I'd like to pose the following challenge: find me one page between 1 and 164 in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous (aka 'the Big Book') which doesn't contain at least one promise. Either directly stated or implied. Because, I'm not sure it can be done.
-M
My (second) first meeting
If you wanted to know about the first twelve step meetings I went to... I'm not sure I could tell you anything about 'em.
The last day of my Junior year of high school, I had a mishap with a bottle of whiskey. This prompted the school administration to require me to attend four meetings over the summer, if I wanted to come back the following year. I chose to go to the meetings, because I'd already had to change high schools once.
So, I ended up going to four of these meetings at a place half a mile from school. I sat with a bunch of other teens, in a circle of folding chairs in a room. There was a lady who was probably in her thirties who was running the thing.
Looking back, it may have been a twelve step meeting, or it may not. I remember that they passed the basket, and I put in forty bucks. Kind of my way of showing off. I had a job, and had plenty of cash (for a high school kid in Seattle). I had refused to talk, but this was my way of showing everyone that I really was doing a little better than the rest of 'em.
I don't remember much else, other than the fact that I dropped another $120 in the following three meetings. I didn't talk, didn't listen, and sure as hell didn't show up without getting high first.
But, I'd promised you the story of my (second) first meeting, which was certainly more memorable. Although, I didn't show up sober for that one, either. But, let's skip forward almost four years.
One Saturday, I was hanging out with my friend, The Scrapper. We were drinking beer and smoking weed, out in the garage. Which is what we did around there.
He'd received yet another DUI, and was a little nervous about even looking in the general direction of his car with keys in his hand. So, about eleven in the evening, he asks me if I'd drive him to a meeting. It was a couple miles away, at midnight.
Meeting? What the hell kind of meeting was he talking about? I sat there for a second wondering why a case worker, parole officer, court clerk, or lawyer would want to meet with someone at midnight on Saturday. But, I figured I'd better actually answer his question. So, I told him I'd run him down there.
Now, I had to ask what kind of meeting this was. It was an AA meeting. I was curious to see what kind of circus that was - my dad had had some employees he sent to AA to get 'em sobered up. Which hadn't worked. I'd always imagined AA was some place where a bunch of winos and homeless came to mooch free coffee and get out of the weather, while some do-gooder stood up at a pulpit and preached the evils of alcohol to 'em. I imagined a cross between Fred Rogers and a Southern Baptist preacher.
This, I was gonna' have to see.
So, we jump in the car, and go down to the Greenwood neighborhood, where the meeting was held. I remember, we parked in a lot behind the building, and went in through the back. The meeting was held in a storefront that had been rented by a group of meetings, who set up the place to suit themselves. There were oak chairs lining two walls of a fairly long, narrow room, and there were more chairs at long lines of tables in the middle. There were a number of signs on the walls with sayings, such as "live and let live" and "easy does it", and two giant lists of rules. One was the Twelve Steps; the other the Twelve Traditions. Since they mentioned God, I didn't pay any further attention. Screw that - I didn't need to hear any proselytizing. I could get as much of that from my mom as anyone would ever need.
But there was one thing that caught my attention: giant black-and-white photos of two old guys were hung up high on the wall. These pictures had to be at least three or four feet wide. The one was a kind of no-nonsense looking old guy with some Buddy Holly glasses; the other was some white-haired old geezer who was the spitting image of my ex-girlfriend's dad. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that. "Holy crap," I thought, "Larry's here watching me!"
Some of the crowd looked pretty rough; as luck would have it, my first AA meeting was to be the Saturday 'Hoot Owl' meeting at Seattle's somewhat notorious Fremont Fellowship. And that meant bikers, street people, and a varied cast of other colorful characters.
Everybody filed into the room, styrofoam coffee cups in hand, and took seats. Lots of these people seemed to know each other. There would have been a few dozen folks. A few of 'em were my age or maybe younger; a lot of them were older. When I was twenty-one, someone in his mid-thirties was 'older'. (unfortunately, that's not the case now) I saw some guys wearing colors from a local motorcycle club. A few pieces of paper were passed around; small candles were placed down the middle of the tables. Cigarettes are filling the room with smoke, making a mockery of the non-smoking section along one wall. A guy at one end of the room hit the table in front of him with a gavel and started talking, calling the meeting to order over the hubbub. A couple people are called on to read different things. Then the lights went out, leaving only the candles on the tables for illumination. Someone else started talking over the din; talking about his life.
Now, this surprised me; I'd expected some kind of leader to try to brainwash us all into not drinking. I'd been waiting for someone to tell me how if I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, that I'd be saved; if I paid membership dues, that everything would be taken care of. But, as I listened, I never did hear about the catch, the angle, the fine print, or the asterisk.
I'd been drinking and smoking all afternoon, and this happened a couple of decades ago... so even if I wanted to, I couldn't tell you all of what was said there. But, this was Fremont, which means you could expect to hear stories of week-long blackouts, boy hookers in prison, waking up in bathroom stalls with bloody rigs hanging out of your arm, or anything else. And yes, I did hear about all of those things (and more) there at Fremont. But those are other peoples' stories, and not mine.
And these people, one after another, simply told about what their life had been like, what happened, and what it was like now. No sales pitch. No "you ought to..."; just a lot of "I found I had to..."
As I listened, there were two things which kept standing out. All these people had started out like I had; alcohol and drugs magically made 'em feel okay. And that things had got worse for them as they continued to use. Sometimes 'worse' could be a very, very inadequate word.
I sat there in the dark, looking at the faces of the people illuminated only by the flickering light of some candles; sitting still while my mind raced. Then, raised voices broke me out of my reverie, and a fist fight broke out. This was enough to completely derail things. The lights came on, the fight was broken up, and the meeting ended. The Scrapper got his court slip back from the guy who'd opened the meeting.
That night, I decided that I'd have to stop drugs altogether, and only drink small amounts of beer or wine (three drink limit; no hard drinks). I had started out just like all those sick bastards, and I sure as hell didn't want to end up like them!
-M
The last day of my Junior year of high school, I had a mishap with a bottle of whiskey. This prompted the school administration to require me to attend four meetings over the summer, if I wanted to come back the following year. I chose to go to the meetings, because I'd already had to change high schools once.
So, I ended up going to four of these meetings at a place half a mile from school. I sat with a bunch of other teens, in a circle of folding chairs in a room. There was a lady who was probably in her thirties who was running the thing.
Looking back, it may have been a twelve step meeting, or it may not. I remember that they passed the basket, and I put in forty bucks. Kind of my way of showing off. I had a job, and had plenty of cash (for a high school kid in Seattle). I had refused to talk, but this was my way of showing everyone that I really was doing a little better than the rest of 'em.
I don't remember much else, other than the fact that I dropped another $120 in the following three meetings. I didn't talk, didn't listen, and sure as hell didn't show up without getting high first.
But, I'd promised you the story of my (second) first meeting, which was certainly more memorable. Although, I didn't show up sober for that one, either. But, let's skip forward almost four years.
One Saturday, I was hanging out with my friend, The Scrapper. We were drinking beer and smoking weed, out in the garage. Which is what we did around there.
He'd received yet another DUI, and was a little nervous about even looking in the general direction of his car with keys in his hand. So, about eleven in the evening, he asks me if I'd drive him to a meeting. It was a couple miles away, at midnight.
Meeting? What the hell kind of meeting was he talking about? I sat there for a second wondering why a case worker, parole officer, court clerk, or lawyer would want to meet with someone at midnight on Saturday. But, I figured I'd better actually answer his question. So, I told him I'd run him down there.
Now, I had to ask what kind of meeting this was. It was an AA meeting. I was curious to see what kind of circus that was - my dad had had some employees he sent to AA to get 'em sobered up. Which hadn't worked. I'd always imagined AA was some place where a bunch of winos and homeless came to mooch free coffee and get out of the weather, while some do-gooder stood up at a pulpit and preached the evils of alcohol to 'em. I imagined a cross between Fred Rogers and a Southern Baptist preacher.
This, I was gonna' have to see.
So, we jump in the car, and go down to the Greenwood neighborhood, where the meeting was held. I remember, we parked in a lot behind the building, and went in through the back. The meeting was held in a storefront that had been rented by a group of meetings, who set up the place to suit themselves. There were oak chairs lining two walls of a fairly long, narrow room, and there were more chairs at long lines of tables in the middle. There were a number of signs on the walls with sayings, such as "live and let live" and "easy does it", and two giant lists of rules. One was the Twelve Steps; the other the Twelve Traditions. Since they mentioned God, I didn't pay any further attention. Screw that - I didn't need to hear any proselytizing. I could get as much of that from my mom as anyone would ever need.
But there was one thing that caught my attention: giant black-and-white photos of two old guys were hung up high on the wall. These pictures had to be at least three or four feet wide. The one was a kind of no-nonsense looking old guy with some Buddy Holly glasses; the other was some white-haired old geezer who was the spitting image of my ex-girlfriend's dad. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that. "Holy crap," I thought, "Larry's here watching me!"
Some of the crowd looked pretty rough; as luck would have it, my first AA meeting was to be the Saturday 'Hoot Owl' meeting at Seattle's somewhat notorious Fremont Fellowship. And that meant bikers, street people, and a varied cast of other colorful characters.
Everybody filed into the room, styrofoam coffee cups in hand, and took seats. Lots of these people seemed to know each other. There would have been a few dozen folks. A few of 'em were my age or maybe younger; a lot of them were older. When I was twenty-one, someone in his mid-thirties was 'older'. (unfortunately, that's not the case now) I saw some guys wearing colors from a local motorcycle club. A few pieces of paper were passed around; small candles were placed down the middle of the tables. Cigarettes are filling the room with smoke, making a mockery of the non-smoking section along one wall. A guy at one end of the room hit the table in front of him with a gavel and started talking, calling the meeting to order over the hubbub. A couple people are called on to read different things. Then the lights went out, leaving only the candles on the tables for illumination. Someone else started talking over the din; talking about his life.
Now, this surprised me; I'd expected some kind of leader to try to brainwash us all into not drinking. I'd been waiting for someone to tell me how if I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, that I'd be saved; if I paid membership dues, that everything would be taken care of. But, as I listened, I never did hear about the catch, the angle, the fine print, or the asterisk.
I'd been drinking and smoking all afternoon, and this happened a couple of decades ago... so even if I wanted to, I couldn't tell you all of what was said there. But, this was Fremont, which means you could expect to hear stories of week-long blackouts, boy hookers in prison, waking up in bathroom stalls with bloody rigs hanging out of your arm, or anything else. And yes, I did hear about all of those things (and more) there at Fremont. But those are other peoples' stories, and not mine.
And these people, one after another, simply told about what their life had been like, what happened, and what it was like now. No sales pitch. No "you ought to..."; just a lot of "I found I had to..."
As I listened, there were two things which kept standing out. All these people had started out like I had; alcohol and drugs magically made 'em feel okay. And that things had got worse for them as they continued to use. Sometimes 'worse' could be a very, very inadequate word.
I sat there in the dark, looking at the faces of the people illuminated only by the flickering light of some candles; sitting still while my mind raced. Then, raised voices broke me out of my reverie, and a fist fight broke out. This was enough to completely derail things. The lights came on, the fight was broken up, and the meeting ended. The Scrapper got his court slip back from the guy who'd opened the meeting.
That night, I decided that I'd have to stop drugs altogether, and only drink small amounts of beer or wine (three drink limit; no hard drinks). I had started out just like all those sick bastards, and I sure as hell didn't want to end up like them!
-M
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The Twelve Steps... how did I ever get here?
So, you may be wondering: who is this "Mahatmaganja" guy; why is he blogging about recovery, and why did he get into it in the first place?
Well, it's pretty simple. Taking drugs quit working. But, it didn't quit happening.
I once heard prison described as: "sex whenever you want it... and sex whenever you don't."
That's what smoking weed was like for me. I got high whenever I wanted to, and whenever I didn't.
The fact that every time I got high, I sat and thought about how my life was going nowhere - due to smoking pot - didn't slow me down a bit. Every weekend, I planned how I was going to take care of stuff during the week; leaving this weekend free to party.
Every weekday morning, I would think about how I didn't want to smoke any weed that day... not forever, mind you; just for a day or two. That I'd take a short break and get my head together. But, every afternoon, I'd have "changed my mind", because - what the fuck - I could always do all that stuff tomorrow.
(at this point, you can cue the music from Annie: "...tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya', tomorrow; you're always a day away...")
A friend of mine had been court ordered to go to treatment, and had to get a slip signed at twelve step meetings. And on one Saturday night, he asked me for a ride to one, where I did a little accidental listening.
And that's how I got started... well that's the Reader's Digest version of the story.
-M
Well, it's pretty simple. Taking drugs quit working. But, it didn't quit happening.
I once heard prison described as: "sex whenever you want it... and sex whenever you don't."
That's what smoking weed was like for me. I got high whenever I wanted to, and whenever I didn't.
The fact that every time I got high, I sat and thought about how my life was going nowhere - due to smoking pot - didn't slow me down a bit. Every weekend, I planned how I was going to take care of stuff during the week; leaving this weekend free to party.
Every weekday morning, I would think about how I didn't want to smoke any weed that day... not forever, mind you; just for a day or two. That I'd take a short break and get my head together. But, every afternoon, I'd have "changed my mind", because - what the fuck - I could always do all that stuff tomorrow.
(at this point, you can cue the music from Annie: "...tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya', tomorrow; you're always a day away...")
A friend of mine had been court ordered to go to treatment, and had to get a slip signed at twelve step meetings. And on one Saturday night, he asked me for a ride to one, where I did a little accidental listening.
And that's how I got started... well that's the Reader's Digest version of the story.
-M
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