I went out to dinner after my home group last night, and somebody made an interesting point: too often we hear about the person who's had multiple relapses, before getting lasting sobriety. But, we rarely hear anybody pipe up and say that it's okay to start working the steps right now. Today.
And, I think he was right.
What my sponsor taught me, as we read through the Big Book, was that we stay clean because of a spiritual experience. We get this from working the steps.
Seems logical that the sooner we start, and the less we dawdle, the quicker we're going to get what we're looking for.
So, what's the big rush? Easy: people eventually relapse if they don't get some power in their lives from working the steps. And, for some people, "eventually" doesn't take too damned long.
While it may be humiliating to have to come back, raise one's hand when the secretary asks for newcomers, and say "I have three days... again", that's not really the biggest worry.
People lose a lot of stuff while they're out working on their next first step story. Jobs, homes, relationships, 401(k)s, and even their lives. My good friend John was one of that last group.
So, whatcha' waiting for?
-M
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
Mean it? Write it in ink!
Some of my buddies were giving me grief, telling me that if I went back out and got sober again in the next half year, I could get it changed to "03" pretty easy. Supportive group, those lads.
I guess I missed the boat on that one. And 08 as well. Now, my next easy mod on the tat comes in 2033...
Naaaah, screw it. I want to get the triangle and circle thickened up a bit; it's going to make it harder to change the numbers later. I guess I'll just have to stay sober.
Next time, something subtle. Maybe a huge Asian dragon on my back, with three-toed feet, holding up a blue book in one claw, with the other front claw resting on a giant pearl? He would be looking back at you, while walking up a flight of twelve steps. Background done like an old Chinese landscape painting; pines, clouds, rivers, impossibly steep mountains.
Can't be wasting any money on changing numbers if I want that...
-M
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
doing what I said I wouldn't do
I went to an NA meeting the other day; it was held at a treatment center.
Sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for the meeting to start, I started reading the lecture notes which had been left on a blackboard. It was a bunch of theorizing about addiction.
Reading it, I realized that I've heard more theory and self-help rhetoric out of new folks than anybody else.
I used to have to understand things in recovery. That changed one evening, after a meeting at the 7th Day Adventist hospital in Taipei.
There was this guy from Canada who occasionally came into town on business. I'd just started coming back to meetings, and probably had my head so square up my butt that cleaning my bellybutton would've improved my vision. I must have sounded that way.
This guy had listened to me talk at the meeting. Afterwards, he took me aside and told me something to the effect that, "if you don't work the steps - soon - you're going to die."
He went on to explain that, listening to my story, he wouldn't bet on my living really long if I relapsed. Oh yeah, and that I sounded like a relapse waiting to happen.
That shook me to the core. In the first nine months, when I was back in Seattle, there'd been a couple of guys who hadn't made it. They both died by their own hand. I figured that if I'd seen two guys buy the farm in less than a year, this guy (who'd been sober for twelve years) had probably seen more funerals than I'd had hot meals.
I'd been yapping on about being in the third step for most of the time I'd been sober. Well, in retrospect, I was nowhere near that point. I still hadn't really believed exactly how royally screwed I was. I just thought I did.
However, at that time, I felt - on a cellular level - that it was 'do or die'. I went home from the meeting and thought about what I'd heard. I had no more reservations about being able to use socially. I'd known that was gone for quite some time. But, now I knew... no make that knew... that I was going to have to work the steps, or face the consequences of a relapse.
I was willing to set aside disbelief, and accept the idea that there was a Higher Power - a God, Supreme Being, what the hell ever - who could help me out. And that I'd better get willing to let him (or her, for all I know) lend a hand; I was in over my head here.
By saying, "get willing" to let God help, I decided I would do what was necessary to allow my H.P. to help. This meant doing the rest of the steps. And, if I wasn't working on 'em, then all my talk of willingness was just that: talk.
That night, I stayed up late, and wrote a fourth step. Since I didn't have a sponsor to guide me with some helpful tips (such as doing one whole column first, before moving to the next, for instance), it was pretty disorganized. But, it was from the heart; I didn't leave any cards tucked in my boot.
The next day, I got a hold of the Canadian fellow; he was gracious enough to hear my fifth step before leaving town.
I got a sponsor shortly after that.
So, I ended up doing the things that I'd originally told people I wouldn't: write a list of things which could incriminate me, and have someone mentor me.
But, I came back from Asia with about two years' recovery. And a totally different outlook on stepwork.
-M
Sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for the meeting to start, I started reading the lecture notes which had been left on a blackboard. It was a bunch of theorizing about addiction.
Reading it, I realized that I've heard more theory and self-help rhetoric out of new folks than anybody else.
I used to have to understand things in recovery. That changed one evening, after a meeting at the 7th Day Adventist hospital in Taipei.
There was this guy from Canada who occasionally came into town on business. I'd just started coming back to meetings, and probably had my head so square up my butt that cleaning my bellybutton would've improved my vision. I must have sounded that way.
This guy had listened to me talk at the meeting. Afterwards, he took me aside and told me something to the effect that, "if you don't work the steps - soon - you're going to die."
He went on to explain that, listening to my story, he wouldn't bet on my living really long if I relapsed. Oh yeah, and that I sounded like a relapse waiting to happen.
That shook me to the core. In the first nine months, when I was back in Seattle, there'd been a couple of guys who hadn't made it. They both died by their own hand. I figured that if I'd seen two guys buy the farm in less than a year, this guy (who'd been sober for twelve years) had probably seen more funerals than I'd had hot meals.
I'd been yapping on about being in the third step for most of the time I'd been sober. Well, in retrospect, I was nowhere near that point. I still hadn't really believed exactly how royally screwed I was. I just thought I did.
However, at that time, I felt - on a cellular level - that it was 'do or die'. I went home from the meeting and thought about what I'd heard. I had no more reservations about being able to use socially. I'd known that was gone for quite some time. But, now I knew... no make that knew... that I was going to have to work the steps, or face the consequences of a relapse.
I was willing to set aside disbelief, and accept the idea that there was a Higher Power - a God, Supreme Being, what the hell ever - who could help me out. And that I'd better get willing to let him (or her, for all I know) lend a hand; I was in over my head here.
By saying, "get willing" to let God help, I decided I would do what was necessary to allow my H.P. to help. This meant doing the rest of the steps. And, if I wasn't working on 'em, then all my talk of willingness was just that: talk.
That night, I stayed up late, and wrote a fourth step. Since I didn't have a sponsor to guide me with some helpful tips (such as doing one whole column first, before moving to the next, for instance), it was pretty disorganized. But, it was from the heart; I didn't leave any cards tucked in my boot.
The next day, I got a hold of the Canadian fellow; he was gracious enough to hear my fifth step before leaving town.
I got a sponsor shortly after that.
So, I ended up doing the things that I'd originally told people I wouldn't: write a list of things which could incriminate me, and have someone mentor me.
But, I came back from Asia with about two years' recovery. And a totally different outlook on stepwork.
-M
Lunch at the cabbie's...
MSA was started in Seattle by a couple of guys in treatment. They were bitching to their sponsor that they couldn't relate to the stories they heard in twelve step meetings. They were both really just potheads; not drunks, not junkies. They couldn't relate to stories of week-long blackouts, sharing rigs with strangers, and some of the other stuff they heard. And, they were tired of hearing, "pffft... pot isn't addictive."
As a reward for complaining, their sponsor told them to start a new kind of meeting; one for marijuana smokers.
So, these two guys started a meeting. Nine months later, when I showed up, it had grown to three meetings a week. They were both held at churches that hosted a number of AA and NA meetings.
One of these guys was a cabbie; an older guy (older compared to twenty-one, that is... which probably put him in his thirties or maybe even forty years old) with long, brown hair, and a mustache. The other was a red-haired guy. Seems to me he was involved in the maritime industry somehow; either a sailor or boat mechanic or something. By the time I met them, they'd become involved in a clean-and-sober house a couple blocks off Market in Ballard.
Anyway, the cabbie and I didn't really hit it off too well at first. We'd pretty much just glare at each other; we just didn't play nice together.
Remember, I tended to piss people off a lot back then, and get pissed off myself. To this day, I'm still one of those guys that people either like or don't. Hopefully, I'm a little more likable nowadays.
One day the cabbie invited me to come over to his house to watch the football game. Probably the season opener. I could tell that he really wasn't too excited about the idea; I suspected someone'd put him up to it. To this day, I'm fairly sure of it.
But, I decided I'd go. I figured that if he was going to throw out an olive branch, that I'd be a man about it and be cool. Anyway, if he started acting like a jerk, I could have a good laugh at the fact that it was because he was irritated by my presence in his living room - which could be amusing, since he'd invited me. Hell, it was a win-win.
So, I showed up a while before kickoff. I think he was a little surprised that I showed. But, he was being pretty gracious, and I figured that I'd be a real asshole if I wasn't pleasant back to him.
I can't recall much of what we talked about that day, apart from his regaling me with tales of driving a cab owned by a guy too cheap to fix the seat (leaving my friend to have to sit on a phone book), and people jumping out of the cab without paying. I've got no idea who was playing, what the score was, or if the halftime show was any good. There are only two things that stick out in my memory about that day. First, our intrepid cabbie's friend and MSA co-founder had a corking cold; sat bundled up in a chair drinking coffee, and looked miserable for the entire game. And that I left there really happy that I'd gone. Whatever hard feelings there had been between us were gone.
At the next meeting, people were surprised to see the two of us hanging out, chatting it up like old friends.
Growing up, I'd always been a guy who was quick to take offense, and damned slow to set a perfectly good grudge down - no matter how insignificant the cause may be. But, this was a real lesson. Since then, I've tried to keep an open mind about people, even if they don't make a really good first impression.
Granted, there are always going to be those who we aren't going to get along with, and those who are untrustworthy. We have instincts for a reason; I'm not saying that I think it's a good idea to let sketchy, shady, or abusive people into our lives. I'm just saying that I've found it beneficial to try not to jump to snap judgments of people. Like they say in meetings, "principles before personalities".
-M
As a reward for complaining, their sponsor told them to start a new kind of meeting; one for marijuana smokers.
So, these two guys started a meeting. Nine months later, when I showed up, it had grown to three meetings a week. They were both held at churches that hosted a number of AA and NA meetings.
One of these guys was a cabbie; an older guy (older compared to twenty-one, that is... which probably put him in his thirties or maybe even forty years old) with long, brown hair, and a mustache. The other was a red-haired guy. Seems to me he was involved in the maritime industry somehow; either a sailor or boat mechanic or something. By the time I met them, they'd become involved in a clean-and-sober house a couple blocks off Market in Ballard.
Anyway, the cabbie and I didn't really hit it off too well at first. We'd pretty much just glare at each other; we just didn't play nice together.
Remember, I tended to piss people off a lot back then, and get pissed off myself. To this day, I'm still one of those guys that people either like or don't. Hopefully, I'm a little more likable nowadays.
One day the cabbie invited me to come over to his house to watch the football game. Probably the season opener. I could tell that he really wasn't too excited about the idea; I suspected someone'd put him up to it. To this day, I'm fairly sure of it.
But, I decided I'd go. I figured that if he was going to throw out an olive branch, that I'd be a man about it and be cool. Anyway, if he started acting like a jerk, I could have a good laugh at the fact that it was because he was irritated by my presence in his living room - which could be amusing, since he'd invited me. Hell, it was a win-win.
So, I showed up a while before kickoff. I think he was a little surprised that I showed. But, he was being pretty gracious, and I figured that I'd be a real asshole if I wasn't pleasant back to him.
I can't recall much of what we talked about that day, apart from his regaling me with tales of driving a cab owned by a guy too cheap to fix the seat (leaving my friend to have to sit on a phone book), and people jumping out of the cab without paying. I've got no idea who was playing, what the score was, or if the halftime show was any good. There are only two things that stick out in my memory about that day. First, our intrepid cabbie's friend and MSA co-founder had a corking cold; sat bundled up in a chair drinking coffee, and looked miserable for the entire game. And that I left there really happy that I'd gone. Whatever hard feelings there had been between us were gone.
At the next meeting, people were surprised to see the two of us hanging out, chatting it up like old friends.
Growing up, I'd always been a guy who was quick to take offense, and damned slow to set a perfectly good grudge down - no matter how insignificant the cause may be. But, this was a real lesson. Since then, I've tried to keep an open mind about people, even if they don't make a really good first impression.
Granted, there are always going to be those who we aren't going to get along with, and those who are untrustworthy. We have instincts for a reason; I'm not saying that I think it's a good idea to let sketchy, shady, or abusive people into our lives. I'm just saying that I've found it beneficial to try not to jump to snap judgments of people. Like they say in meetings, "principles before personalities".
-M
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)