Champions of reality!
Good day to you. I’m not sure
your hats are off to me, and I’m not sure of much, but I can say that I am no
longer seeking claim to the title of sober.
I am also not not-sober. I have
revisited the experiment. Doing the same
thing over and over and expecting different results. You could say that. You could also say,
trying something new. What’s different
this time? That’s a very good
question. One thing is for sure, I was
struggling with my brain a few years into another round of sobriety. I kept not feeling quite right. Working the
steps, being active in the rooms, being of service, and just not feeling quite
right. There was of course the DMT experiment,
an attempt to get rid of a persistent desire, which had reoccurred, to drink
and smoke pot. Not feeling quite right
will do that to you, if your brain-chemistry is just so.
This brain chemistry is often
referred to as the addictive mind, but there is a whole lot more going on in
there than addiction, or at least a particular kind of addiction. But the way this addiction phenomenon is
explained, at least in regard to substance abuse and my psychiatrists
understanding of it, is that it will lead a person back to a relationship with
a substance that will insure that the carrier of this mental virus will
participate in repeat self-administration of the substance over time. In short, the patient will surely drink or
drug again, and then they’ll do it again and again. They will relapse into their problematic
habit. In my case, a bit more than a
week off the wagon, I said that I wouldn’t drink the next couple days, to prove
that I’m on different footing this time.
I did good all day, only taking doctor ordered medications for my mental
health, and then, on a plane to Hawaii, “I changed my mind.” A bit frustrated, a bit bored, I said to
myself, “well, there is that pretty girl somewhere back there on the
plane. I’ll go use the restroom back
there and have a look.” I sighted the
lady, like a blond Ms. Jenn, sharp features, eyes that protrude just a bit,
like there isn’t enough room for them in there, but beautifully, so that you
want to kiss them. That feeling of
nervousness, and a quest for courage welled up in me. So I continued to the rear of the aircraft,
parted the blue curtains, found the hidden flight attendants, and, the change
of my mind firmed up, ordered one of those little plane bottles of red
wine.
Here, we
can say, is the nature of the beast in action.
This is what Bill W. and Dr. Bob wrote about in the book Alcoholics
Anonymous in 1939. They had a
breakthrough, and articulated, in a way that drunks could understand, the
phenomenon of craving. They described a
craving that occurred upon the taking of the first drink, and an obsession of
the mind that would drive the drinker to take that first drink in the face of
good reasons not to.
Well, I was
sober, and now I’m drinking a little mini-bottle of airport wine. Why can’t I just explain this decision to
drink again as a simple expression of an alcoholic tendency? After years of sobriety, with all in my life
seemingly going well, I decide that because I’ve been feeling too depressed
lately, having a drink or two is somehow going to solve my problem? That seems a bit too familiar. In the Alcoholics Anonymous book they talk
about resentment being the number one offender, resulting in more relapses than
any other cause. They had my number
there as well.
I never
could seem to learn the lesson that dating women in the recovery community is
just doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. It never worked. Not with the real love connections
anyway. I did have some nice mutually
casual, beautiful relationships with a couple of women “in the program.”
So there
was resentment against women in play in the psychological drive toward my
departure from strict sobriety. Worse
even than my hesitation to go to meetings, out of fear of seeing exes, was my
grinding resentment against the very tool of every one of my extended periods
of sobriety. That tool is the program
and the meetings themselves. I found
them more and more unbearable. My
fellows in these rooms, when I expressed my feelings about problems that I was
having with the religious tone of meetings, the masculine God language, or the
outdated texts, or the closing of meetings with the Lord’s prayer, scoffed at
me, and told me that I wasn’t doing it right.
I was not showing enough faith. I
wasn’t accepting everything in my life. I wasn’t turning everything over to an
all-powerful God. The more sober I got,
the less I could tolerate this dogmatism.
It’s a catch 22 for a man whose last sobriety date was 1/11/11. Must one’s dogmatism increase the longer you
stay sober? These AA people seem to
think that faith must grow and grow. It
seems all too petty to say that I was scared away by the Lord’s Prayer, but
fighting against the religiousness of AA was just not a battle I felt I could
keep showing up for. It got to feel silly.
In the bay area, this is a problem you rarely see, but in the mountains
of western Colorado where I live, the Lord’s Prayer is the one you hear at the
end of almost every meeting.
What kind of faith is it that keeps
people sober, and makes AA work for so many?
Is it the literal power of God helping get and keep people sober, or are
they experiencing the psychological effects of their faith rather than the
literal intervention of the “Father,” one of the many names for God that the
book Alcoholics Anonymous uses to describe this magical being. People seem willing to take on a belief in a
particular thing in order to get a particular result. In the Alcoholics Anonymous text it states
clearly, “the self-propulsion idea didn’t work, but the God idea did.” And maybe this particular God idea does work
for getting and keeping people sober, but I’m afraid it may be replacing one addiction,
which affects an addict, their friends, families, and communities, with another
addiction that affects us all even more.
This faith in an all-powerful deity, in control of everything, and at
your beck and call as soon as you “turn it over” to “Him,” may be good for
getting off drinking or drugs, but it’s really bad at getting human beings to
accept responsibility for the reality we have created here on planet
earth.
Did the
Lord’s Prayer chase me away from AA?
No. I chased myself away. I have to find out if there is a more honest
program out there, or even find out if I can, like the majority of the people
who experience issues with substance abuse, recover without a 12 step
program. It is not as though AA or its
members don’t have access to the latest research; it’s just that they ignore it
when it doesn’t support their rigid attachment to outdated AA literature. AA members and their literature are in denial
of scientific facts. The AA’s and their
book still claim some ultimate authority, or miraculous accuracy to a book that
was written almost 80 years ago. While
this book does a fantastic job describing symptoms of problematic drinking
patterns and demonstrating the mental factors that are at play in an illness
with physical consequences, the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous does not
reflect or express the latest research data of this new millennium (which I’m
not saying I believe without question either).
The book also directs people to
find their own understanding of a power greater than themself, and this power
is repeatedly referred to as “He, Him, Father, etc. etc.” It’s a bit limiting to a contemporary reader,
contextually and scientifically enlightened by the facts of patriarchal
history. Most women in AA don’t seem to
have a problem with language in their basic text that speaks to the “Alcoholic
man” rather than the “alcoholic person,” and which contains a chapter “To
Wives,” rather than one “To Spouses.”
AA set out, when it was founded, to
make sure it kept itself separate from religion. But, despite the protestations of members
around the world, I can only say that over the last 17 years, during the time
I’ve been exposed to AA, I’ve watched it become more and more of a
religion. People adhere to the dogma,
instead of their own experience. They
are stuck in the words of a book, instead of the life around them. I haven’t gotten drunk, good and drunk since
I gave this new drinking experiment a try.
It’s been 1 or 2 drinks, 2 or 3 drinks, 3 or 4 drinks. I’ve written this little ditty, and just
finished that one little bottle of airline wine (and they’ve gotten smaller
than they used to be). I may get one
more, since I’ve already broken today’s oath.
One drink at a time. If I were still
willing to refer to myself as an alcoholic, I’d be one of the nitpicking
varieties. I’ve nitpicked my way right
out my problem. Or I’ve nitpicked my way
right out of a solution to my problem.
Could be that addiction is smarter than me. Probably yes; but we shall see.
