Bank of Sobriety

What happens when you feel like picking up a drink? You have all the tools to manage that. What about when you’re not even thinking about picking up a drink? Are you prepared when the situation is thrust upon you? Do you have enough in your sobriety bank to avert a relapse?  

Trouble with this dis-ease is you can never be prepared absolutely. Just like when we made the decision to stop so to can the decision be undone oft times much more easily. So any idea that you might be invulnerable to a repeat attack of the lash of alcohol might be an assumption we best un-assume. 

I never thought that AA was the only way to arrest drinking.  There are as I have written here many other protocols in the 21st Century that might be as effective or up for debate more effective. This is not the point. The key lies in the fact that if we choose to undertake this final problem on by our lonesome we might be successful. So too can we get in a rowboat without oars and cross a river with a strong current. There are no rewards for doing it alone. Sobriety is best achieved by using the tools and you all know what they are. Nike started it all with: Just Do It. Take action; decide for yourself that you’re worth it. 

Drunk Dreams

I used to dream about drinking even after many years of sobriety but those went away as even time erodes the desire to drink in the somnolent state. Once in awhile I would hallucinate about snorting coke and thought that I had slipped. And sometimes those castles in the air were so real I thought I had to start counting days again. It was only upon waking did I realize it was just that a dream. 

Fortunately we don’t drink or do drugs in our sleep and the conscious decision to stay stopped is one we make when our eyes are opened not closed. Drinking is a choice behavior even though some would have us believe it’s hereditary or a genuine disease some of us face.  When it came to drinking I used to think it was a lack of willpower that forced me to pick up but I used to run up to 100 miles a week so I knew I didn’t lack willpower. It was alcohol stripping me of my will and with my will gone so was my power.   

I don’t dream about drinking or doing drugs anymore and one day at a time the blessing of sobriety keeps me clean 24 hours a day.  

Anger Part VIII

As a sober man I have learned to deftly shift from being fully associated in anger temperament to one of self-ridicule at the man that just lost his head. When I was active and in a rage there was no stopping my diatribes until they had run their course. Sober however, I am almost am two men. One that is expressing his hostility in manageable terms and a second  that sees anger as better left for those that can handle it.  

Anger for me today is comedic especially when most of the blame falls directly on my shoulders not the world at large that I would love to lay blame to.  I still get angry with people, places and things and most often those very same things are out of earshot or have no ears at all. Anger is truly for this alcoholic better left to those able to handle it. As alcoholics we still cling to things that we are not ready to give up yet and anger is the one human emotion I still wrestle with because it wrestles me to the ground and leaves me breathless.  

We Only Have Today

 I promised myself that I would make My Life After AA a priority and at least make an entry every two days without fail. Well I should have kept my conscious mind away from my afflatus because the two never could mix.  

It’s nigh on 23 years in August that I had my last drink and I’ve talked about it a lot here that in some ways it feels like a blink a long blink but nevertheless a blink in time.  And time means nothing without works because sobriety without work is just dry time nothing more. It’s better than drunk time but if we have the gift of sobriety we have to do something with it. 

Whether it’s helping sponsees or just making restitution to those we have harmed we have to take action and not sit on the sidelines. Marking time is a great thing don’t get me wrong but mostly that is just to show the newcomer it can be done but  we as sober men and women have to use this gift because we only have today.  

Arrested Development

Someone told me early on Jack if you want to stay sober you will have to live like earthlings do.  You know earthlings they can take it or leave it and I could never leave a drink on the bar until the glass was empty and I was sucking on the ice cubes.  I think I was 17 when I picked up my first drink and not long after I experienced my first drunk and boy it was a doozey.  I won’t bore you with those details but suffice it to say that I was arrested development after that.

 When I finally put down the drink at age 38 I was dead certain it was my last. And nearly 23 years later I have been blessed not to have picked up again since. 1989 seems like such a long time ago in certain respects when I think about clock time but when I think about time chronologically it is a blink. I was so sure I was done because 1000 days (to the day) prior I had put down what I thought was my drug of choice cocaine and that experience helped me realize as far as I was concerned that a drug was a drug.  However it was alcohol that brought me to my knees not cocaine. Cocaine decimated me financially and extinguished my 2nd marriage but the drink murdered my soul and left me bereft of my self-esteem, confidence and kept me from being the man God created. That to me was so much more egregious. I was not taking my life but giving up on it.  

An old-timer told me early on that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  My life was erratic like being on academic probation one semester and making 

Dean’s list the very next semester or my worst crime getting married three times thinking each one was for keeps and taking hostages in between.  Those that knew me intimately would remind me of that all the time and   that I did everything in extremes. I dieted extreme losing 75 lbs. in 4 months, I wasn’t content to run marathons I had to run ultra-marathons and in the present day I am still an extremist spinning nearly every day and writing 13 blogs. But I do some things differently now although knowing my limitations isn’t one of them.  I might continue this rant but for now I am headed home to face more challenges but at least they will be taken on sober.  

Getting My Marbles Back Part I

Remember some of the old-timers telling us that it took 5 years to get back your marbles and another 5 for you to know what to do with them?  I remember getting my bag of marbles and even though getting them was more symbolic than anything else, those old-timers probably had the timing just right because it was 10 years before I had some of the rudimentary skills of life that I had thrown away in my active life of drinking. 

An old girlfriend afflicted with some of the same maladies I had used to say to me: “Time takes time”. And as an alcoholic I just didn’t want to be told anything took time because I wanted it all right away but the intellect my Higher Power gave me (what was left of it) also knew that she was right and that emerging from the mocus state would take more than just staying sober it would take a lot of footwork but also a lot of time on the clock. This time wasn’t just for us but also for those in our lives that had survived our rampage. They needed time as well and they had to make major adjustments dealing with us sans the enabling and minus the embarrassment we put them through all the while they sublimated their own needs and desires that were put on hold. And dealing with us without the drink was a yeoman’s task albeit better than an active drunk but a sober drunk was fraught with its own set of challenges they weren’t used to. Drunk they could put us to bed but sober that was something else again.  

Next: Part II. 

Some Are Sicker than Others

I heard this phrase often in the early days of AA but I only understood it from the perspective than that some of us had worse consequences that were part of their active experience shall we say. I used to kid my friends about having a resentment that I never went to rehab when they would share about their time there and here I was coming off an ordinary drunk night into the smoky rooms of AA without so much as a horrific story to tell. 

It was then that my sponsor told me to ‘identify’ with the speaker and not ‘compare’. That was a great delineation for me because after all it wasn’t who could tell the best war story rather it was how it affected their lives was the point.  In fact tangentially when an AA member really understood the compare vs. identify concept he or she was finally accepting that it wasn’t the story it was simply that our lives were out of control.  

Some are sicker than others means to me now that some may not be able constitutionally to stay stopped. Their dis-ease has progressed so far that not AA or any other protocol will help them escape the lash of alcohol.  I was blessed that my addiction to alcohol kept me from some of the dire consequences that so often we hear when some members share.  I can only be grateful that my Higher Power allowed me to be sitting here sober nearly 23 years later. All I can do is pray for those still sick and suffering.