Corking the Bottle

(First published June 14, 2018 and edited today) I'm not very handy when it comes to fixing stuff. At one time, my excuse was no good tools. Now I have plenty of tools and no legitimate excuses. Repairs may take me a long time, but I can only blame lack of knowledge or lack of effort when I fail. I've got plenty of tools in ye olde toolbox. Same thing when it comes to drinking. I'm not so handy when it comes to fixing myself. But when I mess up, I don't degrade myself. I add another tool and sometimes get rid of the ones that aren't helping me. I started off going to A.A. meetings once in a while and going to a local government-supported therapy program. I soon found I needed more than those two tools alone. My toolbox is now full. I regularly: Have a sponsor. See a psychiatrist. See a therapist who exchanges notes with the psychiatrist. Take antidepressants and 500 mg of Antabuse, which is supposed to make me sick if I put alcohol into my system. Sti...

“A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.” ―  Raymond Chandler,  The Long Goodbye

Victims can't recover. I heard that at A.A. last week and at first didn't know what it meant. Then I looked back at myself. I was a victim. My job was eliminated. My friend deserted me. My wife was down on me. My daughter quit speaking to me. I was lonely. Everyone was out to make my life miserable. I didn't deserve that. See? I was a victim. I couldn't have stopped drinking even if I had wanted to. Over time,  I saw I was villain, not victim. I brought all the negative feelings on myself. No one was out to make me miserable. I did it to myself in the way I reacted to negative life events. So I changed myself and my approach to my alcohol addiction. No one could restore me to sanity -- only God and myself. Voila! My life changed. That's why I now say: Victims can't recover.

“If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in.” ―  Bill Hicks Happy Monday!

Tell me if the lyrics of this popular song sound like alcoholism. That may not be what was intended. But it sounds like it could be to me. "Disease" -- Matchbox Twenty ...I got a disease deep inside of me, Makes me feel uneasy, baby I can't live without you, Tell me what am I supposed to do about it. Keep your distance from it, Don't pay no attention to me. I got a disease. I think that I'm sick. But leave me be while my world is coming down on me. You taste like honey, honey, tell me can I be your honey? Be, be strong, keep telling myself that it won't take long till I'm free of my disease, yeah free of my disease. Set me free of my disease.

I have been looking today to identify my best self and my toxic self. This comes from an episode of Dr. Phil yesterday. It strikes me as a different way of doing Step 4: "Made a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves." Life Coach Mike Bayer was on the show. He told two mom/sisters, "When you're your best self, you're being your authentic self, so our best authentic self. The anti-self is the characteristics that we think get in the way of being our best self." ( https://www.drphil.com/videos/life-coach-mike-bayer-explains-how-your-best-self-and-anti-self-affect-your-daily-life/ ) In other words, what are the messages you tell yourself about you? He had them list their authentic selves, draw a picture of what that might look like, then give it a name. Then they did the same for their toxic selves. Watch the video. Bayer wrote a book called,  Best Self: Be You Only Better . ( https://www.coachmikebayer.com/book ) It isn't about how to stay awa...

Todd has a concern. He is in the early phase of battling his addiction. His best friend of many years continues to use with no desire to stop. At A.A. today, Todd asked for guidance on whether he should drop his friend to keep himself clean or face temptation while keeping the friend. I spoke up about page 101 in the Big Book: "In our belief any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to do the impossible have always failed.... "Be sure you are on solid spiritual ground.... Do not think of what you will get out of the occasion. Think of what you can bring to it." Dottie added this analogy. "If you hang around a barbershop long enough you're going to get a haircut."

“There'a a phrase, "the elephant in the living room," which purports to describe what it's like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, "How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn't you see the elephant in the living room?" And it's so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth; "I'm sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn't know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture." There comes an aha-moment for some folks - the lucky ones - when they suddenly recognize the difference.” ―  Stephen King

I must face the facts: I am getting old. I used to consider most people I  saw as "about my age." Reality is that we baby boomers are aging and dying off. I wrote down a note someone said at A.A. not long ago: When you're ripe, you rot. When you're green, you grow. The trick is to see myself as green and growing. I am too healthy to turn ripe and rot. I met with an orthopaedic doctor yesterday. My knees have been bad for a long time, likely from running all those marathons and other races. He said my right knee, which had arthroscopic surgery 15 years ago to remove damaged cartilage, was rubbing bone on bone. He couldn't understand how I could possibly still be running on it. My other knee has been sore because of a calcium deposit. He gave me a shot of cortisone in each knee and told me I never should run again. I won't follow that order if I am away from home and away from my low-impact exercise equipment. Being unable to run without pain was one of th...

Jody relapsed the other night. She confessed tearfully at A.A. yesterday. It's not the first time she wept at a meeting. I can see she tries hard, but she is in the deadly clutches most of us experience as we try to stop drinking. Several times in several ways, others at the meeting consoled her by pointing out that when we slip or relapse, we never lose what we gained. We have acquired new knowledge, new people, and new understanding of ourselves. Jody is better off now than during her last relapse because she has resources she didn't have before. She now must recover from guilt, shame, and remorse. It's a hard road back. But at some point, that road straightens for us as long as we really want it to. Plus accepting God and His will for us will keep us on that straight road despite a few bumps and potholes.

The Daily Reflection of A.A. for March 29 leaves me unsure. After all, I am older now and my days are numbered. Well, my days always have been numbered, but it's a much smaller number now. This is what the Daily Reflection said: " In  Zorba the Greek , Nikos Kazantzakis describes an encounter between his principal character and an old man busily at work planting a tree. 'What is it you are doing?' Zorba asks. The old man replies: 'You can see very well what I’m doing, my son, I’m planting a tree.' 'But why plant a tree,' Zorba asks, 'if you won’t be able to see it bear fruit?' And the old man answers: 'I, my son, live as though I were never going to die.' The response brings a faint smile to Zorba’s lips and, as he walks away, he exclaims with a note of irony: 'How strange—I live as though I were going to die tomorrow!'" So how am I supposed to live? As if I will live forever or as if this is my last day? If I am goin...