3 posts tagged “aa”

I know, I know.  I already posted something with "Thanksgiving" in the title.  But that was just a hook to get folks to look at some websites that might direct money to charity.  Generic stuff.  True meaning of the holiday blah blah blah...

Then there was the whole cutesy Vox Hunt ironic crap post.

Which brings me to the real post, starting now:

Those of you who are my friends, or who have read my blog on a regular basis, know that I don't drink alcohol.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that I am an alcoholic.  Alcohol is poison for me.

I think that it's important to say that I have no moral opinion about alcohol.  After all, it is nothing more than fermented plant matter.  Alcohol is not bad.  And there are plenty of people who are able to enjoy a drink or two, or an occasional blow-out, without any serious impact on their lives.  I am not one of those people.  Now, when I started drinking, when I was in my early teens, I was.  Not to say that I drank just a little bit.  I always drank for effect, even when I was stealing bottles out of my dad's wine cellar and acting like a snob.  I'm just saying that the way I drank did not appear to be having any serious negative impact on my life.  I had good grades, I had lots of friends, I was athletic, I was involved in serious relationships, I was one of the Kool Kids.  I also was basically decent, honest and compassionate.  Just a normal Joe.

But it is difficult to describe to someone who hasn't had the feelings what it was like to drink the way I drank.  There was nothing about alcohol that I didn't love.  I loved the smell of it, the taste of it, the tingling feeling on the roof of my mouth, the numbing of my tongue, the heat as it passed down my throat, the warmth growing in my belly and spreading up to my head, the way I felt more relaxed and confident.  And especially the way it made those voices in my head shut up.  I spent most nights of high school downing hard liquor after my parents went to sleep, and listening to classical music.  It was bliss.

And it opened me to new experiences.  All of a sudden, I wasn't so shy.  That girl who had seemed so unapproachable was there for the taking.  I knew more and better than all of my friends.  I was a raconteur, an intellectual, a bon vivant, a lothario. 

That all passed over time.  I didn't drink more; I had started out drinking a lot.  What happened was that my world got smaller.  By the end, it was me alone in the dark, with inner shakes and the sweats, sleeping with a kitchen knife under my pillow, because I thought the folks having a party next door were plotting to scale the tree outside my window, in order to climb in through the window and kill me.

But I didn't believe that I had a drinking problem.  All evidence to the contrary, it didn't occur to me that the catalyst for my daily hell poured out of a bottle.  I use the word "catalyst", because the booze wasn't what caused the hell.  As a matter of fact, it was alcohol which had taken me out of my personal hell in the first place, in the beginning, when it quieted those voices whispering in my ears as a young teenager.  But as the years had gone along, alcohol ceased to muffle those voices.  As a matter of fact, it became an amplifier.

On a typical evening, I would get home from work intending to run to the supermarket, or maybe to the laundromat.  But I would say to myself I'll just have one drink first.  And all bets would be off.  I would rinse out the same underwear and shirt and socks I had worn to work that day in the bathroom sink, and hang them to dry on the shower rod.  I would work my way through the bottle, usually of whiskey.  At some point in the evening, I would stagger into the bathroom, kneel down, and stick my finger down my throat, so that I could vomit to overcome my nausea, so I could drink some more.  As I washed my hands and face in the sink, I would look at myself in the mirror, and think Who is this animal? 

I'll save the story of how I came to realize that I had a drinking problem and decided to go to rehab, and my experience in rehab for another time.  This is a Thanksgiving story.  And how, might you ask, could what I have shared have anything to do with Thanksgiving?  I left rehab on Thanksgiving morning, 1987.

It was a cold dank overcast morning in Wernersville, right outside Reading, Pennsylvania.  I stood outside the main hall of the rehab waiting for the van to come.  My group members, and some of the other patients I had become friendly with shook my hand, or hugged me, depending on their personality.  The van came; I climbed in.  The driver took me down to the local bus station and dropped me off. 

I stood outside with my ticket, looking at the other passengers, using my alcohol radar to guess who else might be an alcoholic.  (This was a freshly acquired skill).  I picked out one fellow as appearing a likely prospect.  Wouldn't you know it?  When it came time to board the bus, this guy decided randomly to sit next to me.  I have found over the years that busses are some of the most likely conveyances in which to find oneself in unsolicited conversation.  This time was no exception.  It didn't take long for me to discover that my instincts had been right.  My new friend was on his way to the New Jersey shore to have Thanksgiving with his brother.  He had recently lost his job and his marriage.  I didn't mention that I had just gotten out of rehab.

The bus pulled into Philadelphia, and I got off holding my shabby suitcase.  The words of one of the counselors at one of the full rehab meetings resonated in my head.  He said Look around you.  Four out of five of the patients here will be drunk or high within a month of getting out of rehab.  It's probably going to be you.  Unless you take this seriously.

I was determined to be part of the 20%.  I was also afraid to go back to that same apartment I drank in to be alone on Thanksgiving Day.  So I grabbed a cab, and took it to a local AA "clubhouse", which I had discovered while in rehab was less than two blocks from my home.  (I had passed the building nearly every morning on the way to the subway.  I could never figure out if it was a fraternity or a drug house.)  The taxi dropped me off outside, and I walked up the stairs, across the porch, and into the clubhouse.  There was an AA meeting going on.  I sat down in a chair, and listened through the rest of the meeting.  When the meeting was over, I noticed that they had put out some food for Thanksgiving. So, I grabbed myself a plate, and loaded it up with turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and OBrien salad and pie.  I ate my first sober Thanksgiving meal as an adult that day, sitting on a shaky folding chair among strangers.

After I finished eating, I started going around to the other folks, and started to ask for phone numbers.  (The rehab had suggested this.)  Most of them people I asked declined.  Just one guy, who seemed pretty crazy, offered his number.  I took it while promising myself that I would never call him.  At the time, I thought that the reason nobody would give their number to me was because I was white, and they were black.  I have come to understand that I wasn't the only one in pain that day, that perhaps the people who said no didn't feel they had anything to offer me.  Alcoholic thinking can be like that. At the time, it led me to conclude that perhaps the clubhouse was not a place around which I should center my efforts to stay sober.  But I felt OK.  I had gotten through first day out sober, and had even eaten a Thanksgiving meal.  I felt good enough to walk home and fall into a dreamless sleep.

The next day, I went to another AA meeting.  Two guys came up to me after the meeting, and offered me their phone numbers.  Both eventually became friends, and one of them became my AA "sponsor".  I have not had a drink of alcohol since.

Because of the circumstances of that first Thanksgiving Day, the holiday always has centered around sobriety for me.  The first couple of years, I went back to the rehab on Thanksgiving, and sat with the patients as they ate their holiday meal.  Then I made it a point to go to detoxes where people were locked up for the holiday, and shared the joy of being freed from bondage to alcohol.  As time went along, I got back into the "normal" pattern of sharing Thanksgiving with friends and family.  Last year, I had fifteen people over, including my sister and my best friend.  But no matter what, every year, I go to an AA meeting to share my gratitude.

Thanksgiving is the quintessential AA holiday.  A  secular (or at least non-denominational) holiday centered around gratitude.  This year, my sister is going elsewhere, and I don't feel like cooking all day.  So, I'm going down to a local AA group for breakfast and a meeting, and returning in the afternoon for Thanksgiving dinner and a meeting.  I will see a lot of friends there.  Certainly, all of my homeless friends will be there.  (We make it a point to be sure that the local homeless community knows about the event.)  We'll go through at least a dozen turkeys, along with side dishes by the truckload, and tons of desserts.  And coffee, lots of coffee.  The AA kind, that can also be used to strip walls.  I can't wait.

On the off chance that any of you reading this will be doing the same thing, I will be with you in spirit if not in fact.  And if anyone out there can identify with the pain I described earlier, knows what if feels like, and is willing to believe that my experience is not unique, that alcohol need not rule your universe any longer, drop me a line.  I won't answer until Friday my time, at the earliest.  But I will answer.  You are not alone.  You never have to feel the pain of drinking again.  And I love you.  No questions asked.

My life began with a miracle.  My mother has Rh-negative blood.  Deborah, my sister, who was the first-born child, was a difficult pregnancy for my mother.  My brother Brian was a blue baby, kept alive initially through the intervention of a ventilator.  After his birth, my mother's doctor advised my parents not to attempt any more children.  The pregnancy would be too arduous for my mother, and the likelihood of her carrying another fetus to full term was spider-thread thin.

Mom became pregnant again anyway.  But as the June delivery date approached, her obstetrician was very concerned.  After one final pre-delivery exam, the doctor called my parents into her office, and asked them to sit down.  She advised them that the examination had confirmed her worst fear; their baby was stillborn.  As my parents sat numbly, the obstetrician called and scheduled a Caesarian procedure, so that my mother's life would not be further endangered by this lump of inert matter festering inside of her.

When the obstetrician cut my mother open, there I was; not only alive, but perfectly healthy.  I am told that doctors came from all over Northern California to gaze at me, wondering How? and Why?.

The first question's answer may lie at the heart of God's universe.  Perhaps two lines of the time-space continuum somehow brushed against each other.  One family exactly like mine happily expecting the best outcome was crushed under the tragedy of an unanticipated burden of grief.  While my family's shadow tiptoed across dimensions, snatching away for themselves joy which had been intended for others. 

On some level,the latter question lay at the very center of my being for many years.  But the day finally came when God answered it.

Scott and Kay were getting married.  I knew Scott through my membership in Alcoholics Anonymous.  When I had first come into the fellowship, staggering with fear and desperation, Scott had gone out of his way to make me feel welcome.  He was not alone in that, but Scott was part of a select group which folded me into their midst as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.  Scott had met Kay as a result of being a member of AA.  Not that he met Kay in a meeting.  That does happen; the phrase one often hears is "Boy meets girl at AA campus".  Kay was the administrator of a Lutheran church which rented a room to AA members in which to hold a meeting.  One month, Scott had agreed to chair the meeting.  As such, he took on the responsibility for coming early to set up.  While doing so, he began chatting up Kay.  One thing led to another, and soon they were dating.  Not long after, Scott announced to his friends that he and Kay were going to drive across country together, camping along the way.  I remember thinking to myself that they would return either mortal enemies or engaged.  I was right.

So, here I was one night, after their wedding ceremony, dancing along with others around a bonfire, as my friend Chris chanted pagan hymns.  Scott and Kay had elected to hold their wedding at a spiritual retreat center in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.  Unlike a typical wedding, the guests did not go home after the reception, which had been a pot luck meal prepared by family and friends.  Some guests, including myself, had arranged for rooms in the retreat center.  Other guests had set up tents in a large meadow a short dirt road away from the center, screened from it by a line of closely planted tall trees.  It was in the center of that meadow that we few were dancing.  (Most of the others had gone to sleep earlier, after a rousing round of music and singing.)

Although I am not pagan, my experience over the years in AA has left me with a sense of acceptance and tolerance for however another may choose to reach for that stream of pure light which is God.  So it is perhaps not surprising that, having bade good night to my friends, as I walked back to the retreat center by myself, I felt a door opening in my soul.

My hint that this was a special night manifested itself through the presence of fireflies.  I will not digress to my earlier history.  Suffice it to say that there had been a time before when, as I walked in darkness along the banks of the Mississippi River, fireflies had heralded the presence of God to me.  That night in the Poconos, fireflies surrounded me as I walked, and I resolved not to immediately return to my room.  Instead, I continued on the road past the retreat center, and down a hill through a grove of trees.

My first stop was inside a wooden reconstruction of an early Irish Christian church.  I stepped in, closed the door, and sat down on a bench rough-hewn from a log.  In utter darkness and silence, I asked God to speak to me.  Then I stood up, left the church, and continued down the hill.  There was a circle of stones at the bottom of the hill.  The owners of the retreat center had constructed a miniature henge.  I stepped between the stones, and strode to the standing rock in the center.  Placing my back against the cool dampness of the rock, I looked up at the sky.

Up there in the mountains far from any town, the heavens were teeming with stars.  God, I prayed, if what I feel is truly your presence, show me.  I concentrated on a particular section of the sky, and waited.  Within seconds, a shooting star flashed precisely where I was looking.  I walked back up the hill, and lay down in a grass field right next to the retreat house.  I looked back up at the stars.  God, tell me what to do, I said.  Do you want me to change careers?  Should I make a commitment to a religion?  Should I just love other people?  As that last word escaped my lips, a shooting star larger and brighter than any I had seen before or have seen since streaked across the whole of the night sky.  Stunned into silence, I stood up, walked into the retreat center and to my room.  I got into bed, closed my eyes, and fell into perfect slumber.

The next morning, when I arose, questions crowded my mind.  How could I tell if I was loving properly?  What if what I thought was love was really codependence?  Such is the mind of Man.

Ever since that night, I have endeavored to follow God's instruction for me.  When I get bogged down in Why? or How?, it becomes more difficult.  Sometime I forget altogether what my purpose is.  But then God places another of his precious children, writhing in pain from the bondage of self, squarely in front of me.  I put down my own mirror, and drawing on that infinitely pure and powerful light, a tiny speck of which resides in all of us, I love God's child.  And in that moment, I know this thing we call Life is merely one step along that shimmering path we all traverse.  Never lost, never abandoned, never alone.  In the words of my childhood faith, And Love is reflected in love. 

Perhaps some of you reading what I have written are finding that hard to believe right now.  Don't worry.  When you are ready once again, you will find that connection to the pure light which you have temporarily misplaced.  In the meantime, know that I love you.  Truly.  It's my job.

Show us a sign.

12 steps down

This is the actual sign of a bar here in Philadelphia.  They originally were called 12 Steps Down because that's how many steps down it was to the bar entrance below street level.  When someone pointed out the connection to AA's 12 Steps, instead of changing the name, the bar embraced the connection.  If I ever start drinking again, which is extremely unlikely, this is the type of dive bar I would consider as my home.