Day 43: Follow The Yellow Brick Road

Pray for understanding and compassion.

After talking with my sponsor, reviewing yet another week in the life, I see even more themes beginning to reoccur in my day to day experience.

Even as I look back over my posts from the past week, I can recognize where there is still much work to be done. Mainly in how I deal with, and think about, others. While I’ve been very available and loving to some in my life, there are still so many places where I can only see as far as my world view allows. I struggle with accepting another’s experience and difficulty with a sympathetic eye many times. Just because I’ve been so fixated on the ways I can and should improve my life, in and outside of the program, doesn’t mean that everyone else is on the same page.

“Patience my young Padawan,” a wise Jedi once said. Things I need, will come. And, things that others need, they will come to them too. But, what others need in their recovery and in their lives will not always run parallel to my vision for them, or myself. I can only be of service to others in the way they want to accept my service. And my offer, well, it may be what I have to give, but, it is not always what someone else needs to receive. That’s an interesting lesson to learn. Especially since I am still learning to give of myself. And, giving of yourself is hard. So, it’s difficult when someone doesn’t need or want what you have.

Just one more thing to accept.

This week, I embark on actual step work for my sponsor. Step 1. I am very excited. I have done so much reflection in the last 43 days. I feel spiritually, emotionally, and physically different. I am ready. Ready to set out onto what I know will be a long, sometimes painful road. But, with the Emerald City staring at me, miles and miles away, I lace up my boots and prepare myself for the journey.

Sobriety has offered me so many blessings. Lessons I could never have learned without the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. A relationship with God, and, with myself. A way of acting and thinking that benefits me and the world, instead of tearing it down.

So, with the help of my God, my family, my new friends, and my fellowship, I step out onto the Yellow Brick Road. Thinking only of the mysteries that I will encounter on the way to my destination.

And, I look forward to each blip in the road with an open mind and heart.

Day 32: High Bottomed Girls

One of the things that I have struggled with in recovery, and I’ve mentioned this before, is my high bottom.

And no, I don’t mean my booty is firm and lifted.

When I finally faced my alcoholism and decided to get clean and sober, I’d hit a personal low. And yes, my life had fallen apart. But, upon entering the rooms of AA and my rehab center I soon learned that my low was a far stretch from the worst case scenario. And sure, I already knew that on some level. I wasn’t homeless, I hadn’t lost my family, wealth or health.

In AA and rehab I was told, repeatedly, that my high bottom was a gift. So many people have to hit a bottom so low that there is really no further to go short of death before they are forced to use the solution that is AA or treatment. But, this was hard for me. Sharing in AA, seeing other clients at my rehab center struggle to find housing, funding for their care, or insurance for their sometimes dire medical conditions made me feel that maybe my addiction and recovery just didn’t fit into this mix.

I knew I needed help, but, the harder I looked around me, the more I thought to myself: I should be able to do this on my own. These people around me need this help so much more than I do. To them, I’m sitting pretty. Living alone in a two bedroom apartment, financially stable, taking time away from work by choice to clean up my act. It all seemed frivolous and selfish suddenly. And here, all this time, I thought I was doing a good thing.

It took talking to a lot of people and finding the right AA meetings to discover that what I was doing was, in fact, the right thing. That addiction is addiction. And, yes, perhaps I should feel lucky that I didn’t have to hit the bottom that so many addicts do to realize I needed help, but, not selfish or disingenuous.

Well this struggle pops up in my head every time I think of the first step. For the most part, I’d accepted why and how I got into treatment. And if I doubt, I have to work to push that negative self talk out of my head. And, I’m getting better at it.

But today a big victory for Step 1 was won. Today, my situation was validated. The director of my treatment center asked me to come speak in front of a workshop of his students about my addiction and life experiences. I asked him politely, “Why me?” My treatment center is full of clients with colored pasts and stories far beyond anything I could have dreamed up.

I’m going to speak as an example of a high bottom addict. He wants his students to gain perspective on the many varieties of substance abusers and how they end up where they end up.

I’m actually very excited about this. Not only is it a way for me to do service, but, it validates what I have battled for the longest time: I am actually an addict. The First Step. Admission. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. I thought I’d come to terms with all that, but, clearly, today sealed the deal for me. A director of an integrated mental health care facility thinks I’m the prime example of a category of addict. Bingo. Out of self doubt.

So, without trying, without stewing, and without going back and forth. It finally happened.

I’ve finally fuckin’ arrived. Ladies and gentleman, I’ve officially hit bottom.

Day 5: Rock Bottom vs. Me 2.0

In the last few days, as my start date for rehab approaches, I’ve freaked out, ever so slightly.

I’ve wondered, is this the right choice? Am I that bad, really? Is this really necessary? No one’s put me up to it. And while several people have expressed concern about my drinking, there’s only been one person that described my behavior as “some Leaving Las Vagas shit.”

There’s this little elf voice in my head saying — I’ve been sober four days. I got this. Foolish.

The first step of AA reads: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.

It seems so easy. To admit what you know you are. But, it isn’t that easy. The alcoholic mind wanders and twists in ways the normal mind doesn’t. It makes excuses for drinking, and just about everything else.

It’s hard sometimes as a newcomer. You sit in the rooms of AA and listen to all these stories of people bottoming out. Burning every bridge they have. Losing everything and everyone. I’m not that person. And I hate that feeling, like I have to one-up someone’s fucking share in  AA. Sure, some bridges have been burned, many more just singed. But, I was able to keep a job, my family (even though I was far from honest with them), there are friends I did not alienate, some I did. For the most part, the damage done here, was to myself. My life, or my excuse for one. This is my rock bottom. This is as low as I want to go. So, excuse me if I don’t make the AA ‘bonafide-rock-bottom’ grade.

I have to remind myself daily that I can still be an alcoholic without being a homeless person, in the dredges. That I still have real problems and issues that I need to resolve, or, I will end up with some awful fate.

Before I go to rehab to really fix what’s broken, I stopped drinking. I have four days sober. No, I am not homeless or in detox. And, that’s ok.

I am, and will continue to be, powerless against alcohol and my life has become unmanageable. Even as I write it, it seems foreign, and off kilter. Imagining my life without another drink. But, I do it regardless, because I want what the successful members of AA have. I’m driven, I’m going to get it. And, I’m still an alcoholic, even with all this drive…

So, instead of figuring out how to appear a bottomed out, shell shocked mess, I try to be me. The new version. Version 2.0.

I finished assembling my IKEA desk. I read a book. I watched the news. I brushed my cat. I went grocery shopping. Normal. Simple. Tasks you’d think would be easy to accomplish, but, they just weren’t for me while I was drinking. My free time was precious bar time. And now, time just stretches out it front of me, endlessly.

So the new me is going to take it one day at a time, one step at a time. One monotonous task at a time.

And if you want to compare rock bottoms, talk to me in a month, the new me is hitting up the gym.