Don’t Drink and Don’t Die

This is my step book. I took the picture that way in order to show that it is falling apart. The binding is broken in about five places, and two distinct chunks of pages completely come out. In pencil, inside the cover, the price of $3.50 remains. I thought this detail surely tells my age, but I see by a list from our central office as of yesterday that 12 and 12s only cost $6.40. I’m not sure, but I think only soft cover was available in our office. Mine has a hard cover, and it’s been through a lot.

I took the months of February, March, April, May and June to work through the sixth step line by line and concept by concept. I don’t really have a sense of completion, but I do feel I did a thorough enough job for this go around. Although I have spent literally years thinking about Step Six and feeling that I am ON Step Six, I never did it in this formal a way. My character defects, or at least the concept of them, come up pretty quickly in my mind when I face difficulties today. I know that this is where all of my difficulties with just about everything come from. So yes, entirely ready.

“Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”

Since this Step so specifically concerns itself with humility, we should pause here to consider what humility is and what the practice of it can mean to us.

So first, humility.  One definition has to do with having a modest opinion of one’s own importance.  And as word leads to word, modest means free from vanity, egotism and boastfulness.  Humble means not proud or arrogant.

Humility is an important aspect of the AA program.  We’re told that usually, most of us had wanted to climb to the top of the heap, or to hide beneath it.  We are told to understand ourselves as a worker among workers, a family member among family members, a neighbor among neighbors.

In some deep, fundamental ways, I understand this.  I work with people who have severe disabilities, and I know that each is a person, completely.  Abilities between and among people vary drastically, and some are able to do many things, some only a few.  The person who can walk is not superior to the person who cannot, although their ability to get around is superior.  The person who can talk is not superior to the person who cannot, although their ability to communicate is better.

So yeah, I’ll take my halo in a size five.  Or not.  There are other times when I am very judgmental and I judge myself to be better than others.  I cannot do away with the notion that people who are conservative, in religion and politics, have it wrong, and I’m right.  I can work on it and I sort of do, but I just can’t imagine ever being totally over that idea.  And I’m not as good as others in just about every way I can think of.  I’m not as smart, I have few and pitiful talents, physically I don’t have much ability at all.

But I know the ideal I am to aim toward, which is humility and a belief that I am just a person blessed to be here now, just like every other.

As I have written previously, when I first stopped drinking for a time, I could remember my past and what had happened when. After approximately 18 months of sobriety, I drank again and didn’t stop for another five or six years. When I stopped, I had lost the ability to sequence things and know when they happened. That ability has not returned.

It’s not anything as dramatic as brain damage, I’m pretty sure. It’s only during that time that I don’t have odd memories and long periods I can’t account for. The reason, I think, is that I spent those years in just about a constant state of being under the influence of alcohol, inasmuch as that was possible for me to do.

I know I was still in high school when I achieved my first prolonged period of sobriety. I stopped drinking, and I went to AA. I followed the AA program to a large degree. It will be useful for me to try to remember and delineate what was right and what went wrong. When I tell my story at a meeting, I always have in mind the chronic relapser and the person who struggles again and again and again. That was me, and I eventually got it together.

But at first, after a few false starts, I did stay sober for some time. I was so young. It’s not common to see such young people at meetings. It’s not easy to fit in when you’re that young. Unfortunately, there are even people at meetings who do not want teenage girls there. At times I was discouraged and made fun of, though rarely. In general people were wonderful, and I did speak the universal language of the suffering alcoholic. I’ve also always thought it is special and telling that although I was young and vulnerable, I was only taken advantage of once, and that was when one of the dirty old men pillars of AA society grabbed my breast. It was awful and terrible, and it was the only time someone in an AA meeting ever did something like that to me.

I was at a young people’s meeting early on, and the topic was the first step. Although I had good grades and the intelligence to earn them, I could not comprehend the concept of the first step. I said so, and there was a young woman at the meeting who gave me her phone number.  She said she identified with me.  I asked her to be my sponsor, and she accepted.

Elli was a driven young woman.  She had about a year’s sobriety at that time.  She rented a room in someone’s house, and she worked as a secretary in a lawyer’s office and was putting herself through school to become a paralegal.  She had a boyfriend, Kristoffer, who probably doesn’t need any more mentioning than that.  Elli was a tough sponsor, and I’m still grateful to her and for her influence on me.  To be continued . . . .

I was thinking about the revelatory nature of AA and they way we are encouraged and supported and urged to share on the deepest level. There are lots of aspects of this that interest me. I have said and heard so many things over the years, it makes me pause.

On the very deepest level there is probably the fifth step. Where I live now, many people choose to do their fifth step with an anonymous clergy person. There’s a religious organization that supplies such people to listen, and I guess you can look at it as a bit of a tradition here. It’s not anything I heard much about in the other places I’ve lived. I’m sure people did it, but it’s a common experience here.

An anonymous fifth step must certainly be better than no fifth step, and I can understand that sometimes some people feel the only way they can possibly do it is with someone they don’t know and won’t see again. Still, I wouldn’t do that or recommend it unless there truly is no other way.

But THE fifth step is a very small part of the revealing that goes on at AA meetings. I’ve heard people admit to just about every sin except for murder, and I have known at least two people well who did kill someone with a car by driving drunk. I knew someone for some time who lost a baby to fetal alcohol syndrome. I’ve heard people say they have stolen and cheated and lied. People have been unkind to their pets and their children and their parents and their neighbors. People have wasted money and resources and opportunities.

I took this topic from As Bill Sees It, and the section is titled something like “We can’t do it alone.” The chairs pictured are from my home group, and after the picture was taken people sat in the chairs and talked things over together.

I’m an introvert. As I’ve written before, I believe this makes it tough to work AA in a way that someone more extroverted wouldn’t experience. It is by its very nature a very social thing, a self help group. I always hesitate to say that because I know that now and in the past, people in some very extreme situations have stayed sober without other AAs around to help. But in general, when people and meetings are available, it is vital to recovery to go socialize. One of the awesome aspects of the situation is that within the AA program, there are lots of other people who have trouble socializing also. And even the friendly outgoing people are used to being with and helping the loners.

I think the social aspect of it keeps some people out of the program. I read blogs written by people who know they could benefit so much from going to AA, but who don’t go and continue to suffer. Others make up their minds to stop drinking and do so, but they don’t go to meetings and they don’t share with other alcoholics. I don’t count either of those groups of people as being successful at dealing with their drinking problem.

I’ve also seen the culture where the only sharing a person does is with his or her sponsor.  I’ll have to write about “back in the day,” but when I started AA, in the late 1970s, it was sort of required at the beginning that a person get phone numbers and call and talk to people in addition to their sponsor.  Personally, I’m extremely grateful that this is how I started.  I hated it, and I would not have done it had there been another way.  I believe I would have stuck with just a sponsor and maybe another friend or two, and that would have been it.  Because it was expected I would call and speak to another person every day, because it was required, I did it, and it broke a huge hole through my wall of isolation.

I also imagine that for those lucky extroverts, the socializing and sharing that goes on in AA is of an excellent quality and the content is supreme.  Whether we like it or not, every day we have a chance to hear about the very humanness of those around us, and to know we’re not alone.  I have no doubt too that all I’ve said and all I’ve heard has made me more tolerant of and patient with the people outside the rooms, in the rest of my life.  Almost anything anyone can tell me I have heard already, and I’ve known someone who has gone through it, whatever it may be.  I know that the people who seem arrogant and all together are not.  I’ve heard their counterparts describe it and explain it many times over.

The moment we say, “No, never!” our minds close against the grace of God. Delay is dangerous, and rebellion may be fatal. This is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move toward God’s will for us.

And that’s it, that’s the end of Step Six in the Twelve and Twelve.

I won’t, can’t, don’t say no never to anything AA has to offer. I have every character defect every other person has, to my own unique degrees. I have come far in dealing with the things that I did that were very wrong when I was drinking. I have given up the thought that there might be character defects I will never deal with, and will always engage in. I understand that my character defects block me from God’s grace, which is the good things in life that God would give me, if I could receive them.

As much as is humanly possible for me right now, I say that I am entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I’m not feeling particularly guilty, but I wanted to write about something that is not my story and not Step Six. No doubt this will come in handy if I make it around the steps and back for Step Four. I found this on a list of prompts to help with Step Four. Is guilt a character defect? Probably. The question that was asked as a prompt is looking back over your life, what do you feel particularly guilty about?

My adult life has been spent in AA. I have not, since I’ve been sober, done things like drive drunk, steal, cheat, lie on a big scale. I’m trying to think of things that bring to mind guilt from before I was sober. The essence of guilt, I think, is feeling that I’ve done something wrong while knowing better, having caused harm even though I knew it was harmful, or having been very negligent. I’m coming up empty for thoughts from before sobriety. That may just be where my head is, or it may be that a lifetime of AA plus raising my own children has made me see most of what befell me as normal and fallible.

The biggest guilts of my sober life have to do with my children. They are minor, really, but they effect me. AA has given me such an excellent platform to stand on. It’s given good people to turn to and rules to live by that have made for a good life experience.

I have to give more thoughts to writing the particulars about what I feel I’ve done wrong regarding the children. A few instances come to mind that would probably invade their privacy. As I said, though, these aren’t huge things. Today when I feel guilty it’s usually because I’m trying to help and support two people at once, or because there are certain helping aspects of my job that I’ve abandoned, more as a way to keep going than anything else.

As I was writing that, a good example of my current state of guilt came to mind.

This is Xandra. She is my death row doggie. Carole and I adopted her last year from a kill shelter. Xandra was four years old (So they said, but they also called her a labradoodle. Um, no), unspayed, filthy, with awful teeth. She sat in the corner of the pen barking nonstop. We were out to find a different doggie. Through circumstances I’ll have to write about at some point, we were looking for a dog to add to the household (which had another dog and three cats - still does). I set criteria at 30 pounds or less (Xandra weighs 64), between 3 and 5 years old (she was 4, so that worked), female (yes) and from a shelter (yes). One way that Carole and I are often bad for each other is that neither one of us can say no often enough to the animals, and we end up having just one too many, just enough to make things unmanageable.

I will come back to this topic because it has sent my mind sort of racing. My character defects do come into play big time around this dog.

For now, I think that considering what are the things we feel guilty about can show us either where we need to improve our conduct, or where we need to shrink our ego and be our right size concerning what we can and should do in situations, or both.

At the very least, we shall have to come to grips with some of our worst character defects and take action toward their removal as quickly as we can.

I’m a little alarmed to note that I have just one paragraph remaining in Step Six. Just a little though. I do feel that I’ve made progress and increased my understanding and increased my practice of the step.

I wrote before that I think every person has every human character defect there is, just to an individual extent. It reminds me of an expression I heard often when I first came in. “If you sober up a horse thief, all you will have is a sober horse thief.” Horse thieves! They weren’t plentiful, even back in the 70s. Along the same lines is the saying “the drunk who brought you in here will take you out.” The essence of these is that if we don’t change ourselves, we will just continue our bad behavior, or we will drink, or both.

It’s precious to me that there lies the solution to my life’s problems. Not that any are solved or leave completely, but that I will continue to grow in my ability to handle them if I work the steps. If I don’t, I will drink.

One immediate benefit I found in the program was that without drinking, for some reason, I didn’t lie. Drunk, I lied, even when the truth would have been better. So that kind of dishonestly left for me very quickly. And of course it needed to. I couldn’t have continued on, sober, if I was lying all the time.

I like the metaphor of “coming to grips with.” If I can grip them, maybe I can control them, rather than having them control me. My worst character defects are now what they were then. I think they are headed by fear, then come selfishness and selfcenteredness, sloth, anger, jealousy. I feared everything so much when I was newly sober. The support of AA has lessened that substantially.

A few months ago, at work, my boss’ boss’ boss commented to me to not be so afraid all the time. Now work is one area I feel pretty confident in, if only because by the grace of Carole I don’t need the job. And I did interact with this man around some very emotional and difficult situations. Still, I was surprised that I still give off that fear vibe so strongly that someone who doesn’t know me can read it.

I’m still taking action toward their removal, and this part of it. Again, I’d love to be further down this road at this point. Now I’m paying attention and actively trying.

It’s somewhat unbelievable to me now. At 16, I knew I was an alcoholic and out of control (of course I understand now that this is stating the obvious). I didn’t know much about alcoholism or Alcoholics Anonymous. I really don’t know how I thought to call them. But I did. I know I assumed AA would attempt to teach me how to drink moderately.

So I looked it up in the phone book, and I called.  This was 1979.  There were no computers, no internet, no caller ID.  I do remember taking a book out of the school library that dealt with alcoholism.  That was how we gathered information back in the day.  Quaint, and slow.

My phone number at the time seemed to people like a commercial number.  It was one number off from a local golf course, which was a pain on Sunday mornings when people called to make a tee time.  It was something like 676-1000.  Anyway when I called the AA hot line and spoke to the woman answering the phone, she said she would get someone in touch with me and would call back.  When I gave her my phone number, I remember that she didn’t believe me.

I’ve lost the details of what happened between that call and my first meeting.  I know it was a few days away from the call.  I know I had a babysitting job, and Isabel covered that for me so I could go to the meeting.  Among the things I didn’t know at that time was the fact that there are AA meetings all over the place all the time.  I often wonder, when someone talks about being directed to a meeting by the answering service, why they are sent to meetings that are days away rather than as soon as possible.

My first meeting took place in the church pictured above.  It was in April of 1979, about a month before my 17th birthday.  I walked into that church drunk.  I couldn’t handle an AA meeting sober!  There was a greeter there, George.  He was an old guy, and he had the greeting job for years until he died.  I remember being at an anniversary celebration for that group after George died, and his wife attended in honor of him.  She was tall, German, all dressed in black.

That church had several meetings going on at once.  There was a beginners AA and several alanon or alateen meetings.  I went to the beginners in the church library.  After the meeting got going, the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see the other side of the room.  Washing ashtrays was a newcomer job, and it wasn’t a small job at all.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t say much at that meeting.  Some of the friendliest people turned out to be some of the flakiest.  But basically, everyone was very nice, and when I told them of my drinking problem, they told me they understood.  And I believed them, I believed that they did understand.  I never lost that belief.  I hold this as one of the keys to my long time sobriety.

I was surprised to see old people there.  I thought that all alcoholics were like my father, and I didn’t understand how they could live that long and be alcoholic.  I was surprised that AA practiced abstinence.  I was probably disappointed.

I talked to people, got phone numbers, got a sponsor.  Not at that first meeting, but at one of the first.  I drank a few times after getting a few days strung together.  One “slip” I recall happened after I took cough medicine.  It’s a trigger!  It made me drink!!  I began counting days on a calender.

So I got a shaky start on my lifetime of AA.  By the time it was my 17th birthday, I had begun what would be 18 months of continuous sobriety.

	This and this alone is true religion: To serve thy brethren.This is sin above all other sin: To harm thy brethren.In such faith is happiness. In lack of it is misery and pain.Blessed be he who swerveth not aside from this straight path.Blessed is he whose life is lived thus ceaselessly in serving God. Bearing others’ burdens and so alone is life, true life, to be attained. Nothing is hard to him who, casting self aside, thinks only this: How may I serve my fellow man? tulsidas - 16th century
Translation by Mahatma Gandhi.
www.worldprayers.org

The picture is of a tombstone. A tree has grown up around it. It’s at an institution that closed in 1984 and is now mostly all gone. People who died at the institution and whose bodies were not claimed got buried there, and their tombstones bore numbers, not names.

In my work, I support many people who spent times in institutions. Some can even tell me about it. Honestly institutions fascinate me. Aside from the spooky aspect of the disused buildings (which I like to call modern ruins), something about the large scale operations of being the entire universe for lots of people interests me. I am very much against institutionalization in theory and in practice, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be in one. Still I can see why some people do want to be in one, and why some parents prefer this for their children who can’t be independent.

I’ve been inside two functioning institutions. I went several times to visit folks who were in the process of moving out, so that when they were relocated to the community, they might remember me as a friendly face, and so I could prepare as thoroughly as possible to meet their needs once out. One of the places I visited was (is) gorgeous. It has beautiful grounds, stately buildings, beautiful old trees. It has out buildings from when the superintendent lived on the site. In its day it had a greenhouse, a dairy, farming, a woodshop, a pool. Now it has lots of gorgeous grounds and very nice buildings, along with some people who still live there and some staff people who work there.

This is a long and round about way for me to try to put words or pictures to something I live. It is not because I’m virtuous that I do this. This is one of times, like when I say how much sobriety I have or what my son’s IQ is, that it’s hard to just state things without sounding (to me) like I’m bragging. I try to go about it quietly, and most of the time I can. Here, though, I’m trying to articulate what a life time of AA has given me, and how I practice these principles in all my affairs.

My mother did this work since I was five. She took me to work often, so I grew up with it. People with disabilities made impressions on my developing mind. That has created for me a comfort zone I don’t want to leave. I don’t know if that’s virtuous, lazy, frightened or just boring. Maybe it’s all those things. One huge fact of my existence is that I (hate) don’t like change. My mother gave me my first real job. I stayed with that job until I had to find another in order to move several hundred miles to live with Carole. I found a similar job, and I’m still doing it.

So OK, it may be an expression of my character defects that keeps me there. I have no doubt that is part of it. But so that I don’t engage in too much pride in reverse here, I will get on to the other side of it. The other side is trying to be of service to God and my fellow human beings. Those words are from the AA literature, and they tell me what it is I am supposed to build as the foundation of my life. When I’m at work, it’s hardly ever a question whether or not I’m doing the right thing. I’m taking care of people, sometimes in the way the Bible describes when it says, for instance, to give a drink of water to someone who is thirsty. It can be that elemental.

It all fits with my religion. Not that I fit with my religion. I’ll have to get back to that another time, but for now I’ll explain that I was raised Evangelical Lutheran. It surprises me at times that people don’t always know what that is. At this time, “evangelical” means to some people, “conservative.” But that is backwards as far as Lutherans in America right now. This is the liberal branch of the church, and my church had a woman pastor student when I was in elementary school. Our pastor performs same sex ceremonies in the church, and Carole and I had one there in 2005.

A main thrust of the church is to take care of others who are less able, or less fortunate, or in trouble, and my work fits perfectly. It also pays terribly, making it all the more virtuous.

I mean these things sincerely. I have been doing this work for around 15 years, and it’s mostly been wonderful. Being happy with it has given me an awesome quality of life. Sometimes I think that if I had to do some work I didn’t like, I wouldn’t be able to do it. And that is not to put down people who do difficult jobs.

In AA, helping others very often refers to helping newcomers, and that is most important kind of help that we can give. I’ve taken it to a broader stage in my life, and I do believe that it is the most important thing. I don’t know if I’ve done this because it’s comfortable and familiar, or if AA has influenced me so much as to be the reason I do it. “Nothing is hard” says the prayer I’ve inserted up there. One thing I’ve always loved about my work is the therapeutic effect it can have on me when I realize that hours have gone by, and I haven’t worried about the thing I’m worried about in all that time.

I know nothing about the person beneath that numbered stone. I know that I have stood at graves and mourned loved ones. I know that in 100 years, there’s no one living who remembers the dead first hand. I know that person has caused me and probably many others to pause and consider how we treat people who are vulnerable to us.

Let’s dispose of what appears to be a hazardous open end we have left. It is suggested that we ought to become entirely willing to aim toward perfection. We note that some delay, however, might be pardoned. That word, in the mind of the rationalizing alcoholic, could certainly be given a long-term meaning. He could say, “How very easy! Sure, I’ll head toward perfection, but I’m certainly not going to hurry any. Maybe I can postpone dealing with some of my problems indefinitely.” Of course, this won’t do. Such a bluffing of oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasant rationalization.

I find it interesting that here, character defects are synonymous with problems. At any point in life, most of us could probably list our problems at any given moment. We have health problems and money problems and work problems and relationships problems, problems with our pets, our houses, our hobbies, our mind. I’m coming to understand more fully that the external details of my life, the good details and the bad details, are separate from the problems that lie within me, my character defects. Surely these act together to make me who I am at any given time. And I can change and effect some of my external details, things like where I work, where I live, and how I take care of my body. Other things are beyond my control and with these it is my attitude and outlook that I can work on changing.

I was looking back at what I had written so far this month, and I see that before I knew about my upcoming uterine biopsy I already reflected that maybe I won’t be at Disney ever again. I know it’s not important. If I go to Disney again, I’ll be different, the other people will be different, and Disney will be different. You can’t step in the same stream twice.

I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this. My immediate reaction to this section of the sixth step is twofold. One, I wonder how much it was watered down in order to become palatable to prospective AAs. I think that some of this was written with that in mind, not scaring people away. Again, it is interesting to conjecture but I will never be able to answer this question. The book says what it says. I’m not so far away from the time that it was written that I can’t easily understand the language.

Second, I wonder that I or anyone would want to indefinitely postpone dealing with character defects, or, if you rather, problems.

I remember my reaction at first when I saw this step and thought I could not, would not ever heal that relationship, so I couldn’t work the step. The next time I approached the step in a more formal way, and with more experience and humility, understood that the character defect that lead me to have a relationship I’m unwilling to heal is, to quote Dr. Seuss, “big and deep and tall.”

For me, the hazardous open end closed over time, really as a result of my better understanding. My opinion only, but I don’t think a person will make it over the long time wanting to postpone dealing with these indefinitely.

So very many things about living in the “now” come up when I’m frightened about something like a medical test. I started looking through my pictures to find one that might illustrate something about this predicament. My pictures folder is filled with pictures of my pets, and pictures of the people I work with, many of whom have severe intellectual disabilities. One of the things I contemplate about living in the now is that many of these beings, the pets and the people, don’t worry about dying or being sick or disabled.

Now I should explain that I cannot profess to really know what any person (or animal for that matter) thinks about. It’s an extremely important concept to keep in mind that all people have to be respected fully, no matter what their abilities or disabilities are, and we have to assume that each and every one has every thought and feeling that all others do, too. And of course living things from people to pets to bugs fight death and try not to die.

This picture is the view out of the front of my house to the church across the street. This is the church where Carole and I and her sponsee started our meeting. The congregation is more than 100 years old, and the building is getting there too. I love old things, buildings and antiques. I think if I had to start a career completely unrelated to what I do now, I would go into historical preservation. You can see the lighted cross in this view, and I see that every time I look out my bedroom window, unless there’s very thick fog.

I wonder about the other people who have looked at this view through the years. I wonder about the people who founded the church and built the church and attended the church. I wonder about all the thoughts and prayers and words that have gone on in that building. So many of those people have died.

I understand that all I have is now. It’s false to think that I know what will happen in any case. Lightening could strike my house now and kill me. I may survive many medical situations or other life threatening catastrophes. From what I understand of the program regarding things like this, there is a universal vulnerability to being human, and ultimately the more I accept that, the more serene I will be. Also I understand from the program that each and every day I’ve had since my first day of sobriety has been extra, a gift, something I did not earn or deserve, something many other people fail to receive. I am so privileged among people to be healthy, to have enough money and material possessions, to have children and pets and a home and a spouse and a career.

I really love my life, and I selfishly want another 46 years. I realize that I am right here right now, today, and I’m grateful.