When Alcoholism Strikes (Step Twelve continued)

When alcoholism strikes, very unnatural situations may develop which work against marriage partnership and compatible union.  If the man is affected, the wife must become the head of the house, often the breadwinner.  As matters get worse, the husband becomes a sick and irresponsible child who needs to be looked after and extricated from endless scrapes and impasses.  Very gradually, and usually without any realization of the fact, the wife is forced to become the mother of an erring boy.  And if she had a strong maternal instinct to begin with, the situation is aggravated.  Obviously not much partnership can exist under these conditions.  The wife usually goes on doing the best she knows how, but meanwhile the alcoholic alternately loves and hates her maternal care.  A pattern is thereby established that may take a lot of undoing later on.  Nevertheless, under the influence of A.As’s Twelve Steps, these situations are often set right.

I include this paragraph mainly for the sake of thoroughness.  The only relationship I had when I was drinking was sick beyond sick, and was really child abuse.  I don’t know about the mothering instinct, and all that.  Maybe a parenting instinct?  I also wonder if women (or men) go on doing the best they know how or quit that a lot earlier these days.

Glancing ahead, I see the step doesn’t immediately talk about the woman alcoholic so I’ll take this chance to explain something on my side bar, my link to AAnohelp’s Weblog.  I don’t remember when or why I began reading it, but I sometimes look for blogs having to do with AA, just to see what’s out there.  I also read some anti-AA blogs.  This one isn’t that, though, I think the writer explained once or twice that his wife tried AA and it didn’t help.  Well, for a Stepper like me, of course I know that she didn’t work it.  Regardless, it’s a really heart-breaking record of a man living with his wife’s drinking.  I want to reach through the computer and take them both to a meeting.  Reading it never fails to fill me gratitude for the road I took way back when.

24 Hours a Day

How often

• Am I alcoholic?
• Do I need to remember I’m alcoholic?
• Do I need to follow the program?
• Do I need to live the program?

These are not bad things.  These are wonderful, life-giving things.  I wouldn’t minimize someone else’s experience with illness or tragedy.  I won’t compare it to some other kind of survival.  But if I forget in a big way, for a long period of time, I’m doomed.  If I forget in a small way, for a short period of time, I’m diminished.  My life is of a lesser quality than it is when I remember.

Yesterday, at work, my office was chosen for the place to store all the alcohol and lottery tickets that were to be raffled off today for fund-raising.  All day long I had a giant cooler packed with booze in my office, and two different times someone handed me a bottle.  One of those times, it was wrapped in a brown paper bag, the type of which I don’t see very often but which I guess people still use to disguise their alcohol.

I peeked inside.  It was a bottle of rum.  Right there, in my hand.

How bizarre.  I hope the person who wins it doesn’t get into trouble with it.  For once in my life, the bottle of rum I was holding caused me no problems at all.

Self-Will

The alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn’t think so.

The text goes on to say that we need to get rid of selfishness, of self, or it will kill us.

This is painfully obvious to me, as it relates to drinking.  No question I was not going to live much longer the way I was drinking.  That’s an extreme example of selfishness, in that everything and everyone fell by the wayside and came second to what I wanted, which was to drink.

This seems as good a place as any to mention a sort of debate I’ve been having with Antonahill.  This person has commented on my assertions that AA is not a cult.  The discussion has gotten too convoluted and difficult for me to follow, with Anton quoting me and me quoting Anton.  Our discussion travel over several posts and I have printed all of Anton’s comments in full.  I just find I can’t really answer them anymore and make any sense, though I can address ideas one at a time.

Somewhere in there Anton asks if I hadn’t been exposed to the ideals of AA before.  Ideals like honesty, hard work, and taking care of others.  I was very young when I got sober, but of course I had been exposed to those ideals since I was born.  Part of the magic of AA, for me, is that it gave me a concrete way and unlimited support to actually progress in my ability to live those ideals.  If I had been able to do it alone, believe me, I would have.

I started to write this post with the Big Book quote, then I saved it as I was going to a meeting.  At the meeting they read this very paragraph and talked about it for an hour.  They talked about prerequisites for taking the Third Step and formally opening the door to giving up my own will to a higher power.  Somewhere in the cult posts, Anton asserts that saying I am powerless is ridiculous.

I picture a tantruming toddler who has been put in her crib.  She is powerless to get out of the crib or to bend circumstances or people to her will.  She has the power to rant and cry and hurt herself and possibly some property.  But really she is powerless over the conditions that set her off in the first place.

While I tried to have power over alcohol, I was powerless to make any kind of change for the better, to manage my life or to do anything other than race toward death.  My will, the will of an active alcoholic, was killing me.  I had to give it up to live.

Now I’m a bit farther down the road.  I don’t will my own destruction any longer.  But have I really reached the place where I want to be good just because it is good to be good?

My self-will battles with God’s will when I try to lose weight.  The battle continues when I know that I must love someone, or forgive someone, or do something for someone that I don’t want to do.  I can be stubborn to my own detriment and to the detriment of others.  My self-will won’t let me easily erase lines I’ve drawn in the sand, or opinions I’ve formed and that I use to judge other people.

The leap from wanting and needing to drink to wanting and needing sobriety was a huge and profound change for me.  The other changes are not so profound nor are they as long-lasting or as complete as that change was.  I think that each time I knowingly act on my character defects, my self-will is, if not running riot, at least disturbing the peace quite a bit.

This Blog – March 28, 2010

I noticed, looking at my archives, that I’m writing about half as often as I did at this time last year.  I never set out with a goal of how often to write, and I’ve balanced it usually with the other things I do.  What I do is have a full-time job (with generous time off), sleep, read books, crochet, read message boards, watch TV and DVDs, walk, brush, train and obsess over my dog, clean the house, cook (not often), shop (hardly at all), email, talk on the phone, go to meetings, other miscellaneous recreation, commute, read blogs, read and watch news, bathe and do person hygiene stuff, work on my fear of flying, exercise a tiny bit, talk to people in person.  That’s all I can think of.

I’ve meant to focus my thoughts here, in this blog, on the oldtimer experience.  I often can’t resist the “when I first stopped drinking” mode that permeates so many AA meetings.  But I try.  With other people, other books, other blogs, I appreciate oldtimers more than I can say.  Even when those oldtimers are concentrated on “when I first stopped drinking,” their very presence cheers and inspires me.

In person, when I hear someone mention, for example, “Carmelita, who has 20 years of sobriety,” I cringe inside.  I feel I do not live up to the amount of sober time I have.  I feel someone would never refer to me in that way.

I mention AA, I link to AA, I quote AA, this is about my AA experience.  I sincerely hope that no one thinks I am in any way endorsed by or related to AA beyond being a member.  I am not.  I owe my life to AA and I would never harm it.  I hope that  my experiences and thoughts reflect positively on AA.  My experiences in AA are extremely limited, and I only write about my experiences.  AA is world-wide and I am not.  I have not studied AA, I just go to meetings and read information.  AA gave me my life and so it is the most important thing in my life.  That said, I believe that people who write in criticism of AA should be allowed to do that as well as I can write its praises.  I will not reveal my real name or my full face because I follow the traditions of AA.  I will reveal my politics because I do not speak for AA.

Some search terms that lead people here:

aa meetings topics : This is my most popular page.  I have fun collecting topics and welcome suggestions.

aa character defects list :  I do keep a list, and some of it is inspired or comes from AA literature, other parts of it do not.  I mean it to be helpful only.  I know many people struggle with understanding and listing character defects.

do alcoholics regret : Yes, I think they do.  My understanding of the AA program is that not regretting the past is an ideal I am to strive for.  I don’t think we ever get there.

terence this is stupid stuff analysis : Lots of people get here this way, and it makes me cringe a little.  This is a poem that had lots of meaning for me when I studied it in school.  It involves alcohol and drunkenness, and so I related and still do.  I pity the poor English student who comes here seeking enlightenment.  I should probably add a disclaimer to that page.  I hope no one has suffered a bad grade due to my influence.

aa meetings how to chair a meeting : Things like this are so varied from place to place.  I’ve lived lots of places but really, not that many, and all in the US.  I wonder why people seek information like this on the internet rather than asking someone in their group.

running into someone you know at an aa : Well, it happens, and sometimes it results in a very happy ending.  In my experience, the person usually doesn’t, as most don’t, stick with it, and they fade away.  There are people out there who have seen me at an AA meeting and who are not members themselves any longer.  This has never had a bad impact on my life in any way.  Bottom line is, you’re there for the same reason.  My drunken behavior would be much more noteworthy than my presence at an AA meeting.

embarrassed to attend an aa meeting : See above, and be honest.  Your drunken behavior is much more embarrassing than your attendance at a meeting.

what’s the point of aa meetings : That would be to stay sober, and to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.

Restless, Irritable, and Discontent (RID)

unquiet or uneasy

easily irritated or annoyed; readily excited to impatience or anger

dissatisfied

Unserene.  I “should” be quiet, easy, not easily annoyed, patient, not easily excited to anger.  I should be satisfied.

I believe the string of these three words comes from The Doctor’s Opinion in the Big Book.  It is describing something that often happens to active alcoholics.  As a recovering alcoholic, I wish it wasn’t so easy for me to identify with the words and the feelings.

It’s the “there’s no big thing wrong, just too many little ones for me to be serene.”

It is a lack of acceptance.

Sometimes, for me, it will be something like a persistent, though not awful, physical pain.  Sometimes it could be a nagging worry or a long stretch of bad weather.

Bottom line for me is that the things I usually find soothing, enjoyable or relaxing will fail to soothe, calm or relax me to the degree which they might when I’m in a better frame of mind.

I’m grateful that I’m trying to follow a program that reveals these things to me, that I realize these states of mind are not to be encouraged and fed, and that the program points to a way out.

Remembering My Last Drunk

I always want to chant with this phrase:  “Remember your last drunk, to keep it holy.”  Like the commandment.

My last drunk has power to help me stay sober.  My last drunk was the last because I sank lower than I thought I would ever go.  I crossed lines I didn’t know I would cross.  I achieved the level of hopelessness that enabled me to stop drinking.

My last drunk happened six years after I had admitted and understood that I was an alcoholic, and six years after I had tried to achieve abstinence through AA.  I had attended AA that whole time and I had gone to many, many meetings.  I reached 18 months of sobriety at one point, but that was it.  I couldn’t make it longer than that.

During my last drunk, I drunk dialed God knows who all night long, until 2 or 3 in the morning, at which point I set out to my grandmother’s house, 30 minutes away.  I was so drunk that I was mostly blacked out and during my lucid periods, my driving would get all wonky.  I’d come to further down the road.  This occurred in the very busy and dense borough of a major city.  Only luck got me and others who shared the road with me safely to my grandmother’s house.

I ranted and raved drunkenly at her all night long about everything that was wrong with my life, from before I was born until way in the future.  When I drove myself home in the daylight of that morning, I felt a helplessness that I hadn’t felt before.  I felt like there was no where else to go.  I wanted to die and would have killed myself if I had been braver about death.  As it was, I figured I would stay sober for just a little while, while I made plans for the rest of my drugged up, helpless, useless life.

I was afraid of mental institutions because I guessed that others would be in charge of my drugs, and of course they would never give me enough.  I didn’t think my mother would support me and my habit indefinitely, and I didn’t want her to.  I couldn’t see supporting myself or convincing someone else to support me.  I really saw no future at all.

Finally, I was realistic!  There was no future the way I was going.  Clearly seeing that bottomless pit helped me get sober and stay sober from then until now.

I want to add that I don’t know if the people of AA talked about me behind my back during all my years of struggle.  I’m sure they did, but I don’t know if it was in a kind way, or a way that put me down or made fun of me.  Probably both.  I know I could be a heart-breaking person to care about during those years.  People poured their time and energy and good intentions into me only to see my fail again and again.    But no one made me feel bad about it or about myself.  People did express their fears for me, and their thoughts that I wouldn’t make it the way I was going.  But they did not call me names or make fun of me that came to my attention.

I’m writing that because recently, someone new to the program told me she was surprised to hear others making fun of someone in their group who was in and out again.  These people called her a bad name and laughed.  That happens all the time but it isn’t right.  I hope and think that the people of AA do this less than other groups of people do.  I know that our program tells us not to, and that we’ll study those ideas again and again as we work and rework the program.  Had it come to my attention that people were doing that to me back then, my story could have had a different ending, and anything good I’ve done since then might have stayed undone.

To my face, the people of AA welcomed me yet again.  They were the only people I had left to turn to, and I am profoundly grateful.

Relapse

–verb (used without object)

1.	to fall or slip back into a former state, practice, etc.: to relapse into silence.

2.	to fall back into illness after convalescence or apparent recovery.

3.	to fall back into vice, wrongdoing, or error; backslide: to relapse into heresy.

From the time I was almost 17 until the time I was almost 22, I relapsed many times in AA.  Literally I cannot count how many times.  I consider it a relapse when I stated and acted on the intention of staying sober, then did not.  Right now, I intend to not drink, one day at a time, for the rest of my life.  I drank alcoholically, then achieved abstinence, then drank again over and over again for those five years.  The longest period of continuous sobriety I achieved during that time was about 18 months.  I remember deciding to drink and drinking that time, but I don’t specifically remember any of the others.

The time I drank after 18 months I made a conscious decision.  My very bad relationship hit an extra low point, and I debated drinking or killing myself.  I decided to drink.  Now, today, I can see the fallacy of this decision, and how it was the coward’s way out.  I figured drinking left alive some glimmer of hope whereas suicide did not.

Now I understand that the glimmer of hope doomed me to drink again.  As long as just a tiny part of me hoped I could drink and not die, or drink and recover again, I was destined to try it, because that’s the way my mind worked.

I did move away from the program, but I don’t know if I did that because I was going to drink or if I was going to drink because I did that.  It doesn’t matter to me now.  I wasn’t desperate enough to try and try again every aspect of the program, all the suggestions and to make it a life long quest.  Every other way I tried to moderate my drinking or to abstain didn’t work.

People mention often at meetings how staying sober is really easier than staying drunk.  I’ve moved beyond where picking up a drink would mean picking up lying, cheating, stealing, endangering others, and other assorted chaos.  I can only imagine that for me, drinking now would be a terrible catastrophe.

Being sober and working the program has gotten both easier and harder for me over time, but it didn’t really begin until I accepted that I really didn’t have a choice.  As long as I held out hope that I could drink successfully, I hadn’t “hit bottom” and I wasn’t walking down the path of sobriety.

As per the definition of  “relapse,” my former state was one of illness, vice, wrongdoing and error.  How amazing the remedy has turned out to be!

What Keeps You from Drinking?

I was at a meeting last night where someone shared that he had been married for 27 years, and is no longer married.  I don’t know how long he’s been sober.  He said that he always knew his wife would leave him if he drank, but now she’s not there, and it makes him anxious.

People talked about loneliness and keeping busy, but I thought he was talking about something else.

I remember vividly that it felt very strange to me the first few nights my kids spent away from me after they were born.  I didn’t leave them overnight for literally years, and when they first went away with their grandparents, the feeling that it was now Friday night, and no one would look for me until work Monday morning, was a bit scary.

Even then, I knew I had obligations, things I was responsible for, and commitments.  Through the years these has lessened though I have to say that although Carole and I spend lots of time apart, when she travels, she’d be looking for me long before three days have passed.

However, then and now, I came to realize it wasn’t the kids or the job or the responsibilities or the commitments that kept me from drinking.  Plenty of people with these things and much, much more depending on them drink alcoholically.  It was a recovery within me that kept me and keeps me from drinking.

I hope the guy will be alright without the threat of a broken marriage to keep him sober.  I’d like to cavalierly state that no outside condition will cause me to drink, but I don’t know that.  Just none I’ve encountered so far.

We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.

I don’t know where that is in the books, but Mary posted it and I knew I had wanted to find it.

I was at a meeting where the topic was something like “How easy does it get?”  I shared that for me, avoiding alcohol has become so easy it isn’t an issue.  This does not mean that I’m not an alcoholic, that I’ll try drinking again, or that I will stop going to AA.  It means I don’t think of drinking, I’m not temped to do so, for literally years at a time.

Someone else shared thoughts like these:  “We are alcoholics.  We will always think of drinking and always want to drink from time to time.”  Sometimes I hesitate, mostly because of the place where I live now.  I feel somehow, sometimes, like “my” AA is too liberal and if I speak my mind, I will cause someone to drink.

I’m  just that powerful.

Not.

But no, I don’t think always fighting it is the fate of everyone and as Mary quoted, it is in the very books that this isn’t so.

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone — even alcohol.
For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor.
If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame.
We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically.
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given
us without any thought or effort on our part.
It just comes! That is the miracle of it.
We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.
We feel as though we had been placed in a position of
neutrality safe and protected We have not even sworn off.
Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.
We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.
That is our experience.
That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

The problem has been removed.

Other problems are still there.  Friday night, I went to a party with Carole that one of her coworkers was having.  This was a bad idea for many reasons, and I saw them all coming.

#1 – I know my limits.  There have been times, say when one of my children was in the hospital, that I had to keep going all day and night.  But most of the time, I need a better balance and I need time to do nothing.  My job is very liberal with my time, and I get lots of time off and am basically free to not be there much of the time.  If something is going on for me at night, I take part or all of the day off, or the day after, or the day before.  But because I took a lot of time at Thanksgiving, and because we had government monitoring of our program for three days this past week, and because of extra end of the year meetings, I couldn’t take any time and had to actually stay late a bit.

#2 – Friday was also my work’s “Open House,” which is one of our biggest, busiest events all year.  I had to walk around and socialize and be friendly all day with no let up.

#3 – Because of that, I couldn’t even take off my shoes when I got home, but had to go right out to drive an hour to the party.

#4 – Add to that the fact that Carole didn’t tell me about the Friday party until Wednesday because she forgot, and I didn’t have enough time to mentally prepare myself.

#5 – Add to the that the fact that under the very best circumstances, these events are terribly terribly difficult for me to smile through.

It was awful.  I tried, but I choke up just thinking about it now.  I had nothing to say to anyone and these people are very nice, and they tried hard to put me at ease, and that made everything worse.  I don’t even know how long we stayed but if it had been much longer, I would have cried right there.  As it was I held off until the street.  Although I often unfortunately have a bad time at parties, this was a new low.  It was awful.  I think menopause hormone ebbs and surges may be making my emotions worse but I just couldn’t deal with it at all.

So there’s that.  The reason I was so glad to see the sentences Mary copied is because at this party, there was alcohol.

Now through the years I have not attended events where drinking was the main activity, although of course I’ve been around alcohol at times, like any time I’ve visited my mother.  And other times.  But at this party I really saw and noted that so many people were drinking.  They were not at all obnoxious or sloppy or anything like that, they were just drinking.

I looked at their drinks and I envied their ability to drink but I didn’t for one minute think that I could possibly  join them.  If they can drink and it puts them at ease I am very jealous, but not at all tempted.  I know what happens to me when I drink and it is nothing good like being better able to socialize.  Although it can draw you closer to people when you apologize for (fill in the blank) puking, crying, passing out, attempting suicide.

I’m sane as far as that goes.  I recoil.  It is poison.

But I think because I was having such an awful time, I concentrated more on the alcohol than I can ever remember doing.  It just added a lot to my misery.  A little piece of me is just a little bit worried that I don’t want any part of these alcohol occasions.  I don’t participate when the people I work with go out to drink.  I can understand Carole wanting to, in a way (she is incredibly, exponentially more social than I am) . . .

I guess I’m just sort of fascinated right now with my own reaction.  I recoil as from a hot flame (though again, I am NOT tempted).  What fun, I wonder, to watch people kiss the flame?

How Did You Replace the Alcohol?

I am reading this…have read it before…I need to quit drinking but I am afraid to be without this safe “friend’…who is causing me shame and compromising my life…Still, I don’t know how I will replace the feeling of freedom and respite from anxiety. How did you replace the alcohol? Really. I need help with that.

This was made in comment to my Character Defects page, but I thought I could better address it on its own.

How did I replace the alcohol?  Short answer:  AA.

Long answer:  I had to give the program a chance.  I relapsed many times before I “got it.”  I adored the initial feeling freedom from anxiety, but that left me very quickly.  I chased it for years.  But really, alcohol ceased to give me freedom except for maybe a few minutes when it first hit my system.  After that, it ruled.  I may have been temporarily freed from anxiety about things like social situations or life’s responsibilities, but I had a whole new set of alcohol-induced anxieties that were seriously bad.  What did I do last night, what did I say?  Do I have enough alcohol to make it through?  How can I sneak drinks and stay just drunk enough to be calm, but not black out or pass out?  How will I undo the damage my drinking has done to my school work, my job, my family?

For me, alcohol as a coping-with-life tool failed miserably.  I assert that anyone who is seeking an answer to this kind of question is in the same spot.  Somewhere in the literature it tells us, “the trap door has become a trap.”

Within AA, the people and the program, there are real solutions to negative emotions like anxiety, but they take a little while to learn.  When I was anxious, and drank, the anxiety went away, but next time I was right back where I had started.  When I was anxious, and when I didn’t drink, but rather talked to AAs and worked the program on my issues, I learned better how to deal with and sometimes avoid anxiety, and I grew emotionally.  And those solutions did not cause me shame or compromise my life.  They actually gave me a life that I feel confident in holding out to others as an example of the miracle of AA.

For most of us, AA is free and readily available.  In this way, to me, it is more effective and valuable than therapy.  The usual adage is that you should try it for 90 days, after which they will refund your misery if you’re not satisfied.

AA is not easy.  It takes courage and commitment and a bit of faith.  I had to have a little hope and a little faith that what the people of AA were telling me was true.  I had to abandon the hope that one day, one mystical, magical day, I would crack the code and drink successfully.

So this question was on the character defects page.  Those character defects are universal and daunting.  It occurs to me now that it is a blessed miracle that I know that a list like that hold many keys to my serenity.  Today, I have a clue, I have a plan, I have an idea.  I have a sober history.  And I have a life that I will hold out to anyone who is wondering and struggling as an example of the miracle of AA.

That’s how I replaced alcohol.  With AA.  I could not replace it with anything else, and I’m just lucky I didn’t die while I was trying.