Questioning Directed to This End (Step 4 continued)

Questioning directed to this end might run like this: Looking at both past and present, what situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situation fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? Did those perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands? Or, if my behavior was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change? These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can disclose the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.

A ton to unpack here.

What situations? For me: fear of the future and not having enough; fear of future and old age, sickness, disability, etc; fear (disappointment) that I likely won’t have grandchildren; the state of my body (overweight and achy, compromised knees and hearing); worry over adult children and elderly mother.

Did these perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! There it is! This is it!

….behavior……caused by….others? No, no, a thousand times no!

…the source of my discomfort. Self? Driven by a thousand forms of fear? I could get psycho-babbly here and examine my childhood and blame my mother, but I’m not going to! I have had everything I needed and much much more every day of my life.

…I may be able to alter my own conduct….adjust myself serenely to self-discipline. Well.

May 1st I will mark 40 years of sobriety. Forty. Years. So, in the most important way, and to the most important extent, yes, I have altered my own conduct and adjusted myself serenely to the self-discipline that I need to achieve a very long lasting sobriety. AA has always given me more than that and I want so much more than that now.

Selfishness and unreasonable demands. How do I remove these defects? How do I cooperate with God so that he can?

April 16, 2024 (this day)

This morning the topic at my meeting was “forgiving others.” I heard a point that really made me stop and think, and this is the idea that seeking justice is the opposite of forgiveness. In other words if what I’m looking for is justice, and that the person who wronged me or who I think is “wrong” make restitution or even feel remorse, I am not forgiving.

Most days in my life there are a group of people who I consider to be “wrong.” I’m volunteering for a local political campaign and in a very small way, pushing the agenda that I think is right. OK, that’s good! But my feelings about the people on the other side are not good. I feel they are voting against their own best interests, my best interests, and the best interests of the entire world. And I can’t forgive them.

AA calls me to try, and so I’ll think about this concept a little bit more today and maybe move another inch down the road toward enlightenment.

Stress

I had two examples today of people drinking due to stress. A woman came to my online meeting to tell us she had beed drinking. She had previously attended the meeting every day and had some period of sobriety during which she had a baby, among other things. She had been drinking periodically and drank yesterday, she said, because her boyfriend called to say he was working late and to her that meant he was possibly cheating on her. Thinking he was possibly cheating on her, she drank.

Then I talked briefly to my mother. My mother goes through periods of not drinking, but lately she’s been stressed by trying to settle her late husband’s estate. She has spent a huge amount of money on lawyers over a long period of time with no end in sight, and when the lawsuit experiences a setback, or she gets another lawyer bill, she drinks.

These are just two examples that came up in my life today, but of course drinking to deal with stress is everywhere. I often notice when someone on TV or in a movie is stressed and picks up that drink. Ahhhhhh. In my own drinking, life itself was plentiful stressful enough to make me wish and try to permanently take the edge off, the results of which brought me to AA.

I made a little list of how I think we deal with stress in AA. Of course stress is something we want to lessen. Some excitement may be pleasant sometimes, but stress as worry or tension is a negative thing I want to escape. Then I looked at the top Google hit for dealing with stress for “normal” people outside of AA.

The CDC suggests that we 1 – limit our exposure to news; 2 – eat well but not too much, exercise, sleep well but not too much; 3 – meditate; 4 – avoid alcohol and drugs; 4 – get vaccinated (I’m not kidding – being vaccinated will ease your mind, I guess?); 5 – engage in activities you enjoy; 6 – talk with people; 7 – engage with community or faith organizations; 8 – seek professional help (which is a great idea, but often hard to find and far from free).

Searching the Big Book I found the word stress only once, on page 93, wherein working with others we are told to stress the spiritual feature freely. The 12 and 12 uses the word once as well, wherein Step 11 we are told to say the serenity prayer or a prayer or phrase that has appealed to us over and over to search for God’s will in a moment of stress. Interesting to me, and I wonder if the concept just isn’t talked about in the literature or if it’s there under different names.

So my own little list of AA suggestions that came to my mind when I thought about how AA tells us to deal with stress without drinking. 1 – practice gratitude, thinking about the good aspects of every situation; 2 – go to AA meetings, which involves being part of a strong faith community, involves talking to people, involves prayer and possibly meditation 3 – help others, taking me out of myself is a great stress reliever; 4 – remember examples of change, in my own life and in the lives of others – AA is full of these stories literally everyone has one; 5 – cultivate relationships in and out of the rooms by admitting when we’re wrong, admitting we need help, being responsible and reliable, being willing to help; 6 – practicing Step 11 with prayer and meditation.

The most important thing for me to remember is that alcohol won’t lessen my stress. It will give me whole additional worlds of pain and stress added to whatever is bothering me. The first woman I wrote about has a 13 year old son who tells the woman’s boyfriend to “hide the bourbon” from his mother. She has the regret of taking care of her baby while she’s intoxicated. If her boyfriend is cheating, she’s much less able to deal with it while she’s drinking. If he’s not cheating she has created a whole other problem and she can’t predict the outcome.

I can lay the AA suggestions on top of the CDCs and see that I am grateful that AA has given me the template to take these good suggestions and really implement them in a thoughtful manner. I don’t take all of suggestions all of the time and I frequently suffer from stress. I have hope because I have the great example of miracles in my own life and the lives of countless others. And no one around me ever tells anyone else to hide the bourbon.

March 3, 2024 (this day)

My leap year baby turned 36 a few days ago, or nine. He has never seen me drink, and he’s never been endangered by my alcoholism.

My zoom meeting has elected me co-chair of the Rule #62 committee. We have at least two trolls. Troll #1 is a Big Book Thumper who constantly tries to tell us how we’re doing it wrong. OK, he thinks so. But he also send nasty nasty individual chats to people who are struggling.

Troll #2 prefers to remain anonymous, and changes his/her/their name every meeting. This troll openly and individually picks on people in the chat, at least once threatening to “talk to” a member’s 13 year old daughter.

I am so sad that because of these people, we may have to disable chat. I love the chat feature of zoom meetings, and I think it adds a really nice layer that you can’t get in person. I know that some people find it distracting and they are free to not open it, not look at it. But good people use it to post announcements that don’t take up meeting time, post background information on the topic at hand, and send nice individual messages that everyone doesn’t need to see.

I’m sad about this. It also intrigues me a little, wondering how many people are sitting in in-person meeting with me criticizing and silently snarking on the people present. Troll #2 sits through years of meetings to strike at the end. Very strange. I amy set off to google a little to see if anything else can be done.

To Take Inventory in this Respect (Step 4 continued)

To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are threatened.

I really don’t currently have relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. I will chalk this up to luck and decades of sobriety. I had troubling work relationships, and I’m not working, but those came from having to supervise people. I am counting this as a reward of AA.

January 28, 2024 (this day)

There are turkeys and deer in my new neighborhood. They delight us!

What doesn’t delight me is the distance I have to travel to get to meetings. I have been mostly spoiled my entire AA life with many meetings nearby, but for the last 20 years I have literally crossed the street to go to a meeting I started at a church there. Another group started using that church so there were two meetings across the street. Plus a myriad within 15 minutes, including the meetings of a medium sized city. Very spoiled.

So I’m struggling at bit with the distance. I still travel to the one across the street once a week but that’s a 20-25 minute trip now. The two meetings nearest my new house are at 8 pm! I’m old! But I’m going to try them this week.

The other thing that happened in my AA life is that last night (after driving to that old meeting) I met four young people, one still in high school or just out. I went to my first meeting when I was 16, and I rarely see people that young in meetings. It made me wonder if these particular young people will achieve a lasting sobriety. I am always profoundly grateful and somewhat shocked when I realize again that the 16-year-old I was is sitting here with nearly 40 years of sobriety. When I think of this I know that I am one of the luckiest people who ever, in the history of people, lived.

Strength (sharing our strength)

I hesitated for a long time over this one. What is my strength that I share with the people of AA? The sharing keeps me sober and possibly helps some of them sometimes. The preamble of AA says that “AA is a fellowship of people who share our experience, strength, and hope with each other, that we may solve our common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism.” 

Then this morning at a meeting someone announced that he had 53 years sober yesterday, and someone thanked him for sharing his strength. So I counted the things I have. I have a long time sober, this is an undeniable strength. I have consistency (I go to meetings regularly), I have gratitude even when sad or frightened. I’m optimistic and dedicated. I think that I sometimes have tolerance and patience. 

For today, I have strength. I recently moved, and I’ve been looking at some of my college work that I saved for unknown reasons and must now throw out. I drank most heavily through college. I barely graduated and I barely made it out alive, my drinking way so bad. I had my last drink just before I graduated, in May 1984. The miracle of my sobriety from then to now is an incredible strength. I idea in AA that I have to share it to keep it makes me strong in ways I never would be if it wasn’t for this particular miracle.

November 24, 2023 (this day)

Extreme blessings and extreme gratitude!

Everything is going forward here, working out so that soon my wife and I will live in a beautiful house with no stairs next door to my mom. Beyond my wildest dreams, for sure.

We meet with a few friends from the program every Wednesday night to go over steps 6, 7, 10, 11, and 12. This is not an AA meeting because it’s by invitation only, and I don’t think meetings should exclude people. Anyway I had been using something I found online, something like 100 prompts to generate gratitude and I thought that for the day before Thanksgiving, we could pick those out of a hat and have a gratitude non-meeting. Our friends didn’t come, and on Thanksgiving, here with my wife, mother, son, daughter, and son-in-law, we gave it a try. I love these people dearly but their exercises in gratitude showed that sadly they have no been practicing the way we have. I hope it seeped into them a little.

We bought two houses today, and my daughter adopted a puppy. My sons sadly had to give back two foster cats that couldn’t be free in a house just yet. But yeah, so much gratitude for things and people and for gratitude. What a wonderful way to see the world!

The Most Common Symptoms of Emotional Insecurity (Step 4 continued)

The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from causes with sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come from without.

This paragraph, the first full paragraph on page 52 of the 12 and 12, is so full of meaning and importance to me that I want to go through it slowly. The first thought here is that my (for me) most frequent character defects, my most frequent excesses of negative emotions, are worry and depression. Big emphasis on worry. When I’m worried, I’m emotionally insecure.

I believe that. I know that fear is an instinct and it keeps me alive, but I frequently fear situations that aren’t actually dangerous. But reacting to danger and trying to mitigate it are worthy goals, and not a defect. It’s the worry that is a toxic thread, and toxic brew that goes through me, too frequently. It robs me of serenity and it lowers my quality of life. It makes me less useful to the situations around me and brings down the people around me.

So someone made comment that I didn’t publish. It said how I seem way too negative, too unhappy, too sick to have all this time sober. That I should be better by now. I just want to record here that I’m writing about the fourth step, frequently in this blog, which is concentrated on my character defects. I’m going through a very stressful time in my life, and I’m feeling a backslide as far as serenity and happiness go. I’m turning to the steps. Mostly I think it’s the transition from working to not working. Too much time on my hands. But I go through most days happy, content, grateful, helpful, and yes a bit too worried. I constantly try to relate what I’m going through to the steps and the program. I’ve been writing this blog for many years now and I hope that if I look back I will see that this truly is a stressful time, and other times have been more serene. But I’m not going to look.

So the causes come from within me and from without. Getting old is a privilege and a gift denied to many and I’m extremely grateful to be here now, able to do all I can do, which is a lot. But. It’s not easy. I take five medications now, where three years ago I took none. Again, grateful for the medications and my access to them and to the doctors who prescribe them but they treat conditions I’d rather not have. It’s so hard for me to describe what’s wrong knowing at the same time that I’m lucky and blessed but here I am. My ears are ringing, my hearings not the greatest, my back, hips, knees feet and ankles are hurting. I have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. I didn’t used to. I’d rather not!

My mother is elderly (as she keeps telling me) and I’m grateful she’s here and as healthy as she is but seeing her frailty is difficult as well. Politics, the state of ……. things. These are external stressors from without.

So here I am, with 38 years of sobriety, reconsidering the fourth step again, to go deeper and do better. I’ve always found the answers here and I believe that I always will.

October 24, 2023 (this day)

My daughter has said she’ll take my grandmother’s sewing box. My grandfather made the box, my uncle (dead at 60 from alcoholism) made the elephant pincushion. Not pictured my great-grandmother’s darning egg and thimbles. Why they saved all these buttons, I’ll never know, but I do remember playing with them as a child.

I’m getting ready to move! So much of what I worried would happen, didn’t. Yet.

I’ve been slowly reading the 6th and now 7th step with friends. I attended a 7th step meeting this past Monday and I’m trying to understand it. The short form or synopsis in the beginning of the book says that the humility of Step 7 is going to enable us to move away from the character defect, toward God.

If only I could learn this now. I’ve known the right way is to pray for acceptance and to be useful. It’s so hard for me when things threaten my security, and when things seem too good to be true.

Plus, I have nostalgia and sentimentality as a character defect. And I have way too much furniture.