Weakly update #6
Sept 18, 2000
Getting on with life
Once I quit drinking and using drugs my life went through "a lot of changes," as folks used to say.
I went to visit my birth family. For some people that would be a death sentence, I think, but for me it was a gift.
Mom lived with my sis and her husband and their daughter. My family, as my sishas duly noted, was "100% Addicted." By then, my sis had been sober for many years; her husband had been active in 12-step recovery for even longer. Both of them had moved beyond the basics of 12-step recovery: they'd both done enough therapy, and enough tangental work in the offspring of AA—Al-Anon, Co-dependents Anonymous, and Adult Children of Alcoholics—to see that abstinence was only the beginning.
My own family life had been a mine-field of intra-family antagonisms, resentments and outright expulsions. We were nuts, which goes along with being addicts. I'd had been abandoned by my mom and dad to go live with mom's parents. I had a rare bone disease that was used as a weapon by my grandparents against my parents—as if they needed it, because Mom and Dad were already guilt-ridden as hell. The dynamics were a mess. My sister and brother-in-law led me into meetings where we talked about what had happened in our families. We became, my sister says, "The designated diggers into our family history." I began to realize some of my behaviors and a great deal of my feelings were as predictable as morning following night.
Over the years I�d read a lot of self-help and psychology books; none of them seemed to apply to someone like me, except in super-abstract terms, and none of them seemed to do me any good. I'd gone into therapy at several times in my life, but nobody had ever said quit drinking or don�t smoke dope, as a part of the therapy, so—I'd kept right on drugging and drinking. As a result, when I did experience powerful feelings of loss, grief, dread, I could self-medicate. A couple of beers, a joint—the feelings would go away for a while. Some experiments with psychedelics had made me aware of something way beyond me, but once the drug wore off, I was back into my old bag: all fucked up and nowhere to go.
I had been close to suicidal when I joined AA and NA. Both those programs helped me realize feelings of not being terminally unique, i.e.: hopeless. I was given plenty of evidence that other people had been far nuttier than I was, and had come back from the edges of very deep dark pits. Some of them, in fact, were such jerks that I knew that if they could do it, so could I. It was kind of an off-side form of help, but it kept me going. In the programs its called "being on a pink cloud." It was, but it worked, too: it kept me going, kept me sober, clean, and optimistic long enough to start dealing with all the history I carried around with me, unable to forget. And when things got hard, I could look back and see the distance I�d already traveled. Old maps sometimes say "Here there be dragons" about unknown territories. There were. Lots of them.
By the time I got clean, my grandparents were both dead. My dad was dead. Mom was dying. Her sister, Joyce, who had been more like my big sister than an auntie, was dying—and almost psychotic. While I was making sense out of my past, I had to cope with the present. By this time I had some very close friends who kept propping me up. Mom passed away, kind of by her own insistence, when I was three years' sober; my aunt a year later. I was finally an actual orphan. Relationships collapsed on me. My son, born with the same bone disease as I, had a series of severe fractures. I realized that my own bone problems were getting worse and worse. It was an extremely difficult time. I was able, though, to keep on keeping on—someone once told me that if you�re half-way into a swamp of pure shit, the important thing is to keep going and not stop.
I found some good therapists. In the ACOA and CoDA and Al-Anon meetings I was able to talk about my conflicts and problems, to describe them, clumsily at first, then in more specific details. Then, in therapy, I was able to work on solutions. There was a nice interplay between the meetings and the counseling. It was synergistic: the two parts added up to more than their sum. At the same time I was able to make some spiritual connections that solidly affirmed my place in the world, in the scheme of things. I'd had intimations of that on LSD, and just once while fishing at the site of an old Indian village, but for the first time I began to steadily experience those connections. That's what really made the difference for me. I gained a sense of protection of OK-ness I'd never felt. And with that feeling protected I was able to take chances, think freely, question everything. It didn't matter: my protection, my Higher Power—whom I call Creator—loved me regardless of how I felt. Even if I felt totally stupid and childish, it was OK with the H.P.. That was completely opposite from what I had experienced as a kid.
It's been a long time now: almost twelve years. I seldom go to meetings anymore. After a while there�s a repetition that comes a long. Heard it all? Yeah, in a way. The hard thing is practicing what I've learned, not talking about it. Taking chances in relationships, taking chances at being intensely honest. That�s what�s hard. Still is, too.
