"A Tall, Dark Stranger"

   "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
                                                                                                 Aesop

Morning Meditation:

    Virtue is its own reward, addiction its own punishment. Breathe deep. Breathe in. It costs too much to do nothing. Breathe out. You cannot live your life in these trenches. Breathe deep. Breathe in. Breathe in, then slowly out. You did not drink today.

      Fear can be good. A solid part of survival of the fittest. My life has shown me that.


   But many, many fears that I have had have been unhealthy fears. “A fear faced is a fear erased,” as the saying goes, but it may not sound that overtly simple when translated into Spanish or French. I am talking about the meaning behind the words. “A fear faced is a fear erased” for me can sometimes also mean “Turn it over, Rover. Don’t let Jimmy take over!”

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 89)

"The Necessity of Doubt"

    “Looking through the lens of gratitude brings us into the immediate moment.”

Hazelden (05/24/08)

Morning Meditation:

      Surrender to my disease when already drinking took me downward in one single direction. Surrender to my disease when sober carries me forward in any direction I choose.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 88)

"Fight Fear with Flight"

Evening Meditation:

    Alcoholism itself is a defect of sorts. I can turn this liability into an asset when I help another recovering alcoholic. Helping someone else get sober helps keep me sober. Oh, but how these words are easier than these deeds.

    “Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober everything matters more.”

Jim Anders

Question for Today:

    Will these questions ever end? Could they, should they, must they? Will someone help me please help someone else? Am I that someone? Are you? Are you?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 87)

"Memory-go-Rounds"

Morning Meditation:

 

    The choice is mine: One Day at a Time or One Nightmare All the Time.

 

    I’m on “Antiques Roadshow.” Waiting to be authenticated. I’m not in my original package, so I’m sure to be worth less, if not worthless.

  “Hell is other people,” as the existential philosophers love to say. And then, there’s safety in numbers for those like me, with this addiction to alcohol. The wolf of my disease wants to separate me from the crowd. “Divide and conquer,” my disease says.

   "Shut up, Jim," I say to myself.

   I'm off to my 8AM 12-step meeting.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 86)

"The World Between"

　 “Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace during a storm.”
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

　 Anonymous

Morning Meditation:

 　 Alcoholism: Forever craving more. Recovery: Forever becoming more.

　

　　 My Grandmother sits counting her rosary beads. I am ten years old. She whispers a prayer in Latin as each bead slowly moves on.

　

　　 She appears calm in my memory. The light appears to pour out of her as easily as it falls upon her. Her breath is quiet. Her voice is low and calm. There is a unison of sensations going on. Sight is sound is smell is touch. The pause between her inhaling and exhaling lies in some state of eternal evaporation.

　

　　 Watching her calms me.

　

　　 She could not translate into English a single sound of Latin that she had memorized. The sounds took her out of herself.

　


(Sotto): The world between dreaming and sleeping, waking and calm. There seem to be no borders between one state of mind and the next. The peace that Jim seems to have found is more than just the absence of chaos, isn’t it, Vatchi? A peace that is not an absence, but the thing itself.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 85)

"All Drinking Aside"

Evening Meditation:

   There's no room for anger in a barrel full of monkeys. There's no room for rigid thinkers as we alcoholics are sometimes perceived. There's no need for pain devoid of context. There's no room for blame. We are no longer victims.

 

   "The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie."

Susan Sontag

 

Question for Today:

 

   Can freedom fight fear? What chance for survival do I have? Can I learn to walk again? Can people be my medicine, my prescription to get well?

 

   Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 84)

 

 

"Catch the Beat, Dance your Feet"

(Surimi): The insane optimism of attributing any artistic merit to the results of drugs and alcohol. Such a delusion, illusion, insanity. A cultural myth, an addiction myth.

 

   The chemical mistress dominates. Song of the Siren.

 

   Persevere the "pink cloud". The insane optimisms of the newly sober eventually level out, even out, balance out.

 

   Cultivate a realistic optimism, Jim.

 

   He can do this, Sotto. Without regret, Vatchi.

 

   Catch the beat, dance my feet to where sobriety is (on my way to a meeting). Catch the beat, dance my feet... sober in my mind. I never could have guessed this.

 

   Catch the beat.

 

   Dance your feet. To here. To now.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 83)

"You Can't Handle the Proof"

   All I know for sure is that the people, places and things I was surrounded by in my very first year of sobriety were not conducive to my continuing sobriety. How naïve was I to think and believe that I could remain sober tending bar that very first year? Today, I know that I need to live sober in order to remain sober.

 

   And I have learned that for me, this, I cannot do this alone. Maybe someday. But not this day. Not today.

 

   So long as I stay on my current path of recovery, my life will continue to be good. I know this and I believe this, if I, indeed, believe anything at all.

 

   Living in the here and now, instead of in the next drink, I am not so hurried or anxious. Anxiety: the anxiety of living drunk is the anxiety of knowing that this drink in my hand is not the solution, but the next one.... Maybe the next one.

 

   "Fuck you." That was me right there.

  

   Talking to myself again.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 82)

"Empty Bottles and Refillable Pain"

(Surimi): Vicious Cycles. Vicious circles. No vicious virtue. You're right, Vatchi. Slow down, Jim. Impatience. If there's one "character defect" I've seen in most, if not every, addict and alcoholic, it's impatience. Always waiting and wanting the next hit, the next drink. The waiting and wanting have become character traits that have not yet stopped, even after the drinking and drugging stops. The waiting and wanting continue. It takes time to decelerate.

    The child I was before I began drinking, to a certain extent, is the child who must start rebuilding, building anew. The building blocks of recovery. No wonder I need help in my learning how to live. In A.A you hear repeatedly that "It's a 'we' program," and that is so true to my experience.

    At my second two-week Rehab at the Institute for Human Development (now John Brooks), high on Librium as we detoxify on alcohol and other drugs, one guy gave five or six of us a new haircut, one after the other. That was the symbolic start of the emergence of a new and sober self for me. An aboriginal ritual. "Today you are a man. Free of alcohol and drugs. Go forth. Build a new life."

    None of that was said aloud, of course, and the symbol of the haircut and the reality of the haircut were quite different things.

    Am I splitting hairs?
   Yes, but wisely (Har-de-har-har hair).

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 81)

"Sweet Insanity"

Change or die.

Evening Meditation:

Denial, fear, pain, ignorance, surrender. Neither hero nor anti-hero, an alcoholic falling on his sword is really just surviving the powerlessness that is surely his downfall.


"Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop."
 

Ovid

 

Question for Today:

With what will you replace addiction's myths? Another insanity? A chemical-free insanity? Will you do this? Have you done this? Can you conjugate this? Can you replace this?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 80)

"A Daily Reprieve"

    Diminishing returns. When drinking started in my late teens and early twenties, the positives outweighed the negatives, and by a long shot. If I weren't an alcoholic, when the scales tipped in the other direction, I would have been pro-active in cutting down or stopping drinking altogether. But that's not how addiction works. Drug abuse (alcohol is a drug) continues despite and sometimes because of negative consequences. The poison is the potion.

 

   But there's something pervasive about diminishing returns in recovery, also. When I first got sober, the positive changes were stark, bold and immediate. Then, as time went by in early recovery, the changes became less visible and more subtle.

 

   It was at this point that my gratitude for sobriety seemed to lessen. It would be at this point in my recovery where I would find myself singing, "If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep..." drinking.

 

(Vatchi): Yes, Sotto, yours is an honest affirmation. Jim's recovery has an ebb and a flow, degrees of being unsure, degrees of gratitude and impermanence, degrees of insanity.

 

   Sotto, you too, are given a daily reprieve, if not from alcoholism, then from any one of many things. Death. If only a daily reprieve from death. Accept it graciously, Sotto. Jim is but an example. You are but an example, Sotto.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 79)

"This is Where We Find Ourselves"

(Vatchi): Jim is sober at last. This is where he starts over, Sotto. This is where his life begins, Sotto. This is where the future is now, Sotto. This is where we find ourselves, Sotto. This is now. This is today. This is sober.

 

    False comfort in a cigarette. False comfort in a drink. False comfort in a Southern Comfort. Just don't let me think.

 

    "Obliterate me," I would sometimes think. And, thought or not, obliteration was the usual result. Cause or no cause, the effect was always the same. Drinking is a game I cannot win. Drinking I cannot. False comfort. False comfort. I slid down the drain. Down and out.

 

(Surimi): There is no starting over. Or there is only starting over. He has been through all this. He has survived this insanity. All of this.

A star explodes. This end is this beginning.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 78)

"Resentment"

    A major epiphany of my sobriety has been the realization that I had gone from "You'd drink, too, if... (fill in the blank)" to (after a long, long period of sobriety) "You're the reason I can't drink!" Viva la difference! This did not happen overnight. Sobriety is a process.

 

    "Just for Today," "One Day at a Time" and a dozen other catch phrases from Alcoholics Anonymous (most significantly, "The Serenity Prayer") have been my roadblocks to "I'll show them!" and dozens of other triggers.

 

    One circumstance after another presents itself as another reason that I can't drink.

 

(Vatchi): All we have is now, Sotto. The drunken TV show host is gone. The anonymous drunk and disorderly nuisance is gone. Jim clings to these memories to keep himself fearful. The sirens are calling him to drink 'on the rocks'. "Surrender to win" is a tough, tough sell. Until the alcoholic learns that there is no alternative.

 

    And with the first drink "now" ends and the old insanity begins again.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 77)

"Confidence Man"

    Slouched in my seat at the end of the bar, not nodding to sleep, just nodding in a drunken stupor after a three-day binge, I was approached with, “Excuse me, but didn’t you used to be somebody?”
  
   Why did I drink? To forget I used to be somebody.

(Sotto): Vatchi, who is this somebody anyway? A lot of smoke and mirrors and distorted feelings. American idolatry. The ego as God. The Wizard of Oz, false god. Who is this somebody? Who is he, this Jim?

   Drunk beyond the point of recognition and barely recognized . A garden-variety drunk, finding neither fame, nor my true self. Just a me reaching. Just a reaching. Just a shelf. Any bottle on any shelf. Just a battle. Just a battle that I could never win because there was less and less of me left to put up a fight.

 

    Give me another fucking drink above all fucking else. Fuck you.

 

    They called me "Rusty" because I drank Rusty Nails. They called me "Rusty" because that is what I was. I was my drink. And when you are your drink, you are nothing.

 

    Fuck you and give me another drink. Moonshine trumps sunshine.

 

    Drink until I black out. Drink until I pass out. Fuck.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 76)

"Broken Record"

    Had not a senseless, drunken and violent crime against me broken out all my front teeth (and broke my jaw and punctured my lungs), I might have let my teeth rot further as I drank each endlessly continuing drink. A blessing in disguise, I guess, but it was one big mother fuckin' disguise.

 

    I need this damned jukebox brain reprogrammed, man. Livin' on bar snacks. Same old, broken refrain. Arm broken, needle rusted, record warped, spinning, wobbling, warped.

 

    Wednesday. Thursday. Friday? WTF.

(Surimi): You both give Jim too much credit. When he speaks with any kind of authority, his knowledge is merely a pretense, a shield, another form of denial. Not denial of his alcoholism, but his denial about not knowing a whole hell of a lot more than anyone else. A defensive smokescreen.

 

    One doesn't have to be talking of God to come off as "preachy".

 

    Jim's pedestal is stemware with a martini glass base.

 

    It's all part of his recovery process, finding his own sober middle ground.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 75)

"Taking a Breather"

    Is sanity control? I know insanity is not. Thinking to myself instead of talking to myself. How can I practice what I preach if I am not preaching?

(Vatchi): His wheels are still spinning much too fast. Jim thinks that he has changed much more than he really has. I think he needs to slow his pace even more here.

 

    I am an old carnival man now. A Carnie. "He could have been good, once." "Too many spills on life's tightrope without a net." "Too many spilled drinks." "Too many stained carpets." "Too many sweat-stained armpits." "Too much blood in the gutter."

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 74)

"The Sober Road"

    “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance: the wise man grows it under his feet.”

James Oppenheimer

Morning Meditation:

    Actions have consequences: drugs, laws, morals. Sometimes, that’s a tough pill to swallow.


    The universe seems to welcome life. A forest, destroyed by fire, completely rejuvenates from the necessary ashes. Life replenishes itself and I am replenished when I remain open. There is splendor in sobriety, in all of life. I could not have appreciated this in my drunkenness.

(Sotto): Vatchi, life seems to have given Jim another chance. He does seem to be on the proverbial road to recovery, doesn't he?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 73)

"Insanity's Bouquet"

Evening Meditation:

　　

   Sometimes the present seems worse than the past. The present has fresh wounds, more hurtful than mere memories of wounds past. But one thing I know for certain: I want no drink before my final curtain. A drink, for me, can no longer heal my wounds. Only cause them.
　

   "Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow... but only empties today of its strength."

C. H. Spurgeon

 

Question for Today:

 　　 The door of more leads to another door. Won't you, don't you, adore the door?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 72)

"Virtuous Cycles of Progress"

　　 “I thank God for my handicaps for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God.”

Helen Keller

Question for Today:

 

 

 　　 What became of the world that I thought only LSD could give me? Am I there now, along its infinite borders? How many borders am I crossing right now?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 71)

"This is Page One"

　　 “You alone can do it, but you can’t do it alone.”

Dr. Ron B.

Morning Meditation:

 

　　 Even when lost in this beautiful, new reality called recovery, I must remember to keep one foot on the ground, just like I used to do when the room spun around and around on a roll.
f
rom All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 70)

"My Last Relapse"

 
　　 What I did not know, when I made the decision to drink away my last thirty-five dollars over this four day period was that my new landlord had been out of the country and that all the weekly rent checks I had been giving his secretary sat undeposited in his desk drawer.

　　 By the second day I had spent the entire thirty-five dollars and wondered if between loose change lying around my room and whatever was left in my bank account I might be able to buy one more bottle of vodka (even a half pint would have to do) before straightening out and resuming my sobriety (Who would know?).

　　 Long story short: I called the bank's automatic teller to find my balance and as I sat there drunk I heard that I how had several hundred dollars in my account due to my undeposited rent checks…


   If you’re a drunk like me, you know what happened next. I went on a bender, one

ATM cash withdrawal after the other, until all the well-intentioned rent money was spent and I ended up in the hospital.

　　

   Yada. Yada. Yada. Same old story. So much for some new miracle of control.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 69)

"Epiphany-Deprived"

  

   The fear I felt coming back on the bus from the Lakewood Rehabilitation Hospital was palpable. I was afraid I could not do it. I would not be able to stay sober. I had tried before. My history reeked of failure, leaving the emergency room of the Atlantic City Hospital or another detox and immediately I would pick up a drink. The simultaneous insanity of me and I, myself and absence of self, my hand, this stranger's hand, attached to this arm, my arm and a glass comfort, a cold-warm comfort, a drink, this drink, insanity in my hand and down. Down. How did I get in here? This is the only thing I have left, the only thing that I can do, what I am.

   I felt fear on the bus. A killing fear. I didn't know if I could do it. I fought fear and fear fought back. Every emotion I had had a drink in it.

   Off that bus I poured my fright-filled self.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 68)

"Monkey Frocks"

   Time takes time. One shuffle replaces another. One relapse replaces another. Finally sober, sustained sobriety, and "Bolero" by Ravel weaves through my mind, melodious and gentle. The cool breeze of its wind instruments mindful of my sobriety's harmony.

   Chaos is not gone, but the insane chaos of being in the drink is now a memory to be remembered only, not relived.

   Shuffle me sober. Monkey frock sober and then some. Not numb. Hum.

 

Evening Meditation:

   One day at a time sobriety somehow has me feeling lost, directionless, rudderless. That feeling, that looking for a drink feeling, sometimes returns, even when it's not a drink I'm looking for. Some purpose, any purpose can keep me moving forward. There are many different kinds of 'one day at a time' and they're not all good.

   “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

Maya Angelou

 

Question for Today:

 

 

   Does your pulse know the difference between fears real and fears imagined?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 67)



"Insanity Cubed"

 

   Half insane. Twice insane. I am Insanity Cubed.

   No wonder then, no wonder when, I'm sober long and strong, a disease whispers and I do not know I hear, "It could have been, it shouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been insane."

   Somehow, then, I picture the captain of the ship, tied to the masthead, so he could not bring his ship aground upon that ever-beckoning shore, the Sirens calling.

   It is myth that keeps me sober, some life force which wants only to replicate itself in abundance. The dance of abundance, this will to live, this myth that keeps me sober. Amen.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 66)

"Phantom Toes Wiggling"

   From alone with the bottle to alone without the bottle. I could not be alone, alone. I could not be alone. I could not be. I could not.

 

   The death of one part of me to allow the life of another part of me. Ritual sacrifice. I've got blood on my hands from this phantom beast who will not die. This near death to prevent more death.

 

   This life thing will take some time. This sober thing. This thing.

 

Evening Meditation:

 

 

   I was Peter's Sponsor in our Twelve Step Recovery Program. Once he said to me, "Jim, every day I pray that I never have to go back to prison." "Pray instead," I said "that you learn how to stop doing the things that put you there."

   “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

Chinese Proverb

 

Question for Today:

 

   Is there always a lesson to be learned? Relate or relapse? Is that my lesson? Is?

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 65)

"My Extreme Flowchart"

{after Jim touches upon the subject of love, these responses emerge}:

(Sotto): Is that why Jim drank? Or is this where drinking took him?

(Vatchi): What makes you think it matters, Sotto? The result is just the same either way.

(Surimi): Isolation, depression, anger, resentment. A thousand excuses for an alcoholic to drink. And the one reason he should not? Because he is an alcoholic. It does not matter where it takes him. It will always take him down.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 64)

"Inject Me Slowly, Truth"

    When I first got sober, I tended bar for one solid year. It was a year, anyway. And apparently, not too solid, or I would not have relapsed.

    Some people can get sober and tend bar and stay sober. Obviously, I couldn’t. And now, I wouldn’t even want to: The thrill is gone.

    Partly being sober. Partly growing older. Maybe growing up? Hopefully, growing up.

    “Forty Year Old Virgin”? Try this: Sixty Year Old Teenager.

(Vatchi): He lives in a liquid/solid dream world, skating on thin ice. "A solid year sober." Not a very funny pun.

    I don't know if his self-esteem has returned yet, but it seems his 'steam' has. See? I can be punny, too, Sotto.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 63)