Drowning in a Sea of Alcohol

    Carrying the weight of a drink around my neck made me sink, pulled to the bottom, the bottom of the sea. Without that weight, without that drink, I rise to the surface, the surface of myself.

(Sotto): Most all the world can drink safely. But there seems to be safety in numbers for Jim and those like him. Drowning in a sea of alcohol or swimming in a sea of recovery.

   Without the weight of the drink, the structure and function of my sober life are enough for me.   For today.
 
   I cannot drink today.  from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 89)



 
 


Rules in Recovery

    Sobriety is like that. 
    There are no rules in recovery. Or the rules change as your sobriety changes and grows. There are different ways to live sober, to thrive in recovery. The road to hitting bottom narrows as it becomes more and more about the bottle and the road of recovery widens as life becomes less about the bottle (despite the fact that it will always be about not picking up that first fatal drink).

    I can see past myself today. I could not see past the bottle when I boozed. It's all good 'in the neighborhood' today.

    Today I found another day without a drink.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 88)



Daily Vigilance

(Vatchi): Sotto, moments of doubt, steps backwards, progress, then regression. These are all of our lives. It's just that for alcoholics and addicts, people like Jim, one wrong step can have deadly consequences.
   Daily vigilance is the flipside of the daily reprieve coin. Action and gratitude. Jim still has sick moments that are like little relapses minus the alcohol.
   Who's helping whom becomes a moot point in recovery. People are medicine. The melting pot of recovery is a witch's cauldron. Voodoo. Whack-a-mole. Common prayer. A few kind words.
    Finally, there is only the knowledge that recovery is possible. Everyone seems to find their own way, sometimes after a string of failures, of near deaths.
   Jim's life is coming to an end.

   Jim's life has barely begun. The tide comes in. The tide goes out.
     I did not drink today.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 87)


Crossroads

I seem to be approaching the present moment at times, like an airplane coming in for a landing. The present moment has always been here, but my alcoholic auto-pilot just never knew that, saw that, felt that.

Getting sober takes time.

Humble. Thankful. Grateful. Alive.

That drink is dead. Long live this drunk.

I cannot live this alone, but most certainly I can die this alone. I did not drink alone. The drink drank with me. The drink is the company I can no longer keep.

Evening Meditation:

The fox runs after his dinner, the rabbit runs for his life. I was the dog seen chasing his tail. That's addiction. That was my life.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 86)



Zen Moments

Evening Meditation:

 





    The seven billionth person on this earth will have been born.

 

 

    I’m struggling to simultaneously be aware of some atomic clock clattering away the current millisecond and to be aware of the infinite now of Zen moments devoid of gradations to the billionth of a second.

 

 

    Our population is still exploding, the universe is still expanding and I am still my sober self in whatever now this is.

 

 

    “When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”

Mark Twain

 

 

    Could it have been that bad? Am I ready for the side-effects of sobriety? Which wounds have healed and which still need tending? Which should be left alone for now? What are the rules? Will I find a virtuous cycle or will it find me? When?

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 85)

Drank is a Drunk

(Vatchi): .... I hate to say it, Sotto, but I think Jim needs help here. He's losing it here.

 

 

Drunk is a dream. Drunk dreams are drunk. Dream is a drink. Drank is a drunk.

"It's only a dream," my Mother used to say to me, this child.

But drunk is not a dream.

Never, ever again.

There is no running to catch up to, to where I should have been by now.

I yam what I yam is Jesus and Popeye and sweet potatoes.

Sobriety can erode.

Proceed with caution. Keep an even keel.

Glide forward.
No more annihilation of feelings.

Alcohol kills me.

Sobriety heals.
The dream was drunk, but I am sober.

This even keel. 

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 84) 

Chemical Regret

(Vatchi):  Chemical regret. That’s what it boils down to. Add alcohol and everything changes. Take alcohol away and everything changes again. Some changes are reversible. Others are not. Chemical regret.

 

 

    I bring myself back to the present. I cannot cling to the past. Or onto the present, for that matter. Loving life is a lot like letting go.

    So this. This right here. I must finish this. I must be done with this.

    Passing through this. Through this moment. Letting go.

    The drink has not evaporated me. There is still this.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 83)

A Full Cup Hidden Inside An Empty One

Evening Meditation:

  

   Two-thirds cup of doubt in an empty cup. That was my kind of luck. No leap of faith would fill my drunken cup or keep me sober. My trust in my own recovery is not yet complete, has never been, may never be. I have to be here fully, or close to full, belly up to my own Recovery Bar.

 

 

    I am my own Trojan horse- a full cup hidden inside an empty one.

 

 

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”

Oscar Wilde

 

 

Question for Today:

 

 

    Where is the sound that will take you to the silence within the sound? Where is the blood so red that it journies into white? Where is the riverbed through which your life flows? When will now begin? Is this what sobriety is?

 

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 82)

Come One, Come All!

(Sotto): He's like a dog chasing his tail. Around and around. No center. No substance.

 

 

A whole lotta drinking going on.

 

 

And nothing else.

 

 

Looking back now to my drinking days (daze), I can now see that I was always worse off than I thought I was at the time. I continued downhill. There was always something or someone else to blame and the alcohol would always help, I thought. It could not hurt. Sober now, I can see how others must have seen me then. I don't know if this is like the separation of Siamese Twins or not. Did I have one heart, but two brains? One brain, but two hearts? Is it the past and future conjoined in this now, like some side-show freak show formaldehyde bodies in a jar? Ammoniated brains on my gravy train. Come one, come all. From near! From far! See this freak in a fucking jar!
 

   This will never be easy.

   But it does get better. Has gotten better.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 81)

Sweet Insanity

(Surimi): Elizabeth Taylor stipulated in her will that she be late for her own funeral. Well, Jim is or was late for the funeral of his old self. But no real funeral could ever be held because his old self lies forever dormant within him.

 

 

His "sweet insanity" calmly embedded in his brain, patiently waits for him to pick up. No matter how long his new self moves forward in sobriety, it waits.

 

 

I don't think "normies" can ever appreciate the enormousness of what is in an alcoholic's brain, drinking or not, sober or not, sweetly insane or not.

 

 

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 80)

Brainwashing

(Surimi): The rage of addiction. A raging fire. A raging madman. Jim goes from raging alcoholic to "subtle innuendoes of sobriety."

 

 

    Some people have said that A.A. employs brainwashing techniques. Guess what? I think Jim's brain needed a good washing.

 

 

    His greed for chemical relief has faded.

 

 

    He's gone green.

 

 

    Fresh. Fresh coat of paint. New glasses. New ears, too, by his account.

 

 

    Loneliness, anger and resentments are all a part of my sobriety, but these and others and all emotions are more manageable sober without an unimaginable, unmanageable drink overhead, in my head.

 

 

    Let it go. Let it flow. I can do this.

 

 

    I never could have known this. Today I am sober.

 

 

    Sober.

 

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 79)



"Curb Appeal"

    Without the sorrow and suffering of sliding and slamming my way downhill, I couldn't have ever entered my current state of contentment. So much of recovery may not be visible to bored onlookers. Recovery doesn't have the appeal of an action or disaster film. My current "estate of mind" may lack "curb appeal" but I'm not ready for any trade-offs today. Not today.

    “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.”

George Bernard Shaw

Question for Today:

How long after the last hit or last sip will addiction's momentum continue? Clean and serene, is addiction a perpetual motion machine? Can I stay clean?

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 78)

Our Future Selves

(Sotto): Some imagined future vision of our selves. We hold it up to the light like a snifter of fine cognac. And yet, we’re judged by others by our past, like a child’s lemonade stand. For the most part, others view us and judge us only by our behavior. Our own sense of self includes our as yet unfulfilled potential. Jim thought that one day his drinking could become more manageable.

    "I'll show them!" drinking has always been my most catastrophic. All it has ever shown "them" is what a chronic alcoholic I am. My last "I'll show them!" drink resulted in a four-day binge that got me neatly strapped into a hospital bed and nearly fired from my job.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 77)

At Peace

    “Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it.”

Viktor E. Frankl

Morning Meditation:

    In our recovery meetings, we speak one at a time. Sometimes, when I listen carefully, I hear a symphony of sobriety.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 76)

One Cookie

Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

Christ. When I had my business, early on, an employee stole checks from toward the back of the company checkbook and cashed a few checks for a few hundred. Forged signatures, but not enough for jail time.

Another employee made a zillion long-distance phone calls (all over this continent as well as most of Europe) when my partner and I went out for lunch.

                   
I knew nothing about employees stealing from me. I would never have thought of stealing. As I heard
someone at an AA meeting once say, "I only stole emotions."
Drink. Drink. Drink. Drink. Drink.
End of that story.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 75)

Unlearning

Unlearning emotional insanity and learning emotional sanity. Are they opposite sides of the same coin?
This is talking to myself. I'm talking to myself right here. A drink wouldn't shut that up.
I know that now.
A thousand drinks would shut that up.
I know that now.
One drink is a thousand drinks.
One meeting is not a thousand meetings.
A meeting today will quiet my emotions today. Distort and amplify: that's what drinking does. I'm here. It's now. And I think I'm going to be okay.
from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 74)

Escape to Reality

Negotiating the twists and turns of sobriety is not easy. Alcohol magnifies or diminishes or twists all reality for me. There is no balance, for me, in the drink. The useful tool that it once was, was short-lived turned long and twisted.

The progressive punishment from alcohol sold me on A.A. as my means of escape to reality, then alcohol blind-sided me once again, then again and again, into thinking I could somehow gain control over it, somehow, someway.

No way.

The irony of painkillers causing pain does not elude me. I value my sobriety today.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 73)

Insanity's Bouquet

   Why is it so difficult to let go of a past I can barely remember? And blackout after blackout with no memories at all. The curse of suffering, the pain of suffering, muted or distorted by alcohol. Ground zero: The suffering grinds to a halt.

   I was zero. Those around me enabled me or ignored me. I ignored myself (alcohol did not ignore me).

   Poison. Prison. Nothing. (Can you smell the steel, the stench of nothingness?)

   Insanity's bouquet.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 71)


Outside the Prison Gates

   The prize for surviving is surviving. Simple, easy, like breathing when breathing is easy. Nothing good, nothing bad, could be made better by a drink. I would not have believed that forty years ago. For thirty years I could not have believed. "I came to believe," as they say in A.A., that nothing would be better with a drink, be made better by a drink.

   Evening Meditation:

 

   In sobriety, I stand guard outside the prison gates of addiction in a proactive stance to block my entrance back in, my picking up, to block, to stop insanity, to stop. That a prison guard, too, is in prison is one of the ironies of sobriety that I shall have to abide. Stop. Do not go in there. Stop. Do not go in there.

   This prison guard is somehow free. 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 71)





Recovery Accrued

   The tide comes in, the tide goes out. Solitude and serenity find their interludes. A recovering alcoholic is who I am and who I will remain being as I wend my way in sobriety. I am beginning to find my way. Wounded, yet in the process of healing, I reluctantly admit that helping others sustain their sobriety also helps me. Neither a hero nor a healer, I push myself forward. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. No bottles washed ashore.

Evening Meditation:

   Alcoholism is identity theft. The old "the bottle in front of me became a frontal lobotomy" is more than partially true. Even if I were famous, any sense of capturing some sense of an autobiographical self would be impossible.

   Believing I am sober does not make it so.  Recovery accrued.     "For fast-acting relief, try slowing down."- Lily Tomlin
    How many 'new normals' have I had? How many possible futures postponed by another drink? How many pasts must I remember to remain sober? How many 'whys'  must I stop asking?   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 70)  




Drink Like A Man

Evening Meditation:

   Once upon a time, admitting I am powerless over alcohol or anything else seemed impossible, un-American, unmanly. "Drink like a man" made more sense to me than "I am powerless." But, after several relapses and multiple self-realizations, saying that I am powerless over alcohol and that I am an alcoholic has not only become easier, it just "ain't no big deal."

   “Contentment makes poor men rich. Discontent makes rich men poor.”

Benjamin Franklin

Question for Today:

   Could your hollow bones not support the added weight of alcohol? Could you not fly?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 69)





Epiphany-Deprived

   Fired from my first job sober. Over-medicated on prescription anti-depressants. Have they no anti-self pity prescriptions? What must I do to not feel screwed? Emotional brick walls. Pills for everything except for who I am. The self as brick wall and not knowing which side you're on. No pill for that.

   Salvation Army. First job sober. Fired for being too slow, you know?
 
   You know.

   What is left when nothing’s left?

   A drink. A cigarette. Ten thousand more.

   (Sotto): This is getting better? This is what getting better is? Going through the laundry list of bad? What good can come of this? Have I seen any breakthroughs in him? Jim's an epiphany-deprived bastard, Vatchi. Or is it me?   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 68)