"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)