In a recent meeting on Step 5, members talked about the initial discomfort at disclosing their deepest and darkest secrets and deeds to another person. I was the type of drunk who'd tell anyone just about anything, but there certainly was a sense of gravitas associated with writing down said secrets and sharing them, all at once, with another person, stone-cold sober.
When I was deep in my disease, I hung around with others who partied, maybe not quite as much as I did, but inebriation was our pastime. Nearly all of us were lying, cheating or stealing on some level, which included a fair amount of gossip about who was doing what and to whom. In those days, any admission of guilt, or owning up to my behavior, was done strictly to save my ass, avoid consequences, get out of trouble - sometimes worked, sometimes didn't. I liked to think I was a reasonably moral person, but rarely (never?) did I stop to take stock of how my actions impacted those I said I loved. Any disclosures or discussions of how I/we acted out were done within the cesspool of dishonesty and sneakiness, a negative feedback loop. Just like Bill W wrote, I was dishonest, etc. while drinking, then drank more to try to cover the bad feelings about acting out - a vicious cycle.
And then recovery, with the safety valve of the Steps to actually address both my actions and the underlying motivations and drivers, looking to heal the ingrained beliefs so that I didn't have to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Some of those lessons were harder to learn than others, but at least I now had language to explore the whys and wherefores. I remember, after yet one more unrequited love where I was still working through my father stuff, saying to a friend, "How many more times do I have to learn this lesson?" He calmly replied, "I guess until you get it." I was annoyed at the time, but he was right. Lessons will keep coming on the spiral of life, in different forms perhaps, but the same core issue, until I get to that place of deep, inner surrender, that place of once more saying, "I can't do this anymore." Not, "I can't do this anymore," while peeking through my fingers to see if the prize I wanted was there, but I. Cannot. Do. This. Any-Freaking-More.
Early in recovery I came across a wallet in the parking lot of the grocery store, the same store where part of my hitting bottom was the pharmacist refusing to sell me syringes (that felt all-of-a-sudden, but my guess is he'd been watching me slowly deteriorate). Anyhow, I took the wallet to the Customer Service desk with several nearby folks expressing amazement that I'd turned it in. What I said was, "I want to be able to sleep at night." I'd always wanted to be able to sleep at night. My first sponsor would say, "If you knew better, you would've done better" but the thing is, most of the time I did know better. But knowing better and doing better felt nearly impossible while under the influence, and without the structure and guidance of Program. Sure, I had "moral and philosophical convictions galore" but just like the literature says, I "could not live up to them even though we would have liked to" (Big Book p. 62). Sobriety isn't about will-power, but there is a certain amount of self-discipline involved in getting to meetings or making good decisions about where to go and with whom, discipline that was non-existent when I was hungover, or thinking about how to get the next hit of speed.
The other day I passed a man on the street who was very obviously in the throes of an opioid high, bent at the waist with his silly sagged pants below his butt, fumbling to light a cigarette, very vulnerable whether he knew it or not. Instead of disgust, I felt very sad - for him and all of the people who are on the other side of the divide. From that side, the chasm between clean and not clean seems impossible to traverse, which is the big why of why we can't do this thing alone. Sure, some do. Some people decide to quit whatever it is that is causing them trouble, but that didn't work for me. I needed to see and hear from those who'd made that leap. Those who'd made the leap and were still funny, were still enjoying life and having a good time, those who were able to sleep at night because they had nothing to hide anymore.
Would the old you even recognize who you are today? In what ways have the various promises noted in the Big Book come true in your life?
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Fall is a great time to start a small group discussion, or with a sponsor or sponsee on the workbook Now What? See the Feb 4 post for a sample or contact me at shadowsandveins@gmail.com for more info. Available for purchase on the WEB VERSION of this blog page, and at Portland Area Intergroup.
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