November 17, 2011

Looking in the Mirror: 35 Years Sober with an * 2

by JoeC • Alcoholism, Gratitude, Recovery, Sex • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I celebrate 35 years with an asterisk this month: 35 years ago I hit my false bottom.

Brown-nosers are complicit in the fraud of education promulgated by schoolteachers, addiction counselors, and fellow 12 & 12 Members.  It doesn’t matter to me if it’s a Grade 3 classroom, a treatment center, or an AA meeting; I think there is a tendency to reward the wrong people.  We reward those who stroke us and we condemn those who irritate us.  Are the ones who feed back everything we say, getting it?  Is someone who doesn’t seem to pay attention or who says, “This is crap!” not being reached?

I was a perfectionist when I got to the rooms. Below the surface, I felt unworthy. I was as uncomfortable as hell and I wasn’t going to tell you about it.  I thought the program was full of shit but I wasn’t going to balk.  I could see that compliant newcomers got applauded. I may have hated your guts but I needed your approval. So I learned to behave like an obedient pet.  You patted me on the back when I said the right things and you scolded me when I doubted.  I learned that the easiest way to hide was in plain view.  If I resisted, I would draw scrutiny and the wrong kind of attention.

If I could memorize “How It Works,” or set up the chairs you gave me “the good stuff.”  Together we created a completely inauthentic power of example $3 bill.  That was me.  Soon I was sponsoring people and I was still full of shit.  My sobriety became a currency and I didn’t want to lose it.  The more I accumulated the more false pride I displayed.  I bought my bullshit and so did you.

In the case of addicts, apathy, restlessness and relapse aren’t a sign of insincerity any more than daydreaming in grade school is a sign of mental handicaps.  In a classroom, kids that fall behind get blamed and the teacher gets pitied. Often it’s the trouble makers with the higher IQs and the compliant ones getting the approval.

I think that only the addict that resists or kicks up a fuss in meetings is transforming.  Speaking for myself, every time I said, “You know, you are right, it’s me and I need to change,” that may have got you patting yourself on the back, thinking you got through to me.  If I said, “Are you out of your mind; you’re an ass,” you may have been communicating to me.

We reward the newcomer with strokes and approval when they get active and/or parrot back the same tired clichés we have been feeding them.  We warn the defiant ones and we might secretly wish they did go back out and stopped bugging us.   I say one of these newcomers is bullshitting us and the other one is authentic.  Now if bullshit is the road to good living and authenticity is an outdated quality then I am out of my mind.

But I notice people being stunned when a goody-two-shoes gets drunk or when disagreeable drunks get sober.  This makes perfect sense to me. Recovery is uncomfortable and counter-intuitive.  If we say we like it, we are lying about other things too.  The only counties with a heightened sense of national pride and identity are nation-states that have survived civil war.  We appreciate what we fight for.  If we haven’t left some skin in the game, we take things for granted.

Quitting drugs and booze for me was a false bottom.  I got sober as a teenager, was “helping newcomer” when I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, and by the time I was 20 I was promoted as a great power of example. I felt like a total phony but I wasn’t going to say anything; I was addicted to the approval.  Actors might feel the way I felt.  People loved me for the roles I played, which compounded the loneliness of neither them nor I knowing who I was.

My true bottom came from my sex and intimacy disorder.  In 1993 I was introduced to SLAA after two consecutive boy-meets-girl on AA campus, child birth, followed by divorce, fiascos.

The harm I had already caused myself and others was undeniably a sign of a man in crisis. I was a good dad, but not a perfect dad.  I was a nice guy but a deceitful lover.  I was the architect of my own misfortune but I talked like the victim of a serious of bad breaks and serious misunderstandings.

Either I had to face being a phony for over 15 years or delegate the blame.  I demonized my exes, they reciprocated and it was “life during wartime,” where there is no time for honest reflection or vulnerability.  Survival is the game.  I am sorry to say that wasn’t my bottom.

Somehow, taking my pleasure was an understanding folly for a power of example like me.  The more disastrous my life got, the more laughs I got in AA meetings.  They may have been laughing with me, they may have been laughing at me, but no one was holding me accountable. Some are sicker than others and some are sicker than they know. I was suffocating from positive reinforcement.

My behaviour got riskier, I found new lows for my values and the bottom came.  I take some credit for righting the ship, but the catalyst was a sponsor that loved me so much he called me on my shit.  He confronted me about my “nice guy,” façade.  Why was all this happening to such a nice guy?

It turned out I wasn’t so understanding, I was demanding, I wasn’t so empathetic, I was hostile. I wasn’t so self-aware, I hated myself.  I wasn’t such a nice guy, I was desperate, afraid, and manipulative.  I was deluded.

Peer-to-peer recovery will unlock mysteries for the seeker, all the while, enabling the escape artist.  It is a selfish program, which means no one can or will save me.  No one can or will stand in the way of claiming my right to recovery.  I am responsible and nothing happens until I am accountable.

Over seven years ago I started again, working with my sponsor, going to SLAA and AA meetings. I needed more so I found the right therapies and therapists (not as simple as googling “unmet needs” and making a phone call). I traded “what sounds good” for what I really believe.  There were many processes that lead to greater self-awareness that I had either dismissed as quackery in the past, or skimmed through the book to pick up the vocabulary and told people, “Oh, I have been there, done that.”

It is the best of worlds it is the worst of worlds, today. My son and I have a remarkable relationship that when people say, “you should be grateful…” I feel that to the core.  He is becoming a man right in front of me, 22-years-old and working hard in University.

I haven’t seen my daughter, Jesse’s half-sister since Sigourney was just under two years of age.  Her mother abducted our daughter, became a fugitive of the law, and I have been searching for them both since 1993.  Every day I awake a father of two, but it is hard to resolve that the years lost to Sigourney, me and the whole patrilineal side of her family are gone and cannot be reclaimed.  She turned 20 this fall.

“When you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with,” takes on a new meaning when you are a longing parent.  There is no shortage of fatherless children that can benefit from a role model and someone who shows up for them.  None of these replace the loss, but you can’t store the love, I might as well use it.

Today I have an 11 year old boy whom I am a step-father to.  His own father has come back into his life and, in a serendipitous way, this wouldn’t have happened if the boy and I hadn’t come together.  We do finally see how our experience can benefit others.  I don’t agree with every doctrine of Buddhism but they got this right: Suffering is the only path to enlightenment.  I don’t know how I could have got here, if not for there.

I often drifted away from AA in my pain and acting out. In my neck of the woods we celebrate anniversaries every five years. I never took my 20-year medallion (which is funny considering I was preparing my speech dating back to year-two), got pretty much corralled into doing my 25th, and avoided my 30th. I was depressed and I didn’t feel like, or want to be paraded out as, a “power of example.”

Today I am not ashamed of my flaws.  To err is human and I feel more human that I have ever been. I am going to take this 35-year medallion because I earned it, it means a lot to my home group and those who love me.  I am an example.  I am no cliché but I have a story that matters — the story of the fallen angel that stayed a little longer and tried a little harder.  I never found Nirvana, I still search for my daughter, but I have found my humanity and for that I am grateful.