Reflections...

SMART was helpful last night.  I did my sharing close to the end of the meeting, so I didn't have a lot of time to go into it, but I still got some food for thought; new ideas and perspectives I hadn't considered.  Looking forward to going into it in more depth next week, hopefully.

Came up with this poem this morning, and I thought it was amusing:

I woke this morning
Wrapped in Luck
Discovered in the bathroom mirror
My bedhead looked fabulous
Better than my actual haircut
Like finding a $50 bill on the sidewalk
Like getting a fortune cookie
That speaks your name
And says,
"Today is going to be a Good Day."

It makes me surprisingly happy to be able to write a poem about something that isn't dark, or painful, or about some grand aspect of the human condition/affliction.  The little fluff of everyday life is just as deserving of notice, regard, reflection, contemplation, and recording for posterity as everything else, don't you think?

Lost In Recvoery...

Ok, so, in hindsight, clearly not the most righteous stance I've ever taken.  But I still don't think I did anything wrong.  And I just can't help but bristle at the idea that my attempt to view an explicit media with clear artistic merit has caused me to get lumped into the same group as the guy who spends his lunch hour spanking it in his office.  And it really bothers me that, because of this, I now have to fear for my job.  That just seems wrong to me, but I'll drop the subject now, I swear.

In other news, I think I'm going to go back to a SMART meeting tonight, if I can get home in time.  (Yesterday's Inauguration has snarled traffic all through the surrounding area.)  I haven't been to a SMART meeting in months.  It got to the point where they became more of a hassle then they were worth.  I never got very much out of the meetings, and I often felt worse afterwards, which struck me as rather counter-productive.  And having to give up every Tuesday night (and Tuesday morning for that matter, as I had to get to work early to make sure I could leave early so that I could get to the meetings on time) became rather tiresome.  I wanted to make sure I attended enough meetings on a regular basis to establish myself in the group, and to be sure to give them a fair chance (and not make any decisions based on first impressions), and get a sense of what I could expect from SMART in general, and from this group in particular.  And I accomplished that.  And if I'd felt as if I was having trouble maintaining my sobriety, or that attending these meetings would help me maintain my sobriety in any way, then I would've continued to attend.  But, as neither of those were the case, I decided to take my Tuesday nights back, knowing that this group was always there, should I ever need help again.

And now, I think I do.  I had always assumed that, in regards to my sobriety, the only person's reaction I needed to be concerned about, was my own.  It never occurred to me that other people that I care about might have as difficult a time dealing with my sobriety as I did.  I've known that my wife has been missing her "drinking buddy" since I sobered up; we established that early on, in just the first couple of months.  But, honestly, I didn't really think much of it; it just didn't seem that important.  She didn't seem all that upset about it, and my focus, frankly, especially in those early months, had to be on maintaining my sobriety, and not on whether or not She had someone to get drunk with on Friday nights.  I don't think either of us realized just how important it really was to Her, or that it was actually about much more than just missing Her "drinking buddy" - it was about my entire personality changing, again, and for the first time, changing in respect to the ways that I treat Her.  And as the months have dragged on and on, and the situation has remained unchanged, Her feelings about it have apparently grown worse and worse, until we are at the point now where it has become a painful and difficult problem in our marriage.

And I don't know what to do about it.  I thought things had unarguably changed for the better.  I'm much more even-keeled now than I ever have been before.  Yes, I still have my ups and downs, but everyone does.  But whereas before every emotion was turned up to eleven, now I never get much higher than a four or five.  I used to be full volume every minute of every day.  Every high was the highest high possible, and every low was the lowest I could get.  And in terms of how I treated Her, that meant that when I was happy with Her, she was the Sun, Moon, and Stars to me, and I loved her more than Romeo ever loved Juliet; my entire world revolved around her.  (Which sounds beautifully romantic at first, but try living up to such ridiculous and fantastical standards for ten years.  It can't be done.  And I did a lot of damage to our relationship trying to keep her up on that pedestal for so many years.)  But it also means that when I wasn't happy with her, I hated her, because she was completely ruining my entire fucking life.

Now, my feelings never get that ridiculously, over-the-top intense.  I still love her, and I still sometimes get angry with her, but I don't treat her like the be-all-end-all of my existence, nor do I treat her like the worst thing that ever happened to me.  All of my feelings for her, both good and bad, are much softer and quieter, much more reasonable and responsible, much more practical; and so completely fucking boring.  Because while both of us are clearly glad that I no longer feel such intense anger at her every time she makes me feel anything bad, from her point of view, my world used to revolve around Her.  And now it doesn't.  And that hurts her.  It hurts in a way she has a very difficult time understanding, or articulating.  And it's very confusing.  Because while she's certainly glad that I don't yell at her anymore, and while she is definitely very proud of me for all that I've accomplished these past eight months, she's also really hurt and upset; she feels rejected, because, from her point of view, I don't seem to love her as much as I used to.  Which isn't true at all; I still love her just as much as I used to, I just don't express it as intensely.  But how can she be expected to know what I'm really feeling, if I've completely changed the way that I express those feelings?

And then, on top of all of the hurt and rejection she's already feeling, she ends up feeling very guilty, too.  She feels guilty because she understands that my sobriety is clearly a good thing for me, and she wants to be able to support me in that and feel proud of me.  And by feeling hurt and upset in response to my sobriety, regardless of how else she feels about it, she feels like she is doing something wrong, and hurting me, and undermining my sobriety.  Which, unfortunately, I have to agree with, in a sense.  It definitely hurts me to know that I'm hurting her.  And it definitely makes me want to drink, because I feel like that would make her happy (and I'm kind of hard-wired to want to make her happy).  But I don't think she's doing anything wrong; on that point we disagree.  I can't blame her for how she feels, at all.  I would almost certainly feel the same thing in her place.  And I think it can be said that, almost certainly, she has been the one the most hurt, she has been the one who has lost the most, she has been the one who has sacrificed the most, for my sobriety.  And I could never expect her to just be a hundred percent happy about that.  I feel horribly naive for not anticipating it ahead of time.

But now, what do I do?  How am I supposed to respond to this?  How should we deal with it?  What can we do about it?  In the addiction/recovery cycle, most people end up feeling like they lost their loved ones to the addiction side of things, when the addict reaches the point where the only thing they are capable of caring about anymore is using.  We're really fortunate that we've never had to face that problem.  But I've never heard of anyone feeling like they lost their loved one to sobriety.  In all of my experience with addiction and recovery, I've never heard anyone say, "Now that you're sober, you don't love me the way that you used to."  And now that we're unfortunate enough to be faced with that problem, I have no idea how to deal with it.  I have no experience to draw on.

And, so, back to SMART.  I'm hoping someone there has some experience with this, or has at least heard of it before.  At the very least, I'm hoping to come away with some perspective.

Will me luck.

They Come In Three's...

There has been a sudden epidemic of relapses among the members of my SMART group.

Several people, one right after another, taking their turn to share their story of falling off the wagon.  Some people have put off talking about it for a week or so, because they didn't want to add yet another relapse story into a meeting that was already crowded with them.  Some of these people are new to recovery, and are still struggling with it, and so that's to be expected.  But others have been sober for years.   And those are a lot harder to deal with.  For everyone involved.

Relapses are a part of recovery, as they say.  But though they happen, they're still rare enough that it feels very bizarre for them to be happening in a cluster like this.  It feels improbable, bordering on paranormal.

And I can't help thinking about this, as we get ready to go to Dover for the NASCAR race this weekend.  I normally have a six-pack all to myself during the race, plus a few other fun enhancers and reality lubricants both before and after.  It's always been a party weekend for us.  This will be my first time at a race completely sober.

I'm honestly not worried about my sobriety right now.  I don't feel I am in any danger of getting fucked up in any way this weekend.  Nor am I concerned about my ability to enjoy myself this weekend sober.  This weekend is a blast, period, and there's nothing about it that I need to get fucked up in order to enjoy.  I know I'm going to have a great time.

But with the way things have been going lately, I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel a little bit like tempting fate.

It's WHAT o'clock?!...

I have one piece of work I need to finish up before I can leave.  Then I remembered that I still had to post something.  Then I glanced at the clock and realized that I have to leave in half an hour if I'm going to make my SMART meeting tonight!

I don't know if I can even get my work done in thirty minutes, much less that and post something.  And so, as usual, the paycheck beats down the soul.

So it goes.

And goes, and goes, and goes, and...

The Lost Sharing...

I had to skip SMART again this week.  But I wrote to the facilitator, to let him know I'd be out and so he'd know I hadn't fallen off the wagon or whatever; and also to let him know what I would've shared, if I'd been able to make it.

I thought it would be worth sharing here, too:


On Friday, my wife and I went out to our local for dinner and drinks (I had O'Douls).  I mentioned to her that I had recently realized that I could not remember the last time we'd had a fight, or even any sort of minor emotional dust-up, and asked her if she could remember.  She realized she couldn't remember, either.  Things have been really good for us lately; for a good, long while now, in fact.  I hypothesized that this was probably a result of two recent changes in my life.

One of them is a bit involved to try and explain; it involves changes to the way I perceive and interact with her, and to the way I think about Love in general, and so it would require a good bit of backstory that I don't really have time to get into right now in order for you to really be able to understand it.  Suffice it to say that the end result was that I'm no longer as emotionally fragile with her as I used to be, and that these changes began happening quite literally at the same time as I began to get sober.

And the other change that I think has contributed to our recent run of marital harmony and happiness is obviously just that:  my sobriety.  Drinking and taking drugs by definition alter your mood, and your feelings.  They lift them up when you take them, and then they fall down when it runs out.  And even if you're not taking them right at that moment, if you're doing it regularly enough, then the effect persists, and your emotions continue to go up and down, up and down, even when you're sober.  And so one of the results of this extended period of sobriety, is that I'm finding that I'm less emotionally volatile than I used to be; I'm much more even-keeled now that I'm not playing chemical yo-yo with my feelings.

This prompted my wife to tell me again, as we were sitting at the bar, how proud she was of me for being able to stay sober for so long.  And she added how proud she was of me, in particular, for being able to come out drinking with her and still remain sober.  And, I replied back to her that, as always, I found it difficult to accept that praise.  Because I didn't feel like I was doing anything.  It wasn't as if being at the bar made me want a drink, and I was having to spend the entire time resisting this overwhelming urge.  If that were the case, if I was struggling with urges, and then successfully overcoming them, then I would feel as if I had done something worthy of praise.  But as it was, being at the bar didn't make me want to drink anymore than at any other point in my day.  I just don't want to drink right now.  I'm very much enjoying not drinking.

The other half of that coin is that I am very much looking forward to drinking again, later.  We saw a bottle behind the bar that night, of Fireball whiskey; a cinnamon-flavored whiskey that we only just discovered last year, a few months before I sobered up.  And with the seasons turning right now, and the crisp scent of Autumn in the air, I had the thought, "Oh, a shot of that would be delightful for Fall.  That will be really nice to have again.  Maybe next year?"  I realize it isn't typical, but I'm lucky enough that I haven't yet had to say to myself, "I can never drink again."  I didn't fall that far.  I just didn't pay attention to what I was doing, and then realized that I was drinking too much, and that it had gotten a little scary, and so decided that I needed to stop for a while; for some unspecified period of time of at least one year.  And so I've never had to confront that issue, or deal with all the grief and loss of "I can never drink again."  I'm fortunate enough that I've been able to say just, "Not now, maybe later."  And this is just so much easier to handle on an emotional level.  And that makes it easier to stay sober.  Because I can kick that can of "later" down the road indefinitely.

And that's where I'm at right now, and where I've been for a while:  I don't want to drink right now, and I'm looking forward to drinking again, later.  Whether that "later" will ever actually come is a mystery to me.  I honestly don't know.  I imagine it will again, but no one knows what the future holds.  I don't know who I'll be after spending my first year sober as an adult, and I don't want to project who I want that person to be.  I want to find out myself along the way.  And I remember that when I quit smoking pot for a year (that time I had planned from the beginning to do it for exactly one year, and then smoke again, and see how it affected me - I designed the whole experience as a personal experiment conducted on my own brain chemistry), at the end of that year, I found it really difficult to smoke again.  I had built up so much momentum towards staying sober over the course of that year, that it was really hard to make myself suddenly switch directions and do the exact opposite.  Yes, I did want to smoke again, but a huge part of me did not want to, as well.  And in the end, what finally helped push me over the edge was that I had set out from the get-go to do it for exactly one year, and then do it again and see what happened, and I wanted to fulfill that original intent.

I don't have any set time-period of sobriety like that this time around.  I don't have any line of demarcation that I'm going to cross at some point in the future that will tell me that it's time to stop being sober.  (And that was intentional, based on the lessons learned in the experience I just mentioned above.)  So, who knows how long this will last?  Who knows when that "later" will come?  Who knows if that "later" will ever actually come, at all?

And more to the point, whether it does or not is completely irrelevant.  Because thinking about that ephemeral "later" - enjoying the idea of it, looking forward to it - helps me to remain sober now.  And even better, it grants me the ability to do things like go out to bars with my wife, and actually be able to enjoy the experience, without struggling against my desires.  It allows me to accept my desires, and still keep moving forward, comfortably, without having to indulge them.

And to my mind, that's gold.  That's pure magick.

The First Rule of Smart Club...

Serious drama at the SMART meeting last night.  And, of course, I can't talk about it at all.  But I felt like mentioning it anyways, just to annoy my tiny audience.  (Sorry, guys.)  What I can say, is that there was a new guy there (which made my sharing about the AGM interesting, let me tell you - it was hard enough to talk about that in front of the people I've gotten to know there over the past few months - it was seriously nerve-wracking to try and talk about it in front of a total stranger), and after the meeting he came up to me and started gossiping at me about the moderator.  And so now I'm all, fuck, why did you tell me that??  I don't want to be in the middle of this shit.

I started writing up my AGM post, but I just now realized that I can't actually post a lot of what I've written, as it contains descriptions of things that went on there that I am oath-bound to keep secret.  So, once I finish writing it all up (whenever the fuck that will be), I'm going to have to go back and edit the fuck out of it to make it safe for posting.

In other news, I have recently become obsessed with old-school, turn-based RPG video games, like the ones I used to play when I was a kid.  They are just so goddamned satisfying!  Enter dungeon.  Kill monsters.  Collect XP and Gold.  Level-up and buy better equipment.  Repeat.

Yes!  Yes, I will repeat!!

I downloaded an emulator for one I played the fuck out of on my old Mac II when I was about 14, and installed it on my laptop - Wizardry:  Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord - fuck yeah!  And I've been playing a demo of the latest version of the Wizardry franchise for PS3 (Labyrinth of Lost Souls), and have been enjoying that waaay more than is warranted by its anime-themed foolishness.  Whenever I've got a few minutes to kill, I whip out my phone and play some Gurk, a classic 8-bit RPG.  And I've been proper geeked lately over Penny Arcade's 16-bit On The Rain Slick Precipice Of Darkness, Episode 3.  Not only is it really fun to play, and totally satisfying to my 14 year-old inner gamer, but it's also funny as all hell.  I honestly get sad if I don't get a chance to play it in a given day.

Ok, that's all the meaningless bullshit I have time to spew forth for today.  Thanks for giving enough of a shit to read it.

Elephant Blurble...

Still way too much to do and nowhere near enough time to do it.  (When I finished that section of code from the other instrument, they gave me another one!  When, exactly, am I supposed to work on my own code before this ridiculous Friday deadline, huh?)

Have a SMART meeting tonight, so for now I'll just quickly report that, yes, I did make it through the entire AGM sober.  And, more importantly, staying sober wasn't difficult at all, and didn't interfere with my ability to enjoy or participate in the event in the slightest.  (My sinus infection took care of that part.)  So, as I suspected (or finally managed to figure out) during the final week preceding the event, I was, indeed, over-reacting to the whole thing.  I really didn't have anything to worry about.

Again, a lot more to say on the subject, but I wanted to at least address the elephant in the room before the meeting tonight.

What I Should Have Said...

I realize now that I failed at SMART last night.

Because it was my last meeting before the AGM, I felt like I should continue talking about my concerns about that (which unfortunately I can't discuss here - erg).  But, since my meeting with my old Temple the weekend before last, and my reflections on that meeting over the last week, I largely don't have any more concerns about the AGM left to discuss.  I feel pretty confident and excited about it right now.  So, I mentioned that.  And talked a little about how tired I was because of work lately.  And that was about it for my sharing.

But now I know that what I should have talked about, was the fact that throughout the entire meeting, I couldn't stop thinking about how badly I wanted to get the Tuesday night ribs 'n' wings dinner special at the bbq place around the corner as soon as the meeting was over.

I have a serious love/hate relationship with this bbq place.  They are Satanic.  Even their name sounds sinister:  Black Hog.  Their bbq is so good and it is so not what I should be eating right now.  I live very nearby the place, and it seems as if they've intentionally timed their cooking to coincide with my commute, because every night when I get home from work, the first thing I notice is the smell of woodsmoke and charred meat.  Fucking bastards.  Here I am, trying to eat right and get in shape, and every night they viciously assault me with their deliciousness.  It's cruel.

And last night was no different.  As soon as I got out of my car - BAM - like a smack across the face, there came that intoxicating aroma of flame-scorched flesh.  And what's worse, I had a pretty shitty day yesterday, and by that point I was tired and wasn't in a very good mood.  And all I had to look forward to for the rest of the night, was a SMART meeting that I really didn't feel like going to, and a pre-packaged, frozen dinner afterwards.  And that made bbq seem like an even better idea.  A little treat, just to pick myself up.  I deserved it, didn't I?

But that's exactly the problem, and exactly why I couldn't stop thinking about it all through the meeting.  I wasn't really hungry, and I wasn't really craving bbq.  I was trying to make myself feel better.  I was trying to elevate my mood.  And I've found that now that I'm no longer using mood-elevating substances like drugs and booze, I'm more and more lately turning to food to achieve the same results.  It's just another example of my inability to endure any unhappiness at all, and my compulsive use of external influences (or substances) that I know are not good for me in the long run, just to make myself feel better right now.

And it's really pissing me off.

I'm working really hard to try and get in shape right now, and every time I give in to my need to make myself feel better by eating some totally-delicious-and-totally-bad-for-me food, I feel as if I'm un-doing all of that hard work, and making all of that pain and sacrifice worth nothing.  And more and more I'm feeling like a failure whenever I do this, for once again failing to endure even the most minor of emotional discomfort, and for sacrificing my health and shooting myself in the foot just because I cannot abide any unhappiness.  And those feelings of guilt and failure end up tainting my experience of the meal, so in the end, I don't end up feeling better anyways.  It's the exact same cycle I'm experiencing in my recovery from drug and alcohol abuse.

So, I sat there throughout the meeting, dreaming of ways to get out of there early and sneak off to get high on bbq, and knowing full-well that I shouldn't.  But I managed to stay until the end.  And then the whole walk home I wrestled with it.  I wanted so badly to keep walking and round the corner and pick up a bag of ribs and wings and bring them back home and devour them.

But I was too aware of the problem.  Too aware of what I was really doing, and what it really meant.  In the end, I couldn't bring myself to do it, in the exact same way that I can't seem to bring myself to take a drink, even when I really want to:  it would cost me so much self-esteem and self-respect to do it - to fail at this task and take that drink, or eat that nasty-delicious food - that it's just not worth doing anymore.

So, instead of making myself feel better with food, I tried to make myself feel better by focusing on the positive aspects of my decision.  I tried to feel good about the fact that I was saving money by not eating out, again.  (We eat out every week, sometimes two or three times.  There are a dozen great restaurants within a two block radius of us, and it is so hard to make ourselves eat our crappy grocery-store dinners when we have money in our pockets and stupid-delicious food all around us.)  I tried to feel good about the fact that I wasn't undoing all my pain and effort from my workouts.  I tried to feel good about the fact that I was making progress, and actually succeeding in my efforts to endure unhappiness for a change, rather than immediately balming it away by any means necessary.  And I did feel good about those things.  But none of them helped to improve my mood the way I wanted, and I was still feeling like a grumpy old shit when I went to bed last night.

But today?

Today I feel good.

Today, I'm proud of myself for what I accomplished last night.

And just like with my working-out, I feel stronger today for the pain I forced myself to endure yesterday.

Choking On Blurble...

No time to write today.

I'm sorry.  The work I've been sitting around for the last month waiting for has finally arrived, and I've got about two weeks in which to get three months worth of work done now, and I didn't get anywhere near enough done today as it is.  And right now I need to pay my bills and balance my checkbook, and then rush home for SMART, and then it'll be 9p by the time I get home from that, with just enough time to eat dinner before bed, and I just don't have time.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I don't know if I'm saying that to you, or to myself.

Blurble'd...

I really want to write something interesting and creative today, but I am literally yawning from boredom right now, and that seems to have completely sapped my energy and creativity for the time being.

I really wanted to spend a good chunk of today writing a story, but I couldn't come up with any good ideas.  I realize now that I have a problem with that.  If I have an idea, I can write the hell out of it, but if I don't have an idea, then I'm just shit out of luck.  Every once in a while, an idea will come to me, and then I can write about it.  But I can't seem to manufacture that process, or make it happen, during times like now, where I have both the time and the desire to write a story.  I just can't seem to make myself come up with ideas at will.

Any suggestions?

(Not for story ideas.  For ways to come up with story ideas.  Just to be clear.)

On the more boring end of things, I could post about my meeting last night, but I really don't feel like it.  It went well, I guess.  It's hard to judge these things.  What criteria do you use?  Obviously, if you're feeling down and it makes you feel better or not; or if you feel like you need help, and then afterwards you feel like you got that help or not.  But most of the time you're not going for those reasons.  Most of the time you're just going to do your weekly check-in, and keep the momentum going.  I didn't feel any better afterwards last night, because I didn't feel bad going in, in the first place.  I made everyone laugh a lot during my share, and that always feels good, but that seems like a really ridiculous criteria to use to determine whether a meeting was good or not.

So, I don't know.  I enjoyed myself, which is something, but I'm not sure how much, if any, it actually helped.

And now I'm literally dozing off at my keyboard.  So, I guess that's my sign that it's time to go.

Wow, this sure was a super spectacular post.

Good SMART...

Another part of getting back into my routine, was getting back to a SMART meeting last night, after missing the previous two weeks.  Rather surprisingly, this one actually made me feel a little better.

Talked about my recent relapse and depression, and my struggle to learn endurance, and to allow myself to simply accept unhappiness in those situations where I can't find any relief, rather than falling back into the habit of using drugs to create a synthetic happiness to relieve those feelings.  (I feel like I've made progress, because drugs used to be my first response to those feelings, and now they are only a last-resort when all else has failed.  But, still, it's unhealthy, and more to the point, it doesn't work - it doesn't actually relieve the feeling or make me feel better - and I'm tired of it, and I want to break this habit and learn to accept pain and unhappiness when I have to.)  I tried to keep it brief, because one of the last times I talked, the Facilitator actually cut me off after fifteen minutes for taking up too much time.  But despite my efforts, my check-in seemed to spark a rather intense and lengthy discussion that involved almost the entire group, and ended up lasting for a full half-hour.

And in that thirty minutes, I actually got some good advice.  For instance, not to even bother to give people a reason that I'm not drinking, etc.  And if they press me for a reason, to just say that I don't feel like it right now.  There's no need to say any more than that; and, in fact, often times giving people a reason will only invite them to debate said reason in an effort to try to convince you to join them.  So, don't give them a chance.

Someone described my condition as a "relief-seeking missile," which I thought was rather amusing.

Also, someone suggested that these past two weeks of depression are actually an example of the endurance I'm struggling to learn.  I hadn't thought of it that way.  In thinking about it, it occurred to me that I'd been able to endure these past two weeks because I felt like I had no other choice.  I wanted it to end, and the only way to do that was to let it run its course, and then jump up at the very first sign of emotional elevation.  And at the cabin, I hadn't been able to endure, and (probably not coincidentally) I believed then that I did have a choice; that I could choose to get high and that would make me feel better.  And, of course, that's not really true.  It made me feel a little better, sort of, for a very short time, and then made me feel much, much worse for a good, long while after that.  So, I think part of the key to getting through those triggering situations like the cabin, is to tell myself that I don't really have a choice.  I want to be happy and healthy right now, and the only way to do that is to endure those periods of suffering when they arise.  Just like I did for the past two weeks.

I was also reminded of the simple truth that the good times only exist because of the bad times; they only exist in relation to one another, so one can't exist without the other.  And therefore, the bad times only serve to make the good times that much better.  And that if I ever want to be happy, I have to allow myself to be unhappy once in a while, too.

And there was also a lot of general encouragement and congratulations and I'm-proud-of-you's just for being honest and telling my story.  (I guess this is difficult for a lot of people?  Because everyone seemed to be particularly amazed by it and proud of me for doing it.  But it's just really easy to be honest when you're shameless and generally don't care what people think of you.  Besides, if I'm not honest during these check-ins, then I'm just shooting myself in the foot and wasting my time, so what's the point of even being there?  If I'm not going to be honest, then I've got much better things that I could be doing with my Tuesday nights.)

After it was all over, I found that I felt a lot better about the past few weeks, and a lot better about myself.  Enough that I was actually surprised by the feeling.  I realized I'd actually made some progress with this experience, and that it wasn't just a setback.  And I felt a lot better about this process going forward.  I realized I was more hopeful about my chances of success now.

And all that made me realize that, for once, I was actually glad to be there.

Disappointments & Failures...

How's that for a title, huh?

I was in a pretty good place the last time I wrote here, almost a week ago.  But the past week hasn't gone well for me, and I've swung myself over to the opposite end of the scale since then.

It started when my weekend vacation in the woods didn't work out as anticipated.  I got some writing done (expect to be reading my crappy work off and on for the next week or so), but nowhere near as much as I had wanted.  The mosquitoes and other bugs were simply relentless, so I couldn't do any meditating out in the peaceful forest setting, either, which I'd been looking forward to a great deal.  (We are both covered in itchy, red bites from head to toe now.)  And the hot tub out on the back deck, which is one of my favorite features of this cabin-in-the-woods, and which might've provided some needed respite from the bugs, was broken.  So, while the weather was beautiful, and the setting serene, I couldn't really spend any time outside to enjoy it.  Oh, and somehow, we only managed to have sex once all weekend.  So pathetic.  What a waste.

And to top it all off, after all of these disappointments, combined with all of the stress of getting everything ready for the vacation, and then not being able to find any way to relax once we got there, I ended up succumbing to my addictive desires, and relapsed again.  So much for "looking forward to spending this weekend sober."  I somehow managed to justify it with the fact that I was using a drug I'd never used before, and not one of the ones that I'm currently trying to resist because I've had problems with them in the past.  (Basically, I told myself it was okay to use this drug, because it wasn't alcohol or pot or painkillers, and because I'd never used it before.  Which is such complete bullshit.  Same old pattern I'm trying to break:  avoid using one drug by using another instead.)  I'm not going to name the drug here, but it's legal (or maybe it'd be better to say that it's not yet illegal), and while not actually a painkiller, one of the active chemicals in the plant bonds to the opiod-receptors in the brain, producing the same physical sensation, without most (if not all) of the harmful side-effects of true opiates (liver damage, chemical dependency, respiratory failure, withdrawl, etc.)

So, basically, it's a safe, cheap, legal way to get an opiate-like high.  How the fuck am I supposed to say no to that?!  The horrible, deadly, sickness-inducing side-effects of opiates are what I use to convince myself not to do them in the first place!  Without them, I'm reduced to telling myself, "Well, you shouldn't use it because... well, because you've committed to a year sober and you don't want to feel like a failure.  Oh, and don't forget that if you get high, on anything, at all, you'll end up feeling depressed and lazy and unmotivated and emotionally unbalanced for a week, remember?"

All of which is true, but I couldn't bring myself to give a shit at the time.  And now I'm paying the price.  I just wanted to enjoy my vacation, and I had run out of other options that I could find.  Somehow, sitting around the cabin watching DVDs (two of the three movies we watched ended up being really awful) and snacking (which just made me feel fat - I could feel all of my workouts being undone with every bite) just weren't going to do it for me.   And that's my problem in a nutshell.  I couldn't bring myself to stay sober, knowing that it meant not enjoying myself on my vacation.  Because when I get in a situation where I feel like I need to have a good time, and I try and fail to find any other way to do it, I always know that I've got this sure-fire method right in my back pocket.  And, sure, that shortcut comes with a heavy price to pay, but I can never seem to bring myself to care about that in the moment.  I'm always willing to pay almost any price later to enjoy myself now.

Like I said last week, a lot of what I'm trying to work on right now is learning how to suffer; how to allow myself to be okay with something like having a shitty, sober vacation, rather than feeling like I have to get high in order to avoid it (which only ends up making for a shittier vacation anyways).  And this was put to the test this weekend, hard.  And I failed that test, completely and utterly.

Anyways, then I got home and found out that my wireless had broken, again.  So I had to take the laptop back to the shop and have them fix it, again, less than a week after I got it back from them and spent two days frantically trying to restore all my files and programs.  But before I took it back to the shop I wanted to make another back up, since my previous one is corrupted.  I decided to back-up to disk this time, since every other method I've tried has failed.  After three hours, and three failed attempts, I had to give up on that method, as well.  (I have never, not once in my entire life, successfully backed-up a computer.  Every single attempt I have ever made using any method has failed.  Either it crashes while creating the back-up, or it doesn't restore from the back-up properly.  Why the fuck do I even bother?)

Then the depression from a weekend spent getting high kicked in full-force, and (combined with all of the other things I was already legitimately depressed about) totally knocked me on my ass, and I ended up calling out sick and spending two days on my couch playing video games.  (I am such a fucking child!)  I'm chemically exhausted from the coming-down, and so it takes me hours to get up and out the door in the morning.  As such, I haven't worked out in almost a week, and I know I've managed to completely undo most of the gains I've made with all that hard work in the last month.  I finally managed to make it into work today, but an hour late, only to find out that I missed an important assignment while I was out, and my boss had to take care of it for me.  (I didn't know about it, because I couldn't check my work email, because my computer is still fucking broken!)  Then my boss had a "talk" with me about the fact that I never seem to have any internet at home.  (For years, this was because our building's internet sucked.  And now that we have finally managed to fix that, my computer has been broken for a month!)  And my story of why I never seem to have internet at home sounds ridiculous (even to me, and I know it's true!) so she didn't believe me, and I can hardly blame her.

I skipped SMART last night, because I'm too depressed, and too much of a coward to face all those assholes and admit what a stupid fucking failure I am.  And I skipped my therapist appointment today (which I should be at right now, actually) because I couldn't bring myself to leave work early to go to my appointment, after missing two days and then coming in late today.

So, basically, my vacation sucked, I relapsed, I'm chemically depressed and exhausted, my computer is still broken and back in the shop again, I haven't worked out in a week, I'm way behind and in trouble at work, and I feel like a miserable, worthless, piece-of-shit excuse for a person right now.

And it is ALL.  My.  Fault.

Taking It...

Picking up my computer on the way home tonight, and spending the bulk of my night setting it up again.  I'm so happy I could shit my pants!

The yang to that happy yin seems to be my SMART meeting last night.  Every time I do my "check-in" lately (what they call taking your turn to speak) I just end up feeling embarrassed, and like I made an ass of myself.  And worse, I can't tell if I really did make an ass out of myself, or if I'm just being self-conscious.  Either way, the net result is that I end up feeling like I really don't want to go to these meetings anymore.  But I don't feel like I can stop, either.

I'm really not enjoying the experience; but, then again, is this an experience that you're really supposed to enjoy?  It's about learning and getting healthy, not having fun.  And I'd really like my Tuesday nights back (I could be volunteering at the planetarium if I didn't have to do this instead, which I'd much rather do), but inconvenience hardly seems like a good excuse to stop going.  You know what's really inconvenient?  A drug habit.

And I don't know if these meetings are doing me any good.  And that's the main reason why I still feel like I have to go:  I don't know if these meetings are doing me any good or not.  If I knew for a reasonable certainty that these meetings were not helping me much, then I would feel perfectly fine with deciding to stop going.  But if I stop now, without having answered that question, then I'm just quitting; I'm just giving up.  And as much as I'm not enjoying this, and as much as I don't seem to be getting much out of it beyond embarrassment, I'd be really upset with myself if I just gave up.

I keep coming back to this lesson again and again all over my life.  I think it's one of the big things I'm trying to tackle through this process.  It's not simply about not drinking and not getting high for the next year.  What I'm really trying to do, is learn how to take it.  When my life sucks, and I'm stuck doing things that I don't want to do, and I'm unhappy with the way things are going, and there's nothing I can do to change it, then just shut the fuck up and take it.  You can't be happy all the time.  Sometimes you have to do things that you don't want to do and that make you unhappy.  And when you ease those pains with chemicals, that makes you weak.  And you come to rely on those chemicals, because you're not strong enough to simply put up with those feelings of stress and depression and unhappiness on your own.

So, I'm learning endurance here.  I'm working out my "acceptance muscle," and it's getting stronger.  I'm a lot stronger than I used to be, because I never bothered to work it out at all before.  Whenever I had to use that muscle, and whenever it got sore, I'd soothe it with the painkillers of booze, and pot - and sometimes even actual painkillers.  But now I'm using it, and working it out, and getting stronger, and learning to accept that sometimes I have to just shut the fuck up, and take it, and do what I have to do, instead of what I want to do.

Like going to these stupid fucking meetings.

Son of Blurble...

I miss my computer.

Workout is going well.  Weight is coming off at a good clip.  My stomach is flatter, and my pants fit better (my tight pants feel normal, and what used to be my good-fitting pants are starting to feel baggy).  I'm pleasantly sore all the freakin' time.

Really not happy right now, though.  I miss my computer (as I said), I miss writing, I miss meditating, I miss having free time, I hate kickball... .  And I just generally miss being happy and feeling that I like my life.  I miss Her, and realize now that I basically always have, even though she's right there, standing right next to me.  How could two people who are so close end up so far apart?

SMART meeting tonight.  No idea what to talk about it.  Really don't want to go, but feel like I should.

Guess that's about it for now.

Apologies for the boring and the whiny.

S.M.A.R.T., Take 3...

Last night felt like a decent meeting.  Finally.

There was a lot of discussion, people seemed more engaged, there was a lot more discussion of actual issues surrounding our compulsive behavior, and the chit-chat about everyday bullshit was generally short and quick.  There was also a lot more laughter and smiles this time around, which I think makes a difference.

I felt a lot more comfortable this time around.  Just getting some basic familiarity with everyone, I guess.  Felt a lot less like "the new guy."  I felt comfortable offering input on other people's stories, and when I did they seemed to find it helpful and it usually sparked further discussion in the group.  I did my own "sharing" mid-way through the meeting this time around, rather than at the end, and that worked out much better for me.  I had gone in there with every intention of updating them on my resolution to the question that I'd been struggling with and that I discussed last time, but I actually ended up giving them a bit of a synopsis of where I'm at right now and what I'm working on and what my goals are.  Not sure why.  Just felt more natural, I guess.  Went with the flow.

Talked about my mother and her mother.  Talked about how I self-identified as an addict since before I ever actually used or drank anything, and that I've basically been using for my entire career as though I were also in recovery; using what I learned from my mother as a child to maximize the pleasure while minimizing the risk.  Explained that I'm just kind of tired of it at this point, and so I've committed to at least a year completely sober from anything, which will be the first year of my adult life spent that way.  And that generally I'm not struggling with my addiction in any way on a day-to-day basis - that I feel like I have a good bit of experience here, and how this all feels very comfortable and familiar - but that every once in a while, it'll suddenly sneak up out of nowhere, and I won't know what to do.  Told a condensed version of the story of my relapse from a few weeks ago.  I got a lot of positive comments, including "Wow, good share!"  And I got a lot of laughs.

(Why is that so important to me?  I guess I feel like, if I have to essentially give a performance to a group of people - a captive group, at that - then I feel I should at least be entertaining.  If I have to tell a story, then the people who hear it should at least enjoy the experience on some level.  I strive to be entertaining here, too, as much as possible without compromising the message.  So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to discover that I do the same thing in the group.)

I realized a few new things about the whiny woman who has apparently decided to become co-facilitator.  I realized that it's not just that she's whiny, but that she rambles.  She never seems to get to her point, and you're never actually sure what her point really is, anyways.  She just rambles on and on in this stuttering, monotonous way, that makes it really difficult to pay attention to what she's saying.  Whenever she finishes, I'm always left feeling sort of, Huh?  What were you trying to say?  What was the point of all that?  So, of all the people I've met there so far, she is absolutely the worst at actually communicating her point to other people.  That doesn't seem like a quality you'd want in a facilitator.

And she always has her two-cents to stick in.  Which I guess is why the facilitator thinks she'd be good at the job.  And I know we're supposed to respond to each other and discuss things and try and help out (SMART actually encourages "cross-talk," whereas most groups forbid it), but whenever she responds to somebody's story with her two-cents, it's always about her.  It seems like she always begins with something like, "Well, that reminds me of this thing that happened to me the other day..." and then suddenly we're all listening to her story again, instead of the person who was supposed to have the floor.  It just seems so rude.  I imagine she must believe she's trying to help, but it's hard for me to see how she's actually helping anyone.

Also, now that I've heard everyone share their stories a few times, it's becoming fairly obvious that of all the people in the group, she is the one who least has her shit together.  She is clearly the biggest mess in the entire group.  I would go so far as to call her a hot mess, in fact.  And she's apparently been coming to this group for years.  If, even after all of these years, she is still struggling to this degree with the most basic aspects of recovery, then, again, I have to ask, how is this woman in any way qualified to function as a group facilitator?  She seems like the absolute worst choice for facilitator out of the entire group!  Ugh.

Hopefully I'll be done with all of this by the time she starts taking over.  Or that she'll prove me wrong and turn out to be a wonderful facilitator.  (Stranger things have happened.)

Despite all of that, the meeting was more of a positive experience than a negative one, and much more so than the previous weeks.  For the first time, I find that I'm looking forward to the next one.


The last of the "ironic" bumper stickers from the back wall of the room:

"I've Fallen and I Can't Reach My Beer"

"Rehab Is For Quitters"

"The Only Urine Sample You'll Get From Me

Is A Taste Test"

Confounding Conundrum Countered, Conclusively...

Regarding the question, "if I'm still getting high, but just in healthier ways, am I really changing?  am I really getting better?" - a question I have been asking myself here repeatedly for some time now - I think I finally have an answer.

My counselor read my blog entry yesterday regarding the SMART meeting (I sometimes send him pertinent entries to keep him updated between sessions, and he is gracious enough to read them), and he sent me this reply:

A desire to want to get high and/or altering our mind/mood state is part of our genetic, biological, and chemical make-up as Humans. It is an underlying instinctual desire that we all have. That's why we have serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, adrenaline, and various other chemical neurotransmitters in the first place. These chemicals are a vital part of our survival mechanism, that's why sex, eating, and exercise can feel ssoooooo gooood! These chemicals are a part of [our] neuro-chemical make up to ensure pleasure when we engage in these activities. These activities are necessary for the healthy survival of any species. A desire to feel good or even feel high or to alter our mental status is very much a part of who we are as humans. This is why every civilization known to Man has developed some sort of mind altering practices or substances. The harm is when we lose the capacity to regulate the chemical process either internally or externally. Excess is what changes the dynamic from healthy to unhealthy and triggers addictive behaviors.

Short answer:  getting high is just a part of who we are, and we wouldn't be here without it; so, healthy methods are okay, but everything in moderation, always.

It seems so obvious now.  And in hindsight, I feel like I already knew it.  I just couldn't find my own way there, for some reason.  I was over-analyzing the situation again, I think.  Missing the forest for the trees.  I'm glad I had someone there who could explain it to me in a way that I could understand, and use.  Thanks, Doc.

I enjoyed my workout-induced endorphin high this morning, guilt-free.


PS - I kind of want to talk about this at my next SMART meeting, but I don't know if that's because I want to update them on my progress, or if I just want to start a confrontation with the panicky facilitator and prove him wrong in front of the rest of the group.  Can't deny that'd be fun.  But definitely a dick-move, too.  We'll see how I feel next week, I guess.

S.M.A.R.T., Take 2...

Went to my second SMART Group meeting last night.

About half the people there last night, were not there last week.  So, it was almost like meeting a whole new group again; only about half the people there last night had met me the week before.  And the meeting began with the announcement that the person I had found to be the most annoying from the previous week was apparently now going to be the co-facilitator and help run the meetings.  Wonderful. 

It was very much the same as before in most ways.  A lot of older, broken, rather tired and sickly looking people, for the most part (there were a couple exceptions).  And again, everyone basically just spent their time detailing the mundane minutiae of their lives.  It's almost as if everyone is trying to answer the question, "What's been going on with you lately?" rather than, "How have you been doing with your recovery lately?"  And that is sooo boring to listen to for an hour-and-a-half, and just so completely not-helpful.

Once again, the facilitator (the guy who ostensibly runs the meetings) waited until two minutes before the scheduled end of the meeting to get around to me and the other new guy from last week (the one who shouted "Where's Happy Hour?").  Which put us, the new guys, in the position of having to choose between either being looky-lou's (listening to everyone else talk, but not really participating ourselves), or being the reason everyone else had to stay late.  Thanks a lot.  (To be fair, we could've volunteered to speak at any point during the meeting, but as "the new guys," it just doesn't feel right, somehow, to be interjecting and taking time away from people who have been coming there every week for years.)  I'm beginning to get the impression that this guy isn't a very good facilitator.

When it was my turn to talk, I basically gave a quick synopsis of the events and questions I described in yesterday's post.  When I asked aloud, "Maybe everyone needs to get high, and all we can choose is the method?," I saw the facilitator's eyes widen in panic, and he started shaking his head as if to say, "No!  No, don't say THAT!"  Which kind of shocked me and upset me a little.  Why the fuck is that a taboo question?  And I thought the whole point of SMART vs. other organizations was that this was supposed to be free of dogma.  So, what was so wrong with that question??

After I finished speaking there was a murmur of "Wow, good questions. - Yeah, those are good questions. - Wow, I never thought of that. - Whew, how do you answer that one?!," etc. from the rest of the group, which was far more reaction than had been generated by anything else said at the meeting to that point.  (Not bragging, just stating a fact.)  And then a bunch of people offered several comments (again representing more activity than had been seen in the rest of the meeting so far).

The really annoying, whiny woman who is apparently now going to be co-facilitator told me that I should trust my feelings (whatever that means - I just told you my feelings - my feelings are "this makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure I really am doing anything wrong") and to try an experiment where I accept it, and tell myself that it's okay to feel that way, and then see how that makes me feel.  (???)  And then another, older gentleman (who apparently is either a chemist or other scientist, or works with chemists or other scientists) started trying to explain to me in dumbed-down language about Endorphins, without actually naming them.  I interrupted him to say, "yeah, I know, the endorphins.  And they activate the opiate-receptors, so it's basically a naturally produced painkiller."  He seemed kind of shocked and at a loss for words after that (guess he was looking forward to dropping some science on me?), but went on to say that since my body is producing it for a good reason, then I should just enjoy it.  Which made absolutely no sense to me.  What fucking difference does it make if the opiate is synthetic or naturally produced by my body??  I'm still activating my opiate-receptors, which is the exact behavior pattern I'm trying to fucking break!  The idea that it's as simple as just Natural vs. Synthetic is completely asinine.  But I didn't have the heart to tell him that, of course.  I just nodded and smiled and tried to look grateful.  And there were other comments, as well, but none any more helpful.  They basically fell into either "trust your feelings/instincts" (gee, thanks, hadn't figured that one out yet) or "it's okay, so accept it and allow yourself to enjoy it" (no explanation as to why or how it's okay - just stating simply that it is, so accept it - again, thanks so much; I guess I should just do what you say and not worry about having to, I don't know, understand the situation at all or anything).

And so, after two meetings, I'm beginning to wonder if this group really has anything to offer me.  I keep hearing people tell their stories, and describe how they learned some lesson or wisdom that seems totally basic and completely obvious to me, and that I feel as if I learned ten years ago; and this coming from someone old enough to be my father, or my grandfather!  I came to this group hoping to learn something, and maybe find a resource that I could use for help when I needed it.  But over and over again, I keep finding that I want to help these people, that I want to educate them, instead of the other way around!  I'm not trying to be a condescending prick here, honestly.  It's just that it seems to me as if I'm already a lot farther down this road than they all are.  (When you think about it, I've been doing this my whole life - from before I even started using - while I was using, for crying out loud - and this is just the latest stage of it.)  I feel as though I'm asking people who are still figuring out the things I already know, what I should do next, when they can't possibly know, because they haven't even gotten to the point that I'm at yet, much less beyond it.

All I seem to have gained from attending these meetings so far, is a reinforcement of the same experience I have whenever I get in a group of other people:  I end up feeling like a condescending misanthrope.  (It's so weird - I used to need other people so badly when I was a kid.  I didn't know who I was without a group of friends around me to validate and support me.  And now, I can't stand people!  It drives me crazy to have to spend any significant amount of time with the general public.)

I don't know.  Maybe as I get more comfortable with this group, things will get better.  Maybe my influence will lead them to participate more and discuss more worthwhile topics.  (That certainly seemed to be the case last night.)  Or maybe as I get to know them better, and feel more comfortable inserting my $.02 into the conversation, maybe I actually will be able to help some of them.  And maybe helping some of them will help me in some fashion.  I don't know.  It's possible, I guess.  I'm going to give it a few more meetings before I make any decisions, at the very least; I want to give this a fair chance, and not make any snap-judgements.

And, worst-case-scenario, if this meeting continues to be this bad, or gets even worse, there's always another meeting close to my work that I could try out instead.  Maybe that one will be better.


More of the bizarre, "ironic" (?) signs from the back wall of the room:

"I'm not an alcoholic, I'm a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings."

"Don't Drink and Drive.  You might spill your beer."

"I <3 BEER"

"Don't Drink and Park:  Cocktails Make People Make More People"

SMART Observations...

I went to my first SMART Recovery meeting last night.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I've attended a few more (I try to never make decisions based solely on first impressions), but here are a few observations I had last night.

I was sad that they didn't have coffee.  Not that I would've had any that late at night, anyways.  It's just that, I started drinking coffee at AA meetings when I was a kid, and I've never had coffee I enjoyed quite as much as those first styrofoam cups full of burned, generic-brand, tooth-achingly sweet non-dairy creamer off-white java.  And I guess part of me was looking forward to revisiting that experience, without even realizing it.

They also didn't have any donuts, which was an equivalent bummer.

The people I saw there reminded me very much of the people I remember from AA meetings:  old, sad, tired-looking people, complaining about how difficult their lives are.  And I believe them.  Every one of them looked rode-hard-and-put-away-wet.  You could almost read the toll their addiction has taken on them on their faces, and in their posture.

It surprised me, though, how little discussion of addiction or recovery there actually was!  No horror stories of rock-bottom moments, no woeful tales of lives and fortunes lost to the demon Addiction.  Mainly, everyone just bitched about what was going wrong in their life that week; their work, their friends, their families (in-laws and children were a repeated theme).  A couple of them actually had some positive developments to report, but they were still about work/school/kids.  People would mention once in a while how the issue they were discussing was related to their addiction in some manner - such as saying, in the middle of a long rant about in-laws, that they used to drink in order to deal with being around them, and that now that they're not drinking, they don't want to be around them at all - but the other 99% of the discussion would be about the in-laws, not about how the in-laws make them want to drink, or how they are dealing with the not-drinking.  One person's story was exclusively about their struggle to avoid online gaming, but that was the one and only addiction-and-recovery themed discussion of the evening.

It also surprised me how few of them there were.  Only a handful, compared to the dozens of people I used to see at a typical AA meeting.  A typical AA meeting wouldn't have even fit in the tiny little room we met in.

The back wall of the room was covered, oddly, with all these pro-drinking bumper stickers, that said things like "Some people call it a six-pack; I call it a support group" and "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" and "BEER: helping ugly people have sex since 1800" and so on.  There were others that were worse that I can't remember right now.  They struck me as really out of place in this context, and I couldn't tell if they were meant to be funny, or ironic, or what?

"I hope you're still as pretty when I'm sober."

"God made pot; Man made beer.  Who do you trust more?"

Towards the end they passed a hat to collect donations.  And I couldn't help but wonder, What's that for?  They obviously aren't spending it on coffee and donuts.

They asked me to introduce myself at the very end, with about two minutes left before the end of the meeting.  I wasn't really comfortable with it at that point, but I also didn't feel right refusing, after having just sat there and listened to all of their stories for the past ninety minutes.  But with the meeting almost over, I felt a lot of pressure to hurry up and get it out ASAP so that I didn't keep these people late.  So, I stumbled and fumbled, trying to quickly deliver as condensed a version as possible of what I believe my problem is, and why I had come to SMART.  I got a couple of encouraging comments at the end, but I honestly wasn't even listening.  I just wanted to get out of there and go home.

I didn't feel comfortable there at all.  These people obviously know each other well, and I'm a stranger suddenly plunked down right in the middle of their intimate and familiar conversation.  And the reverse was true, as well - it didn't make me feel very good to be revealing intimate details about myself and my own life to a room full of complete strangers.  What if one or more of them are complete assholes, whom I would never spend a minute trying to converse with in any other situation?  Do I have to pretend that I like these people?  Or worse, that I care about them?  And I didn't even share anything really personal, either.  Just some basic details of how I ended up there, and not AA.  So, how much worse will it be next week, when I have to start telling them my story?  I feel like it's going to make my skin crawl to have to open up and get deeply personal with these poor, sad strangers.

But, maybe that's part of the point.  I'm already doing all the expressing of a group therapy session here, with this blog, but let's face it - there's a comfortable safety in being hidden behind a computer screen.  Fuck, this isn't even my real name.  (Though, to be fair, that has more to do with feeling a need to protect other people in my life that I care about - mainly my family - than any desire I may have to be anonymous.)  So maybe there's a lesson to be learned from being able to say these things out-loud, face-to-face, to a group of people.  Or, maybe not.  Or maybe I'm entirely wrong, and it won't even feel uncomfortable after a couple of meetings, because we won't feel like such strangers anymore.  I don't know.

And I don't know what to expect.  But I've committed to going to at least a few meetings before I make any decisions.  So, I guess I'm gonna find out.

So far, I'm neither encouraged nor discouraged.  I don't see this becoming something I'll suddenly feel like I absolutely need in order to continue with my recovery, but who knows?  Stranger things have happened, I guess.  Right now, my only hope is simply that I won't hate it.  I would be happy if it was just a place that I felt I could go in those rare moments when I feel like I need help.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I feel perfectly comfortable doing this on my own.  In fact, I'd prefer it that way, quite honestly.  But every once in a while, there's a situation where I do need help.  Where I suddenly, out of nowhere, feel an overwhelming desire to use, that I cannot talk myself out of.  Where I don't know what the proper response is, or how to react.  Where I don't know what's going on or what to do about it.  Times like my relapse a couple of weeks ago, and the depression and uncertainty that followed.  Because, in those moments, right now, I don't have anyone I can turn to and ask for help.  So, it'd be nice if this group could fill that role for me.  But I don't know if it can, yet.  We'll just have to wait and see.


At the end, when everyone was filing out of the tiny little room into the parking lot, the other new guy who was also there for the first time (I wasn't the only one!) yelled out, to no one in particular, "Where's Happy Hour?!"

Really, new guy?!

Really?

Hope and Regret, part 3...

On the heels of all of these thoughts on my addiction and recovery and sobriety, I started thinking about how I feel about my history of using.  And I feel a need to state here, strongly and clearly, and in no uncertain terms, that I have no regrets about my past behavior.  None.  If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't do it any differently.  Even the very worst moments, where I hurt myself badly or scared myself half-to-death or nearly died, I'm still grateful for.  Because each and every one of them taught me valuable lessons that I wouldn't have learned any other way, and I have in each instance become a better person for having learned them.

And those scary moments were few and far between.  The vast majority of the years I spent drunk and high, I laughed my ass off and just had a wonderful time.  I learned a lot about myself through those experiences, and I feel lucky and privileged to have had the chance to spend so much of my life feeling happy and stimulated and satisfied.  I've had a great run of it up to this point.  But it's just becoming a little old, a little stale, a little tired.  And so am I.  After all these years, it's taking more and more of a toll on me than it ever has before, right as I'm getting less and less out of it than I used to.  And as I get older, and my priorities for what I want out of life shift from more immediate pleasures to bigger-and-better things, it's just becoming less and less worth it for me to keep going like this.

And I always knew that it would have to end one day.  And I always knew there would be a price to pay for all those years of self-indulgence.  And I always knew that this was that price.  And I always knew that one day I would pay it.  And now that this day seems to finally be coming around, I am paying it.  Gladly.

But I'm still glad I did it, too.

And I wouldn't change a thing.

Hope and Regret, part 2...

And speaking of breaking the cycle, the 2nd, and possibly most, important thing I learned in my session this week, was the existence of an organization called SMART Recovery.

I've considered going to AA or NA meetings before, but having some past experience with them and knowing the gist of what they're like and how they work, I've never really felt like they would be a good fit for me.  The central core of the X-Anonymous twelve-step programs starts with two things:  1) submit your will to a Higher Power, and 2) admit that you are powerless over your addiction.  The rest of the program builds off of those two ideas, so if you can't do those, then the rest of the program isn't going to be much help for you, either.  And neither of those ideas really work for me.  More to the point, they're basically the exact opposite of what I feel I need in order to get and stay sober.

I don't believe in a sentient being that controls the Universe, so the entire concept of "Higher Power" would be difficult for me right from the start.  I could use Tao, but that wouldn't really work, either.  Because Tao is not a sentient force, it's just a pattern.  It's the pattern of Nature seen throughout the Universe.  It is the Set of All Things.  It is the Universe, and everything it in, and everything outside of it (if there is anything outside of it) and the motion of all things that repeats in the same way from the spinning of galaxies down to the spinning of electrons.  It is the cyclical pattern of motion that is all creations, that spurs all nothings to become some-things.  So, it's not really a Power, and it's not really Higher, either, since there is nothing that is not Tao.  And how would I "submit my will" to it, exactly?  How can I submit to something that I'm already a part of, merely by virtue of my existence?  And then there's just the whole idea of submitting my Will, at all, which I'm not real keen on.

Which actually ties in with the 2nd step, admitting that you're powerless over your addiction.  Submitting my Will, admitting I am powerless... these are not things that I've ever been good at.  In fact, I have spent the majority of my adult life strengthening my Will, to the point that I was able to convince myself that I can actually bend Reality to it.  "Powerless" is not something I ever want to feel, or believe I should ever have to feel.  And more to the point, it's not something I believe I am.

I'm not powerless over my addiction.  That fact is self-evident.  If I were powerless, then I would've ended up deranged and out-of-control, like my mother, or her mother before her.  Or like one of those poor, pathetic people on Intervention, who are incapable of caring about anything beyond their drug use.  I have never been like that.  Throughout my entire history of using, I have always carefully monitored myself, my cravings, the amount of my intake; constantly limiting the amount I use to "just enough;" never letting myself use as much as I really want; dialing back my use whenever the cravings started to become more intense; etc.  I used always knowing that I was an addict, and that I was walking a fine line between having fun and losing it all, and always on the lookout for signs that it was getting out-of-hand.  (That's one of the reasons I'm actually feeling kind of done with all of it at this point.  That kind of constant self-intervention takes a lot out of you, and it's getting to the point that getting high is no longer worth the effort it takes to maintain anymore.)  In my entire history, I've only ever let myself use with abandon, to my heart's content, a couple of times.  And every one of those times, things quickly got out of hand, and I scared the shit out myself, and ended up getting my shit together in a new and better way as a result.  And even at my worst, even when I've hurt myself badly with liver damage and ulcers and near-overdoses, I've still never been even half as bad as my mother, or my grandmother, or the sick souls on TV, or any of the people whose stories I heard in those church basements as a child.  So, if I have to start that program by admitting that I am powerless over my addiction, then I have to base that entire program on a lie.  And what is the point in that?

And, honestly, if we're really "powerless," then what are we even doing in recovery?  If we were truly powerless over our addictions, then wouldn't we be out getting drunk and high right now?  For me, my sense of my own power, my sense of my internal strength, my strength of Will, is exactly what I've used to keep from going off the deep end my whole life, and exactly what I've relied on to get sober.  So why on Earth would I want to just abandon that??  The whole idea just seems completely counter-productive to me.

And adding to all that the fact that my mother used to take me with her to AA and NA meetings when I was a kid, and that she left one of those meetings and went straight to the hotel room where she took her life, it would be a significant understatement to say that I have some emotional baggage associated with those programs.  And if I went, the only reason I'd be going would be to try to get and stay sober.  I really wouldn't want to also have to work through a bunch of my childhood mommy-issues at the same time.   So, for all of these reasons, I've never really considered the X-Anonymous twelve-step groups to be a valid option for me in my recovery.

So I always assumed I would just have to do this on my own.  I thought that the X-A groups were the only ones out there, and since those wouldn't work for me, then it must be up to just me doing the work, and the best help I could hope for would be the occasional 1-on-1 counseling session.  And I was ok with that, honestly.  But then my counselor tells me about this other recovery group called SMART Recovery.

They're basically an alternative to the twelve-steppers, that emphasizes scientific methods of recovery (constantly evolving as the science of recovery evolves; none of that watered-down, psuedo-JudeoChristian psychology "Higher Power" bullshit), self-empowerment as the main recovery tool (as opposed to submitting your Will and pretending to be powerless - more pseudo-JudeoChristian nonsense; and none of this Will-undermining "my addiction is a disease and I am sick and I will always be sick" crap, either), and recognizing that there is no one right way to become sober that will work for everyone - that everyone is unique and different and that each individual has their own best method of recovery - and so the key to recovery is finding your personal method and working it (which is completely in-line with the way I have lived the entire rest of my life; SMART Recovery is to traditional recovery what Chaos Magick is to traditional Western occultism - find what works best for you, and use it).  They try to get at the root of addictive behavior itself and deal with that, using modern Cognitive Behavior Therapy methods, rather than focusing on the particular substance or thing one is addicted to.  (SMART stands for "Self-Management And Recovery Training".)  As such, they aren't just for alcoholics or drug-users, but accept any kind of addict at all.  A meeting could include people ranging from alcoholics, to drug-users, to sex addicts, or gambling addicts, or hoarders, or anyone else who would fall under the category of "I'm exhibiting compulsive behavior that I would like to stop."

I was astounded that I'd never heard of this before.  They sound perfectly tailored for me.  I found out there's a meeting in my area, and I'm going to attend my first one next week.  I'm going to try to reserve judgement, though.  In my experience, things that sound too-good-to-be-true usually are.  And while the base description sounds fantastic, some of the material I've found on their website absolutely screams "MOTIVATIONAL SEMINAR," and that could be a big turn-off for me.  So, I'm going to keep my expectations low, attend a few of the meetings, and get a sense of what they're really like.  It'd be nice if they turned out to be even half as great as they sound, and it'd be nice if I could actually get some extra help from them.  But it would be just that - extra.  So if they turn out to be not-quite-right for me, then oh, well.  I still have no problem doing all of this on my own.

And no reason to believe that I can't.


concluded in part three tomorrow...