Neighbors...

Walking home from my appointment at dusk.  Walking down my street, in my neighborhood, on my block.  Group of kids in front of me, walking slowly, taking up the sidewalk.  I walk around them, between the parking meters and the parked cars.  Passing the tiny girl up front, she yells at me, "You best say 'escuse me!'  I got kids here!  An' you don't say 'escuse me??'"  I hadn't bumped into her.  Hadn't touched her at all.  Her kids, a boy and girl about five or six years old, were on the other side of her from me; I was nowhere near them.  She hadn't had to so much as move an inch to avoid me at all.  I had simply walked around her.  And now she's angrily demanding an apology from me, as if I had done something inexcusably rude.  Never in my life has anyone ever said "excuse me" for simply walking past me.  For bumping into me, or getting in my way, certainly.  But not for simply walking by.  Nor has anyone in my entire life ever expected me to excuse myself or apologize simply for walking around them.  She's deliberately provoking me.  And I don't understand why.  I haven't done anything wrong.  But I'm suddenly very aware that each of these kids is black, and I am white.  And this confrontation we're having is our neighborhood, to the core.  This is our home.

I've lived in my neighborhood for over fifteen years now.  This girl staring me down with angry eyes looks to only be about twenty, give or take five years.  It's possible that I was living here before she was even born.  I went to school in this neighborhood when I was a child.  I feel like this is as much my home as hers.  But she has no way of knowing this.  This has been a traditionally black neighborhood for over a hundred and fifty years.  Back then, it was the Freemen's quarter; the first people to settle on this particular piece of ground were freed slaves.  This has been a black neighborhood from the very first brick.  But a few years ago, it started to get very, very gentrified.  Rich, white developers came in and swooped up cheap properties, fixed them up with marble counter-tops and hardwood floors and halogen track lights.  Sold them to rich, white hipsters who wanted to live close to the burgeoning downtown bar scene.  Back then, I was the only white person living in my apartment complex.  Developers bought it and turned it into a condo.  We all got letters saying we needed to buy our apartments or find someplace else to live.  I bought mine.  Everyone else left.  And since then the neighborhood has been this uneasy mix of poor black living side-by-side with rich white.  And I've seen it.  Seen exactly this happening before.  But this is the first time I've experienced it myself.  She doesn't know me anymore than I know her.  We're both making assumptions about each other.  She has no way of knowing that I went to school around the corner, or that I've lived on this block my entire adult life.  All she sees is another doughy white, nerdy-looking hipster who had the fucking nerve to walk too close to her without showing her proper respect.

Things escalate very quickly.  "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be rude.  I just walked around you."  "You best watch who you talkin' to 'for I smack yo' fat ass!"  There's no good way to respond here.  What am I supposed to do?  Fight these kids?  Let them beat me up?  Why?  So they can feel better about themselves?  So I can feel better about feeling better than them?  And there's clearly no reasoning with someone who, within a matter of seconds, is willing to resort to threats of physical violence with someone twice her size for something as minor as stepping around them.  Talking about it any further is clearly pointless.  There's no reasoning with a bully.  I learned that lesson the hard way, long ago.  No choice but to simply end this as quickly and quietly as possible.  I turn and walk away.  To more taunts and threats thrown at my back.  Victory cheers for having driven out the interloper, the outsider.  For having proved her strength and dominance to the rest of the tribe.  For having earned back the respect I somehow stripped her of by walking past her.  I'm instantly ten years old again.  On the playground again.  Having my dignity stolen by a pack of fifth grade delinquents again.  Being called "fat ass" again.  Feeling like an outcast again.  Feeling scared again.  For the first time in fifteen years, I feel scared in my own neighborhood.  For the first time ever, I feel like this isn't my home, and never will be.  I will never be welcome here.  I let them make me feel like an outsider in my own neighborhood.  I let these kids make me feel scared in my own home.  I don't feel like I had any choice.  And there's some part of me that feels I deserve it.

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...

Hope and Regret, part 1...

(When I originally wrote this piece, it turned out to be a lot longer than I'd anticipated, and it just seemed like way too much to include in one posting.  So, I've decided to break it up into three parts.)


I learned at least two really important things at my counseling session this week.

First of all, I was reminded of something that I had previously known, but apparently forgotten.  That this thing I'm going through right now, this period of depression and low-energy/motivation, is a really common psycho-emotional/bio-chemical reaction in addicts, in response to a relapse.  It's almost textbook.  Basically, once you've sobered up a bit, then the crash from even just a little bit of use is much more pronounced, and much more noticeable.  (It's always there, really - it's just that when you're getting high all the time, it's a lot harder to notice it.)  And so that's what's happening with me right now.

I've learned that lesson before.  I used to know this.  So I kind of felt like an idiot for somehow managing to forget it.  But I was also very glad to be made aware of it again.  Oddly, it made me feel better somehow to know that this was a common phenomena, that many other people have gone, and are going, through it, that it's been studied and cataloged.  Made me less sad about giving up what I'd lost.

Speaking of which, I was reminded of something about that, as well.  That period of time in early sobriety, where life is beautiful and being clean just feels so good and everything comes so easily and naturally - that period that just ended for me after Walpurgisnacht, what I've been calling my "state of grace" - in recovery-speak, that period is called "the pink cloud."  Also common, also well-studied and cataloged by men in white coats.

And also another trap.  At least for me, anyways.  Because, when I think about it, I realize that the pink cloud is just another high.  I can see the pattern in my behavior so clearly now.  I use until I get bored with it, or until it becomes so much less fun than it once was that it's no longer worth the price I'm paying for it in terms of health, energy, etc.  Then I sober up and ride the pink cloud for all it's worth for as long as I can.  And then as soon as that wears off, as soon as that becomes so much less fun than it once was that it's no longer worth the price I'm paying for it in terms of effort and sacrifice, then I start using again.  And round and round we go on the merry-go-round of rotating knives.  Basically, I've been cycling back and forth between being high on drugs, and being high on life.  But no matter what, I've always been high.

So, that's what I'm trying to work on now.  Breaking that cycle.  And not just learning how to live a life without using, but learning how to live my life, truly sober - meaning not high on anything at all, completely regardless of whether that thing is seen as a positive or negative influence.  Figuring out how to live my life completely down to earth.  (And figuring out what "down to earth" even means for me.)

Takin' it back to formula.


continued in part two tomorrow...