I've heard and read various iterations of this over years, so here it is put together:
- Mercy: Not getting what we deserve
- Grace: Getting what we don't deserve
I put this in the Sobriety category because I've heard one or the other of these at AA meetings and because I myself have stated that I am glad I haven't gotten what I deserved over the years.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 14:49 2010-06-20 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Acceptance (Sobriety)
I met with my sponsor Friday afternoon. Toward the end of the meeting he asked me if I had accepted my alcoholism. I thought about it for a minute and answered, “No, I'm not at peace with it.” He replied, “I didn't ask if you were at peace with it. I asked if you had accepted it.” I realized at that moment that I had assumed that accepting something meant being at peace with it and that, consequently, I didn't have a good definition of “accept”. So, I looked it up. According to Merriam-Webster, to accept something means to:
- To receive willingly (accept a gift)
- To endure without protest or reaction (accept poor living conditions)
- To regard as proper, normal, or inevitable (the idea is widely accepted)
- To recognize as true: believe (refused to accept the explanation)
- To make a favorable response to (accept an offer)
- To receive favorably something offered – usually used with of (a heart more disposed to accept of his — Jane Austen)
With these definitions in mind, I can say, “Yes, I have accepted my alcoholism” and, “No, I have not accepted my alcoholism.” ;-)
I do not receive it willingly—I did not and do not want to be an alcoholic. I have no recollection of deciding as a child that I wanted to be a lying, cheating, stealing drunkard. I do endure it without protest or reaction—it's a fact that I am alcoholic, although I do not care for that fact. I certainly do not regard it as proper or normal, but I do think it was inevitable once I took the first drink, especially considering my family history. I do recognize as true and believe that I am an alcoholic—I don't have to look at my life in any great depth to realize this.
Nor have I heretofore made a favorable response to being an alcoholic. I am glad to be alcoholic in the sense that I know what my problem is and what to do about it. There are a lot of people with all manner of problems, including alcoholism, who haven't the first hint that they have them, much less what to do about them. I haven't, finally, received favorably that I'm an alcoholic although, again, at least I know what my problem is and have a solution.
What do I take away from this? That I have work to do and prayers to say toward the goal of fully accepting I am an alcoholic.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 13:14 2009-03-08 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Resetting the Date (Sobriety)
You might have noticed that I reset the sobriety counter. While I won't go in the details of what happened here — I drank, duh — I will note how I came to do so and what I've learned. The condensed version is that I was feeling good after over six months of sobriety and slacked off the nearly daily attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I got the predictable (to other alcoholics, at least) results.
If one accepts the proposition that alcoholism is a chronic disease, then the notion of a relapse makes sense. People with chronic diseases have relapses. Where alcoholics are concerned, Dr. William Silkworth, AA's early medical supporter, explained relapses more eloquently than I will undertake to attempt here.
Honestly, I resisted the idea that I need to attend meetings daily. I want a “normal” life. Whatever I thought that was, I was pretty sure that it did not include near-daily attendance at AA meetings. What I learned on February 19th is that I need to do so. Regardless of what “normal” is and means, I'm not it, particularly when it comes to alcohol. To paraphrase the beginning of Chapter 3 in the Big Book, I don't like to think I am bodily and mentally different from other people:
No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30).
The fact is, where alcohol is concerned, I am bodily and mentally different from normal drinkers. So, “normal” for me includes attending meetings. It took having to reset my sobriety date to get that. But I get it now in a way I didn't before.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 23:11 2009-03-03 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Coming Back (Sobriety)
I'm delighted to let everyone know that Kelly is on her way back to San Jose.
After some time passed, a lot of conversations, a lot of prayer, and no small amount of forgiveness, Kelly decided that she loved me more than she was mad at me. I've done a lot of work, too, but I did that because I didn't want to drink. No, Kelly made this decision on her own. At least, it was nothing I did. I'm thrilled she's changed her mind, of course.
As of 8:30 tonight, she was in Richfield, Utah. She hopes to get as far as Sacramento on Tuesday, but even if she only makes it to Reno, she should still make it here Wednesday.
YAY!
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:51 2008-11-10 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
FEAR (Sobriety)
AA has lots of saying and acronyms. “Live and let live.” “Let go and let God.” “One day at a time.” “HOW” do we get sober? Through “Honesty, Openness, and Willingness.” Lately, the one that has my attention is “FEAR” which can be either of “F**k everything and run” or “Face everything and recover.”
I'm sure I've done more of the former than the latter. At the least, I've been surprised to discover how fearful (or, perhaps, fear-full) I am. I'm afraid of being alone, afraid of not being accepted, afraid of conflict, afraid of losing my job, afraid of responsibility, afraid of making mistakes, afraid of not being liked, afraid of being like my father, afraid to tell the truth, afraid of being just like everyone else and afraid of not being like everyone else. I'm sure there's more.
One of the purposes of AA's 12 steps is to learn how to face reality and recover rather than run from it by drinking. What I've spent the last few weeks doing is learning just how laden with fear I am, laying that out for my sponsor, and discovering how to move forward. I haven't and won't become a saint, but I can at least become an honest, decent man, someone to whom my wife is proud to be married rather than someone she regrets marrying.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:21 2008-10-14 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
60 Days (Sobriety)
I can't remember the last time I was proud of a 60-day chip. Actually, as I write this, 65 days and change have elapsed since my last drink. Sunday past marked day 60, but I didn't get to a birthday meeting until tonight. My “normal” meeting (in AA terminology, my “home group” acknowledges sobriety milestones but doesn't celebrate them by giving chips. It seemed important to me, though, to collect some token to mark the occasion, so, I found my way tonight to the Saratoga Serenity Group, located, strangely enough, in Saratoga (on Saratoga Avenue, no less), to collect this chip. If you're curious, I've included larger images of the front and back of it. I hope to collect more of these as the days and weeks and months and years pass.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:09 2008-10-10 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Sobriety Update (Sobriety)
My friend Doug asked me today on IRC how things were going on the sobriety front, noting that I hadn't commented much about it here. For those of you keeping up, I'm still sober, going to an AA meeting almost everyday. I got a sponsor a while back and he's been taking me through the Steps. I'm just about finished with Step 4 and then will move on to Step 5. As I've remarked before, I usually attend a 6:00 a.m. meeting, but if I can't/won't drag my carcass out of bed at 4:45 a.m., I go to an evening meeting. For those of you who don't know me, getting up at 4:45 is not something I do unless my ass is on fire. Well, my ass was on fire. As my sister-in-law put it, “Kurt, when your life starts to sound like a country 'n' western song (got drunk, wife left, truck broke down,…), something needs to change.”
So, in short, I'm okay. I'm getting what I need, but not necessarily what I want. Nonetheless, I'm finding that what I need is what I wanted all along. I'm going to keep attending meetings and working with my sponsor. While I might have drinking problem in the short term, what I really have is a living problem. As I told my friend, drunks are permanent passengers on the short bus when it comes to living skills. The things which are obvious to some people seem to elude me. Like, “Kurt, if you don't take the first drink, you won't get drunk.” :-\ Well, duh, but that had never occurred to me.
All I want is the magic pill that will allow me to drink without destroying my life. I don't think that's too much to ask. Really. Failing that, I'll keep going to meetings and working with my sponsor.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 15:16 2008-10-09 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
The Blahs (Sobriety)
Yesterday was okay. After an AA meeting and time spent with my sponsor, I took a nap and then went grocery shopping so I could make shrimp creole for dinner. The creole was good and I enjoyed watching the Steelers defeat Cleveland for the tenth time in a row.
Today, though, I just feel lost. Went to a meeting and then to work and, while I got work done, I don't feel any sense of accomplishment. Dinner was baked ziti. I'll have some shrimp creole for a snack later on. I'm full, nourished even, but it was definitely a moment in which I was eating to live rather than out of a zeal for good food.
I've just been going through the motions since Kelly left.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 18:58 2008-09-15 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Steps 1, 2, and 3 (Sobriety)
I met with my sponsor on Thursday afternoon and formally and officially took the first three of AA's twelve steps:
- Admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restores us to sanity.
- Turned our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.
I had already taken these steps myself. It's clear to me and to anyone who knows me that left to my own devices I'll drink myself into an early grave, jail, or an institution. As to the unmanageability, well, my wife left me because I lied to her and deceived her about my drinking. If that isn't an unmanageable life, I can't imagine what is.
It is also crystal clear that only a power greater than myself can keep me sober and remove the compulsion to drink. My best thinking and efforts got me here. Nothing I've tried, and I've tried almost everything, kept me dry, much less sober. It's got to be God, or I'm taking the bridge.
My understanding of God is the conventional, traditional Judaeo-Christian God. Not the guy with lightning bolts waiting to drop the big hammer on my head when I inevitably foul up. Rather, the guy who slaps his forehead, says, "Dude! Again!? Let me help." and wraps me up in condemnation-free love. I turn my will and my life over to him everyday and almost immediately take it back, so there's ample room for growth on that front.
What, then, is the significance of taking them with a sponsor? I'll quote from a message I sent my wife when she asked the same question:
The significance of doing them "officially," with a sponsor, is that I'm working the steps the way that the first AAs worked them. This is the "AA way" and the way it is described in the Big Book. In a way, I'm just doing this the way my sponsor told me we're going to do it.For me, the significance is also like the difference between teaching myself algebra and being taught algebra by someone who already knows it. In the former case, I can get the main elements and the highlights, but I'd miss the subtleties and gotchas that someone experienced could show me.
I don't want another relapse. My best thinking got me where I'm at right now, so it's time I get out of my own way. When it comes to sobriety, I clearly don't know anything, so I'm going to listen to someone who does.
We'll meet again next week sometime to start on the Step 4, Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. That ought to be about as pleasant as getting raped in the butt with a running chainsaw.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:00 2008-08-29 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Not Going to Hide (Sobriety)
I'm not going to hide, much as I'd like to just now.
For a brief period on Wednesday, 6 August, I prepared to enter a 30-day residential treatment program because I felt completely overwhelmed and was fortunate enough to find a center that could take me in the next morning. Similarly, there were a few days during the second full week of August during which I had closed KurtWerks and BlogWerks and taken down the content. Obviously, I didn't enter the treatment program and if you're reading this, KurtWerks and BlogWerks are back up.
After some consideration, I decided that disappearing into a residential treatment center, while appealing, was the moral equivalent of hiding from the world and the mess I'd created. It felt dishonest. It also simply wasn't practically feasible. Regarding feasibility, I couldn't take a break from my responsibilities for 30 days. There are bills to pay and so forth, things that wouldn't get done in my absence because there is no one else here to do them. My wife is back in Pennsylvania, my brother and sister-in-law are in Michigan, and my parents are dead. Being out-of-pocket $1050 for the co-pay didn't appeal either. I had the cash, but it was the money my wife had left to pay for shipping her belongings back to her and it wasn't right to divert the money for my own use.
As to hiding from the mess I'd created, well, I've wrecked my life and my wife's. Selfishness and my best thinking got me here, so it would be equally selfish to create such havoc and then run and hide in a treatment program for 30 days. No, I determined that I was going to face the consequences and clean up the mess to the best of my ability. My wife has made clear that, as far as she's concerned, there is no going back, no way to mend what I've broken, and, I presume, no future. Accepting that, there is still the disaster that is my own life and still the responsibilities I have here and now, from neither of which I can take a month off.
With respect to dishonesty, it occurred to me that real honesty was laying bare what I had done, what happened, revealing for anyone to see that part of me of which I am most ashamed: my alcoholism and its devastating consequences on my life and for those closest to me. There's a saying that we're only as sick as our secrets. Perhaps if I have no more secrets, I'll get well just a little bit faster.
I took down KurtWerks and BlogWerks for similar reasons. I wanted to hide, vanish, disappear. That's a pointless undertaking. I'm not going to be ruled by shame or humiliation. What I was did was beyond stupid but, again, I'm going to try to hold my head up and maintain some sense of dignity; I won't be walking through this slop forever.
As I said, I'm not going to hide. My wife thinks I'm a lying coward. I'm certainly those things and more when I drink. I'm not drinking today, so I have a fighting chance to be a decent man.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 08:15 2008-08-23 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Raising the Bottom (Sobriety)
I didn't completely waste 6½ years when I relapsed. My bottom was far higher than it was when I sobered up in 2001. I'm still employed, have a few friends, money in my checking account, some money in the bank, and some in my pocket. I'm not living in a pit. My health isn't shot. I'm not gray, wan, and stooped (beyond what spondylitis has done to me). Nor am I malnourished because I've been getting 80% of my calories from alcohol.
I bottomed out after a mere weekend of continuous drinking, which followed eight months of sporadic, episodic drinking. Which is to say my pain tolerance decreased quite a bit since 2001. Perhaps I didn't even hit bottom; it came up and hit me.
High-bottom drunk or low-bottom, losing Kelly is losing too much. I'll kick myself for some time to come over this. Life goes on and I intend, God willing, to go on with it, sans my wonderful wife if I must.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:34 2008-08-16 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Some Honesty (Sobriety)
Time for some rigorous honesty.
Sometime during December, 2007, and I'm really not clear on when, I started drinking again. Yes, I threw away 6½ years of sobriety. No, I don't know why. I don't honestly know, yet, what happened. I definitely felt lonely, restless, and bored. I was also under a lot of stress from changing jobs and moving across the country. And I was challenged, perhaps past my limits, by my new job. These neither excuse nor explain anything; they just provide setting and context.
Naturally, being the alcoholic that I am, I told no one. Certainly not Kelly. I didn't drink every night; didn't, by comparison with my past drinking, drink heavily. But, it continued. And, predictably, it escalated from beer to liquor. My disease had progressed.
After Kelly came out here, she caught me drinking in either late March or early April of 2008. When confronted about how long, I lied and said I'd started the night before I left San Jose to fly back to Pittsburgh. After some consideration, Kelly said she'd stay but the deal was that it could not happen again or she'd be gone. I said that I'd go to AA and pursue therapy, but, ultimately, failed to do so.
I stopped drinking for a while. My father's death on May 27th shook me up and I used it as an excuse to drink. Upon returning to San Jose from Galveston, I stopped drinking and never said a word to Kelly about it. Sometime in late June, I think, I started drinking again, using trips to my garden plot as the opportunity. Kelly smelled it on my breath one night, at which point I vehemently denied it. She let it drop. Finally, Kelly found a receipt from a liquor store ATM machine. Confronted with the evidence, I tried to lie but ultimately admitted that yes, I had been drinking. The next day, Friday, August 1, she packed minimal personal possessions and returned to Pittsburgh. Remind me not to tell someone again that, if they are going to do something, not to dally…
Let me be crystal clear here: Kelly left because I lied to and deceived her, not because I drank. Lies and deception make a pretty lousy basis on which to build a marriage. I'd like to point out that that this was a late development in an otherwise sound marriage, but that's my perception. I played Kelly for a fool, albeit not out of malice but out of fear she would leave and shame about my drinking, but she's too proud to tolerate that. Kelly feels humiliated. I hope she changes her mind, but I'll plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Realizing I had royally fucked up, I spent that weekend on a prodigious binge. I took all but a few tablets of my half-full bottle of Paxil one night, Saturday the 2nd, hoping, honestly, I wouldn't wake up. Well, I woke up (much to my relief, in retrospect), but not until very early Monday morning. I didn't make it to work that day, made it work on Tuesday, and then spent Wednesday working from home. I returned to work Thursday after attending an early morning AA meeting.
I've gone to at least one meeting each day since, haven't had a drink since, and haven't had the desire to drink. I've gotten a sponsor. I'm pursuing therapy — it's surprisingly difficult to find a psychiatrist who 1) accepts my insurance, 2) has openings, and, 3) is willing to work with someone in early sobriety. In short, I've done all the things I should have done back in March/April. If she hadn't left, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now, but I'm not doing this to get her back. Kelly's made it clear she won't be coming back and, at the moment at least, doesn't want to see me at all (I offered to fly to Pittsburgh).
I'm sure there are details I've left out, but I haven't done so intentionally and I think this post adequately covers the lowlights.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 20:47 2008-08-15 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)