AA?

If you take the first step toward recovery, you'll hear lots of advice about getting to AA.  My counselors in rehab always wanted to know how many meetings I was attending.  I think it's a gauge of how serious you are about getting sober.  Many counselors have taken this path themselves; they believe that AA works.  There could be some self-validation at work there, too.  Maybe the most salient reason the clinic encouraged me to attend meetings -- and the one that worked for me -- is that my health insurance threatened to pull the plug on covering my rehab if I didn't start attending.

I figured that if I had to do this meeting thing, I'd find a meeting or two where I was comfortable.  It wasn't easy.  After attending quite a few, and asking people about their favorite meetings, I found one that meant a lot to my early recovery.  It was a men's meeting early Saturday morning.  It was joyful, brutally honest.  No place for coddling, they cut you off if you talk to long.  With 60 minutes and maybe 60 men -- and everybody shares -- too long comes pretty quick.  In any event, I felt like these men let me know that sobriety may not be easy, but it's not a joyless enterprise.

There were plenty of meetings that I refuse to attend.  In some meetings, I heard disturbing anti-Catholic bigotry.  Let me make this clear.  I grew up Catholic in a small Oklahoma town.  I'm used to the name-calling, the Jack Chick pamphlets, and worse.  I dated an Episcopalian girl whose mother didn't want her getting serious with a Catholic boy.  What I heard in these meetings, if you uttered about another religion or a race, would get you placed on a watch list for domestic terrorism, and the Southern Poverty Law Center would be trying to determine which hate group you belong to.

These remarks angered me at several levels.  I was angry because there was no effort in the meeting to walk back from the remarks; no objection implied acceptance.  More than that, I could just imagine a Catholic alcoholic attending his first meeting at such a place, finding it repulsive, and refusing to attend any meeting.  More generally, if an institution harbors such intolerance of any sort, it cannot effectively perform its mission.

One of my most fundamental issues with AA is the "I'm (your name here), and I'm an alcoholic."  I understand the reason why this is the drill in AA.  We share an affliction.  Whether we're rich and powerful or homeless, we are helpless, and we need God's help and the help of others.  Of course, I think that's true if you're an alcoholic or not.  We are all sinners and, absent God's grace, offered directly or mediated through the work of others, sinners we will remain.  Nobody introduces themselves to you in the context of their sin.  Even so, "I'm so-and-so, and I'm an adulterer" would be one memorable introduction.

Ultimately, I don't think it's productive to be defining myself in terms of my weaknesses or, as more formal Catholic language would describe them, my disordered desires.  I think even Luther might agree as he told us that we give Satan power over us by focusing on our sins too much.  If alcohol does hold power over us, describing ourselves in terms of its power over us does nothing to reduce its sway.

Cognizant of some AA's foibles, I still would advise someone who wants to stop drinking or the newly sober to go to some meetings.  See where -- and with whom -- you're comfortable, where you find support, laughter, tears.  Really, these meetings are for you, newcomer.

So why would old-timers attend?  Well, I find inspiration in Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians:

Praised be God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation!  He comforts us in all our afflictions and thus enables us to comfort those who are in trouble with the same consolation we have received from him.  

About last night

... when I noted the similarities between conversion and recovery, I didn't discuss one of the biggest differences between the two.  While conversion and recovery may both produce all kinds of healing - emotional, spiritual - physical healing is an integral part of recovery from addiction.

When I stopped drinking, my body changed and changed again in ways that I never would have imagined.  Some of the changes were by design, as I knew intuitively that gaining strength was essential to my recovery.  Some of the changes were the natural result of reducing my daily calorie intake by the hundreds or, maybe even a thousand, and the stress of divorce and all that entails.  I lost 30 pounds that needed to be lost and gained 20 that I could use.  It was great to be 50 and to require new clothes because the shoulders of my suits were too small and the waist of my slacks were too large!

As edifying as these changes were, they paled in importance to the healing of my brain.  These changes were mystifyingly difficult to manage.  If you stop cold turkey, you feel the brunt of withdrawal: the sleeplessness, the thickheadedness, worst of all, anhedonia, the complete inability to feel any sort of happiness or joy.  As bad as it is for alcoholics, oxycontin addicts seem to have a long and especially difficult period of anhedonia.

Having gone cold turkey once, I knew I needed help, not only in the form of counseling, but in the form of detox.  It was a real blessing.  Sleep came right away, my blood pressure didn't spike as it did before, and the sense of joylessness was markedly reduced.

Not long after I started rehab, I noticed something else.  During rehab and meetings, I heard over and over: no relationships for a year.  I didn't have to worry about that, but I was puzzled.  Why?  I'm not drinking any more.  Doesn't that mean I'm more capable to make decisions like these?

The answer is no, and I discovered why as I looked for a place to live.  After fits and starts, I found a place that I knew was right for me.  Spacious, airy, and bright, it was perfect -- until I went back to sign the lease.  The complex, so appealing on first sight, was dingy the second time around, worn and ill-kept.  It looked as though somebody -- residents?  management? -- didn't care much about the place.  The interior was nice, and I had made a commitment, so the lease was signed.  I learned that any judgment based on my perception stood on the shakiest of ground.  Well, any judgment at all was pretty unreliable, for that matter.  So it remained for a number of months.

For me and some of my rehab cohort, that number was six.  For those of us who were close, we all agreed that, six months in to recovery, it was like the world around us had suddenly become clearer.  We knew that the healing had been taking place over time, imperceptibly, but at six months it became so apparent, it was as though some sort of quantum leap had taken place.

Those first six months were hard -- very hard.  I had to find a new way to live, new ways to recreate, new friends.  Even though the last thing I wanted to do was spend my time in rehab or in meetings, the experiences were critical.  In a lot of respects, rehab and the people I went through rehab with were invaluable.  I found a good AA meeting where I learned that men don't have to get drunk to have fun.  Over time, with work, alone and with others, The Promises that I discussed last night had become credible.

By their fruit you shall know them

Sunday night, I was driving to the store, channel surfing on satellite radio.  I tuned to the Catholic Channel, just in time to hear the start of a program called Christopher Closeup.  I took my foot of the accelerator when I heard that my friend, Julie Davis, would be the guest.

Julie is a convert to Catholicism.  I listened with interest as she told about the changes that occurred as she began to embrace her new faith.  She talked about how a friend found her, shall we say, easier to be with.  Julie was surprised.  She wasn't seeing these changes in herself.

Conversion and recovery are so much alike.  Both involve surrender.  Both produce, encourage, and are catalyzed by gratitude.  Each one can represent a tenuous, but strengthening, hold on a new and better reality.  Conversion, like sobriety, represents a daily reprieve, contingent on the maintenance of one's spiritual condition, as they say in AA.  I might say "deepening" as opposed to "maintenance", but that's just me.

Really, the two - conversion and recovery - go hand in hand, although your local Twelve-Steppers may object.  As I've mentioned before, to me, sobriety is part of the way, not the destination.  It's a necessary, but not sufficient condition for me to become who God wants me to be.

That person would be a saint, by the way.  Not a guy whose likeness appears on holy cards.  Not someone who can bi-locate, or read minds, or bear the stigmata, like Padre Pio.  Not even somebody who kept ice cream frozen in a desk drawer, like Solanus Casey.  He wants me to be happy in His presence, but I digress.

I've mentioned the Promises before.  They describe what we should expect if we work toward sobriety, through the Steps or another approach.  They are contained on pages 83-84 of the Big Book:

"If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.  Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them." 

Hey, Julie!  Sound familiar?

Father Kennedy, reprise

I have written about Father Kennedy before, or, at least, the novel in which he appears.  An ex-drunk, heading up a parish past its prime, he is afflicted with a severe case of acedia.  He approaches his parish and his responsibilities with apathy, if not disdain.

The climax of the novel leads him to a choice.  He is offered the opportunity to become the pastor of the parish in which he was raised, a parish that knew him and of his alcoholism.  It was a parish that was certainly move vibrant than the parish he led.  He decided to remain and to become a real pastor to his parishioners.

Earlier, I had watched and enjoyed Of Gods and Men.  The movie depicted the true 1996 story of Trappist monks in Tibhirine, Algeria.  The monks had been threatened by Islamist terrorists, and they had refused the protection of the local authorities, who also suggested that the monks should leave.  The Trappists were torn, many wanting very much to leave.  Ultimately, they decided to remain and continue ministering to the people of Tibhirine.   The critical line of dialogue: "Je reste."  I'm staying.

This line pretty much foreshadowed decisions I would be making.  When I encountered each of these works, I was hoping on hope to move away.  I desperately wanted to move West, especially to Denver.  Each time, I had opportunities; each time, the opportunity vanished.  I half-jokingly - okay, less than half - noted that these works suggested that I was to stay here.  I glossed over why these men were staying put.

What on earth does this have to do with the newly sober?  With the alcoholic who wants to stop drinking?

I think that, much as I wanted to go West, Father Kennedy would have liked to have gone to a shiny new parish.  The Trappists would have preferred a life of safety if not comfort.  Unlike me, they realized they had work to do: Father Kennedy, in his parish; the monks, in Tibhirine.

Getting and remaining sober requires you to do your work, as well.  Like Father Kennedy and the Trappists, you probably don't want to do it: the rehab, the meetings, getting a sponsor, working the steps, a lot of prayer.  Surrender.

Note that sobriety isn't the end game.  Like Father Kennedy and the Trappists, the work is what you do to become who are truly are.  To paraphrase Thomas Merton, another Trappist, the work is to identify what we are living for and what is keeping us from living for what want to live for.

I have my work to do, as well.

On My Fifth Anniversary

In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

From Luke, Chapter 1.

More to come...

Exodus

During the first three weeks of Lent, those who pray the Office of Readings read daily from the Book of Exodus.  This week, we find that the Israelites, having been led out of Egypt by the Lord, are exquisite whiners.  They fear that the Egyptian army will crush them; they are hungry; they have no water -- and they complain.  In each instance, they long for the relative safety and comfort of their slavery in Egypt.  In each instance, they are saved by the Lord.  Pharaoh's chariots and charioteers are swept into the sea.  The Israelites find manna in abundance in the morning; quail, at night.  Moses strikes a rock with his rod at Massah and Meribah, and water flows.

In other words, Exodus depicts a people from whom a heavy burden has been lifted; they are free.  Their reaction: "This is hard!"  They prefer the easy acquiescence to the responsibiity-free days of forced labor and abundant pork of Egypt's fleshpots.

These are great stories because they work at so many levels.  Christians read these stories not only as the history of the deliverance of the "stiff-necked" Israelites out of Egypt, but as a pre-figuring of a more global Passover.  Christ, the Paschal lamb, leads sinners out of the bondage of sin and death to the Promised Land of communion with God.

I don't mean to be harsh in my assessment of the Israelites.  I think that these stories have such an enduring appeal, not because they attempt to describe actions just at a cosmic scale, but at a human, personal scale, as well.  I recognize the reaction because it is my reaction to difficult days all too often.  It is the reaction of a recovering alcoholic or addict, longing for familiar escape.  Even well into to sobriety, it's natural to wish that life freed from our own slavery didn't require constant diligence.  In that way, the story of the Israelites suggest the story of addicts in recovery.  It is hard.

Of course, the Israelites were right about one thing; they didn't leave Egypt and slavery behind to die in the desert.  They had a destination, however difficult it may be to achieve.  In recovery, we are freed from our slavery to drink or drugs, but sobriety isn't the destination.  Sobriety is the liberation from our slavery and a journey to undertake, as well.  For most of us, it involves doing the work to understand how we came to be drunks and addicts and to do what we can to repair the damage we've done.  We have our own Promised Land to get to.

The Edge of Sadness

Who knew that such a mild winter could be so hard?  That the gravitational pull of my sofa and my bed could exert such tremendous force?  The strange thing was that the effects weren't felt so much by my body as my spirit.  Physically, I was active.  I was running regularly, getting reasonably fit.  The other side of the coin: it was next to impossible to get out of bed, off the couch.  Chores wouldn't have been done at all except for hosting a get-together with a few colleagues.  I felt constantly behind at work.  No meetings.  No Vespers.  Prayer, which usually is a real joy, had no appeal whatsoever.  My waking life seemed to revolve around the web and the remote, each involved in a futile search for something that would catch and hold my interest.

So, I got sick.  Facing a cold and a weekend that promised a little winter, I made soup -- 2 gallons of soup -- and settled in with a novel.

Somewhere, months before, I had read a discussion of The Edge of Sadness.  It sounded like an excellent novel.  I bought it, brought it home, and put it on a bookshelf in the disaster area that is my extra bedroom.  There it stayed.  As I considered my weekend of winter and discomfort,  I remembered reading this:

I just finished reading “The Edge of Sadness” by Edwin O’Connor. It’s the best novel I’ve read in a long time, about a priest who’s been through a period of spiritual aridity and finds at the end of it, the freedom to embrace the life he’s been living as opposed to the life he always thought he wanted. When Father Kennedy finally acknowledges that what he wants is not the warmth and regard of other people, but love and truer devotion to God, his conversion works out like this:

“The mighty changes, of course, did not take place—or if they did they remained invisible to me. Which was natural enough…since a slight increase in the zeal of one man produces no miracles—unless the one man is himself one of the extraordinary few who can and do change history. But nothing like that was involved here. I did my work, time went by…”

And so it does.

Taking my cue, I read the novel, and it is one of the best novels I've read in a long time.  It is beautifully written; the pages flew by.  It is wise.  And, as the Quakers would say, it spoke to my condition.  It cast a new light on how I had been living, not just this winter.

Even though I've fought against it, however passively, it's time for me to actually do the Steps.  My 4th Step is very much clearer now.  It's time for me to arrange my sock drawer, remove the extraneous from my extra bedroom.  It's time to recognize that I'm home.