Consequences

You'd Better Let Somebody Love You

I’m grateful for a really, really busy week. I’m grateful for feeling like things are catching on. I’m grateful for quiet nights, people who make me laugh and the people I love. I’m grateful for an imminent grandson. I’m grateful to be sober today.

song of the week:

This week’s choice shines a light on the basic philosophy behind the selection of the song of the week. One could look at the song of the week as a creative springboard of sorts, the carefully selected song yielding all sorts of reflection and reminiscing and then some kind of catchy conclusion is reached that somehow relates back to the song of the week. Oh, and it’s also sort of about recovery.

Or, it’s just a song I really like listening to and I very much would like to make you listen to it. Among the many hats I’ve worn semi-professionally was dj. I not only had a gig on the actual campus radio station but my partner, Rob Sinclair (not his real name), and I actually had radio names. I was known as Wilson St. Croix, sometimes that would be accompanied by the tag line,

The Voice of Terror

We were silly and maybe high a lot of the time. The professional part of the gig was comprised of the value of the albums I would borrow on a long-term basis and then also the $20-$50 we would be paid to dj various dormitory basement mixers. I had mysteriously been promoted to “Music Director” of the station, which meant that I was responsible for putting together the playlists each week. It also meant that I had access to all of the new albums that came into the station. I had a good feel for the albums that listeners and the other DJs wouldn’t really like, and these were mostly the albums that I then borrowed, again, on a long-term basis.

But then, those semi-purloined albums would form the basis of the playlists for our dorm floor soirees—where we very much wanted to demonstrate how cool our musical tastes were. Except the issue with this was at every party, after about 20-30 minutes of our super cool, very trendy, new wave playlist, a couple of football players would come over to our table and request that we play “Celebrate” by Kool and the Gang or the “Apache Rap,” even if it was for the 4th time, because, “that’s what the girls like to dance to.”

I feel like I am still engaged in the same endeavor, trying to force people to like the music that I like. I do think I have excellent taste, but that’s just me. This particular song came out in 1984, when I was finishing college and heading to law school and I always thought it was pretty groovy. To be honest, the idea of a girl capturing me like a wild butterfly, even if it meant a life of captivity in a jar with jagged holes punched in the metal lid, sounded pretty good. Maybe that’s even what happened.¹

And also, about the “wild butterfly” thing, that is most definitely not an effort to trick you into reading this:

A Caterpillar Year

Anyway, enough about the song of the week. In the alternate universe, where I selected option A as the song of the week, and the next 2000 words were filled with meaning, beauty and purpose, we would be talking about this song:

If I had a nickel for every time a well-meaning and somewhat bitter ex-girlfriend eventually sent me this song, well, I probably wouldn’t have enough to trade for a quarter. However, this song is frequently applied to alcoholics and other hard cases—often in therapeutic settings and I kind of hated it for that reason.

I was at my first IOP—Intensive Outpatient Program—where I spent most of my evenings for about 60-days, subject to random testing and taking Antabuse for good measure. There were different sessions on different nights, there was the “Feelings Lady” on Tuesday nights who taught us emotional management techniques, there were small group sessions and often at the end of the evening, we’d divide by gender for discussions about the issues facing men—I was in the men’s group, so that’s what I know.

Anyway, there were 8 or 9 of us in the men’s group one night and the counselor who led the session brought in a bluetooth speaker and I knew there was going to be trouble. There was a brief powerpoint presentation about the role of music in recovery and then while she connected her phone to the speaker, she “invited” us to stand up. I knew I was going to hate what came next.

Yeah, she asked us to close our eyes and just listen to the song and, of course, it was “Desperado.” As we listened to the litany of imminent regrets in the self-imposed darkness, I wished I was just about anywhere else and top of the anywhere else list was a certain friendly tavern near the corner of 14th and P Street, N.W.

Then she invited us to “move, if you feel like it.” Ok, this is not really a very danceable song, unless it’s a junior high dance and it’s slow dancing with one of the “Sarahs.”² But of course, having been invited to stand, it’s now a group of alcoholic guys standing super awkwardly in a circle. It’s the worst dance party you can imagine. And, of course, one of my alcoholic brothers starts to sniffle and then someone’s crying.³ I uttered an alcoholic prayer:

Please, please take me to the Logan Tavern.

Fast forward a few drunken years and I’m at sleepaway rehab. A group of 40 or 50 guys are gathered in one of the big meeting rooms, we’re sitting in a circle of chairs and we’re given sheets of paper and sharpies. One of the counselors begins pairing his phone and you know trouble is afoot. The usual suspects on the Rehab Playlist like REM’s “Everybody Hurts,” and some other sad songs. We’re invited to write some of the consequences of our addiction on the sheets of paper and then we’re supposed to throw the sheets of paper into the middle of the circle. The counselors retrieved the sheets of paper as they landed and read them aloud to the group.

It was the usual litany of consequences for alcoholics and addicts. Lots of 45-50 year old guys with ruined relationships and estranged kids. Lots of DUIs and drug arrests at airport security checkpoints. Lots of really inappropriate relationships and then this:

“Vehicular Homicide.”

That stopped the whole thing in its tracks and it really felt like all of the air left the room. The counselor who read the sheet of paper looked to identify the author and it was my friend, “Red.” Red was a courtly gentleman in his 70s, who had a nearly intractable drinking problem. His life, at this point, consisted of shuttling between all of the high-end rehabs, punctuated by outbursts of coke and drinking. He was doing 6 months in rehab at this point, and then he’d go and relapse and then spend the next 6 months at Betty Ford or Hazelden or the Ocean Drive outpost of our facility.

I had gotten to know Red because he lived in our house and I helped him buy a valentine once: :

My Funny Rehab Valentine

Anyway, I had always wondered about Red. He had a lot of money and he had basically concluded that he could never live independently and never had—he literally lived in rehabs. I wondered how his life had gone off the rails and now I was about to hear why. He briefly shared the story in his very soft Kentucky drawl:

I was 15 and drinking with my best friend and we were messing around with his Dad’s car and then I ran him over and killed him.

Like I said, all of the oxygen immediately exited the room and everyone just sort of stared at Red. The counselors didn’t know what to say and so we all just sat there in this stunned, heartbreaking sadness. Red just sat very straight in his chair and stared intently at nothing. Then the counselor in charge of the music played “Desperado,” and I think everyone simultaneously found themselves transported to a really dark place—the place where you have to confront what happened and what might have been.

Yes, you could look at my life and say that maybe I drew the Queen of Diamonds a few too many times and there certainly had been some very fine things laid upon my table. It also seemed very, very true that I really only wanted the things I couldn’t get. I really hated when I had to listen to this song, mostly because all of the lines were too f***ing true.

At the end of the song, we were dismissed and it was time for lunch. We walked in silence, all of us, to the cafeteria and got our food. There was no chit-chat, no talk, no bitching about the smoking gazebo edicts or the lineup of nightly speakers, everyone was spending time in the prison they had been walking around in for the last however many years. There were lots of wet eyes and sad, resigned, slumping shoulders—Mine among them. Facing that list of regrets, the things we lost, the things we did, the people we hurt, the ways we hurt them, the things that could have been, the things that were but could never be again.

That’s just a terrible f***ing list to compile.

I had an individual session with my counselor after lunch and when I recounted the whole terrible spectacle, the raw emotion and grief that emerged, he looked at me over his glasses and said,

“The terrible thing is that’s not enough to keep any of you sober.”

He was right. That’s what the Big Book teaches, too. Bill writes of emerging from treatment, full of high hopes and self-knowledge. Yet, soon enough, he’s back to ruining his life and realizing that self-knowledge, including knowledge of the consequences of his drinking, is not enough to produce sobriety.

At some level, that makes a lot of sense. All of those consequences already happened and there’s nothing that can undo them. Drinking turns out to be an effective strategy for not having pesky thoughts like that. In a funny way, it’s possible that focusing on the consequences increased my desire, my need to drink.

In economic/financial terms, those consequences are sunk costs, and making them the the foundation of one’s sobriety seems like signing up for an installment debt repayment plan that will never end. Like if Sisyphus had to pay all of his credit card debt instead of pushing a rock up a hill. That’s why the focus of sobriety, in the opinion of this alcoholic, is about changing the future and less about atoning for the past.

There is certainly a role for understanding and atoning for the past, but the foundation of recovery needs to be built facing forwards, not looking back. I think the reason I was finally able to stay sober and rack up a number like five years is because I started to find happiness along the way. The Steps I worked, the lessons I learned, helped build an outlook and a life that was focused on what could be instead of what could have been.

I could never, ever make up for what I did to the people who loved me. They can forgive me, but it’s an act of grace on their part, not because I deserve it. As long as my recovery was about avoiding consequences, my life felt like I was walking a tightrope between the things I wanted to do (drink and escape) and the things I knew I should do (stay and not drink). The tension generated on the tightrope was inevitably too much for me and since I really only knew one coping mechanism—it was soon time to collect yet another silver chip.

I finally realized that turning my will and my life over to a Higher Power was not a sacrifice or an occasion of self-humiliation, it was the path to freedom and happiness. I’ve listened to “Desperado” a zillion times and love/hate it because so much of it describes what happened to me and the road I traveled. The reason I haven’t had a drink in more than five years, the reason that it doesn’t even sound attractive anymore, isn’t because I finally found the willpower to avoid more consequences, it’s because I found myself.

Drinking helped me be the person I thought people wanted me to be. Recovery helped me find the person I actually was meant to be and to live the life I was meant to lead. My life makes sense now—at least to me. I for sure came to my senses and came down from my fences. I know I was a hard one and I had my reasons, but none of that matters, I realized.

I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to impress people. I get to be myself and live a life that is full of twists and turns, but feels strangely right and familiar at the same time. All I have to do is show up, do right by the people who love me and do right by the guy who was lost for so long. Recovery wasn’t a matter of learning to avoid consequences, it was about finding love. I guess I finally understood where letting people love me before it was too late had to start.

With me.

Happy Friday.

1. No, I don’t think I could ever actually qualify as a “wild butterfly.”

2. I had several crushes on several girls named Sarah.

3. It was not me.