Daily Gratitude List 10.12.22

I’m grateful for feeling placed. I’m grateful for my journals and for the things I wrote down. I’m grateful for not trying to stop the things that need to happen anymore. I’m grateful for a different way of thinking. I’m grateful to be sober today.

I love days when the date adds up. My dad had a math background and so fun at the dinner table often went something like this:

“What’s the next number in this sequence: 5, 9, 12, 14,?”¹

This was in the 1970’s, so while it was not motivated by future SAT Prep, it turns out to have been a pretty good way to get ready for those logic problems. What it really did was ingrain in me a constant searching for patterns and connections. Of course, we all operate in that way, but I became pretty hyper-vigilant about looking for those connections and I began assuming the existence of connections, even when I couldn’t quite figure them out.² That’s one of the thinking patterns that I had to unwind a little bit to get sober.

I freely admit to having quite a few crazy ideas. Here’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about, and keep in mind, I’m pretty much unburdened by any kind of factual understanding of neuroscience. Also, not a doctor.³ My understanding is that our brains operate on an electro-chemical basis—meaning that it interprets and transmits a wide variety of electro-chemical signals and information. I kind of believe in ghosts, but I don’t think that a ghost is responsible for what I think, what goes through my head. I know that no one has figured out what consciousness really is, but doesn’t it need to have some kind of electro-chemical basis if it’s happening in our electro-chemical brains?

Where am I going with this? There were so many obsessive, negative thinking patterns at work as my alcoholism deepened and there was a constant chorus of therapists and counselors telling me to “let things go,” but no one could ever explain to me how you do that. It used to make me pretty angry, if I could just stop thinking these things that were driving me to ruin my life, that were causing so much pain to the people I loved, I would have. All of those years of thinking about it turned out to be just years of thinking about it, while I sank deeper and deeper.

I’ve tried all of the different kinds of therapy, all of the crazy alcoholism treatments out there and while things like CBT/DBT are pretty helpful tools, nothing really moved the needle on the core problem, how I thought about the world and how I thought about myself. I spent ten years and untold amounts of money trying to find that magic switch, the one everyone was telling me was right there on the wall, except I could never find it.

If you spent time with me, you would probably be curious (more likely appalled and nervous) about the number of times I break into spontaneous laughter. It’s not like 10 seconds of rollicking merriment, it’s more like '“hahaha, I get it.” It usually comes when something is demonstrated to me in a way that is impossible for me to ignore. I’ve been feeling kind of blah lately, a little uninspired. I’ve struggled with depression for most of my life and it kind of rolls through me like waves that can exacerbate and exaggerate things, so that’s probably at work, too.

Moose addressing his crew.

Anyway, I had been fiddling around and cutting and pasting some excerpts from the Big Book for a project and walked away from my desk for a while. I came back with a darker outlook and a complete lack of enthusiasm, a sense of pointlessness (you see how quick this goes!) and when my Mac awoke, here was the first thing on the screen facing me:

My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems. It was fortunate, for my old business associates remained skeptical for a year and a half, during which I found little work. I was not too well at the time, and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment. This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measure failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.

Big Book, p. 15

There were lots of thinking patterns that drove me to drink and made it nearly impossible to stop. There was one that helped me find the way out. It turns out that it’s not about “stopping” certain thoughts and feelings. For me, to change the way I was thinking, I literally had to change the “way,” I was thinking. Meaning, I had to frame things differently, see things differently, address things differently. Working the Steps and actually putting the words of the Big Book into action was what helped me to change the way I thought. Writing this gratitude list every day has been an important way for me to change the way I think.

We’re wired to puzzle things out and to try and understand the consequences and connections in life. I spent a lot of years searching for the wrong patterns and connections, solving the wrong equation. The truth is, the number pattern at the beginning doesn’t really provide enough observations to exclude the conclusion that those are just 4 random numbers. It’s my brain that makes 15 seem like the right answer. Changing the way I thought required seeing the right connections. Somehow, helping other alcoholics and addicts turns out to not only be the magic ticket, it solves the right equation.

Thanks for Letting Me Share

1. I would say the answer is 15.

2. A nice way of saying they didn’t exist.

3. I’m going to let you in on a little family tiff. My dad has a Ph.D, he’s a “Dr.” My brother is a doctor doctor and that leaves me with only a law degree and no one calling me Dr. Wait, what's the “D” in JD stand for?