The Power of OK

Daily Gratitude List 12.4.22

I’m grateful for the farmers market in the rain. I’m grateful for finally being able to see things. I’m grateful for the little things that bring me closer to the people I love. I’m grateful a sunny morning and coffee. I’m grateful to be sober today.

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I think this is one of those days when it would have been good to have more pre-planned topics to write about. I’m sitting here drinking coffee, listening to Mozart, watching a beautiful December morning take shape and things just seem really good.¹ I don’t mean things are perfect, they aren’t, but one of the gifts I’ve received in sobriety is a sense of calm and ease. It’s not such an earthshaking thing, until you live without it for a while. Maybe you notice, I write, “things are ok” or words to that effect, in the gratitude lists all of the time. That, to me, is the essence of sobriety; the inescapable sense that things are going to be ok.

I say “inescapable,” because I spent a number of years working very hard to escape. Why, you ask? Why would someone try to escape such a lovely thing? Because I’m an alcoholic.² I really believe our brains manufacture chaos and upset and resentment to create conditions that alcohol perfectly salves—at least early on. During my drinking career, I’m not sure if there were many things more satisfying to me than sitting down at the end of a bar at the end of a long morning of work and letting my seething resentments and budding rage get washed away by a glass (or four) of flinty Sauvignon Blanc.

The thing is, once the seething resentments stopped roiling and the rage stopped budding, the attractiveness of sitting by myself at a bar somewhere, literally drinking my life away, declined pretty precipitously. The problem is, to get to the point where you can begin to tear down the emotional infrastructure that supported the drinking, you have to realize how empty the whole enterprise is. That usually doesn’t happen until the alcohol stops working—which is a truly terrifying, demoralizing, crushing experience. It’s when you realize you’ve created this completely empty vessel of a life that is really just designed to facilitate drinking. And the the f***** drinking stops working and then where are you?

Bill W. called it the “Jumping-Off Place”:

He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end.

Big Book, p. 152.

I think Bill gives a pretty good clue about the evolution of the disease and the eventual, complete decline, when you compare his attitude back in the glory days, when drinking worked:

The papers reported men jumping to their death from the towers of High Finance. That disgusted me. I would not jump. I went back to the bar.

Big Book, p. 4

It is surprisingly hard to look back unabashedly at how things were. Whenever I think about the bad, old days, how bad they truly were, my stomach clenches, my shoulders involuntarily go to my ears in a shudder and my head shakes. Sometimes, I just want to start crying. The feelings are still that intense, because things were really that bad. But that’s good. Because every time I’m brave enough to really look back, the other thing I see is how far away it is getting.

Daniel is a Sponsee and you’ve heard him on the podcast and, most recently, Volume 1 of the Big Book Study.³ I had him write his story in the style of Bill’s and he knocked it out of the park. I think Bill’s story is about turning points and realizations—it notably avoids any the drunk-a-logue that you hear so often. What blew me away is a story that Daniel recounted very calmly, very matter-of-factly but that is actually tremendously scary and dangerous and sad. It was something the present-incarnation of Daniel could not even imagine doing.⁴ Looking back at it gave him a sense for how lost he was, and now, how far he’s come.

Our friend Jane talked me into qualifying at a meeting tonight at the Workshop at 10pm. Of course, I said “yes,” even though it’s pretty late for someone of advanced years who unwittingly signed up to write a daily gratitude list every morning.⁵ As we were chatting, I had one of those moments and realized that the first time I qualified at a meeting in NY ( a live meeting) was this very Sunday night, 10pm meeting at the Workshop and it was right around this time of year, two years ago. I hadn't really thought about it for a while.

It was a cold, dark night, I remember that. I had moved out of the Sober House and into the apartment I love so much.⁶ But life was still pretty empty and bleak-ish. There were maybe 7 or 8 people at the meeting that night. I remember smoking nervously before and walking-home after. In-person meetings had just cautiously begin again and it was frankly a little odd, but mostly lovely, to be back at a live meeting. Don't get me wrong, I think Zoom has been one of the most important developments for AA since the publication of the Big Book. If the whole point of this exercise is to bring the Program to the still-sick and suffering alcoholic (which it is), then Zoom has been kind of a magic bullet. But there is an undeniable power, another form of magic, sitting in a room with other alcoholics.

I’m guessing it will be dark and kind of cold tonight, but the thing that is different, is that things are ok for me. The doubt and uncertainty that plagued me, tormented me, is mostly gone. It’s not gone because the Big Guy shared a detailed plan and timeline with me, laying out exactly how great things are going to be and when. It’s gone because I finally let my life be suffused with okay-ness. Bill says that a willingness to believe is all that is required to make a start. Believe in what? For this alcoholic, it was being willing to believe that despite doubt and uncertainty, bad things, good things, pain, joy, whatever—things were going to be ok.

The light at the end of the tunnel is probably sunlight, not an onrushing train. The ceiling is not about to cave in. And even when those things happen, I’m still willing to believe things will be ok again. That has been the fundamental gift of sobriety for this alcoholic, to repeat myself (well, repeating myself repeating someone else, actually):

every minor world that falls apart, falls together again.

That is very ok.

Thanks for Letting Me Share

1. If you’re curious, I spend a lot of time these days listening to the collection of symphonies by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Bohm. I will tell you that I really, really love the collection that Neville Mariner and the Orchestra of St. Martin-in-the-Fields did on period instruments. But change is good.

2. I relapsed one time and a friend tracked me down at a bar. He sat with me while I had a few more drinks, he was going to drive me back to rehab that night, so why not? I bemoaned yet another relapse, “Why do I do this?” He told me, “Because you’re an alcoholic.”

3. Breakfast with an Alcoholic: Episode 27

4. I’m trying to persuade him to share the whole story here, so I’m definitely not going to ruin the surprise by telling the story in a footnote!

5. Although I do have tomorrow morning off.

6. Speaking of being placed.