I’m grateful for a sunny, hot morning. I’m grateful the natural order of coffee has been restored, I’m grateful for letting go of things I don’t need anymore. I’m grateful navigating by looking forward. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Happy Friday. Today’s song of the week comes to us from one of my favorite bands of the 70’s and 80’s and that would be none other than the Electric Light Orchestra.1 This is a bit of departure for Jeff Lynne and crew, and have some issues with the lyrics:
“You’re looking good, just like a snake in the grass, one of these days you’re going to break your glass.”
Okay, the breaking glass thing is a radio edit. Apparently, you couldn’t say “ass” on the radio in 1979. But, here’s where I’m going to differ: Snakes in the grass don’t look that great. Ever. Just saying. Without more nonsensical ado, I present the deliberately undercapitalized song of the week:
And now, I’m going to blow your mind. Like everyone else with non-German Shepherd-style hearing,2 you thought it was:
Don’t bring me down, Bruce
Many official lyrics sources insist on using the original “groos,” which is either a Jeff Lynne-made-up-word or the first part of the Bavarian/Austrian friendly greeting: “Gruss Gott.” That seems highly unlikely to me. In any event, according to Quora.com:
As ELO's song writer Jeff Lynne explained below in an interview, it was simply a made up word, "Grooss." Because so many people started singing it as "Bruce" he often just went with the common thought and sang it as Bruce when doing it live.
I think that’s called “Acceptance.” I wanted to wrap up things in a bold way this week, finish strong. I think we’re going to settle for a glide-in Friday morning.3 There have been no further semi-audible communications from the Big Guy. I have walked past the spot on 86th Street where it happened, mostly because it’s in the neighborhood and it’s on my way to many places. But also, I kind of wondered if there would be any special feeling attached to that spot as I walked by on another afternoon. Other than the heightened sense of anticipation, manufactured by my own brain, I’m going to report there is no special God-generated force field of positive affirmations running behind the construction fence there.
Maybe I thought it was going to be like 2001: A Space Odyssey where the weird, eerie monoliths sent signals directly into the brains of passersby. Nope. But that does bring us to today’s topic. Which is:
Do the laws of physics apply to alcoholic brains?
I’m going to ruin the surprise. “Yes,” is the answer, I believe. I do kind of believe in ghosts, but I don’t think there are ghosts in my brain generating thoughts and wayward desires. I think my brain probably works pretty much like yours, most of what it processes is electro-chemical in nature. That’s how it sends the slightly opposing, balanced signals to muscles that enable movement. The chemicals that wash over my brain and generate “feelings” and “thoughts” are also actual real things, not the astray-leading actual thoughts of Satan somehow injected into my thought processes.
My brain is a machine and it processes electro-chemical stuff and turns it into my conscious life. How does that happen? Look, I’m content to be picking up scuffed-up pennies here and there, that’s way above my pay grade. When people say things like “we manufacture our own reality,” or when they talk about manifesting things, I think that’s one hundred percent true. Speaking of manifesting, this always makes me laugh:
Anyway, one of the really frustrating things I encountered during my recovery was the constant admonition to “stop thinking so much.” Right, up there with the “you should really stop drinking, don’t you see what it’s doing to your life?”
“Oh yeah, things are kind of shitty now that you mention it, thanks for pointing that out, now I definitely don’t need to drink,”
said no alcoholic ever.
The folks who told me that the 18-inches between my head and heart was the longest distance in the world? No, that was how the path to “sobriety,” (read: “Not drinking’) felt. A broken toy trudging the trail of “happy destiny (?)” until the literal end of time, even broken into helpful one day at a time chunks.4
I’ve come to believe that my drinking was driven by some negative thinking patterns I developed very early on in life. With no plan or forethought. The same way my brain could plot out how to dribble to the left corner, jump and then shoot, well, it also came up with it’s own way to deal with fear and shame and loneliness. A combination of environmental factors, my own make-up and the adaptations to events that my brain generated helped create the thinking patterns that led me to drinking. I was not suddenly visited by the alcoholic fairy in 1977.
I see the steps, not as alabaster monuments to sober thinking, but as guides and prompts to help change my thinking. I don’t think getting sober requires you to stop thinking, I think it requires a neural reset that allows for the development of new thinking patterns.
I think things like meditation and gratitude and acceptance and just plain old approaching life with love can work a little like the old “Ctrl-Alt-Del” routine. A reboot to flush out the corrupted software that keeps generating all of those faulty thinking patterns. The ways we alcoholics and addicts have of seeing the world that is:
(a) inaccurate
(b) designed to generate a need to drink or use.
I think the Steps are really about identifying and understanding those thinking patterns and then setting out to modify them. For sure, I was a victim of “stinking thinking.” I just think the fix for that is cleaning out the machine that started generating all of those misperceptions and faulty judgments. By the way, focusing on “what is” also helps avoid those neuro-emotional cul de sacs that go so well with a flinty white wine.5
Getting sober wasn’t just about stopping drinking and it also didn’t involve a cessation to all thinking. It was an exercise in getting my mind right, and like one of my real life heroes, it might have taken a while and some pretty tough stuff to reach that spot:
But like Cool Hand Luke, once you taste freedom (or hard boiled eggs) it’s hard impossible to go back.
Happy Friday.
A little personal history, “Strange Magic” was playing on the jukebox when I realized I was an alcoholic.
A school nurse once told my daughter she had “hearing like a german shepherd,” she was very proud of that.
I’m not sure what that means, either.
Try that next time you’re looking at a really long set of stairs.
I’ve now made that joke for the 1,000th time.
💯 you can reload your OS (operating system) and change your BS (belief systems)
Nice read my brother, I’m more of the God could and would crowd
Keep the Faith 😎