I’m grateful for a bright sunny morning. I’m grateful for an exciting trip. I’m grateful for the sponsees. I’m grateful for what I learn every day. I’m grateful for what’s right in front of me. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
There definitely was an announcement about the song of the week being determined as early as Tuesday morning. Is this where we ended up? No, it’s not. Well, I mean it is, as this is where we are right now. But is this the song was heralded as the song of the week, earlier this week? No, it’s not. Why? That song was going to take me down a definite topic-denoted path, and I was deciding that this would be a really good topic, but that it deserved more attention than I had at the moment.1
And then I heard “Minute by Minute,” and I knew where I needed to go.2 We’ve made desultory comments about Michael McDonald here before. He’s littered across the musical terrain of the 1970’s and ‘80’s, and I do think that purgatory could very well resemble being trapped in the TV sales section at the Best Buy with the Michael McDonald live concert playing in the background on all of the TVs. And yet, he sings some of my most favorite songs and he kind of narrated a big chunk of my life—perhaps ridiculously, but whatever.3
This song, in particular, became kind of an anthem for me. I believe it very much applied to a certain high school-era romance, one of those very much unrequited love situations. Why was it unrequited, you politely ask? Well, despite several instances where this person was asked pretty directly about going on a date, and managing to decline without actually declining, without actually acknowledging that the question had even been asked, now that I’m thinking about this, well, I got the feeling that things might not be in the cards between us. Also, she already had a boyfriend who was like a junior in college. On my side of the ledger, I was the state debate champion and had access to a 1978 Dodge Omni.
Yes, it seems more obvious in retrospect. Anyway, I adopted this song as a kind of anthem, and to be honest, I’m kind of being honest here. As horrifying as the implications might be.4 I definitely adopted the mien of the jaded, toughened, sardonic, “thanks, I’ve had enough heartbreak.” It’s a pretty odd look for a seventeen-year old. But the adoption of this song was pretty consistent with the rest of the facade I was building: cool, aloof, un-hurtable, being funny as an avoidance tactic, making sure no one ever got too close. This song is the perfect accompaniment to that narrative.
Hey, don’t worry, I’ve been lied to… I don’t need this love, I don’t need your hand, I know I could turn, blink, and you’d be gone… Livin’ on my own Somehow that sounds nice You think I’m your fool, Well, you just may be right.
That very much encapsulated my outlook on life, and with a very not easy-to-dance-to beat.5 To be honest, that belief about myself, what I really wished for, what I thought I did or didn’t deserve, seems a little ridiculous, but also, it’s a pretty recently-held belief. Meaning, I still kind of thought this way for a while.
One of the Sponsees will soon be attempting the Sixth and Seventh Steps. Now, these are often derided as sort of nothing-burgers of the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, who would willingly want to hang on to character defects? Is it really necessary to double-check and make sure we’re ready to have the Big Guy clean up the mess in Aisle 9? Really? That’s because there’s way more to it.
In the case of this alcoholic, lots of the character defects sprang from false beliefs and negative thinking patterns. The way I looked at the world was flawed, so most of my observations about it and my co-inhabitants were similarly flawed, or worse. That flawed worldview, the false beliefs, were what had to go, if I was going to remove drinking from the equation. And here’s the kind of math-y thought, the point of this is not changing the answer, it’s changing the entire equation. That’s what happens in the Sixth and Seventh Step, the old worldview, the nest of beliefs, opinions, a few random (but confirmatory) events and misperceptions that were its foundation, must be jettisoned. It’s letting go of the life that was built on drinking.
Don’t think of it as saying goodbye to a set of shitty behaviors, it’s saying goodbye to an entire person, the person who did those things, thought those things, the person who tried so hard, who was so desperate and forlorn, but who could never quite make it. It’s an alcoholic deceit (conceit?) to think that we walk through the world with some kind of ability to detach ourselves from the things we did and then just say, well, AMF!6 And those things stay behind and we just move on unburdened?
That was not the case for this alcoholic. The entire equation had to be altered, because the old one was simply never going to produce the right result. It wasn’t that people, places or things had to change, it was me that had to change. One of the maybe ironic things I do when we start work on this Step is to come up with a list of the positive attributes connected to the drinking or using or whatever. Seriously, drinking was, for me, an exercise in managing the world around me, it enabled me to be the person who lived that life, and that life was not entirely unsuccessful. So, I encourage the Sponsees to write a list of the things that drinking or using enabled them to do, the bright side of the addiction, if you will.
If you’re saying, “isn’t this glorifying the thing that very nearly ruined my life?” Sort of. I think what it really does is show the false beliefs at the core of the addiction, that there were things that needed to be done that could only be done if drinking was involved. This list should start to define the hole we addicts feel, that feeling that we’re not complete, not like other people. Because this alcoholic worked very hard to drink that feeling away, to fill that hole.
It’s not easy letting go of the person I used to be, but I realized that was the only way forward. I wish there was a more elegant metaphor than snakes shedding skin or bugs coming out of shells, but whatever, the point is, the cicada cannot become free until it leaves the old carcass stuck to the tree.7 That’s a terrible metaphor, but you get the idea. It’s that shell-exiting experience, however, that has transformed the world around me.
One of the most central flawed beliefs that this alcoholic held was that he was meant to be alone. That was how things were going to work out eventually, so maybe it’s easier to cut to the chase? If you need a few more reasons, before you head for the exit, “here you go!” Like the song says, “I’ve been here many times before…I know where I stand.” Except I didn’t. I was very, very wrong about that. It’s the words at the end of the song that I should have paid more attention to.
I used to fantsize about the realization the afore-described “person” was going to have one day, she’d hear the lines,
you should spend your life with someone, you could spend your life with someone
She’d finally hear the song and those lines would hit her and she would indelibly know then just what she had lost. It turns out, it was me that needed to realize those things. Letting go of the person for whom this was an anthem is not a one-time thing. It’s a more gradual slipping-away, but what it leaves behind is not a gross, dead snakeskin, its the person I was meant to be and the life I was meant to lead. That guy doesn’t need to be alone.
Happy Friday
I realize that makes this seem like a “second-best” option. I just wish you didn’t think that.
And, welcome to your “musical hostage experience.”
If you want, we can do the whole Burt Bacharach thing again.
What if I’m a CGI-generated character in a Michael McDonald music video?
Seriously, this would get played at high school dances.
The first word is “adios.” The next two words are probably properly hyphenated.
See what I mean?
And the other fantasy love song that fits us alkies so well on that same album: “What a Fool Believes” 🙏