I hope you enjoyed the first two episodes of Breakfast with an Alcoholic! Wait, you haven’t listened yet? Let’s fix that right now:
My first breakfast was with Chris, a 31 year-old teacher and graduate student who lives here in New York City. A big part of the reason I do this is because the stories that people tell in recovery are so compelling and they often offer so many parallels with my own life and my struggle with alcohol.
When Chris was talking about his perfectionism in Junior High, how he couldn’t sleep even as a 13 year-old, I completely identified with him. I also laid awake many nights dissecting my performance in 8th grade with a pretty harsh scalpel. Like so many of us, like me, when Chris had that first drink at 13, it lit him up. I think anxious alcoholics go up like dry pine boughs in a fire when they begin drinking. That first drink can be revelatory; the curtains are pulled back and Gabriel’s Trumpet sounds. Well, maybe that’s a bit much, but you get the idea.
I was a shy, awkward, lonely kid and in my early days, it felt like alcohol completed me. It was the missing term in the equation that allowed me to function. Of course, it went from completing me to consuming me before too long. When I go to meetings, I hear so many stories about perfectionism and how that self-imposed pressure and shame can so easily lead to problematic thinking patterns and play such a significant role in addictions.
I really liked Chris’s take on how addictions have their own energy and that one of the big challenges in recovery is finding ways to offset that energy. Our language is different today, but I think that’s exactly how Bill W. would have described the power of working with other alcoholics. Carrying the message to other alcoholics and helping people get and stay sober seems like a bespoke energy offset for addiction. For me, meditation, exercise, meetings, working with other alcoholics, reading the Big Book and, of course, doing a Daily Gratitude List are the things that help keep that alcoholic wolf away from the door.
The music at the end of the podcast is Monolog’s Remind Me, a pretty cool remake of a Patrice Rushen song (the original is great, too).
Of course, Forget Me Nots is her big hit and one of my favorite songs.
If you remember the scene in Big where Tom Hanks is jumping on the trampoline in his loft, that’s Forget Me Nots playing in the background. I used to hang out a bar in DC near my house and talk basketball and music with Antoine the bartender. He had excellent taste in music but a very questionable belief that DeMarcus Cousins was the ultimate answer for just about every NBA team. Anyway, I miss Antoine and his music recommendations (but not the drinking) this version of Remind Me is one of his better suggestions and I’ve listened to it about a thousand times.
Another thing that struck me about my breakfast with Chris was how many of us build lives based on running away from things. The problem is we often don’t even know what we’re running from. I know I didn’t. As the calamities and losses of addiction mounted, they exerted an almost anti-gravitational force; pushing me away from where I was supposed to be, pushing me farther from the people who loved me and ultimately, pushing me very, very far away from myself. The old adage is that if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. I think a big part of early recovery is about finding a way to just stop running. The hard work of figuring out what we’re running from and coming to terms with it and the fear around it is a big job and more easily tackled with a little sobriety under the belt.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the first two episodes of Breakfast with an Alcoholic. If you have comments, questions, suggestions, criticisms, whatever, I’d love to hear them. You can leave comments here or by email at ThanksFLMS@gmail.com. And if you just love this all so much and think it couldn’t possibly be better, that’s cool, too and you should feel free to hit the LIKE button, even better, share us with your friends! There will be a new episode of Breakfast with an Alcoholic next week and the Daily Gratitude List is, well, daily. So see you soon!