Liner Notes for Episode XX

Breakfast with Jane: The Return

First things first. You’ve listened to Episode XX, right?¹

Breakfast with an Alcoholic: Episode XX

As we were discussing in Episode XX, Jane is going to start doing some of the interviews for Breakfast with an Alcoholic. In fact, Episode 21 featuring Jane and her friend J will be out this weekend!² As if that weren’t enough, Jane has also agreed to start sharing some of her thoughts here every week and so we launched this:

Welcome to Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition!

I think this is all really exciting. I’m prone to repetition, but I think the more perspectives we can share about this, the better. You’ve been getting my views and my experiences ad nauseam and, while there is a commonality to our experiences as alcoholics and addicts, there are important differences, too. Jane has seven months of sobriety and counting. Her experience as a young woman getting sober in NYC is really, really compelling and, of course, very different from my experience. I’ve gotten to watch this take root in her and that to me is what is so special and so powerful about this Program and about Jane. The tragedy is that doesn’t happen nearly enough. So many people can’t stay or never find their way in; the prodigal doesn’t find the way back home all that often.

That’s why sharing our successes is so important. I was chastised once for not raising my hand at an October meeting to announce my anniversary.³ I always struggle with looking showy and demurred, but my friend told me later it was my obligation to the Program to do that.⁴ That is 100% correct. Announcing an anniversary is not a function of ego, remember, we acknowledged in the very First Step that this is something we could not do on our own. Announcing an anniversary is giving credit where credit is due. It actually becomes an act of humility.

The same logic makes it just as important to share our failures candidly, too. There is way too much stigma around the diseases of addiction and alcoholism and the stigma around relapsers is significantly higher. Seriously, we relapsers are often judged by other alcoholics.⁵ Joanna, in Episode 15, said that after a relapse she was like, “and now I can’t even go back to AA?”⁶ Of course, there is an open-door policy and most everyone observes an open-armed welcome back posture. I guess what I’m getting at, is that I think this pretty brave of Jane, being willing to share this experience because it’s not easy and it’s not like the outcome is decided. We get a daily reprieve that is dependent upon the expansion of our spiritual experience and I’m so glad and pleased that Jane is willing to share her journey with us here. It’s powerful stuff when people share themselves authentically.

And, speaking of that, we’re not done with the announcements. You are, no doubt, familiar with my Sponsor, Tommy. He is often quoted here⁷ and, as you well know, was featured in the critically-acclaimed Episode 19 of Breakfast with an Alcoholic⁸:

Breakfast with an Alcoholic: Episode 19

Tommy has agreed to become a contributor here as well and he’s going to be writing something we are tentatively calling “And Now a Word From Our Sponsor.” Right, I love that, too. Tommy is a legit, OG Big Book Thumper and has been running Big Book Study Groups for longer than I’m allowed to say. His perspective will be a fascinating addition to the mix. He originally wanted to write a series about how to be a good sponsee, which I felt might have been indirectly aimed at me. This way he’ll be telling all of us what we should do, not just me! Somehow, that feels better. Anyway, stay tuned.

I would like to address something quasi-administrative. My aim is to expand the conversation around addiction and recovery by adding new features and new voices whenever I can. I’m also sensitive to the fact that this ends up in your email inbox and I don’t want to turn into the person who texts you all day long. In addition to the Daily Gratitude Lists,⁹ you have the episodes of Breakfast with an Alcoholic (on the weekends), the Liner Notes (generally Thursdays), Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition will be on Tuesdays and Now a Word from Our Sponsor will be Mondays. I’d love your thoughts on all of this and I’m all-ears for new ideas!

This all seems completely insane to me. This whole thing. I mean that I’m doing this and that now there are these other people helping me do it and then all of you. Insane in a cool way, to be sure, but insane. And that makes perfect sense. Remember what I said about realizing that it wasn’t possible for me to truly understand God? Well, I think that when you finally make the right connection to the Universe, God, your Higher Power, whatever that is, life goes in some pretty unpredictable directions.

Our Sponsor Tommy frequently says that sobriety is the process of becoming the person you were meant to be and to live the life you were meant to lead.¹⁰ That makes a lot of sense to me. I didn’t start drinking because I was a shitty person with no values. I was 15 and the moment that first drink hit my system, I knew it was for me. It solved a problem. It made the equation work. Alcohol wasn’t all bad, it allowed me to accomplish a lot of things, but one of those achievements was building a life that I couldn’t sustain, couldn’t live, without alcohol.

When it comes crashing down, and a life built on alcohol will always, eventually come crashing down, it does tend to sweep aside a lot of what doesn’t matter anymore. There’s more than a little clarity at the bottom. I finally started to listen and that’s what has changed my life. You’ve heard about my ridiculous higher power communication infrastructure and how it relies on pennies and playlists and balls passing through hoops and all sorts of other nonsense that I’m too embarrassed to tell you about. You’re right to be skeptical.

Except for the first time in a very, very long time, it all makes sense. When I’m doing the right things, on the right path, I just know now. I know because someone will say exactly the right thing to me at the right time, or a pressing concern will suddenly resolve, a new opportunity will present itself, a new person comes into my life. These things all happened before. I just didn’t understand what they were or where they were coming from. I certainly didn’t understand the messages that were being sent. When I was in early sobriety (roughly the period between 2010 and 2020), I would speak about God showing up in my life. My hubris and arrogance kept me from seeing that God didn’t just show up. God had been there all along, I just hadn’t been listening.

As long as we’re on the topic, here’s a true story about an encounter I had with God. I’ve written a little about this before, I think, and I know I’ve shared it at meetings, so if you’ve heard it before, feel free to scroll down, maybe hit the “Share” button before you go? Here, I’ll make it easy:

Anyway, I was walking into the gym one morning not so long ago and heard a voice in my head. This is not unusual as I often do impressions as part of my interior monologue.¹¹ This voice was different than the voice with which I usually talk to myself and this voice did not use my secret nickname to address me, as I do when I’m speaking with myself.¹² This voice suddenly and gravely said:

Do the thing you don’t know how to do.

This is not the way I talk to myself and I never speak in platitudes like that: “Eat the taco you’ve never tried.” I was putting away my backpack and kept thinking about the strange thing I had just heard. I looked around, I was definitely in the men’s locker room at my gym and everything seemed pretty normal.¹³But what does that mean? I quickly decided it couldn’t be a sign that I was to suddenly start doing brain surgery or electrical work. To be honest, I kind of already had realized this was God talking to me and, I feel funny writing this, I was a touch disappointed. Not that I expected a burning bush or a plague of locusts or even to have my water turned into one of those fancy juices they sell at the counter in front, but this was decidedly undramatic and also pretty elliptical.¹⁴ I went upstairs and worked out.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what that could mean and how was I to apply it to my life. As I said, I had already accepted it was a message from the Big Guy, but God does not really provide detailed explanations, at least in my experience. I thought maybe it meant I was supposed to be nicer to people or to fix some other flaw. I didn’t know. A few days later, I had the idea for the podcast and was talking to a friend, who was a very enthusiastic supporter of all of this and a big part of why all of this happened, and I was explaining why I wasn’t going to actually do more than talk about it and I was listing all of the things I didn’t know how to do as the reasons.

I have a special laugh, mostly reserved for when God points something out to me, it’s kind of dry, a couple of bursts from a machine gun laugh at a tenor pitch—I’ve done it on the podcast. Anyway, I laughed that laugh pretty hard at that moment. I was actually presenting a list of things I didn’t know how to do as the excuse for not doing this project. That still makes me laugh. God had literally just told me:

Do the thing you don’t know how to do.

The next thing you know, there’s another alcoholic with a podcast! Yes, this does seem to be a kind of indirect way for God to establish a podcast with a small but mostly enthusiastic following, and yet, as My Sponsor Tommy likes to say, “God will answer our prayers in unexpected ways.”¹⁵I think the key is to keep listening, because I’m finding that God can be kind of chatty and I know what happened the last time I stopped paying attention.

Here we are at the end of the Liner Notes and no doubt, there is probably some grumbling because there hasn’t really been any kind of discussion about music. Fine. Jane asked that if I had a band, what kind of music would we play?Fortunately, this is something I think about pretty frequently and if we’re sharing dreams, having a wedding band playing this song, at a wedding, well, I’d find that to be very special:

Fortunately for all of us, God has not done much to encourage me to chase the wedding band dream. But he does give me a lot of encouragement for the other stuff and the right people do just keep showing up at precisely the right time. Do I think I’m finally doing what I was meant to be doing, being the person I was meant to be? Maybe. I guess there’s only one way to find out. In the meantime, I’ll keep an ear out.

Thanks for Letting Me Share

1. Quasi-rhetorical question, as I do get a report.

2. Yes, I agree, the single initial is kind of intriguing.

3. We never jinx things here, but I could be celebrating 3 years this October 22nd.

4. I know and yet, I do this.

5. If you’d like to remain on cordial terms with me, never tell me the thing about “Relapse is not part of recovery.” The whole phrase, whichever way you use it, is just not really helpful or accurate—so I’d be fine just dropping the whole thing.

6. Breakfast with an Alcoholic: Episode 15

7. Sometimes with attribution.

8. Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but it makes him feel good and I don’t think he reads the footnotes.

9. Someone once said to me that the best part about the Daily Gratitude List was that it was, well, daily. I think that was a nice thing?

10. He is is going to like this so much.

11. Anyone?

12. Haha, and you subscribed.

13. The gym is a place of wonder for me as I have also seen Neil Patrick Harris there. Yeah, I have a witness: Shaggy the Yoga Instructor.

14. That one?

15. Yes, I’ve already admitted that not all of his quotes have been attributed properly, or at all.