I’m grateful when things open up. I’m grateful for faith and patience. I’m grateful for Reese’s Miniature Peanut Butter Cups. I’m grateful for spiritual bargains. I’m grateful for the blue-gray sky. I’m grateful the building AC got turned on. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I don’t like to speak in the third person, except when it’s really necessary, and I have to say TBD is on a bit of a roll these days. I’m not sure we were at that darkest hour before the storm place, but things are looking considerably brighter this morning. Here’s part of the reason: I was standing on a subway platform somewhere yesterday and had decided to scroll through some old Apple Music playlists. I’m mostly a Spotify user on the phone and the playlist entitled “What I’m Probably Listening to Right Now,” is actually what I’m probably listening to right now.
I have often lamented the fact that the best “Friday” song of all-time,1 and this also includes all future time, was not available on Spotify and therefore was not capable of being part of the soundtrack for my lower-extremity-destroying, ain’t-no-toying, joint-decaying, upper-body-swaying, I-am-crying, Aleve-gel-applying completely insane love for playing basketball.2 Those lamentations, that small but meaningful, bundle of regret, vanished the other day on that subway platform. Bell and James’s greatest hit, their only hit, the greatest Friday song that will ever be, one of the greatest basketball playing songs of all time (particularly for lay-up drills before games on Friday nights) is on Apple music. While I can’t share the Apple music link here (probably more inexplicable collateral damage from the Substack vs. Musk border conflict), you may still celebrate alongside me on this glorious Friday morning:
Now, on to the next important topic.
The role of candy in recovery.
Last night was yet another installment in the “Tour de AA.” This would be where me and the sponsees pick a random AA meeting somewhere in NY and attend on either a bi-weekly or a semi-weekly basis—whichever one of those works out to roughly every other week. S. and D. have more thoughtful and more logical approaches to picking meetings, they focus on topics and formats and geography and things like that. I prefer choosing on the basis of the name, which is how we ended up last time at a rather unusual AA meeting called “Cadillacs for Everyone.”
Last night we attended a Big Book-based AA meeting on the West side called “Oxford BB.3” It’s a really good meeting and the format has someone reading a portion of the Big Book, leading a discussion of it and then some time at the end for general shares. Anyway, the reading last night started on page 132. It's actually a really lovely passage that starts,
So we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness.
Big Book, p. 132
It goes on to proclaim that God wishes us to be “happy, joyous and free,” underlines the importance of attending to one’s physical health, of seeking appropriate medical treatment from doctors and psychiatrists, generally working to undo the damage of years of substance abuse, And then this:
One of the many doctors who had the opportunity of reading this book in manuscript told us…He thought all alcoholics should constantly have chocolate available for its quick energy value at times of fatigue He added that occasionally in the night a vague craving arose which would be satisfied by candy.
Big Book, p. 134
Look, I swallowed hard and did that stuff about turning my will and my life over to the care of a Higher Power that I only kind of understand. I have worked hard to find humility and gratitude wherever I can, I’ve re-examined the hardest chapters of my life, sifting and panning for the nuggets of change, all at the command of the Big Book. So, if I’m going to do all of that shit, well, when the Big Book says to eat candy, this OG, Big Book -thumping alcoholic is going to honor Bill Wilson and his divine invention and I’m going to eat some mf-ing candy. Quite a bit actually.
This goes way back. My grandfather kept a container of butterscotch candies in the glovebox of his huge Chrysler New Yorker—you’d get get your hand slapped if you tried to eat one of those driving along, they were reserved for “emergencies.”4 My daughter often stays with me when she's in NYC for work and she was prowling around the kitchen one evening and came out with a slightly suspicious look, "Why do you have three bags of Reese's Miniature Peanut Butter cups in the freezer?" Archly suggesting that perhaps I was concealing a child? Nope, not hiding anything, why do I have three bags of Reese's Miniature Peanut Butter cups in the freezer?
“So I never run out.”
That answer has the benefit of being true, as I used to say as a young lawyer. I also eat a lot of really inappropriate and very, very unhealthy cereal. I’m slightly embarrassed when people peer into my basket at the Gristedes and see a box of Lucky Charms or Apple Jacks or Frosted Flakes. “Oh, he must have a grandchild visiting!” Nope, that’s all for me.
I’m being very jokey. It’s super important to eat healthily in recovery, there is something to that undoing the damage; years of drinking can leave some pretty significant nutritional and vitamin-based deficiencies, all of which impacts mood, etc, so it is important.
Now, I would like to salute someone who has not just been with me during recovery, but has been with me, really my entire life. He was there when I was a child, when I was a teenager, an adult, when things were good, when they were bad, when they were really, really, really bad and even now when they are pretty f***ing good. It turns out my journey-mate was also born in 1962 so also currently celebrating 60 spins around the sun. There is no doubt this running buddy infused this alcoholic with the pirate-y sense of adventure that has ultimately made recovery possible5:
There’s no indication that the Cap’n was actually a pirate, I seem to recall that he had some early brush-ups with a pirate named “Jean Lafitte?” But that jaunty salute, the slightly confused, teetering on the edge of psychotic look in his eyes, that’s my guy. It’s possible I’m going overboard here, and there may not be any clever recovery-themes to be teased out of a box of my favorite sugary cereal. I could say this, if recovery is recovering myself, the me at the bottom of the box, then integrating all of that with the me that teetered through life drinking for all of those years, well, the Cap’n is definitely going to be coming along for that ride. Or voyage. Whatever.
I’m happy today. The sun is out. It’s Friday. I’m going to play basketball in a bit with a groovy song playing in my head. That’s pretty f***ing good, right there. But it gets even better: The Book that showed me the path out of this dreadful, soul-crushing disease, the Book that literally saved my life, says I should be eating candy constantly. I mean, if that’s what it takes. Aye, Aye.
I do remember agreeing to go to any lengths….
That song about the “freakin’ weekend” and “I’m about to have me some fun,” just doesn’t sound the same way anymore.
I had this description from Sports Illustrated pasted in my school locker: “Aint-no-playing, get-out-of-the-waying, backboard-swaying, glass-is-flying, Robinzine-is-crying, chocolate thunder dunk.” I did that from memory, hope it’s pretty close.
Here’s a link to the meeting information on Intergroup.
No, I still don’t know what kinds of emergencies call for butterscotch candies.
My son is in the Navy. Coincidence? hahahahahaha
I wonder if Bill would approve of those of us in Al Anon eating candy too??? (here's hoping!!) Great post, thank you.
Oh, brother, The CAP’N! I can’t credit him with keeping me sober, but I love those little palate-shearing delights! Wish my wife would let me eat them…