I’m grateful for the pink and yellow sky. I’m grateful for the Law and Order hypnosis effect. I’m grateful for the way the world opens up, all of a sudden. I’m grateful for cold walks with coffee. I’m grateful for finding lost pieces. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I’m not one hundred percent sure where I stand on the subject of past lives.1 I frequently and semi-seriously aver that I was likely a dog on a pretty recent go-round. When done in person, this usually gets either a concerning look, nervous laughter or some quick follow-up questions—or all of the above. Why do I think this is a possibility?
Number one. I have no idea what the whole afterlife, soul, essential energy situation really is. I’ve read some kind of gruesome stuff that suggests that the white lights or whatever are dying cells and neurons, but I’m an alcoholic, not a doctor, and that should definitely factor into your calculation about how much credence to put in anything that’s said here.2 But, to sum up point number one, I really don’t know how things work and given some of the weird stuff I’ve seen on YouTube, really anything is possible.
Number two. I have a lot of dog-like characteristics. I don’t think it’s important to go through the entire inventory, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, as it often is with dogs. I am also pretty reliably informed that as a toddler, there was a period of time where I insisted I was a dog and should be fed according to that style. Just saying.
Where are we going with this? Great question. I qualified at a meeting yesterday, sometimes I kind of rehearse what I’m going to say during my walks. If you were to spy me on one of my fast, caffeine-laden and -fueled walks, and if my lips were subtly moving, you can safely assume that I’m quietly singing along to something like this:
Or I might be rehearsing something I’m going to say. I was a high school debater, which created many ironical situations, but I learned how to practice things I need to eventually say in my head while walking around. I know it’s kind of a weird practice and it extends to my writing. It really doesn’t work very well unless I’m moving. So, if I have a big meeting and have to make a pitch, or am qualifying at another kind of meeting, well, I tend to walk around aimlessly and rehearse in my head.
So, I was qualifying yesterday and telling the story of when I realized I was an alcoholic, how drinking came to dominate my life, how I spent more than ten years trying to get sober and mostly failing at it, and then, most importantly, what changed and how I finally did get sober. I’m pretty familiar with this story, having lived it, and also written about it ad nauseum, ad nauseum here.3 Despite that, I’m always surprised at what comes out of my mouth. Maybe I’m just the typical self-obsessed alcoholic, but I often find myself wondering where some parts of the story come from.
I get emotional at regular intervals during these exercises, often when I talk about always volunteering to read “How it Works,” at this meeting I went to nearly every day. And how I knew that I was going to leave that meeting and probably be drinking pretty soon. I know why re-counting that memory always chokes me up; it brings back the feelings of desperation and sadness around the idea that I was never going to be able to do this. This being stopping drinking and getting my life back. I desperately wanted to stop drinking and losing things. This is not a reference to car keys.
The other part is where I talk about the magic of AA and recovery. When I talk about what happened and the weird but miraculous assemblage of people who helped me get to where it was I needed to go, the pretty-impossible coincidences and the sudden shots of beauty and grace and perfection. Not my own, of course. But this is the most miraculous realization; that the very, very, highly imperfect me is enough for the world.
I don’t mean it exactly that way. I drank to remedy the firmly-held belief that I was not enough for said world, so it seems like reversing that belief would be pretty important in the whole recovery exercise, and it is. But the weird thing about yesterday, to me, was the strange sense I had when talking about the drinking version of me. I realized that guy is really gone. In some sense, he always was. But I’m writing about him in the third person because I think about him in the third-person more and more, almost like a historical figure.
I’m not trying to pull off some version of faking my own death, but “that guy,” gets a little further away every day. Of course, I always will be that guy, carry that guy with me. But the stuff he did and thought is just so sad and so incomprehensible—I’d like to describe it as being foreign to me, but of course, it was me.
After I finished speaking, about four other alcoholics in the room raised their hands and told their version of the story where they realize the true potency of, and the capabilities bestowed by, drinking. I see those common thinking patterns as symptoms of our disease, and it’s those thinking patterns that are targeted by the Twelve Steps.
When people ask me how I finally got sober, I tell them that I studied the Big Book exhaustively and came to realize that my story was told in those pages, too. Whether it’s “Bill’s Story,” right there on page one, or one of the case-studies in the back of the book, there’s likely a version of nearly every alcoholic’s story, and the crazy news is that the same program can lead each of us to our own independent, recovered destinations.
I guess I walked away from the meeting yesterday with a bit of the feeling that I had been at a seance, channeling someone who doesn’t come around too often, but whose story is still pretty important to tell. I think part of the reason that writing has been so important to my recovery is that it has allowed me to see that what came before is a story in the same sense that what happens to me now is also a story, a story I not only write, but live.
I don’t mean to suggest that I have editorial control or final approval rights over the story. Accepting my lack of control over the world at large has been a critical element of my sobriety and, more importantly, my happiness. That guy is always going to be out there, and it’s not like I hate him or anything, we just have less and less in common with every passing day. I think we’re both very okay with that.
Or should it be “passed lives?”
I was going to limit that to medical matters, but that definition might need to be more expansive.
Yes, that’s deliberate.
"When I talk about what happened and the weird but miraculous assemblage of people who helped me get to where it was I needed to go, the pretty-impossible coincidences and the sudden shots of beauty and grace and perfection." Beautiful! Thank you.