I’m grateful for Friday morning. I’m grateful for a busy week. I’m grateful to be near the end of my cold. I’m grateful for the soft gray sky. I’m grateful for Fall. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
First, I was going to post the video, but then I watched it and it’s kind of disturbing, including Sting making kind of a Jesus-y entrance, so this is much better. I’ve been listening to this song for a couple of decades (yikes!) and it’s funny how different parts stand out at different times. For a long time, many years ago, I very much liked the “meeting that same old smile on the street, I wonder if she’ll take me back” part of this song. This was a song I’d play at that chance encounter to drive home the point how much I’d changed and how sober I was.
Except I was still drinking.
What I love about this song is the attitude. It’s another sneaky alcoholic anthem, it’s all about starting over, but the starting over is triggered by a desire to recover something that had been lost. I’m pretty down with that. I like the part, “the river’s wide, we’ll swim across.” I think that’s ultimately the attitude that helped me get sober: We’ll start here and we’ll get just keep swimming until we get to the other side.1
I had occasion the other day to explain why I think most of human behavior (certainly male behavior) is explained by one semi-inappropriate dog joke:
Q: Why do dogs lick themselves? A: Because they can.
hahahah. I know. But seriously, it does explain a lot. It occurred to me the other day that the “Because I Can” mentality was a part of my drinking. Not just the, “I’m going to drink wherever, whenever, because I can,” mindset. The part that was more pernicious was where I took on more and more and more “because I can.”
What do I mean by that? You often hear people at meetings talk about perfectionism and workaholic tendencies being part what drives drinking. That certainly was true for me. My very high levels of pre-existing insecurity and fear were greatly magnified when I went to work. I was terrified of failing, like all alcoholics, I was terrified that I’d be found out. Those hamsters can run for a long time, and pretty fast, when they think whatever hamsters fear most is chasing them.
Also, like many alcoholics and addicts, I had a very deep sense of unworthiness; if people knew the lies I’d already told, the way I’d already been living my life, that would be it. The answer? Never say no. I took on every assignment, went wherever they wanted me to go at the drop of a hat. All nighters, shitty confrontations with insane opposing counsel, doing mea culpas for other lawyers in front of angry judges.
Alcoholism is a disease marked by self-dishonesty. One of the lies that kept me drinking was the “Because I Can” mentality; that because I could do all of that, I should do all of that. There were no boundaries in that life, because it takes a belief in self-worthiness and self-value to establish and then enforce boundaries.
Surprisingly, this life, where I worked an insane number of hours, coped with gigantic levels of stress and felt that I was always, always walking on the razor’s edge, with personal and professional ruin awaiting the tiniest, most inconsequential misstep seemed tolerable for long stretches of time. I kept going and told myself it wasn’t so bad because, “I could do this.”
A side-note about what happens when you feel like you are constantly putting in a super-human effort, working harder than anyone else, putting up with more shitty stuff than anyone else.
You tend to get kind of resentful.
Which was perfect, because I was an alcoholic. I continued to put myself in those kinds of situations, because I could. I thought that was how things went. So, I kept doing it. Also, the other thing I kept doing was drinking. How does this change? Here’s one of the paradoxes of sobriety:
It requires humility but it produces self-worth.
For me, the humility part comes from recognizing my powerlessness over alcohol (and some other things) AND that there is a power greater than myself in the Universe. The great thing about that Higher Power: For whatever reason, The Big Guy seem to value me more than I valued myself. This budding sense of value, and changing my thinking from “what could I be doing,” to “what should I be doing,” is what finally allowed me to see the importance of boundaries, and how to set and maintain them.
The “Because I Can” philosophy led me to accept assignments and duties that I never should have. They led me to construct a life that was missing a central ingredient: My authentic and genuine self. I cringe sometimes when I think about my old life and some of the situations I had to navigate. Those feelings and reactions still run very, very deep.
Here’s an example. I watch the news a lot. You don’t know this side of me, but I’m kind of a politics and news junkie.2 I had the news on a week or so ago, and was absent-mindedly reading something, not really paying attention to the images on the screen. I had the volume off because I was reading. I suddenly had that icy plunging fear thing, my stomach turned, and my entire body stiffened. Literally. I looked at the television screen, it was Mark Meadows and his lawyer walking into the federal courthouse in Atlanta for a hearing, through the freight entrance in the back .
How did I instantly know this? I did an evidentiary hearing for a couple of weeks in that courthouse before a very hostile judge and in a very high stakes setting. This was many years ago. I don’t honestly remember too much about the proceedings, the immediate outcome was kind of a draw. What I remember? The intense fear. I didn’t sleep. I worked insane hours. Of course, I drank.
All of that came back to me, just by my brain processing those very same, very triggering images in the background. That tells me how far I was off the path. Now here’s the thing, you’re going to say, “wait a minute, you were a successful litigator, how can that be considered ‘off the path?”
Because I wasn’t being true to myself. Yes, I 100% could do that job, and some other shitty jobs. But that’s the “Because I Can” mentality. I’ll get paid a lot of money and be successful, so sure, I can do that. That was the old calculation and while it led to material success, it also led to emotional misery.
The things I had, the person I was, were a function of the “Because I Can” mentality. My drinking was a function of the “Because I Can” mentality. We’ve officially taken down the “Because I Can” signs over here.
At some point, I realized that this whole sobriety thing was going to change a lot more than just my drinking. As I became willing to believe in the existence of a power greater than myself that was capable of restoring me to sanity, I realized that same Higher Power didn’t need to just stop at “restoring sanity.”
What replaces “Because I Can” is a bit more mysterious and non-obvious. The Big Book and my own experience suggest that adopting an attitude of service has something to do with it. The potential existence of a Higher Power in my life also suggests the possible existence of meaning and purpose in my life, just not of the self-defined variety.
How can it be that what you need the most, Can leave you feeling just like a ghost, You never want to feel so sad and lost again.
It’s because I was chasing the wrong things. It was because I believed in the wrong things. It’s because I couldn’t see what was right in front of me for so long. Realizing that at 60 is kind of jarring. Realizing that you have to start over is hard when that much water has passed under the bridge. That realization has changed everything. I realize that for me to actually be of service to the Universe, I needed to be honest with myself and try to understand not just what “could” I do, but what’s right for me and what actually serves others. Respecting my own limits and needs are an important part of that determination and ultimately eliminating the “Because I Can” thinking from the process.
Fortunately, sobriety has helped move the locus of decision-making from my jangly brain to the source of true courage. Listening to my heart is what changed the focus of my life. It doesn’t mean the tasks are less daunting, that everything is happy-snappy. It’s not. Things are kind of hard these days. But I’m finally with myself. That’s what sobriety and my Higher Power did, they showed me the way back to myself, that I wasn’t alone anymore:
Turn the clock to zero, Boss, The river’s wide, We’ll swim across.
I’m not a huge fan of swimming, but I like the metaphor.
I did live in Washington, DC for 30 years.