SUNDAY GRATITUDE EXTRAVAGANZA
| Breakfast with an Alcoholic Episode 31 | The "You Can't Make Me" Relapse | Three Recovery Discoveries | The Sober Library | Much, Much More |
I’m grateful for the gray quilted sky. I’m grateful for right now. I’m grateful for being where I am. I’m grateful for the hard and sad moments. I’m grateful for knowing there’s always something learned. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I could say something like, this is your last chance to listen to Episode 31, except that would simply not be true. However, I am going to say that there will be a new episode out this week and it’s already shaping up to be a doozy. It is likely to include a 4th and 5th Step Roundtable with actual Sponsees, it is likely to include one of our favorite alcoholics reading something he’s written and the usual nonsense sometimes comes close to seeming appropriate.
But, as exciting as that prospect might be, I think it’s time to honor the present and listen to the podcast episode in front of us (technically below, but you know):
I’ve been hitting the nostalgia stuff pretty hard, I guess I always do, but am trying to be slightly more systematic about it than usual. I think the purpose of examining the alcoholic past is simply to promote understanding about the forces that brought me here. In the same way that paleontologists are able to glean insights from the fossil record, it helps me understand a little about where I need to go.
By the way, talking about the fossil record, if you want to preserve normal sleep patterns, don’t watch any of things I watch on YouTube at night. I watched one video where a bunch of science-y people talked about what actually happened in the aftermath of that big asteroid strike in Mexico that pretty much ended nearly all life on earth. It’s the way it ended nearly all of the life that is troubling. Think about a huge splash of magma in the wake of the asteroid cannonballing the pool, a splash that reached the very top of the atmosphere, fanned out across the globe owing to centripetal force,1 froze and then fell 90 miles to earth as razor sharp shards of frozen igneous rock. Also, the ones about giant insects are terrifying.
I talked to someone at a meeting once who had a really strong meditation practice. She told me the secret was not always seeking the liberating confines of blankness, it was leaning into discomfort when she sensed it. Not with the objective of annihilating it, but with curiosity and the intention of trying to understand it. It is, after all, a product of my own mind.
The topic that produces the most discomfort for me in the alcoholic past is relapse. I had lots of them. I make light of them, the sheer number of them, but there’s really nothing too funny about them. I do think relapses and relapsers are misunderstood a lot of the time and I think those misunderstandings are really costly—a lot of those people don’t come back again.
I couldn’t even begin to figure out how many times I relapsed. Part of it is definitional: If we define a relapse as drinking after a firmly announced intention to stop drinking, then there could be thousands for me. I was forever promising myself that we’d get the drinking under control. I’d order a drink at the end of one of my drinking sessions and gaudily leave half of it behind in the glass, neatly proving I wasn’t really an alcoholic and setting the stage for the next day when I wasn’t going to drink at all.
I think that kind of self-dishonesty and self-manipulation is a symptom of alcoholism, not simply a bad habit that can be willpowered into oblivion. This self-dishonesty is what enables the making and rapid un-making of alcoholic promises—we alcoholics feel that we are allowed to change the announced rules without warning or notice. One of the neat rhetorical/logical tricks of the Steps is that when one cedes control over aspects of their life to a higher power, one finally gives away the power to keep changing the rules.
I’ve written about relapsing on my way home from rehab. I’ve written about relapsing while I was supposed to be at IOP sessions. When I was thinking about writing this, I originally thought of it being a “Gallery of Relapses,” where I’d put them on display in the hopes that people might see a bit of themselves somewhere. Also, to help me see things for the way they actually were and what they actually meant. But listing all of them would be demoralizing and tedious, so I’m going to try and group them by category.
The “You Can’t Make Me” Relapse
I did my first IOP in the Fall of 2012 and managed close to 60 days of sobriety. I carefully planned a relapse to coincide with my 50th birthday. I had been taking Antabuse and was not drinking, but as you progress through an IOP, there are fewer weekly sessions, hence few opportunities to be tested and the crafty alcoholic with a pretty extensive knowledge of testing procedures and the hal-life of Anatabuse was able to create a 5-day window that would allow drinking and minimize the risk of detection. That one “worked.” I got away with it.
Having successfully “graduated” from the IOP, I was then transitioned to “continuing care,” meaning a once-weekly small group session, where random testing was a possibility. A note here about testing protocols. At this IOP, the test they used for alcoholics was not a breathalyzer or something that detected alcohol in the blood right now; they use a test that can determine if your body has metabolized alcohol over the last 3-4 days. This isn’t an easy test to cheat.
My counselor at the IOP didn’t really like me and certainly didn’t trust me. He correctly suspected I was drinking, I was outraged at the notion. One night after such a session, and having been tested, I felt at liberty to have a few drinks since I wouldn’t be tested for days. But then the safe drinking period got extended into the next day and part of the next. Suddenly, I was in the danger zone of possible detection when the next weekly session was scheduled.
I decided to rid my body of the evidence. I began a multi-day regiment of absurd levels of water consumption punctuated by frequent sessions of hot yoga and long spells in the steam room and sauna at the gym. Insane levels of exercise and then more insane water consumption.
I worked really hard a this insane plan; knowing the entire team that nothing I was doing would change the results of the upcoming test. I walked into the CC session, saw that I was on the testing list, and then nonchalantly lied my way through the whole evening, never mentioning all of the drinking that had been going on. Even though I was going to be discovered in a matter of days.
It is this doomed, pointless lying that is the real hallmark of addicts and alcoholics. We know we are going to get caught, we know there will be consequences. We know our behavior is incomprehensible and demoralizing. And yet, we plunge on, ceaselessly beating into the current, or something like that.
I got caught that time. I got a very stern talking-to and a punitive 90-in-90 order, complete with a sheet I needed to get signed after every meeting, like the folks who had turn their lists into parole or probation officers. I guess this style of meting out consequences makes sense if you think the lying alcoholic in front of you actually has the capacity to control his drinking.
The fallacy of most of today’s treatment is that it relies on the idea that if you just understand enough about the disease and how it affects everyone around you, you’ll suddenly gain the power, upon discharge, to control your drinking. Bill W. wrote pretty convincingly on this topic, more than 80 years ago; self-knowledge is not sufficient to produce sobriety. Note: There’s a reason most treatment centers don’t list their success rates and it isn’t to protect anyone’s anonymity.
I have several variations on this story; all they show is that no one could make me abandon alcohol. That power resided with me. If the inability to stop something that is ruining one’ s life could be correctly called a “power.” The IOP used to give people a “relapse prevention” card to keep in the wallet. It listed the progression of a relapse, from the formation of false beliefs like “stress or anxiety reduction,” or “enhancing pleasure,” the the belief in the ability to avoid consequences.
If my relapses were logical affairs debated by people of good will. Then maybe. But for the 100% of my relapses that didn’t fall into that category, then the relapse prevention card mostly stayed in my wallet. Maybe I would catch a glimpse when I pulled out my card to pay my tab.
At the same time, I don’t believe the exercise is to isolate the alcoholic on an ice-floe of non-enablement and see if that’s enough to make them want to control their drinking. The common thread in all of these approaches is that they presume the alcoholic has some previously undisclosed ability to control their drinking, to just stop all of this.
The “You Can’t Make Me” Relapse is not really a function of will or arrogance. It’s mostly comes from the recognition that alcohol is so ingrained in the alcoholic’s fabric, that “just stopping it,” is both nonsensical and impossible. Or at least seems that way. I knew I needed to stop, I was motivated enough to be seeking the answer, I signed myself up for the IOP and I went. I went even when I was going to lie about drinking. I think that’s very curious behavior. A little like the Christian receiving an optional invitation to a small gathering of lions at the Colosseum and then actually going.
I wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone, I really did want to find the answer. I wasn’t trying to waste anyone’s time, especially not my own. I learned a lot in those sessions, and what I learned there and in other treatment settings was invaluable in getting sober, but it was never enough to get me sober. We know what that took.
The “You Can’t Make Me” Relapse can’t survive the Second Step. The Second Step changes the terms of the engagement and forces the acknowledgement that the entire construct has been wrong. The Steps aren’t an escalating series of “now you can’t drink” exercises, or things designed to “wreck my drinking.” They helped me recover the parts of me I lost when drinking became part of my equation, part of my purported “solution.” Here’s the thing:
You don’t get a new solution until you change the equation.
The Steps showed the old equation and how I could change it. The thing that people miss about relapse is that it’s not actually about failure or deceit. When the alcoholic relapses and lies about it and then comes back and lies about it some more, that’s not actually a despicable thing. It’s the most honest admission that an alcoholic can make:
I can’t control my drinking.
My relapses were terrible and hurtful things. They put the people who loved me through so much pain and fear. They put me through an endless car wash of shame and regret and failure and fear and impending doom. None of that changed until someone patiently and kindly explained to me how I could change my entire life by reading about 160 pages in an old book.
It’s not a card in my wallet that keeps me sober. It’s not the fear of the consequences that would attend a relapse. It’s not even the specter of having to climb that hill of days again. It’s because the equation changed and so did the solution. That solution doesn’t live in my wallet, or on wall of a treatment center, it lives in my heart every day.
If you’ve already listened to the podcast, then we’ve covered this. But, this is now a “regular” feature on the podcast, wherein a variety of people share “Three Recovery Discoveries,” this being an off-week for the podcast, you’re going to get three recommendations for great things to read here on Substack:
I lifted something from “A Message from The Universe,” last week and probably will again:
Gratitude is such a transformational thing, a lens that actually changes the world when you look through it:
There is a lot of great writing about addiction and recovery here on Substack and finding different perspectives on the topic is part of how I expand my own sobriety. Here’s a really good one:
For us, reading and writing have been a big part of recovery and sobriety. We thought we’d start sharing some of our favorite books on the topic of recovery, addiction and general happiness and telling you how they helped us! If you have ideas, thoughts, comments, suggestions or if there are some books that you’d like to chat about, well, we’d love to do that with you. 2
Now, here’s something new. You may have heard me mention something about writing your story in the style of Bill W’s: and this is where we are going to do it. If you want to write your story and share it, I’ll be happy to put it here for other folks to read. If you’d like to record yourself reading your own story (I highly, highly recommend this), I’ll put it here, too:
The “Anyone Anywhere” Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous
It’s the “Anyone Anywhere” meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, this Tuesday evening at 7pm. We’re ready to go and hope you can join us this Tuesday! It’s 1/2 AA Meeting, 1/2 Alcoholic Book Club and 1/2 something else we haven’t figured out yet. We’ve been reading the “Stories from the Back of the Book,” and they are all so great. It’s a fun way to learn more about the Big Book and reading these stories out loud is a little like listening to the legends of AA share.
Hope you can join us!
From the TFLMS Archives:
How Can I Help Support TFLMS??
I know this from a Boy Scout trip to Six Flags Over St. Louis and the ride where everyone gets pinned to the wall as this thing spins really fast and then some kid threw up.
Seriously, write a book review (or we might expand into movies!) and we’ll probably put it up.
Thanks for sharing ‘Be a no-getter?’ ! I’m glad it made you feel some type of way 💁🏽♀️