The Four Horsemen of Recovery

I’m grateful for getting to the end of a very busy week. I’m grateful for a visit from my son. I’m grateful for seeing things I couldn’t before. I’m grateful for letting things happen. I’m grateful for seeing the power of acceptance. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Photo by Julian Berengar Sölter on Unsplash

song of the week:

I don’t usually spend too much time here talking about dead celebrities—but I was pretty sad that Sly Stone and Brian Wilson died this week. The Beach Boys were still pretty popular when I was a kid and it’s kind of hard not to like the music. My best friend Mark H. and I used to cruise around Iowa City in his green Ford Pinto, blasting the music. He could do the really high part on “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “Surfing USA,” so when those came on the radio, we were very enthusiastic car karaoke participants.¹ I thought “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” was about the sweetest love song ever written; especially this line, in that completely gorgeous Beach Boys harmony, when the music slows way down towards the end:

You know it seems the more we talk about it, 
it only makes it worse to live without it, 
but let’s talk about it.

But back to the song of the week, I used to play “If You Want Me to Stay,” way back in the Wilson St. Croix/WLHA Sunday afternoon show days. It’s dark and has just a little but of that FAFO edge to it.² But, it’s a little too dark and growly for me most days and I do have a great deal of love and admiration for Bootsy Collins. Making Bootsy’s version of “Want Me to Stay” as the SOTW is a 2-fer; I pay homage to the great Sly Stone and listen to the version that actually accompanies me on a lot of subway journeys.

Of course, the premise of the sotw is, “for me to stay here, I’ve got to be me.” I dig that. It’s that “being me” that I think is at the heart of recovery and I think that the Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are accidentally brilliant at helping figure out. The inventories, the self-assessments, the emphasis on self-honesty, all work together to help identify the target on the distant horizon and then mark the trail to get there.

In my continuing efforts to understand just what the f*** happened, I try to identify the concepts and changes to my thinking that helped me the most. I unfortunately think a lot of what gets written about recovery is just not helpful and usually misunderstands the process. I’m not sure in what order these should be listed, but I think coming to an understanding of these concepts, is what helped me see the truth about myself and then find a way forward. I think embracing these concepts and integrating them into my thinking and the way I lived my life is what has produced happiness and sobriety for me. These concepts include:

• Gratitude

• Acceptance

• Self-Honesty

• Humility³

I think that coming to an understanding of what each of these means and then doing my best to apply these principles as I bop through the world is what has produced change, is what has produced happiness and contentment and peace. This is a very individualized process and everyone has to determine for themselves what these mean and how to build a life upon them. Of course, they are all mixed together, like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and it’s the combination that delivers results. Here’s what they mean to me:

Gratitude. This is easy. Writing a gratitude list is what turned my life around. Sitting in the dark on those pandemic mornings and coming up with 4 or 5 things to be grateful about every day is what helped me see the beauty all around me and, more importantly, helped me see my place in that world. Forcing myself to be grateful for sad things, for failures, setbacks and losses, is what showed me how everything is interconnected. Those sad and bad things, the things that seemed like deathblows to my world, actually took me to the next chapter and usually armed me with precisely what I needed for the next adventure.

Gratitude helped me see purpose and learning in everything around me. Gratitude slowed me down, showed me the emptiness of my expectations and often forced me to take a deep, slow breath. Replacing the lens of expectation with a grateful heart’s view of the world softens things and can replace resentment with love, understanding and even empathy. Gratitude is a healer of worlds broken apart and a sure way to orient oneself so as to follow the scant trail out of the woods.

Acceptance. Easy to say, very hard to live. The “acceptance” passage in the Big Book is one of my favories:

Acceptance is the answer to all of my problems today.

To me, acceptance is about ceding control to the power greater than myself, the force that has a bit more to do with the way things work out in the Universe than me. Which seems like just plain old good sense, particularly when you look at the wreckage I’ve left in my wake. Like most good alcoholics, I was born with a pretty strong sense for how things were supposed to be and I quickly came to believe that I alone could determine my fate, and the fate of those around me.

Of course, this belief is the great alcoholic fallacy, the idea that we have control over the outcomes in life. Again, this is very easy to articulate, it’s very hard to live this way. For me, acceptance is a process of looking at the things in my life that cause discomfort and unhappiness and trying to understand why I have those feelings. Sometimes, I see those hurt feelings did arise from the actions of others and that it makes sense that I feel the way that I do. Acceptance teaches me to let that go. Of course, I should learn what I need to from the situation before commencing that whole letting-go thing, but acceptance is about coming to the understanding that these things are simply what create the opportunity to move forward, what was necessary to move me forward.

You often hear the sentiment at AA meetings that repeating the same thing thing with the hope of different results is the definition of insanity. That seems harsh, but the truth is this: Until I understood my role in what went wrong, until I saw what it was that I needed to learn, things were not likely to change.

Acceptance precedes change.

Self-Honesty. One of my favorite AA’s, Marty Mann, the out-lesbian of the 1930’s who was Bill W’s sponsee, came to understand that self-dishonesty was one of the hallmark symptoms of addiction. The lies begin around the nature of the drinking and the false hope that said drinking could be controlled better in the future: I’ll only have two drinks next time, I’ll drink a glass of water between glasses of wine, Next time, I’ll go home early, I’ll figure this out tomorrow.

These are the lies that facilitate addiction and eventually lead to greater self-lies:

I need this. 
I don’t drink differently than anyone else. 
If other people weren’t so shitty, I wouldn’t need to drink. 
I’m better drunk than most people are sober. 
I can handle this. 
It’s not really hurting anyone. 
I can stop when I want to.

I’m a very facile and cunning self-liar. I can convince myself of really ridiculous ideas and then be completely caught by surprise when the full ridiculousness of those beliefs is brutally exposed. I will drink gallons of my own Kool-Aid. Now, I talk to myself when I realize I’m concocting a lie in my head, when I’m formulating some mistaken belief about the world around me and the other people who inhabit it. I sternly remind myself that it’s not true and then try to investigate what it is I’m trying to obscure with that self-lie. What is it I’m trying to persuade myself of? More importantly, why?

Self-honesty is hard and it feels brutal and heavy early on, as the consequences are still swirling around. It seems anti-empathetic, but it’s the foundation on which a happy and content life has to be built. Years ago, when I was embarking on a quest to substantially improve my golf game, a friend told me that the most important thing was to keep score completely accurately: no mulligans, no dropped second balls, no gimmes and all penalties had to be assessed. I thought of my score ballooning, my carefully tended handicap headed back towards hacker status. He said,

“if you don’t keep score accurately, you won’t see how much you’re improving.”

That is very true. There is a bit of acceptance involved here, but understanding when and why I lied to myself helped me see myself so much more clearly, helped me understand my own motivations, fears and beliefs.

Humility. I hate when people accept awards and say, “I’m humbled.” No, you’re not, you posting that on social media is pretty much the opposite of humility. Likewise, strolling into a meeting and then declaiming about humility and surrender to the audience rings a bit hollow to these ears.

I also don’t like equating humility with surrender. My life is active and vibrant and I don’t think I’m living in some state of abject contrition. I think I’m winning these days. I didn’t surrender, I just finally saw my place in the universe, the place that was meant for me. Humility, for me, is a state of mind and a tool to help me stay grounded and stay present. Humility is not about loving third-place, it’s understanding that there is a place in this universe for me, designed or created or initiated or something by a force that I don’t understand and that is way more powerful than me.

Humility is understanding that this great and magnificent power gives me the chance to live in a special place in the universe, a place that is meant for me, a place where being my authentic self is all that is necessary.

Humility is not defeat, it’s recognizing where home is.

Things happen in my life that I don’t always appreciate or understand. Things happen that make me sad, angry or hurt. Gratitude, acceptance, self-honesty and humility are what let me see the purpose, the opportunity in those events. The crashes are what let me see how I could fly longer and higher next time. The tragedies and losses took me to the next chapter of my life and taught me the lessons I needed to learn so that I could face whatever’s next with vulnerability and courage.

If this is making recovered life seem a bit dark and dreary, then it’s producing the wrong impression. I managed to land in some pretty dark places, it’s these things that let me see the light, let me find the path out. These things, gratitude, acceptance, self-honesty and humility, are what separated the night from the day for me. They produced light in my life and lightness in my heart.

Maybe it seems egotistical to believe there is a special place in the world for me. But here’s the thing: As I walk through the world, my eyes newly opened, there is possibility instead of disappointment, there is kindness and understanding where anger used to thrive. More importantly, there is a chance to love the people around me and to find love for myself. Sure, there are things that I wish that could be different, but I remind myself that every second I spend thinking that way is a second that I’m not appreciating the beauty and love and just general grooviness all around me.

Try it. You’ll see.

Happy Friday.

1. This was like 1977, I don’t think “karaoke” was something that existed in the USA then. Also, we always regarded our inability to generate much female interest as something of a mystery, but when I tell these stories, things become a little clearer, dont’t they?

2. “FAFO,” for those who don’t know, stands for “F*** Around and Find Out.” Am I obsessed? Yes.

3. Unfortunately, the “GASH Method” sounds terrible!