I’m grateful for another big day ahead. I’m grateful for the holidays. I’m grateful for chances to make amends along the way. I’m grateful for all of the glimpses of love. I’m grateful for reminders of where I’m supposed to be. I’m grateful to be sober today.
For whatever reason, it seems like the last couple of Wednesdays have had a big-game feel to them. Today is not an exception. I often warm-up for those big days with a trip to the basketball court Carl Schurz park. When I shoot baskets at the park, there aren’t a ton of rules, but the ones that do exist are important. The most important of those, to me, is the rule about how the shoot-around ends. When I was younger, I did very Hoosier-esque stuff, like see if I could hit 8 (or maybe 7) out of ten from the imaginary free throw line (crack in the cement). That can make for a lot of free throws, however.
These days, the rule is as follows: I need to hit a 3-point shot (the park has the old lines and is not regulation, so it’s not that far), followed by 2 free throws, in a row. I give myself the leeway to take one practice free throw, but after that, it’s two made free throws in a row, or it’s back to shooting 3’s and starting the whole thing over.
I’ve tried to decide exactly what game situation to overlay: Are we down 5 points, and the game gets miraculously tied with those five points in like 2.1 seconds? Or, are we down four, the second free throw wins the game? Or, big departure, up by 16 and this is all just salt-in-wound, “I’ve got an AARP card, son,” stuff.1 No, I’ve settled for this scenario: Down by 3, the shot behind the line, ties the score. There is some foul away from the shot or something, and I step to the line, no time on the clock, and two shots (technically, free throws) at glory. First one wins the game, second one is where you maybe get to wink at an opponent or something slightly unsportsmanlike, and then the very large satisfaction-based release of very positive brain chemicals as the ball hits that spot just below the back bracket and the backspin on the ball is what makes that really awesome ripping noise on regulation nets.2
The last two Wednesdays have been pretty big, and today is another shot at glory. Well, not really glory, but you get the idea. Anyway, I’m feeling good about the prospects of adding to a small lead in a very tight game. There has been a lot of work leading up to this point, and I hadn’t been making as many basketball-connected trips to the park, but Saturday morning was gorgeous and I took a break and headed over there.
It was pretty glorious, let’s just say a lot of “stuff” really comes out when I first start shooting around. I shot for a while, but eventually my mind was veering to the presentation I needed to finish editing, not that spot right at the back of the rim, and the results were what you would expect. I realized what was happening, re-grouped, shook off the brief spate of work-related tension and then turned to find the next shot. Once I got a little bit of a groove going (it was definitely music-assisted), I started looking for a chance to hit the big 3-pointer.
The thing about shooting longer distances is the more unpredictable nature of the rebound, there can be disastrous misses, wherein the ball rolls over the plaque marking the spot where Rudy Guliani dedicated the court, through the gate and down the long f******* hill, past all of the dog walkers. Even a pretty decent shot has the potential to take a disastrous turn, just depending on where the miss occurs. The other bad part of the down-the-hill miss is that it just is not a great look. Everyone is like, “how did the ball end up all the way down here?” If I could blame it on the Pickle-ballers, I definitely would.3
Anyway, I was kind of eager to get going, grab the post-game coffee and get home to work. I made the 3-point shot, made the first free throw and then badly missed the second. I shrugged my shoulders, gave myself the, “that’s fine for today” line and headed over to where my backpack was hanging from the chain link fence. Then I stopped, this did not feel right. Rules are rules, right?
Now, this happens to be a very silly rule, largely fueled by what would be a semi-ridiculous fantasy for an adolescent, much less a 60 year-old, who remembers when the word “pep” wasn’t always ironic. But, a rule is a rule.
I love to talk about the two great books written about alcoholism and addiction by Marty Mann and Dr. Ruth Fox.4 Frankly, I think they are better than most of what is suggested for us alcoholics and addicts to read. Not sure how it would happen that the trailblazing work of two women in the 1950’s would somehow get overlooked, but there you have it. Both of these books identify self-dishonesty as one of the prime symptoms of alcoholism and addiction.
Self-dishonesty is quite sneaky and very difficult to understand, truthfully. I used to sit on barstools and think that the one person I wasn’t dishonest with was myself—because I knew all of my own shenanigans and games. Right? The stuff I thought back then, the stuff I felt back then, it’s downright painful and unpleasant to really think about it. The lies were so obvious. Plus, I knew that it was a lie. It’s weird to think of being both the liar and the victim of the liar at the same time.
It’s stuff like this that is the work of the Sixth and Seventh Steps, but that’s not the topic for today. I don’t know if you’d like to hazard a guess as to what today’s topic is?
Marty Mann identifies one form of self-lying as an inability to follow even the rules we set for ourselves. Her test for the “Am I an Alcoholic?” gameshow is whether you can set a limit for how many drinks a day or a week and then stick to it. The brilliance of this test is that you’re allowed to keep drinking—this helps kill that fantasy that there will be a return to just that one glass of red wine with dinner one magical evening in the so-distant, semi-sober future. That’s a fantasy that must die as part of sobriety.
I did the Sinclair Method once, where you are supposed to list out how many drinks you have every day. No shame or guilt, you’re allowed to drink as much as you want as long as you take a Naltrexone first and log your drinks. The theory is that you end the obsession with alcohol by first ending the obsession with trying to stop drinking. No, it doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I’m an alcoholic and it meant that I could simultaneously say I was getting sober and still be able to drink. That’s a jackpot even Jack Barry would love.
I falsified my drink inventory from the very beginning. I was the only one who was going to see the “drink inventory.” I knew I was falsifying the entries, putting down one glass when it was really a full glass plus a bonus carafe. Somehow, I could list three or four glasses of wine and still be able to drink 2.5 bottles. That’s my kind of math.
The exception in the very poignant “How it Works” section of the Big Book is for those poor unfortunates who are not capable of living a life of rigorous honesty. But it’s not the lies to others that are the driving force behind the addiction, it’s the lies we alcoholics and addicts tell ourselves. A lot of my self-lies took the form of not following the rules I set for myself and the manner in which I excused those infractions.
It’s not that I’m looking to convict myself of perjury, or to somehow punish or blame myself. The point of exposing those lies is that those lies conceal the true nature of the disease we suffer from:
We cannot control our drinking.
The lies I told to myself were designed to prevent this fundamental truth from seeing the light of the day. I wasn’t drinking because of what other people were doing or saying, or because of what was or wasn’t happening to me, I drank because I didn’t have any ability to control it on my own. Until I realized that (this is part of the First Step), I had no chance.
Even though I really wanted to get that deck out, I had this thought, as I got close to the fence, “rules are rules, baby.” I turned, threw the ball up in the air towards the top of the key, did a mini-headshake to get ready, picked a new song and jogged out to start shooting again. The music was pretty groovy, it was a gorgeous Saturday morning for the middle of December and I was doing something I loved. Didn’t take too long, bucket from the right side of the key, bang and bang, two made free-throws and I was done.
I felt a little sad, maybe a little bit longer? I caught myself again. That’s the other rule, when the game is over, the game is over. I made the shots, now it’s time go. Rules are rules, baby. It was time for coffee anyway.
I have uttered those words in an actual pick-up game.
Owing to a lack of regulation nets at the Carl Schurz Park, the noise is piped in, like the birds at the Masters.
I think PickleBall is the least baller of any sport. “Ahoy” to you young people, wearing athletic attire to play life-size ping pong, the 60 year old shooting baskets is definitely judging AND mocking you. So, is his 74 year-old friend.
Marty Mann’s New Primer on Alcoholism (1950) and Alcoholism: Its Scope, Cause and Treatment (1955)
In 10 years you’ll think of this article while you hurry to pickleball!
Love it. As a casual tennis player, I share the sentiment towards pickle ballers lol