I’m grateful for a rainy day and a morning in my den. I’m grateful for thoughtful people who notice things. I’m grateful to be where I am. I’m grateful for seeing what’s negative and letting it go. I’m grateful for the people who help me do that. I’m grateful to be sober today.
You might be surprised to learn that I played a role in absolutely no April Fools jokes/pranks/escapades yesterday. I am a great lover of pranks and hi-jinks, but didn’t really have much clever in mind, even with some AI-ssistance.1 Now it’s April 2nd, and any attempt at a prank, well, “why didn’t you do that yesterday?”
And who here hasn’t heard that question? It’s great that you finally got sober, but…
Why couldn’t that have happened yesterday?
Most people would look at the wreckage in my life and say, “enough, I think I need to change some things.” Civilians have a hard time understanding why it takes as long to get there as it does, and why did it happen now instead of then? I don’t have an answer for that, and it’s part of the reason I feel sheepish sometimes when re-connecting with someone and telling them I’m sober. It’s that sheepish, self-judgmental voice in me that is responsible for adding something funny at the end of the confession like, “finally, I know, right?”
Sort of funny, I know. For whatever reason, I’ve been in a bit of a reflective state lately, and thinking back to how some of those early days felt. The days when I first moved into this apartment. The walls were empty, the den was a holding cell for boxes that I just couldn’t manage to open. I knew how much pleasure and joy I would get by setting the den up, clearing those boxes, putting the books away, giving myself a place to write and think. And yet, I couldn’t do it.
The same thing went on in lots of different areas of my life: There were all of these things I could do to improve things, for myself, and yet, I couldn’t manage to get to doing them. I don’t know what holds me back from doing those things, and I’ve spent some time thinking about it. I think it’s probably one of the symptomatic thought patterns we alcoholics and addicts share.
What do I mean by “symptomatic thought patterns?” I just kind of made it up, so not one hundred percent sure.2 One of the things I notice when listening to other alcoholics is how often I’ve thought the same kinds of things they’re sharing. It’s the commonality of the stories that led me to start thinking of those common thinking patterns as symptoms, rather than “defects of character.” Marty Mann, the visionary alcoholic of the 1940’s and 50’s, identified some of the species of symptomatic thoughts. She thought the earliest-occurring variety were the ones that suggested we had control over our drinking. Self-lies like, “I won’t do that again,” or “I will do a better job next time,” setting self-rules that we keep breaking, sometimes within seconds of making them.
My recovery has been about recognizing those thinking patterns, trying to understand where they came from, the purpose they were intended to serve and then finding a way to let go of them. If you’d like to get all technical about it, That might be a rough summary of the work of Steps Four through Nine. I think it took me a couple of passes at those Steps before they worked for me. Repetition here is not shameful, nor a mark of failure; repeating the Steps is not like repeating the Fourth Grade. Repeating the Steps might even be seen as a somewhat courageous exercise in vulnerability and a belief in the prospects for self-growth and development.
I see alcoholics on social media saying things about how it’s shameful to have to keep describing themselves as alcoholics forever, especially now that they have been clean for 49 days. The people who say that they don’t want to define their life in terms of being an alcoholic, or even in terms of recovering from that disease.
And I guess the first thing I would say to that is, “alcoholic is a diagnosis, not an insult.” I, personally, do not attach shame to the title “alcoholic,” I don’t think it’s a red letter or even a bill of attainder, it’s not something that I earned through bad deeds. I was an alcoholic from the time I took my first drink onwards, I was what the literature used to describe as a “primary addict,” someone who was wired that way.
Second, the life I led while I was drinking was not the life I was intended to lead. The life I led while drinking was a life of conceited self-direction; a life fundamentally out-of-touch with the world around me, a life that required me to drink to ignore all of the consequences and misperceptions.
The lament about defining oneself in terms of one’s recovery? I finally came to see that as an attachment to that old life—the one that was built on the self-lies, the one that represented what I thought I was, instead of just being who I am. I understand the sadness that comes along with saying goodbye to a part of life, even if was a misdirected, semi-disastrous affair.
In the view of this alcoholic, it should be more akin to waving goodbye to the desert island we occupied for a long, long time, from the stern of a vessel equipped for way more than a “three-hour tour.” Why didn’t it happen yesterday? That’s just not a question one asks as that island finally, finally, finally recedes from view. Recovery is being filled with gratitude for finally getting off the island, no matter how long it took.
This is a word I’m making up. Also, “agreeance,” and the phrase, “better have your s*** in a can.” I was very excited to use this on a work-related call last week and have it be met with, “Exactly.” Yes, very excited.
See Footnote No. 1.
Found comfort in this read. So glad to be off that island!