No Guarantees

I was asked by a colleague to answer a few questions about coming to that place of willingness, that turning point, to describe the moment I could see myself and my disease clearly. I’ve been concerned about keeping my ego out of the way so that I can offer authentic answers, answers that reflect the weight and gravity of the experience, in hopes that the story will be useful to someone. I’ve been re-reading my old writing. I rode my bike yesterday to the corner where I finally broke down. I have completely reconnected with the pain and the hopelessness that brought me to my knees; the point where I surrendered to the idea that I was never going to be able to get high without destroying my life and the lives of those around me.

When I had that moment of clarity and was able to see the truth about myself and my disease and finally became willing to ask for and accept spiritual help I was led to the one man perhaps most uniquely qualified to take me to the solution. I knew this man. I trusted him. I could see that he was living a principled life and I knew that there was no earthly way that he could become the man he was in light of the man he had been. A transformation like that requires a greater power. Somewhere I was given the willingness to do a few simple things to follow this man down the path. So far the road has been pretty clear and dry; not too tough a go, even considering the pain I was obviously in during the first 2 months. I’ve been very lucky.

I wrote the other day, though, that there is no guarantee that even under the most favorable conditions I’ll make it to the other side of the desert. My friend pulled me aside last Thursday night to tell me that he’d been drunk the night before; that he hadn’t made it. I responded with detachment, compassion, concern. Obviously I would need to find a new spiritual advisor. Thats fine, I thought. The whole next day I imagined that I hadn’t been too disturbed by the news at all. Friday evening, however, in a small meeting with some close friends, it suddenly occurred to me that someone I love who suffers with the disease of addiction, someone who is hopeless and helpless like me, someone who had put everything he had into grabbing on to and holding on to this thing we call ‘recovery’ — had not made it across the desert. Though my friend seemed, at the moment, to have gotten back on the wagon, to be back in the group and back in the work, one can never know for sure. My own experience has been that one little incident, even followed by rigorous effort to get back, often, perhaps usually, takes one right back to the place I was before I became willing to ask for help. One little slip sends me straight off the highway. I hate crying in public. I did it but I hated doing it. I’m worried for him and I’m worried for myself and I’m heartbroken.

There is not guarantee that we make it to permanent sobriety. Even with a spiritual program many of us miss the mark. After all, we’re only human. And being human, many, if not most of us, will fail at gaining victory over addiction. It is a baffling enemy. We can just do our best, seek guidance from those who have gone before us and trust the Man With the Star.

The Last Chance Texaco

Got up this morning, padded to the kitchen, fired up the coffee maker and laid back down to ‘pray’ (that I’d be able to rouse myself when the pot was brewed). When the best part of waking up was ready to breathe life into me I got up and began to grope out the last pockets of slumber in front of the Early Show. My brain was still mushy and this curious story about how much time Americans spend stuck in traffic each year got stuck in the mushy front side of the diorama of absurdity that is my mind. We Americans, apparently, spend over one work week a year stuck in traffic. The cost of the fuel wasted in those hours each year would more than pay for all of the road repairs that need to be done in every state from sea to shining sea. The lost productivity is in the billions. America is profoundly stuck in traffic.I’ve heard 12 step recovery described as ‘the last house on the block.’ When we get there ‘all our score cards read zero.’ I’ve always thought of it as the Last Chance Texaco. Better gas up while you’re here because, if you’re like me, there is nothing but desolation as far as you can see. The only hope of making it to the other side is to get your tank good and full now! Lucky for us real alcoholics and addicts, the kind that 12 step recovery can actually save, at the Last Chance Texaco the gas is free.

Over and over in meetings you hear that ‘resentment is the number one offender.’ I’d like to be able to call bullshit of that, I suspect for me it is fear, but honestly I don’t know. Either way, we’re given tools for dealing with resentments and fears by doing the steps. We write them down. We look at what has troubled us. We share it with a trusted friend (a sponsor or someone else, a spiritual advisor). We look at our part in the situation. We ask our Creator to help us be willing and we set right our part with everyone that we’ve harmed with those resentments and fears. And somehow by doing that we are set free from the very things that have kept us trapped in hopelessness and helplessness.

Of course it’s not a requirement. It’s simply a suggestion. Those who stay sober permanently are usually men and women who have taken the suggestion and applied it to their lives. But here’s the thing; I’m at the Last Chance Texaco. There is nothing ahead as far as I can see and I don’t even know how to fucking pump gas, but my very life depends on tanking up on all the free fuel I can get. If I make it to the other side of the desert there is a new and wonderful life waiting for me but there is no guarantee that I’ll make it there even under favorable circumstances.

How much time am I willing to be stuck in traffic?

Step Aside Miss Buttercup, It’s time to wrap this mutha up.

I think the tale of MethedUp is nearing an end. I’m not that methed up anymore. I’m setting up a new home at The Last Chance Texaco but will keep posting here till the pumps open.

My new email address is OutOfGas @ theLastChanceTexaco.com

Avant Tard

I think I may have described here before that I think of 12 step recovery as Spirituality for Complete Idiots. I may also have said ‘total retards’ but that really isn’t correct, politically or any other way. I’ve had cause recently to rethink the moniker. I can’t recall exactly why but for some reason I started exploring other, perhaps more accurate, descriptions. Angry Barcode has done this thing before where she takes a phrase or sentence and deconstructs it, looking at each word individually and carefully, extracting the full essence of meaning from each one and then reconstructing the original sentence. It’s an analytical tool I became rather enamored of and I’ve found that it works quite well on extracting the full meaning of a single word, too. So that having been said;

Retarded is not the word I would pick to describe my own spiritual malady. Retarded implies that, given time, my own power, as marshaled by my will, shall be enough to lift me out of the condition I found myself in last year; that armed with proper knowledge and training I have, of myself, the power to transcend my drug problem.

Yeah, right.

But let’s shake out the pertinent parts of the various definitions of autism, shall we?

It appears to be a lifelong, pervasive, chronic brain disorder with an unknown origin that begins in early childhood and and persists throughout adulthood. Autism is not a mental illness. It affects the functioning of the brain. Some theories suggest that it may be caused by genetics. It manifests itself in marked problems with a person’s ability to communicate, form relationships with others, and respond appropriately to the environment; in which a person is dis-associated from the reality around them. It prevents individuals from properly understanding what they see, hear, and otherwise sense. Some adults with autism function well, earning college degrees and living independently. Others never develop the skills of daily living, and may be incorrectly diagnosed with a variety of psychiatric illnesses. It is actually a morbid, pathological self-absorption marked by lack of awareness of the feelings of others. Autistic people often have little or no social interaction or communications with others. Their subjective, self-centered behavior is not altered by external influences and they withdrawal from contact with people.

That’s it! Exactly. For me anyway that’s exactly right. I was locked into exactly that type of syndrome, with full knowledge that there was something wrong and not being able to see the way out. It was like being locked in a black box and the instructions on how to open the box were printed on the outside. I was stuck in there, screaming, until I was exhausted enough to hear the voice on the outside of the box reading the instructions to me.

The 4th step is really like listening carefully and transcribing the combination to the lock on that box. 5 through 9 seem to be turning the combination and unlocking the box and stepping out of it. Once you’re out you notice there are locked boxes with helpless people inside them everywhere. Steps 10 - 12 are the opportunity to read the instructions to anyone locked in there that’s ready to hear them. You can’t make a spiritually autistic person listen to the answer any more than you can make him follow the instructions on the outside of the box he’s locked in. You just have to wait till they’re worn out from trying to beat their way out on their own.

Which reminds me, I need to buy aspirin.

Lexical Semantics

Not that it’s relevant or apropos of anything and not that I am particularly well today and not that I’ve done ANYTHING related to doing the work that I talk here so feverishly about doing, BUT -

I was thinking just now on my walk home from a meeting (yes you know who was there) about the difference between a hustler and a whore. How could I fault anyone for being a whore if I’ve been one too, right? So I looked them up.

A whore is someone who engages in sexual activity for payment or who misuses their talents or who sacrifices their self-respect for the sake of personal or financial gain.

A hustler is someone who aggressively and dishonestly takes advantage of others for personal gain.

There is something more honest, it would seem, about being a whore.

The Faith that Grows

But sometimes, in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, the discussion of finding a relationship with a Higher Power that can support and sustain one in the certain low spots that lie ahead, is not only frowned upon, but actively discouraged. As AA has grown, more and more people pass into (and back out of) ‘the rooms’ who have not yet or, perhaps, will not reach the level of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization that is nearly always required for one to grasp on to the program with the desperation of a drowning man. It is hard for me not to fault certain members of AA who, having found some relief in simply not drinking (or using), have elected to forgo the work required by anyone who is truly an alcoholic or an addict. I have long observed and it has been my experience that one can gain a certain relief from the suffering that living an unexamined and purposeless life imparts simply by hanging around AA long enough and by accumulating a few days of abstinence. It is even possible gain merciful relief by propinquity, the filial calculus of entering a room filled with a brothers and sisters who have been pulled from the jaws of death virtually guarantees it. Even the founders were aware that what the program offers is something almost anyone can benefit from. In the forward to the first edition of the book they say as much.

When this type of ‘alcoholic/addict’ enters a 12 step meeting and shares ‘their’ program they deprive others who, like me, need THE program, of hearing the solution to the hopeless state of body and mind from which we ‘real’ alcoholics and addicts suffer. And like many of us who are relatively new to this, to doing the work and seeking God and working with others, I do not suffer fools gladly.

I have been absent from writing both my blog and my inventory lately because I have been angry with many of the members of (what I used to consider) my home group. I chaired a meeting there a couple of weeks ago. When one of the members there, someone with a couple of years clean, ’shared’ about his struggles with schizophrenia and sex addiction but never mentioned alcohol I ‘thanked’ him and let someone else have a chance to speak. I believe that it was my responsibility to the group to do that. It is none of my business if he went to his sponsor’s house later that night and cried about how mean I am. Making sure that the message of AA is delivered in an AA meeting is my responsibility. Seeking out and working with newcomers is my responsibility. If I am looking at the last drop in my cup it is my responsibility to be looking for a chance to help someone without a cup.

I was severely criticized for asking that guy to stop and moving on to the next person. Then I made the mistake of opening my mouth in that same meeting a week later and talked for seven minutes; a full two minutes over the customary five, compounding the criticism I endured after Sunday’s meeting.

The same way gay people in Boise, Idaho, don’t want to be politically involved (we’ve known Larry Craig is a big fat gay homosexual faggot for decades and never did anything about it) they also don’t want to know about or share the solution that is supposed to be available in their own AA meeting. Perhaps that’s why there are so few gay members of AA here. That’s not really true. There are plenty of gay AA members, just very few who go the the gay AA meeting here.

So that’s it. I dumped my home group. And I’m trying to get over being angry about how it happened; not something I, as an addict, am capable of doing or have any power over. But I believe that in recovery, as one seeks a relationship with their Creator, one’s faith grows. It grows into certainty. It grows into reliance. God willing I’ll learn to deliver that message more effectively and find the right place for me to share it.

Shifting Focus

Yesterday a reader posed some interesting and complex questions that I want to take some time to answer. They all really boiled down to his final question, “Shouldn’t you now start to focus on life after meth?”

The short answer to that is yes. Moreover, I should be focusing on life. Period. I have recently questioned whether or not to continue keeping this blog. My purpose in writing this was to record my experience in early recovery. On about my 5th day clean I was hunting around the net for anyone out there sharing their experiences getting off crystal meth. I had done it before but really wanted to hear other reasonable voices talking about it, mostly to remind myself that it was possible. I was disappointed with what I found. Search engines largely netted a few random voices extolling the joy of crystal meth, not the misery of it. Several other sites offered instructions on how to make it. Much like having to become the boyfriend I wanted to have, I had to become the voice I wanted to hear.

In recovery there is a point where one just gets over it; when the phenomena of craving simply disappears. The book Alcoholics Anonymous describes this as, “We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.” That is an important proviso. A tricky one, too. If you’ve read much of this you’ve heard me describe 12 step recovery as ’spirituality for complete idiots’ and I stand by that description still. Few people I know in AA or NA, even the ones with sound and happy religious backgrounds, come to God easily or naturally.

This is the point where one might ask if it is useful to remain 100% focused on the problem rather than focusing on the life that recovery has given me; whether focusing on the problem can even really be thought of as recovery. The fact is that, having had the problem removed, in my day to day life I rarely ever think about crystal meth. I live in a small city and I have an extensive use history. I am constantly reminded of ‘the bad old days.’ Three doors down from my office is a house where I used to buy crystal for years; a fact that long prevented me from applying for the job that led me to the wonderful job I have now. I was afraid, early on, that seeing that place, wondering about it’s occupants, might eventually lead me back to that craving I want to avoid. I can hardly go anywhere in town where I haven’t used, bought or sold crystal meth. I regularly run in to people I used to use with, not just the sober ones in AA meetings, but those that are still ‘out there’ using. Even so, and even when I remember the buying, selling and using, I rarely think about it. It just doesn’t exist for me anymore.

When I’m in a room of AA or NA though, particularly when there are new people there just trying to figure out how to get sober, and often in my writing here, I don’t hesitate to share that part of my story. I “neither regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it” because I believe that my experience can help other people facing the same things I went through. I hope that in all I share I remember to also talk about what happened to get me sober and what my life is like since getting sober. I realize that sometimes I focus more on one or another of those three parts of the story, but I hope that anyone reading or listening to my story will generally get the bigger picture. I hope I don’t sound like I am “100% focused on meth”. If I do I am failing at my mission.

What I don’t want to do here is dwell on anything too far away from the message that I “have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body” and that I could hardly have done that on my own. I don’t want to dwell too much on the luxury of the problems I have today. To anyone suffering greatly from addiction that would only seem petty and selfish. I don’t want my story to be too unique because in the end it isn’t. I’ve taken some minor liberties with editing, but only for topic, not for thrust, but one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors reads:

[E]very year they leaped further ahead, leaving me in the dust with all my doors closed, and each with a new and better deadbolt. . . That’s how [addiction] feels, once you’ve made your nest in it and learned to call it home. Self-pity becomes your oxygen. . . I finally see how our lives align at the core, if not in the sorry details. I still shiver with a kind of astonished delight when a . . . brother or sister tells of that narrow escape from the coffin world of [addiction]. “Yes yes yes, “goes a voice in my head, “it was just like that for me.” When we laugh together then and dance in the giddy circle of freedom, we are children for real at last, because we have finally grown up.
Paul Monette, Becoming a Man; half a life story

My purpose, then, in sharing my experience in active addiction, is not to glorify the past or to dwell in the painful memories it gave me; it is not to remain “100% focused on meth,” but rather to let others know that when I talk about addiction I know what I’m talking about. It is to let anyone looking for a way out that I’ve been where they are. When I talk about my life today, I don’t talk too much about the problems I face now. Those are luxury problems compared to what I had. Dwelling on that would likely drive away anyone looking for a way out of the ’seemingly hopeless state of mind and body’ that I had and that they perhaps have, too. Sharing the message that by taking the steps suggested in 12 step recovery , a God of my own understanding has done for me what I could not do for myself, is part of what I do to maintain my own spiritual fitness and therefor maintain my own sobriety. There is much more I do in my own community and in private to perfect and enlarge that relationship with my Creator, but I have always considered this an important part of what I do, both for myself and, hopefully, for others who may chance upon it.

Either I’ll choose to give up this particular activity or I’ll become better at sharing the message; the message that yes, there is a point where you get over it. Yes, I was addicted, and am an addict in recovery. Yes, I have relapsed. Today, to outsiders at least, it seems like I’ve got my shit together. That my live was once 100% focused on meth, but I have found a new life in recovery, and that sharing what it was like and what happened is as important as sharing about the details of my life after meth.

If I haven’t said so lately, I cannot believe how much better my life has become. I cannot believe how focusing on my recovery has made all sorts of other, unrelated things possible. God is, indeed, doing for me what I could not do for myself and for that I am truly grateful.

It’s Good to be Sober. It’s Good to be Alive.

Neither is really a condition I thought would persist for much longer as recently as last December. I am, quite frankly, astonished; both by how bad things had become and by how much better it’s gotten. If you show up in a 12 step program (like I did) and grab on to it with “the desperation of a drowning man” (like I did), a number of things become clear, not immediately, but pretty quickly, provided of course that you do the work. For me, one of the things that I noticed by about my 3rd month clean and sober was that some of the people who made sense to me when I walked in the door no longer made any sense at all. Others make more and more sense over time.

One of the men who falls into the latter group tells a story about coming to a place where life had become so painful that he decided to bring things to an end; he overdosed hoping to die. The very next thing he did was call 911. He realized that he didn’t really want to die. He just didn’t know how to live. That is a story I really identify with; not wanting to die but not knowing how to go on.

At one point, near the end of my use, I was sitting at the front door of a ‘friend’. The IFX was there. He was supposed to have come by my place three hours earlier, one of the times when I actually needed his help with something and one of the astonishing number of times he let me down. I tried calling from the security phone. No one would answer. I managed to get in and knocked on the door. No one answered. I sat in front of the door and waited. I could hear them talking inside. I knocked again. Silence. IFX was kind of a knife obsessed kind of thug and for some reason I happened to have one of his knives on me at the time. So there I sat, at my ‘friend’s’ front door, listening to the object of my affection, who’s neglectful actions were at that very moment mounting harm on me, and my ‘friend’ talk about how crazy I was (and I’m sure I was, obviously). I took out IFX’s knife, which he sharpened obsessively, and figured this was as good a place and as good a time as any to bring the pain I was in to an end. But, pressing the edge of that blade into my wrist, I realized how easy it would be to go that way; how a truely sharp instrument really wouldn’t hurt at all. That wasn’t what I wanted, after all. I wanted him to hurt the way he had hurt me and I wanted to stop hurting. I kicked my ‘friend’s’ door and screamed some obscenities, left the building, walked to the parking lot in the strip mall next door where the IFX626 was parked and there, in broad daylight, in full view of several onlookers, took his knife and slashed his tires.

In all honesty I felt some relief; enough to face a few more days, but not much more. Yet that was my condition when I reached out for help. I was afraid to die but I didn’t know how to live. I couldn’t continue on, yet I couldn’t stop. After the knife story I had just enough left in me to propel myself in the direction of someone who could show me the way out of the mess my life had become. It took several months, though, to discern who in ‘the rooms’ had a solution. If you’re new to recovery and you’re doing the 12 step thing the way I am, give yourself some time there. Don’t feel compelled to talk at each and every meeting. Be present. Be still. See who only shares when they’re called on and among those see who reaches out to new people. Listen for them to talk about hopelessness and about finding a solution. Find one of the people that does those things and who you think you might be able to trust, introduce yourself to them and demand that they show you how they did it. They will. They’ll be more than glad too.

It’s good to be sober, today. It’s good to be alive. By the grace of God I haven’t had to imbibe, ingest, inhale or inject anything to change who I am today and for a guy like me that’s a miracle.

Thank God it’s Friday!

Wow. What a week. I’ve learned allot. I’ve accomplished some; some more than had been accomplished by my predecessor in the last 6 months, which is a good thing. I’ve got more ideas than when I stepped into the job, which I think means I won’t be a one hit wonder in terms of getting shit done. It’s good. It’s very good.

On the down side, I haven’t picked up a pen to work on inventory in 5 days, but I have lost my keys, not once, but twice, and the second time seemingly permanently. Which would seem to indicate to me that my feet aren’t exactly on the ground. I’m really looking forward to this 3 day weekend to get myself grounded again, refresh my relationship with God, work with another addict, do laundry. Enjoy the garden we planted last weekend.

Get more than 6 hours of sleep.

On the good side of the coin, I seem to be able to sit in a meeting with IFX without much anxiety; even to feel some compassion toward him.

I’ve got to find my keys now.

We are the Actors, He is the Director

Well, actually, I am. At least from 9 to 5. Today I start my new job as the Alternative Donations Director for the NFP that I work for. I’ll be in charge of leasing or purchasing warehouse space in Boise and Nampa, Idaho and setting up manned donation centers in them, developing our corporate giving program and soliciting those gifts, writing grants to fund various programs, developing a work skills development program for our clients as well as a marketable service to employ those participants, build community relations and use those to create opportunities for our supporters to give in all ways other than the ones currently being used.

I know about half of what I need to know to do this job well. I’m relying on the fact that I’m bright and happen to know a lot of people in this town to help me learn the rest. I may be ‘the director’ but I’m not the expert. It’s a far cry from the cheesy part time job that a month ago I didn’t dare apply for and didn’t think I deserved; that, considering who I had become, I didn’t deserve. Let me explain.

I’m not the kind of guy who gets to do things like this. I’m not the kind of guy who gets to be recognized as valuable. I can’t be a friend. I can’t be a good son. I can’t pay my rent or bills. In fact I had all of the symptoms of a spiritual malady described on page 52 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous;

“We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people.”

Overcoming that, or any part of it, could hardly have been done on my own. While the success I have been given isn’t promised till the 9th step, it is an answer to the 3rd step prayer:

” . . . build with me and do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love and Thy way of life.”

I may be a director in this tiny area of the temporal plane, but my Creator is the director of my life. My job is the execution of the ordered direction of His thought.