Overheard in Recovery: Freedom

One of the "secrets" of recovery is to stay away from resentments, something tough for an alcoholic or addict. Addiction feeds on resentments, loves them, turns them into giant mountains.

One of the classic ways of dealing with resentments is found in one of the stories in the back of the Big Book of AA. It is titled "Freedom from Bondage" and is one of the best stories that sums up the AA program. The anonymous writer gives her solution, which she credits to some unnamed clergy writing in an unnamed magazine. It is classic recovery-

And actually works.

If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.
--Alcoholics Anonymous, P. 552

Seventy-Five Years of Recovery

April 1939:
Alcoholics Anonymous publishes the first edition of its basic text, known to most as the "Big Book."

Now in its Fourth Edition it continues to be a source of hope and inspiration, not to mention instruction and direction, for millions.

Closing the Dome

It was a cold and windy day- well- at least it wasn't the start of a bad novel. Sunday, December 29, 2013 was the day for the last game - ever - at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The Vikings were closing the place down after 32 seasons. We were there for the last Twins game, so why not the last Vikings game?

Noise!!!  One of the hallmarks of the Dome. On 3rd down, for the opposing team, of course, it was time for noise. Most fans didn't need to be reminded, but, hey, that's part of the hype.

I wonder what the Viking will do for the next couple years when the team will be playing outside at TCF Bank Stadium at the U?

I have a hunch he'll still be standing around like this. I know I won't be there in the cold to watch.

Two touchdowns kept the crowd noise up, needless to say.

No. Those are not some new-fangled blue plastic handcuffs the officer is holding. They are old-fangled blue plastic cup holders that have been attached to the seats. Some adventurous person, now  being arrested, had decided he wanted a souvenir. Maybe a copy of the ticket he will be paying will make up for the loss of the cup holders.

There was the presence of security. These yellow-garbed event staff calmly walked around the field as the fourth quarter began.


They were not going to allow any stray fans to get on the field. No destruction was going to happen today. I guess it's a Metrodome version of take only pictures, leave only everything else.

Within the next couple weeks the demolition will begin. The Metrodome will go the way of the old Metropolitan Stadium or some of the other iconic stadiums around the country.

I have only been to four football games at the Dome, but it was a fun place. (I saw Brett Favre play for the Packers and set a record here.) I for one am glad that the new stadium will have a roof. It was cold last Sunday (didn't get above 0 degrees F.) with a bitter windchill. 

The new stadium will be in the same place. I may never be able to afford tickets to see my Packers play the Vikings in the new stadium, but at least the old Dome gave me that chance.

But perhaps my greatest memory of the Metrodome for me will  be the first time I ever set foot under that inflated Teflon. It was Friday, June 30, 2000. The Twins were on the road, but over 50,000 people gathered in the Dome for the Flag Ceremony and Open Meeting for the 65th Anniversary International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous. Over 50,000 SOBER people cheering and celebrating. The bars in town were not happy, but we were.

Here's the link to my post in 2009 after the last Twins game.

Time Keeps on Marching

Twenty-five years...
One Day at a Time...
Easy Does It...

and

Acceptance is the key to all my problems.

 Pretty much sums up what I am celebrating today.

Oh- and since the Promises in the Big Book say that we will be amazed before we are  half-way through....

I am still amazed at what each day brings.

Must mean I am only half-way through.

Thanks to all my family and friends for support and love throughout all these days.

Overheard in Recovery: Anger

They didn't mean it as a take-off on an old line about Jesus and life, but I heard it that way:

Know anger, no happiness
No anger, know happiness.

One of those truisms heard around 12-Step meeting tables is that for those in recovery issues of anger are downright poisonous. They will, without question, build in dangerous thoughts and finally into a relapse. It comes from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous where Bill W. and friends said:

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.[Emphasis added.]

Anger is a barrier, a block that keeps what Bill W. called the "sunlight of the Spirit." I believe from what I have seen over the years that this is not even a "dubious luxury of normal men." The pain that anger engenders is devastating. It tears people, families, communities and nations apart. Anger undermines any possibility for hope.

Anger is often appropriate when someone hurts you, of course. But what do you do with it? How does it eat away at you as you seek revenge or retribution? That is the point where anger moves from a human emotion to a primal or primitive survival reaction.

Underneath anger is often a secondary emotion. It is a response to hurt, fear, embarrassment, sadness. When one is anger we feel as if we can at least do something. Strike back! In reality whether the anger is directed outward and hurts other or turns inward and hurts ourselves (our self) it can destroy more than it can build.

Righteous anger can even be worse. Righteousness is always a difficult foundation on which to build anger. It justifies and gives permission to do something that can hurt others. It is far better to take that energy of anger and turn it somewhere helpful, positive and hopeful. It is better to build with it rather than tear down.

As the anonymous quote at the top said, the result will be happiness.

Grassroots Religion

Nora Gallagher is a wise and spiritual writer. She has a way of exposing and celebrating the depth of life that is possible with God as part of what you experience every day. In her most recent book, Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic, she talks about what happened when her alcoholic father got sober. She describes what happened when he and his AA friends would come to their house:

They talked freely and openly about falling down drunk, about lying in the ditch, and about running out of any other option besides this Higher Power. If you had fallen off the edge, I understood finally, you could talk about God. Their stories were "grassroots religion..." (p. 14)

So simple, yet so true. The stories of recovering alcoholics and addicts perhaps come the closest to miracle stories of our day. There's nothing mysterious about them until you try to explain them; there's nothing unusual about them other than their straightforward honesty.

What would happen if we tried this in church. No, really try it, not as an experiment, or a time of witness and testimony in the rest of the ritual. What if this was THE ritual? What if the down-to-earth honesty were the rule and not the exception? What if religion was "grassroots" rooted?

The miracle stories of the Bible might begin to make sense in the 21st Century as reality and truth, rather than challenges to scientific theory. The passion of the early disciples might be the passion we feel within us. The desire to live and share might take on new dimensions in seeing "attraction rather than promotion." Our community of faith might begin to live by "principles rather than personalities."

Sure I'm an idealist. But without such a vision and hope we won't get anywhere.

Grassroots religion for the 21st Century.

The First Word

We used a slightly different creed this morning in worship. It was one where the priest asked a question:

Do you believe in God, the Father?

and the congregation responded:

We believe in God the Father.

As I recited the words my mind grabbed on to the first word of our response:

We.

Each of the following sections began the same way:

We believe...

As I continued to confess my faith with this creedal formulation, it took on a different meaning than it usually does. I was no longer just stating what "I" as a lone congregant believed; I was no longer standing there with some individualistic stance. I was part of a group- or better, a community. I was not alone. We were holding each other up in the various levels of belief that may have been present this morning. It also meant that I didn't have to have a full certainty of belief myself. The community was there, and continues to be there, even when I am struggling. There is no such thing, some used to say, as a "lone Christian."

My mind then multi-tasked to a question that most in Alcoholics Anonymous would be familiar with:

What's the first word of the First Step?

The answer, obviously, is:

We.

Again, it is not something the individual alcoholic, active or recovering, can do alone.  

We are in this together.

Humbled and Silent

I sat listening to a great deal of talk about God. It’s not usually that specific, but this was a night about

Step 2: Came to believe

Reading from a chapter To The Agnostic.

The members talked; I listened as I often do on that subject; a “professional”

                Spiritual person needs to remain silent in the face of

                The Words of God being spoken so eloquently.

Honest Theology flowing

From the heart split by pain and alcohol

Visions of God shared

From dark days long gone yet ever so present

In memory or ever so real possibility

Words of Grace received

When not worthy; never worthy, really;

Filling the cracks and

black holes

with Light

                and

                                wonder.

I listen in silence to a sermon far

                Better than any I ever preached.

No big words filling the spaces,

                No deep, unintelligible thoughts

Instead a common experience of

                Uncommon awakening.

The humble moment of gratitude not just for their experiences

But because they are mine as well.

The empowerment of the

                Powerless by a

                Power greater than any of us;

Shared through each of us

                To all of us.

Recovery!

The Answer

It is probably the most often quoted passage in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. It is, many will tell you, The Answer. I agree. It is on page 417 in the 4th edition, page 449 in the 3rd. Dennis S. quoted it to me and introduced me to its importance over two decades ago. I strive to live it each and every day. It is why this week with the theme of acceptance is so much fun for me.

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life —unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” He forgot to mention that I was the chief critic. I was always able to see the flaw in every person, every situation. And I was always glad to point it out, because I knew you wanted perfection, just as I did. A.A. and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God and we each have a right to be here. When I complain about me or about you, I am complaining about God’s handiwork. I am saying that I know better than God.

A Daily Reprieve

In Alcoholics Anonymous they report that the recovering alcoholic is always in danger of using again. What they have, it says, is "a daily reprieve" based on how we maintain our spiritual life.

I thought of that the other day when the Hebrew Bible lesson was read on Sunday in Church. It is the passage in the wilderness where the people are getting bored with an unchanging menu of manna. Morning and night, no variation, manna. Each day like the one before. And on weekends, enough for the Sabbath so no one has to work to gather any. Hoard it- and it goes bad. Take all you need, but don't try and store it.

There is nothing but manna in front of us.

Only manna.

Only manna?

Enough to eat. Sure it isn't the "gourmet" food of a slave in Egypt. No meat and veggies. Just manna. Just a daily miracle.

All they have is a daily miracle. A daily reprieve from starving in a desert wilderness. A daily gift, right there. No questions asked.

How narrow and selfish we humans can be. We even get bored with miracles. We even get tired of the same old miracle day in and day out.

Like a sunrise or sunset.

Like a newborn child.

Like the possibility of love and hope and relationship with family and friends.

Like growing closer and closer to God.

Auntie Mame: Oh, Agnes! Here you've been taking my dictations for weeks and you haven't gotten the message of my book: live!
Agnes Gooch: Live?
Auntie Mame: Yes! Live! Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!

Life is a spiritual banquet. Yet so often we starve in our boredom. Our spirits wilt and shrink because we can't see the miracle of the everyday all around us.

A 76-Year Memory: Taking the First Step

June 10, 1935-

By James Poniewozik

Bill Wilson, a stockbroker and a drunk from Brooklyn, N.Y., thought he had found the secret of kicking the bottle. But on a business trip to Akron, Ohio, in May he found himself outside a bar, tempted and desperate. In the past, he had fought the urge by talking to other alcoholics, who truly understood his struggle. Through a church group, he found local surgeon Robert Holbrook Smith.

Dr. Bob and Bill W., as Alcoholics Anonymous members know them, promised to keep each other sober, following Bill W.'s strategy: a simple set of principles—later refined into 12 steps—that would become the foundation of America's self-help culture. Alcoholics, he said, must admit they are powerless over their addiction. They must make amends to all those they have harmed. And they must submit to God—however they define the deity.

The advice did not immediately take. Dr. Bob went to Atlantic City, N.J., for a convention; several days later, he showed up at the Akron train station, smashed. On June 10, the dried-out but still jittery doctor was due in surgery. That morning, Bill W. gave Dr. Bob a bottle of beer—to steady his scalpel hand. The operation was a success. The beer was Dr. Bob's last. And the two men pledged that day to work to bring Bill W.'s principles to other alcoholics, one day at a time.
--Time

Overheard in Recovery: Re-engineering

An optimist sees the glass as half-full
A pessimist sees the glass as half-empty
An engineer wants to re-engineer the glass.

Which is what recovery is all about. Optimism has its place, of course. It is the source of hope. But in recovery we discover that our lives are no longer able to hold the hope thanks to the addiction that has been hijacking our brains and flooding our neurotransmitters with false chemicals and signals.

So the only thing that we have to change - is everything.

In order to do that we have to work at re-engineering, rewiring the brain through new ways of thinking and acting. We turn our lives over to the care of a higher power- someone that can guide us when the old ways come back.

Then the longer we work at it, the better we get, the more the shape of the glass of our lives fits the new way of living- sobriety.

Roger E. Breaks Anonymity

A wonderful, top-quality recovery post today from Roger E. about his membership for 30 years in Alcoholics Anonymous. I am sure he will get criticism from some in AA and the recovery community for breaking his anonymity. Some of that may or may not be justified. But he does a good job telling his own story with wit and grace, which he has plenty of. He is a wise essayist and worth reading. He also has some You Tube clips related to alcoholism from The Lost Weekend, Days of Wine and Roses, and Clean and Sober. He also does a nice job of moderating comments.

One thing struck me that may be the most important part of his story. Here is a guy who for 30 years has been hobnobbing with the wealthy, the elite, the celebrity in many places where alcohol is free and very free-flowing (Think Cannes and Sundance and Toronto.) In all that he has remained sober! No relapse. He says that AA has taken away the desire to drink. Some in AA will whine about a little party or sitting in a bar/restaurant and crave that drink. It overpowers them; overwhelms their senses.

Yet what Roger E. and many others will attest to is that it doesn't have to be that way. The desire and need and craving and urge to drink will be taken away.

For today, in this 24 hours, reading Roger's story is what my Higher Power has decided to send me. Roger at 30 years, me at 20+ still need each other and others to remind us

• what we used to be like
• what happened and
• what we are like (or can be like) today.

Thanks, Roger.

Liquid Courage Promises

Anyone who has ever heard an inebriated person make promises knows the truth about what science is now proving. According to Wired Science last week "Emptied Flask Makes for Empty Promises."

It may seem obvious to most of us that drunken promises don’t mean much, but apparently two German researchers weren’t so sure. Using 60 undergrads as guinea pigs, they designed a randomized control trial to test the effects of alcohol on a person’s commitment to unrealistic goals.

“People may indicate being determined to reach their goals after having consumed alcohol,” wrote the researchers in the August edition of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, “but once sober again, they do not walk the talk.”

The researchers set up a fancy study with a placebo to show what happens. After four drinks they asked both groups to make commitments. Four drinks, to an alcoholic, is barely a good evening out. But to non-alcoholics it is the point past which you don't like to go very often. It definitely puts you into the binge drinking category and almost certainly into too drunk to drive.

Well, in no surprise to me and anyone who has ever worked with alcoholics, the results were just what you would expect.

[D]runk people ignore reality and think they can do just about anything, a condition scientists have aptly labeled “alcohol myopia.”

The researchers say their results can help explain why people who don’t have high hopes for success are more likely to abuse alcohol.

In other words people who are low in hope use alcohol to find it. And it seems, they have as much success as those who try to find liquid courage. They don't talk about any of the possible reasons in the article at Wired Science but those who study the physical effects of alcohol know the easy reason for this.

The first place alcohol affects is the "higher" brain processes- thinking and judgment, rational decision making, and the ability to use logic in a logical way. The result is what we often call the lack of "inhibitions" that keep us on an even, sane path with at least some semblance of logic.

One of the difficulties is that the more this happens, the more people seem to give over the rational control to the non-rational. In other words, it appears that the illogical aspect that alcohol initiates actually becomes in certain settings and situations the "Normal" or "Default" approach. Hence the levels of denial and minimizing that are symptoms of alcoholism/addiction. Hence the inability to stop even when things are going south more quickly than we would want.

As I have said before, though, one of the aspects of recovery is that we can learn to be able to utilize the logical processes again. The brain re-wires itself, so to speak, to allow the rational parts to be able to seriously and eventually successfully, challenge the illogic. AA for example begins to work on this at first by getting people to change their behavior- to act their way into a new way of thinking. (Keep coming back- it works.)

Cognitive behavioral training works on the thinking process itself. (as does AA with its Twelve Steps and group support.) Cognitive behavioral work helps people to catch the illogical thinking based on the lack of inhibitions, to slow down the time from thinking of using to actually using.

Put together these two are probably the best opportunities to develop long-term sobriety. In spite of what critics on both sides say, they are no mutually exclusive. In fact the 12-steps are a behavior modification program based on a cognitive model developed before cognitive therapy was in any kind of use.

In short. it does work. And a thanks to the researchers who over and over again prove what many of us see anecdotally which gives us all a sense of relief that we may know what we are talking about.

Supply - or Demand

I was listening to Marketplace on Public Radio Tuesday when they had a story about the 40th "anniversary" of the war on drugs. They pointed out that most of the money spent in this war has been on the side of stopping the "supply" side of the issue, that is keeping the drugs from getting to the US in the first place. The speaker noted that this has had the effect of giving Colombian and Mexican forces new toys to play with.

Yet most studies and "experts" tell us that the best way to "win" this "war" is through decreasing the demand, not the supply. (And you don't do that by upping the criminality, no-choice sentencing, etc.) You do this through prevention and treatment. Prevention is education and cultural shifting that reduces the numbers who start in the first place. No, this is not a pipe dream (oops, sorry.) If 25 years ago I had told you that smoking would be outlawed in many public places you would have called me crazy. (No, I wasn't crazy enough to think it possible.) Yet that is what has happened. Who says it can't happen with other drugs?


Then there's treatment. This means providing the opportunity for good, solid, effective treatment for those who abuse and get addicted. Even if only 10 - 15% of those in treatment "get it" and stay clean, that would be a significant reduction.

Now I work on the demand side of this equation. I see miracles each day as people discover a clean and sober life. I see more than 10-15% of people "getting" recovery. Perhaps it is time to get rid of the war language. To imply or work from a violent metaphor when what we want is a far different lifestyle is to be working against ourselves. No wonder there are drug wars to keep the supply going. It's just the other side of the war fighting back.

In good synchronicity as I got up to get a coffee refill a moment ago I looked across the shop. There, sitting at the corner table, were two people in a significant discussion. On the table in front of them were two books- Alcoholics Anonymous (The Big Book) and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. They were doing what this post is all about- staying sober. That is done with one alcoholic (or addict) helping another alcoholic (or addict) discover how to stay sober (and clean).

Isn't that a whole lot better sounding than waging war?

An Anniversary
Today (June 10) is the day known in Alcoholics Anonymous as Founder's Day. It is considered the day of the founding of the first AA group with Dr. Bob and Bill W. In the past 20 - 30 years AA has become so relatively commonplace that it hard to imagine a time when alcoholics were shuttled away to asylums or sanitariums or dark corners of hospital wards. They were incurable. There was nothing- absolutely nothing- that could be done. Very sad, people said, but so very true.

Of course watching the behaviors of many of the alcoholics then and now (just read the newspaper) you can understand why they were locked away. But today many people do not end up in asylums, jail, or dead. A lot still do because they still misunderstand the power of addiction and of alcohol as a highly addictive mood-altering drug. But more and more people are discovering recovery.

So today, 72 years into AA's history, we say Happy Founder's Day- and thank God for AA.

Dryblog (where I was reminded of today's significance, has some good links to things like the Time article that ranks this date as one of the 80 days that changed the world and places to go to hear mp3s of Bill W. and Dr. Bob. Good stuff.

Some More on Mindfulness
Thinking a little more about what I posted yesterday made me ponder what John Kabat-Zinn wrote in his book, Full Catastrophe Living. Kabat-Zinn, the director of the stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, uses mindfulness as the center of his program. Based on principles he has learned and synthesized from many places, Kabat-Zinn has developed a wondrous insight and wisdom about what helps bring about human health.

The Five Remembrances from yesterday can be an essential foundation to that mindfulness. Kabat-Zinn has seven foundations to mindfulness that includes two which fit the remembrances. These two are:

Acceptance:
Acceptance is seeing things as they actually are in the present. It does not mean that you have to like everything or take a passive attitude or feel hopeless. It simply means that you have a willingness to see things as they are at this moment. To do anything else is to be in denial (my word) of what is truly happening.

Letting Go:
This is non-attachment, letting our experiences be what they are from moment to moment. This is the natural outgrowth of acceptance truly and deeply practiced. When one sees things as they are and starts from an understanding that this is the way it is at this moment, we stop fighting the moment or seeking to hide our head in the sand.

But yes, I am an activist so I affirm again we are not talking about passiveness. We don’t know what needs changing- and what we have the ability to work to change- until we have discovered what is. That includes discovering ourselves- being mindful of who we are, where we fit in the great scheme of things, and what our skills, gifts, or even calling might be.

A number of years ago in the AA big book, one of the stories had a passage about all of this that has become a central focus for many people in recovery. Here is part of what it says:

Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today... I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposes to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
(p. 417 in 4th Edition)

Such can be the beginning of our own mindfulness and serenity.