"The whole spiritual journey might be summed up as humble hope." Thomas Keating

Monday, May 30, 2011

I got better before I got well

I heard this at a meeting the other day.  The speaker was explaining his recurrent relapses over a period of 24 years.  Every time he stopped drinking things got better.  He felt better.  He was able to get a job.  He acquired material goods.  He developed relationships with women.  In other words, his sobriety was exactly what I imagined mine would be before I entered AA:  his prior life and values minus the booze.   The result, of course, was unhappiness and relapse.  


 AA is not about not drinking.  It is about living in such a way and following such values that you don't have any reason to anesthetize yourself with booze.  AA is about getting well.  I'm tempted to say that when you get well you can handle things getting better and in a way that's true.  The kicker is that the definition of 'better' changes.  You may get your job back or even get a better job.  You may end up in a nicer house with a nice car, etc.  But when you've gotten well, those things matter a LOT less.  Your goals and values change fundamentally.  To cite my favorite Flannery O'Connor quote: You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Why do we get sober?

For the last little while I've been thinking about the AA slogan "You can't get sober for someone else - you have to do it for yourself" and, well, I'm not sure it's all that simple.

My bottom came when I collapsed with alcohol induced heart failure and was expected not to make it.  I certainly felt that if I let go I would die and, in fact, I thought that was a pretty good idea.  Primarily I thought my wife would be better off with a second husband.  The thought then occurred to me that I could become that second husband and if I did I could make a lot up to her, so I decided to fight to recover.  The next day my wife and I agreed to launch a project we still call "Brian 2.0".  So, I can certainly say (as I usually do when I tell my story) that I started my recovery for someone else.  For myself I was pretty content with the thought of dying.  If I had decided on the basis of living for myself I would have just let go.

Now I know a lot of people who started for themselves, usually saying they just wanted the pain to stop.  "Sick and tired of being sick and tired."  Yet as they grow in recovery they talk about living for others.

I think we learn that to live for ourselves we have to live for others and in order to live for others we have to learn to care for and about ourselves, sort of to do unto ourselves as we would do unto others.  If we're going to love people, the cosmos, God.... we have to love all people, the entire cosmos, all of God and his/her universe and I guess, uncomfortable as saying it makes me, that means we have to love ourselves.  However, the crucial point is that self-love is not the goal, it is just a small but essential part of our spirituality.

So, the reason we decide to get sober, to enter recovery, is generally not the reason we continue on the spiritual path.  We may start for ourselves and grow to live for something greater, we may start for one person and grow to live for all.  Whatever direction it takes, it is a process of growth.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Anonymity

Last Sunday the New York Times published an article ‘Challenging the Second A in AA’ (http://xrl.us/bkhnum (Link to www.nytimes.com). I have the impression that we get this kind of attack on Anonymity about once a year. However amusing it may be to find it in the Fashion and Style section, the article still bothered me. If focuses almost exclusively on anonymity as a protection for the individual alcoholic from social abuse. Now, I personally think the author is nuts for claiming that there is no longer any stigma attached to drug addiction or alcoholism, but that (like most of the article) is beside the point. First, the author never touches on anonymity as a protection for the fellowship against the potentially damaging publicity from a famous self-proclaimed member going out.
Far more importantly, it is only at the very end that the author mentions the connection between anonymity and humility, yet this connection is the central point. It is critical that when people come into AA meetings they leave as much of their reputations behind as possible. I got sober in Cambridge MA and one of the local mottos there is “when you walk into a meeting you leave your degrees at the door.” It is very important that we enter AA as equals in our illness. We are there because we are sick and flawed, not because any accomplishments or disgraces on the outside. As sick and flawed people we want to heal and grow spiritually. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions and that fact is not changed by the social status of any particular alcoholic. The point is not protection from gossip or backstabbing; the point is maintaining an important spiritual tool.