Carrying the message

Recently an old friend of mine reached out for help, he was trying to stop drinking and wanted to attend an AA meeting. This brings the count of people that I grew up and drank with who have at least attempted sobriety, into the double digits.

There was a point in time where I was very concerned that my friends would look upon me as weak-willed for joining AA and getting sober. I tried very hard to keep my anonymity protected for fear of judgment. However, rumors being what they are, word got out there pretty quickly anyway. The list of friends who were willing to talk to me dropped off precipitously during my first year of sobriety. At the time I was so scared of drinking I just dealt with it by doing step work and complaining to my sponsor, but I stayed the path of sobriety.

After a year or two the feelings of shame and loneliness began to lift and I was more open with my friends about what I had done. Some seemed genuinely happy for me, some were still cool to the idea. I never pushed my beliefs on anyone, and said thing like "I have nothing against drinking, I just can't do it anymore."

Then came the day when I started getting requests for help from the very people who had distanced themselves from me. It seemed I had been living a life that showed them that AA worked, and that I had changed. There was a life after alcohol.

As far as I am concerned, this form of "carrying the message" was something I never planned, or even knew I was doing. It has also been the most fulfilling. To be of service to old friends like this can not be measured in words. I am truly blessed to be of service.

Of course, it also says that I hung out with a lot of drunks... but there you have it.

Detachment

I recently ran across this comment by Thomas Merton:

Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see.
-New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York: New Directions Books), p 21

Detachment does not mean abandonment of the world in search of a spirituality that is separate from the world.  It means perspective, and with perspective, humility.  As one of my favorite AA slogans says, if it's not practical, it's not spiritual.

I have spoken in this blog about the 'get sane quick schemes' I engaged in when I was drinking.  The various things I tried, such as  meditation and yoga, were good in themselves but they became 'get sane quick schemes' for me because I was using them in pursuit of a disembodied spirituality.  I thought there was some healthy pink cloud I could enter that would make me feel good about the world and (especially) myself without changing anything in the world or in myself.  I was seeing 'spiritual' detachment precisely as a separation from reality, rather than a principled, spiritual engagement with it, contributing to changing it and myself.  Unless I'm seriously misreading Merton, that is what he means when he talks about seeing and using things in and for God.

It takes a long time

It takes a long time to become young. - Picasso
That is a good summary of my experience in AA.  As I mentioned in my reply to Maggie Lamond Simone, while it is possible to use AA as a sort of post-detox, a way to learn how to 'just don't drink', if a person limits their AA practice to that they are cheating themselves.  Basically, that makes being a dry drunk the goal and, while that's better than being a wet drunk, it still sucks.

Meetings and meditation reinforce each other

The entire AA program is about personal transformation.  Soon after we enter the fellowship we realize that stopping drinking will never be enough; we have to become new people.  Going through the Steps gives us the solid framework for the transformation, but the transformation, the rewiring of our persons, only comes when it is hammered in through the repetition of meetings and the 10th, 11th, and 12th Steps.  Our trips through the Steps with our sponsors, at retreats, or in AWOLs tell us how we should view the world and behave, but that only becomes an ingrained part of us through repetition.  Spirituality has to become a habit and then grow into just how we are.

The Dark Night of the 12 Year Itch

I have written before about the '12 Year Itch', that dry spot people tend to hit when they reach double digit sobriety, often leading to a relapse.  I firmly believe that this is a sign that we are reaching a new stage in our spiritual growth, in facing ourselves and seeing what and who we are.  


My observation (admittedly of the limited sample of AAs I know)  is that this itch can take two forms, depending on the AA's program. (I'm generalizing here.  There are, of course, exceptions to this pattern.)  For those who have spent 10 or so years 'just going to meetings and not drinking' it is a spiritual depression that almost always leads to a relapse, usually lasting years.  For those who have been seriously working the steps it leads to a deeply felt spiritual crisis that often includes a short but nonetheless extremely painful relapse, sometimes lasting as little as a few days.  This crisis is characterized by a feeling of confusion and loss and the experience that the program just isn't working. The AA is resolved to renew their spiritual journey but is usually at a loss as to how.  (Hint: You're REALLY ready for very hard, temporarily unsatisfying Step 11 work and a Step 12 that organically grows out of 11.)


As I have said before, this type of crisis is a known stage in the spiritual path, one that has been written about in popular literature (for example, Willam Styron's Darkness Visible) as well as in all of the great spiritual traditions.  In the Christian mystical traditions is often referred to as the Dark Night of the Sense and of the Soul.

I am not my ego but my ego thinks it's me

One of the gifts of the 11th Step is a gradual (at least for me) realization that I am not my thoughts, emotions, character defects, character assets, in short, all those things that constitutes what I normally refer to as my self.

This bundle of naughty and nice makes up what Thomas Keating calls the 'false self', constructed through our confusing happiness with the gratification of the instincts of the child: security, power/control, affection/esteem, and approval.  The false self promises happiness but leads us to a necessarily unfulfilled life, in my case one where I was constantly slightly pissed off at the world and every bit as fun to be around as that implies.  But meditation shows me, in a very real, direct way, that while I have these characteristics they are not what I am.

Meetings are good; the 11th Step is essential

Last night an AA I recently met told me that he tried to stop drinking for 23 years.  All that time he came to AA meetings and followed the advice he kept getting: "Just don't drink and come to meetings."  He kept pointing out to people that this wasn't exactly working for him and the reply was pretty much always "keep coming back."  Finally someone suggested that he try working the Steps.  For 23 years the only tool he was offered was meetings.  Using the Steps he has now been sober for 5 years.