Boozaholic

 

So, what about this "Letting go and letting God"? How very, very hard that is to comprehend, let alone do. A God Box? Daily prayers? Giving up self will? What does it all mean? 

Try this, if your feeling anxiety about something take a moment to take your self out of it. Ask three people with GOOD sobriety what they think (2nd hint: you should have them in your speed dial). If you get three different suggestions then you have a hard path to travel. I will clue you in... You NEVER get three different answers. 

My first year of sobriety I was crazy over a wedding I had to go to. I obsessed about the wedding toast, the toast , the toast , the toast! I was going to be surrounded by drinkers and I was going to have a glass in my hand. Should I do ginger ale? Should I bring the champagne to my lips but not drink? Should I drop into a fetal ball and cry with ABANDON? Maybe chew on a table cloth? 

All three people I asked said "DON'T GO". 

I was stunned. 

A wedding, one of them said, is a celebration in a church; go to that, skip the reception. I am glad that I had such desperation in those first years that I would have done ANYTHING, even skip a reception. And so I did (not without a little self martyrdom...)

It is a tool that really helped me. And in the beginning I used it a lot.

I am so grateful to be around and living a full(ish) and happy(ish) life. I can not imagine what my world would be like if I still drank.

Around year four I felt like I was settling in, around year six I felt like I was settling FOR. Settling for: less of a life, less fun, less outrageousness, less… normality.  Also, I thought EVERYONE around me had a problem with booze. Everyone was an alcoholic. Loved ones, family members, people I worked with, people I saw out, people I sat next to on the bus - EVERYBODY! I am also grateful that my need to FIX their drinking problems didn’t last very long. Thank god. Also, everyone was having more fun than I was. They were doing more enjoying more letting loose and letting go. And that was a far cry from letting go and letting god. Let me tell you.
 

 
So what happened? Nothing much but time. Everyone doesn’t have a drinking problem, and after a while I could figure out which ones did, and let them know my story. People  really were having more fun than I was, but that’s because I didn’t know how to have fun - without booze. They went hand in hand for me.

 
I remember standing off to the side of a dance floor and wondering if I would ever be able to dance again. It took an inhibition I just didn’t feel I had anymore, all my freedoms were bottle-bought.

 
Now I dance. Also, I know how to have fun and not make people self conscience because I’m not drinking. Also, I remember the fun I have now. It isn’t a blurry mess of what I thought I had been doing and what everyone was telling me I actually did...  And most importantly, if I hadn’t sobered up; would I have ever taken a sober look at my life, and my daily actions? No, I would not have. Period. 

I have been in a blue funk all day. I finally got the photos developed from Patrick's camera; it was photo after photo of tall ships in the Rhode Island bay. Clear blue skies and white crests. When were the tall ships? It must have been years ago. There was, however, one of Patrick and his dad. It came out perfectly. They were standing in front of his old "big gay jeep", the bright yellow one! They looked like they were having a great day. Since Patrick was at the shore, I know he was.

Tonight's topic was rigorous honesty. "They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average." I wondered if Patrick knew that day that he was one of those unfortunates? That he would push that ONE LAST DRINK to the point of no returning.

I was thinking about him during the meeting because he was incapable of being honest about his drinking, except with me.

He wanted to count his sobriety date from the morning he went to his first transplant visit. I had gone to lunch with him that afternoon, as we were checking him in for tests. Two hours earlier he had been told that he would be on the transplant list. He was happy.

"He drank the night before." I thought to myself. 

One of the reasons he was so happy was that his doctors believed him when he said he had stopped drinking four years earlier. He got one over on them; to get on the list he felt he had too. I wasn't happy that day. I knew they were testing his blood ammonia levels. They do that with drunks, because it's high. "He’s not fooling anyone but himself" I thought: "Jesus! Maybe he has to lie, to get on the list. What was the other option? Wait another six months to a year, and if he were still alive try again? And be hospitalized and on dialysis until then?" Maybe he had to lie, maybe there was such a thing as: Too Much Honesty.

Flash forward a few months - If he had been honest, rigorously honest, his doctors would have run a simple test to determine if his airway was clear for a breathing tube. Instead all the alcohol induced varesies in his throat ruptured and filled his lungs with blood, which triggered a heart attack, which left him in a coma, from which he did not wake.

And so tonight I was thinking, How Rigorous? The answer: Very, very rigorous.