Boozaholic

A toast to: Letting Go And Letting God

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:45:26 GMT

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 Everywhere...

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 20:40:37 GMT

The job is incredible. I fly around and stay at expensive hotels and eat in great restaurants... and work a tiny bit. I have been to a couple of meetings down here, they are closeted and a little too friendly. Where are the hard ass old-timers? Telling people to sit down and shut up seems so much ruder.

Now that the settling in is over I need to start thinking about the big picture. How do I integrate life, aa, creativity, health and job into one whole person?

Will in Durham!

Sun, 13 May 2007 22:25:10 GMT

The move went well and the job starts next Tues. The gay AA meetings seem lacking, but that has more to do with everyone down here being in the closet than anything else. Gay closets and sober closets, I need to find a larger meeting.

Sober New Year

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 18:47:56 GMT

Went to dinner and a house party, which was fun... but not how I wanted to ring in the new year. A friend and I hustled over to The Paradise and danced and danced. We flirted, we laughed, we waggled our light-up wrist straps, and, a little part of me couldn't help looking around and thinking: "How many of you guys will be joining me at another gathering in the coming weeks or months."

Celebrations that center exclusively around alcohol (St. Patrick's day ,weddings and graduations) are hard for sober people - Duh. But on the flip-side their very excesses can help a troubled person face the brutal truth about how out-of-control a life can become. I viewed New Years Eve, when I was drinking, as a pressure release valve. I spent just about every other weekend trying to control my drinking and would live almost daily with the mania of trying to keep my drinking "normal". So much cognitive energy spent on that meant I was often depressed. Depressed at my failures to keep to my agree upon number of drinks; or my inability to get home at a reasonable hour on a work night; or the nervous terror of waking up on my feet in some far off suburb of Boston. Only the lone blue tower above the skyline to guide my unsteady steps home. Being gay and drunk is not pretty at dawn.

Looking around at my dancing fellows I had a tinge of sadness. That one, over there in the corner, back against the wall and shaky on his feet. The older guy who had most of his clothes off imagining himself as he was twenty year earlier. The beautiful shirtless man who kept falling over while trying a dance dip. The crazy young man, also shirtless, who danced frantically with one surprised dancer and then another. I hope and pray that I will have the opportunity to see you all again. And soon.

Two guys walk into a bar...

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 01:22:33 GMT

"Let us also remember to guard that erring member the tongue, and if we must use it, let's use it with kindness and consideration and tolerance."

Bill Wilson: The first A.A. International Convention held in Cleveland July 28-30, 1950.

Screw That!

Well, it's what your thinking isn't it? I know I do... ALL the time. Well, maybe not all the time, but enough times to make me think about it. Am I so off base on this? Am I really supposed to stand by while some newbie prattles on - AND ON AND ON and then... GETS IT ALL WRONG!

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if I could take a few moments after each speaker shares to give them my thoughts? Share the wisdom of all these dry years. Meetings could become so on target. None of this failing language, fuzzy memory and tear-filled need that so many people have these days. I know that everyone "really understands" AA (usually along about the second meeting). But come on! Read the book! Or, don't bother, I'll Reader's Digest it for you... LISTEN TO ME! ME! ME! ME!

Me.

If fact, spare yourself public embarrassment and, BEFORE you speak, pull me aside to confer. I will polish it up for you. Pull out all the bad AA, maybe lead with a joke...

Alright, not just me. We'll make TEN YEARS our line in the sand (unless you're from New York, then it's 15). Nobody gets to speak until someone with at least ten years reviews your material. With exceptions. There are a couple of "old timers" that I keep a special sock in my pocket for, because one of these days I'm going to lunge across the floor and shove it down their throats (really, I'll show it to you if you ask me).

Grateful Dancing Queen

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 01:13:15 GMT

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.

A lovely Day, Lovely Day

Fri, 15 Sep 2006 21:55:16 GMT

I was sitting in my office today looking out my floor to ceiling windows towards the helipad on the next roof when I thought: Wow, when did the promises come true for me?

After twenty years I'm on a payment plan for my student loan... I SWORE I'd never pay that back! I have a perfectly good job (two actually) a small but servicable studio right downtown by the Symphony, and a morning commute that involves a stroll through a park. My friends check in with a regularity that has nothing to do with my ability to buy them drinks and I do things like poetry slams and twenty-somethings.

Rigorous Honesty.

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 03:28:05 GMT

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.

And on and on...

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:10:08 GMT

It's amazing how the little things in your day can bring you down. Puppies and kittens are going to be the death of me. I got handed a cat the other day damn it! Now I feel like Cartman screaming No KITTY! at seemingly random moments. I need to find some serenity, if I can find a moment when that kitten isn't trying to battle my feet to the death.

And as for puppies? Well "it's always something". If boozaholics couldn't argue at meetings about meetings during meetings then it just wouldn't be AA.If it wasn't bans on smoking (us old timers remember when the phrase smoke filled halls HAD MEANING!) then it was whether people should speak whatever's on their minds, whether there should even be a meeting for GAYS ONLY, whether it was OK to exclude people from a meeting if it was being held at your house, or keep meetings limited to the topic of AA (I want to be at the business meeting when THAT finally gets decided!). And now it's doggies, to have or to have not.

I am of two minds. My first thought: "Who cares?" how does this keep me sober, It doesn't seem to... so... who cares?. But wait, although I have spent years practicing blotting everything out in any meeting except the speaker, others are new and unskilled. They can be distracted by whispers and someone unwrapping a candy bar. I can sit in the back row with the puppies and knitters and gameboy players and chair shufflers with ease; I even made it through one memorable meeting with a guitar player next to me... not holding, playing (badly). I know that newbies can't do that. They are so easily pulled towards what ever the hell is going on around them. It is these newbies that I need to hear. They pull me back to my first year, the agony of wanting a new life and having no idea how to start living it (just go to meetings). I want to hear them. I will hear them if they get the message they need to hear and keep coming. I will not hear them if they don't "keep coming" because they were too distracted to hear. I will not hear them if they are petting animals; or, frustrated that someone else is petting animals and miss the point of the meeting (which is not to socialize - exactly...) and then start thinking that it is the fault of AA that nothing seems relevant to thier lives.

I learned a long time ago that we must carry the message of AA to the alcoholics in our meetings, NOT carry the alcoholic to the meeting for AA's message. And yet, and yet. Do we have to make it harder than it already is to hear, to participate?

Sometimes you have to give up on a meeting: god knows you won't catch me at the Tues. meeting for gay guys... But sometimes you have to give up the comfort of having your pet with you where ever you go. And, most importantly, you have to give up that comfort for YOU. You can not hear, or participate, in a meeting if you are worried about how your pet is behaving, and where he is, and whether or not your getting attitude about him/her. He/she made be a comfort to you, but he/she is also a distraction. So, here is my moral for today: Keep your eyes on the prize (how lame is that?)

Letter to a friend - Patrick J. Lynch

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:49:20 GMT

Ilene,

I was so sorry to have to break the news to you by phone. I know Patrick would have wanted me to tell you with my arms out and my shoulder ready. He was very sick, but things looked so hopeful that he didn’t want to frighten people until it was all over, and he could share a laugh and play-up the seriousness.

He wasn’t strong enough for the liver, when one became available. Afterwards his kidneys failed and he was put into heavy sedation and temporary paralysis. He was slowly improving each day - until one little infection. It was very short after that. I was with him at the end, I told him all his friends and loved ones were there with us in prayers and thoughts. When they stopped the machines he just went to sleep, I think you know what I mean by that.

I know how horrific this all is, and how difficult it is to be so far away… I sometimes feel like I am still waiting for something to happen. Something that will bring me back to that hospital room, that there will be one more chance.

I take great comfort in knowing that Patrick and I had so much time to talk. I wish you could have been there, in that room, but he wouldn’t let people who were one town away visit him, let alone great distances. I want you to have comfort knowing how happy your phone calls made him. He was very excited about seeing you, about all the plans for France. He made me read the DaVinci Code. He told me about “roadies” and the possibility of “groupies”. You have to imagine him filled with glee. That’s how I imagine him.

Will

What a difference One day can make.

Wed, 31 May 2006 18:40:24 GMT

Duration calculation results

From and including: Saturday, February 11, 1989
To, but not including : Wednesday, May 31, 2006

It is 6318 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date

Or 17 years, 3 months, 20 days excluding the end date

Alternative time units

6318 days can be converted to one of these units:

545,875,200 seconds
9,097,920 minutes
151,632 hours
902 weeks (rounded down)

Baby Steps / 12 Steps

Sat, 20 May 2006 14:43:27 GMT

Patrick is hanging on, doing better day by day. Sometimes hour by hour. I have spent so many hours praying and hoping and preparing for his end. And yet he crawls back, inches at a time: Baby steps. When I am there, alone in the room with him, I can't talk. I can't do anything but think, What was/is this live? What did/does it mean to me? What did/does it mean to Patrick?
Alcoholism and depression is a deadly combination. Years of isolation, depression and secret drinking has left a life in shambles. All the years of medications, all the "returns" to AA's halls all the rock bottoms. So many years to think about, so much stuff to go through, so many questions...

Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends -- this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.

Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly. It works, if we have the proper attitude and work at it. It would be easy to be vague about this matter. Yet, we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions.

AA's Big Book

We have lost him.

Tue, 16 May 2006 03:59:01 GMT

4:30. I walked back into the unit to find a dozen people scurrying everywhere. Hovering over him. He had gone into arrest and was being intubated. He went into the induced coma at 4:30 as best as I can tell. I sat and cried all evening. One little man in the corner of a bloody room, weeping. Tonight I pray.

Very, very sick.

Mon, 15 May 2006 19:26:27 GMT

I got the call that Patrick is being shipped out to the Surgical Intensive care unit. He looks awful and his kidneys have failed. They will try dialysis tonight, he should get better. But for now he is pathetic, mummbling and moaning in half deliriums about what he wants, what he needs.

Gay and Sober in Boston.

Tue, 09 May 2006 15:17:02 GMT

Sometimes being gay boston sober and going through a "Rough Patch" is made even harder by... well... gay boston sober people. I need to sit quietly and listen when I'm struggling with something. I need to hear that one thing that will get me through. I do NOT need needy people who need to self affirm. Sometimes it's not about the experience of drinking, the strengths we pray for to overcome our need, and our hopes (and fears) for our future; sometimes it's just about patting our self on the back. And I am in no mood for smug smiling people. So fuck off.

I feel better.

Maybe a meeting is in order for tonight... but NOT a gay meeting!

I'm having a "Too Bright Colors" day.

Mon, 08 May 2006 15:34:51 GMT

Everything hurts my eyes. I can't stand the sun today, the colors are just too bright. I am restless and yearning but can't figure out what for. I feel a little dead inside today. People keep asking me if I'm alright, when they catch me unguarded. It's just pain and emotions. I have gotten comfortable with them since sobriety, since opening myself up to them. But the looking at them and the feeling of them are very different things. Especially today. Today I hate beauty, and loveliness makes me want to cry.

Bostonwill's new facial hair.

Fri, 05 May 2006 16:06:20 GMT

gay boston

I like this pic, it makes me feel monumental. AAers LOVE feeling that

Or not.

Fri, 05 May 2006 15:59:21 GMT

One half hour after Patrick was scheduled for surgery I got a call in my office from his surgeon. I went clammy mmediately. "Mr. Weeden, you are a friend of Patrick L***'s?" at the time, I didn't notice the present tense of the verb, my body felt like lead and I thought It has happened, he has died, tears welled up in me. "Mr Weeden the surgery didn't go on as expected..." something gave out, I thought. My officemate was staring at me by then. "His heart went into an irregular rhythum and we had to cancel." Cancel. What happened was: He went to sleep hoping he would wake up with a new liver, and he did wake. And then, they told him no, no liver.

Truly and profoundly a sad moment, and all he said through the tears was "I WANT A GODDAMN CHOCOLATE BAR!"

12:57, Count-down to a new life.

Tue, 02 May 2006 17:06:43 GMT

Patrick L is about to get his new liver. After a bad week at the hospital, failing kidneys, he recovered enough to go home. I didn't think he should. His Doctors didn't think he should. He got to spend a few hours puttering about before going to bed at 3:30am. He got the call at 5:30am, some tragedy somewhere had the benefit of a caring soul who was willing to sign a donor card. He is probably done with the pre-op by now at 12:57pm. In the next few moments he will go under and have the pre operative placement of the things that need to be placed. At 2:00pm they will begin. It should be over 6 to 8 hours later, barring any complications. He was very emotional, yet resigned. I was there when they read the surgical consent to him: "did he understand that one of the complications might be death?" Hard medicine to swallow. I said "I love you" and now I wait, and pray.

Meetings, Meetings get to meetings.

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:04:48 GMT

I have been very depressed since, trying to reclaim parts of my life and asking myself if I really want them anymore. Cruising cruising. Went to a meeting last Thursday, Park St Church, saw a cute guy I think I know from Mondays. Going to a meeting tonight, probably Wensday's meeting too. I know they will help. They always do. Patrick is sick again, but his house is clean. His liver (drinking) and his depression did a number on that poor space. It was all very "NEWS AT ELEVEN!" shocking. He is having tantrums at the hospital and is very bad this morning. Cleaning his house has kept me sober today.

Love Pain

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:07:37 GMT

Boy o boy, when I want to verbally bitch slap someone I can cause some damage. I should have gone to a meeting last night. I know it, I knew it last night. Why hang around to pick a fight? Why? What is it about last words/ parting shots? Why lie around, in the dark, waiting for someone to drop by when you told them you wouldn't be there? Has any drunk ever said what they meant to say? How can we spend hours and hours thinking of just the right words to say and not know, with certainty, that in the end our words will be swept away on a tide of emotions, willy nilly hither and fro. And always with the same result: Waking up the next morning to the shock of "WHAT HAVE I DONE!"

That which does not kill us can sometimes damage us for life. A crippled broken thing. Never whole or well again. Never the same as before.

How can all this step-work come to nothing? I should have gone to that meeting last night. I know it now; I knew it then.

In all things: truth and honesty. Yeah.

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:09:32 GMT

I broke a confidence and read something I shouldn't have. I came clean 2 weeks later, but you can imagine how it went. How dishonest am I in pursuit of truth? Why would someone lie to me? Is it really to keep me from pain? I am in pain, that failed. There is a difference between what's "a secret" and what is "private" I have things I keep private, but I try to have no secrets - nothing in my live should be SO private, that there isn't someone to tell. What does a guy like me do when he meets someone who can not keep from lying. About everything, each little utterance is embellished with something. It drives me crazy. Patrick L made the list for a new liver. That is good news, may he not drink this one away.

Why do men avoid relationship discussions?

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 21:04:56 GMT

I don't know.. maybe PAIN (flames shooting up my face...)

Patrick L. seems to be doing OK, except he isn't eating. That has everyone worried. I might just have found me a man, seems like a nice guy.... with the possible exception of a vegtable crisper filled with ZIMA'S! Oh dear.

My Weekend With Bill W. and Dr. Bob

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:57:05 GMT

It was fun, had some inside jokes and at one point the whole audience yelled HI BILL! The play I'm talking about is Bill W. and Dr. Bob, reviewed here and here. All in all it had a kind of "after school special" feel to it all. Or maybe Alkie-House ROCK! My only problem was I kept having to stifle giggles every time the lead spoke a dramically-type line. I just couldn't get J. Peterson out of my mind... I could not stop thinking he was about to say "Being the founder of AA makes me feel like the Sultan of Oom Papa Mau Mau!" All that heart-rending angst and I could not help giggling every five minutes. Bad Will! BAD! The play was a decent retelling of the beginnings (No, I wasn't there!)

The real play, however, seems to be Henrietta Seiberling. There would be no AA with out her religious-zeal inspired pairing of the two leads... but then to go on and say about Bill W.: "Let us keep ourselves 'children of the Light' & keep serving God, instead of 'Mammon'. Bill has made his choice." YIKES!

What does 17 years really mean, after all?

Tue, 28 Mar 2006 18:34:11 GMT

I sobered up on Feb 9th 1989, (My God! Something good came out of the eighties.)When I walked into the room I was welcomed by Patrick L. We got along and he even became my third sponsor for a while. Because of him I know what I want this Blog to be "about", finally. The years from that Febuary in 1989 on.

I came to AA's meeting halls as a boyfriend of Chris K. Imagine how inconvienent it was for everyone when I stayed. I met some great people at the beginning, but of all of them, it was Patrick L. who I have remained friends with since day one. And now things are different. Horribly, sadly, different.

For me, these past seventeen years were a daily journey to a (hopefully) better me. Each of those six thousand two hundred and fifty nine days a chance to become a better guy than I was the day before. For Patrick, it was a hike up to The Void itself. I had my bottom over a single drink afterwork one day in Providence RI, in a bar on Eddy St. It was enough for me. Patrick seems to have had a few bottoms over the years, each more telling and more discomforting than the one before. And now, all these years later, he will probably die. A human liver can only take so much. This makes me angery, more angry than I have been in years. The shaking kind of anger.