It's a Process

December 9, 2004

The testosterone shot, unfortunately, is not time-released. You feel its effects mostly in the next 48 hours, and then it starts to fade. But this wasn’t unexpected

The Lexapro, on the other hand, made sleep difficult the first night, and nigh-on impossible last night. Jittery isn’t the right word, but tense in the head is. You know that taut feeling around the eyes that just won’t relax no matter how much you toss and turn and turn the light back on and read for an hour. I finally had to take an over-the-counter sleep aid, and still feel hard-jawed this morning. So no more of that and half-caf instead of full-caf coffee for me this morning.

I am no doubt being punished for my skipping of the NA meeting on Sunday. Various family members and a friend seem to think the fear of returning prison may not be enough to keep me on the straight and narrow. Being on the defensive about this only feeds this perception, and I certainly have no wish for anyone who has loved and supported me during this to fear for my sobriety, however unwarranted I feel that fear to be.

The reality is that the 12-step paradigm, which has no better a track record (this from both personal experience and research I’ve done) than do-it-yourselfers in long-term rates of successful recovery, nontheless has a complete monopoly on the rehabilitation industry and the public imagination in this country. Non-program-based abstinence is somehow considered an ersatz sobriety, in "the program" one still commonly only starts "counting the days" from the date of one’s first meeting—not last drink or drug use.

"Rational Recovery," which is a book I fell in love with when I read it at County Jail, actually argues rather forcefully that AA et al., closes off the possibility of purely and simply becoming someone who doesn’t drink or drug anymore. You are an addict for life, in the throes of a progressive disease that is but temporarily arrested, and only an intense daily acknowledgement of your powerlessness—and the help of a higher power—can keep you from perdition. I find this maddening, because for me, if your life becomes about not using or drinking it is still about using or drinking.

That said, I do recognize when your life has been so much about drinking or using, it is a smart idea for there to be an equal preoccupation with sobriety for a fair amount of time after one stops drinking or using. Old habits die hard, and new habits grow slowly.

I am lucky to have 10 months under my belt and literally no craving whatsoever for meth. (Simply because I don’t invalidate my experience on it, nor think it should be illegal, does not mean I do not acknowledge its sometimes pernicious effects.). But certainly, between jail and parole, there is an element of coercion involved in my abstinence. It would be a good thing if it felt more of a choice I was making on its own merits, as opposed to a choice I had no choice but to make.

Many people stay sober because it’s a requirement for the maintenance and continuation of very fulfilling friendships they find with other sober people. This for me personally, is by far the biggest argument for my participation in the program, and it is why I am going to a meeting tonight at 7 pm. But I will watch very carefully for the effect that has been described to me by others many a time. Meetings, for meth users, seem to be as often as not a trigger, in which they find themselves leaving wanting more than ever to use again. (That’s why many go to straight AA, where the other participants don’t have 12-hour sex marathon memories on the brain. Unfortunately this also greatly reduces the degree of identification one feels with the other participants, and makes it easier to distance oneself from their experience).

And, of course, I’m scared to death of smoking a cigarette, Talk about a trigger.

In other news, I am reading a friend’s screenplay and enjoying taking notes. Sometimes I really wonder if I’m not a better editor than I am a writer.