December 20, 2004
This morning I didn’t take my anti-depressant, in the hope that I can get to sleep Xanax-free and then don’t sleep away the morning. Frankly, my Xanax-dose is so low that I think it’s fear of the world more than anything that keeps me in bed.
Fear is such a powerful force. It underlies every negative emotion we experience, I think. Being with the fear is what we need to do to before we can let go of it, but boy, we certainly resist that don’t we? Trying not to feel something is like putting a bothersome cat in a sack and carrying it. Oh gee, that works!
Today I did some errands and went to see Vera Drake. Good movie. Mike Leigh captures 1950 lower middle class England superbly. It tells the story of an English housewife, an abortionist who, in her mind, is doing more good than harm. Suddenly she finds herself arrested and her unaware family ripped apart.
As you can imagine the movie hit a bit too close to home. (I don’t think this movies-alone-in-the- afternoon-thing is a great idea for me.) Smartly, I had grabbed a meeting booklet before I left the apartment, and I found a meeting close by that was just starting. It was a big one, (with more than a few really good-looking men, I might add.). The speaker turned out to be one of the best I have ever heard. Incredibly funny and insightful and perfect for where I was at the moment.
I had with me copies of my stamp collage that I had just sent to many of you as Christmas card. After the meeting, I was the very last in a long line of people thanking the speaker. He had recounted how he had barely escaped prison, by some miraculous error all charges were dropped when he was caught with a considerable amount of drugs, while driving under the influence of LSD. I told him I wasn’t so lucky, and just got out of 10 months in the pen, but here was something to put on his refrigerator. I told him if he ever need to feel some love, than to just put his hand on the collage, because there was an unbelievable amount of love in those stamps.
We gave each other a great big hug. Then I turned on my cellphone, and got a ride back to the apartment and spent some time with a friend.
We talked about what was so different about being on drugs and about being sober, and I told him one of the big differences for me was when I was on meth, it was always a hunt to find something out there. And sometimes you found it, but rarely felt sated afterwards.
The contrast of sobriety, for me, is more about opening yourself up to the universe. Put yourself out there, and do the work, but allow yourself to let in the love, and let go of the fear. It’s less about finding something, than getting out of the way so you can discover what is right there in front of you,.
I don’t want to reserve this for "sobriety." It’s good advice for life. Sobriety is just a context that make the process much more available to someone who was previously placing obstacles to his full access of it.
And I’m pretty sure if there is a God, she prefers you don’t call her up drunk or high. It’s like static on the line.
