December 14, 2004
Despite a glorious Xanax-faciltated 10 hours of sleep, I woke up feeling like crap. I took a Lexapro, had breakfast, had come full-caf coffee, and then had a wonderful, funny conversation with my sister.
God knows which of those elements had the most impact, but I’m feeling much better, and I only started noticing it as soon as I hung up the phone with my sister
I think what constitutes much of the "magic" that goes on in "the rooms" where 12-step programs meet, is no more mysterious than the relief that comes from honest communication. I’ve been dealing with a friend who hews very strongly with the "half-measures avail us nothing" AA tenet. 90 meetings in 90 days, get a sponsor, work the steps, all of which I did in 1986 and none of which kept me sober in the long run. This is not to make AA wrong—I simply wasn’t ready to get sober. I didn’t, and I don’t regret it a bit. I had a different journey to go on.
What I am saying is why can’t sharing outside of the rooms have the same tonic effect as doing so inside the rooms? My father was an alchoholic who never made an honest stab at sobriety. He also had very few friends. He didn’t share inside the rooms, but he didn’t share outside of the rooms either. My mother, on the other hand, went to a few Alanon meetings, and never shared once. But she did have a wonderful circle of friends with whom she cried her eyes out during the years. Who’s to characterize her "sharing" as somehow less therapeutic because she did it outside of "the rooms?" She never chose to leave my father, and as hard as it was I don’t think she regrets not staying married to him. Part of her journey was to honor their vows and to be there for him and sickness and in health, and when he died, of cirrhosis, they only thing worse than being there for him would have been to not be there for him.
I’m not trying to "set up" a rationale for not going to meetings. I’m going to another one at 7:30, frankly, as much as anything, because I get lonely around that time, not surprisingly as I spend all day on my own. But if any part of me might have been drifting closer to using today (it wasn’t), it is a funny exchange with my sister that would have halted that. I resent the implication I am getting from this friend that the only way to get and stay sober is the 12-step way—everything else is a "dry drunk," some sort of ersatz sobriety that doesn’t count. This a dogmatic arrogance, in my book.
It also does not reflect my experience. I have a host of abstinent friends thriving, who took their distance from me when I was in the throes of my addiction. All got and stayed sober with little or no help of the program. They are as inspiring to me, and as much an example, as anyone who raises their hand and says "3 years" in a meeting. And they also have a lot more time to just live their lives because they don’t have to run to a meeting every other day because they been brainwashed into believing without a steady diet of the program, you are doomed to get high again. If any of them do get high again, I’m sure they’d dust off, get back on their feet and go right back to being abstinent, without experiencing a horrific sense of failure and great fall from the heights, saying "1 day back" and being treated like a newborn, as if the three years they had accumulated count for nothing. In fact, many of the relapsers I know have a terrible problem going back, I think largely because they can’t bear the sense of humiliation and group reprobation. They hear the whispers, "So and so went ‘out.’ Tsk. Tsk."
The relapse rates for Meth, in particular, are horrific, mostly because of its intense correlation with sex. When overeaters deviate from their eating plan, or gamblers buy a lotto ticket, it makes sense to me they own up to it, look at it and what prompted it, and return to their corrected behavior. This strikes me as utterly sensible. If I ever do relapse, I would not envision using it to rationalize my way into thinking I could drug "safely." Addiction to me, is less a disease than an allergy. If you are allergic to peanuts and break out in hives, when they hives subside, you don’t go back to eating peanuts. I consider myself allergic to drugs and alcohol. It may be, in my view, a milder allergy simply because using or drinking did not send me into a frenzied personality change where every indulgence resulted in a morning-after contemplating the half-remembered wreckage of the previous night. (Most of my experiences were almost wholly pleasurable and I had few, if any, apologies to make.). It doesn’t mean the long term effects were not cumulatively toxic, and it doesn’t mean I am not allergic, or that I can drink/drug safely.
Same thing with cigarettes, an addiction if there ever was one. I have quit and started again more than a few times. The non-using periods have been far longer than the using periods. But they count. I’m have been a smoker for 6 years over the past 30, and and a non-smoker for 24. I haven’t been a non-smoker only since the last time I didn’t have a cigarette.
I risk "protesting too much." But I am not going to stop using my brain, intellect and experience to assert that the whole addiction syndrome is complex, and the jury is out on the best ways to deal with it. If I didn’t have the gigantic motivation to say sober no matter what right now, it might well be foolhardy for me to follow any path that is not tried and true. But I do have this motivation, and I am not truly in danger of returning to my old ways. So I assert the right to remain sober the way that is most comfortable for me. Life is too hard all by itself to make it any harder by working at doing so.
MCO 2004
Well, I dunno there, Mister O.
I am not by any stretch of the imagination a very partisan champion of 12 Step ideology any more than I am a prescient orator on the glories of addiction, but as much as 12 Step groups annoy me, as much as over-zealous 12 Step ideologues irritate me, I do think you have a basic misunderstanding of what 12 Step methodology is cranked up to be.
Bill Wilson (co-founder of AA) never wanted to be thought of as the Mao-tse-tung of 12 Step ideology. His own sobriety was evolving, as, indeed, the world was, by the time of his death. Rumor has it that even Bill W. screwed a few chicks while out here in L.A. setting up the very first AA Intergroup here many years ago. If he were still alive, I don't see Bill W. acting like the stereotypical 12 Step Nazi his memoirists want him to be.
All that being said, while "the jury may still be out" on the efficacy of 12 Step groups, the facts are in as far as their track records are concerned.
The single most salient statistic about 12 Step groups is that they have inspired -- and kept -- more people off of and away from toxic substances and odious, addictive behaviours -- than any other movement or discipline, religious or mystical, of the 20th century.
All of the so-called "competitor approaches" -- Rational Reasonists or whadever [sic] the fuck they call themselves -- have pretty absymal success ratios to report compared to AA, NA, and other 12 Step type groups.
The bottom line is what approach leads to a healthy life free of the tyranny of outside forces? Isn't that what the great struggle of our age is? Whether it's Stalin or Stoli, Mao or meth, if it interferes with the liberty of the human spirit, whatever it takes to liberate one's self is the correct approach.
The Jury Might Be Out, but there's some important facts to consider nonetheless, all other things being equal.
Mark, I did just want to clarify a point about our mother. She attended Alanon meetings for well over a year and shared on the "inside" quite a bit. And I was there with her on several months of Thursday nights. These meetings brought her a great deal of relief at a very stressful time. When the kids left home and she was alone with an alcoholic, life got tough. As for me they helped pave the way to setting ground rules for a healthy marriage that has lasted 25 years. I found everything about Alanon relevent to ways of being in all relationships.
All that said, I have full faith that you are and will continue to explore all avenues available to you in your quest to find the Holy Grail.