January 28, 2005
I realized that when I have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, it suppresses my appetite just enough that I find it hard to eat breakfast. So I now eat breakfast, and then have a cup of coffee. This reduces any residual morning anxiety that I was having. It is now quite manageable. Although my reporting about it may be putting you, dear reader, to sleep.
On Sunday or Monday I will be moving to my friends’ Larry and David off Hollywood and Highland. Andrea has said it is okay for me to "commute" here to use the computer. I was very tempted to sublet a place for the three weeks until I get my own (Craig’s List is a miraculous resource…I just wonder who Craig is?) But that would pretty much deplete my funds, and I have to watch them carefully to make it successfully until my first paycheck—and from where that will come is still in doubt. That’s all right. The Goddesses have always provided.(And for once, I don’t mean my mother and sister).
I am so happy I have been able to discover a completely new relationship with X in sobriety. And we are seeing, today, a very close friend from the old days who has also gotten sober. Unfortunately, there are a few people X still has to deal with who are still "out there." It is sometimes a luxury every sober person cannot afford to cut off such contacts, and some of them are in varying degrees of addiction. They still work, function outwardly with relative success. But they exhibit telltale signs of undependability, evasiveness, and discomfort with sobriety. One of them continually offers X a drink when they see each other, even to the point of pushing it on him. "It’s not a drug" he scolds. Oh yes it is. It’s just a liquid drug, that happens to be legal. I found myself saying to X "He wants to be like you, but he can’t, so he wants you to be like him."
Recently, someone I thought I was friends for life with cut me off because he clearly couldn’t let me out of the compartment I was in. I was still the drug dealer/taboo relationship that reminded him of his own substantial wreckage (Or tweekage, as the case may be). Ostensibly, he was determined to get sober on his own at the time of our parting. And yet he turned away my sober friendship. It somehow stood as a reproach to him, I think.
I could only offer him my own amends for having facilitated his use, which had clearly crossed the line from recreational to something more. And left the door open to reconnection if he found he couldn’t get sober on his own. Some people do, after all. But from all the many stories I have heard in AA/NA of people who have been "dry" before they got sober, and my own experience in prison, it is so much more difficult and less satisfying an experience than when one avails oneself of the tools of the program and the support therein.
It remains, unfortunately, for many—as it was for me---a sign of weakness to ask for help, to admit you can’t do it alone. Most have to be literally brought to their knees. But really, asking for help is one of the bravest things you can ever do. No one would think twice to cry out if they were trapped in a fire. No one would reject help from the Fire Department because they all wore uniforms and were specifically trained to deal with the problem. And yet AA can be rejected because of its "group" trappings, the slogans, the steps. They are but the equivalent of a hose, a hydrant, a fire engine. And it goes far beyond that, the tools offered can be used for a wholesale reconstruction of lives.
Too many wait until their house has burned down, thinking somehow they don’t qualify because they’ve only lost a roof or the guest house. It’s generally easier to renovate an existing structure with minimal damage than rebuild from scratch.
But how many people successfully put out their own fires once the flames have leaped from the stove to the drapes and beyond?
MCO 2005
