Step Two, HP and Me

When confronted with Step Two my initial reaction was less than pleasant and much of what I said out loud was not appropriate for any social situation. My personal issue was that I was reading words that were not there. It may as well have read, “Was told that Jesus Christ was the only one who could fix me.” Instantly all of my opinions about God and organized religion and hypocrites flood my head. The repulsion, the anger, and the fear drown out the simple message of the step. I convince myself that I know what the hell is going on here and I’m not doing it. And so, I become unmovable. 


To think of it in these terms was getting ahead of myself in this process, but the short detour was part of the pathway to moving forward. I think that conjuring up these old images was the issue I’d had with this step in the past. But this is not where I want to be, yet. For me I had to have it pointed out to me that developing my concept of this God, as I understand Him, is Step Three. We’re only on Step Two. So rather than sabotage my progress with old ideas, once again I had to get out of the way and take the path of least resistance.


Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. The first thing that I had to look at was my belief system. I had a childhood filled with violence. I had an adolescence filled with booze and drug addled rebellion. I had an early adulthood filled with reckless abandon. I believed there was nothing wrong with my drinking because I was owed a good time. I deserved it. If you’d had the life I’d had, you’d be like me too. I came to believe that there may be plenty wrong with me, but it was everyone else’s fault.
  
Those Powers greater than myself, they were the problem. They wanted to control me. They wanted to take away my fun. They wanted to place the blame on me.  Those Powers would tell me to sit down and shut up. They would tell me that I had to take responsibility for my actions. I couldn’t be bothered. I had nothing to be sorry for.


As for the idea of being restored to sanity, well I had ideas on how to get there. First of all, put everyone who had harmed me in front of me and then give me the means to make their lives a living hell. That would make me feel better. When it came to my drinking, just shut up and mind your own business. That will give me some peace and quiet. And isn’t that what sanity is? No one constantly on your back about what you did and how much you drank and where did all your money go?
  
In my skewed perceptions, I couldn’t acknowledge the concept of an intangible Power greater than myself. I associated that phrase with authority figures. All the cops, teachers, parents, all of them were just trying to hold me down, trying to control me with their rules. When I finally stopped struggling against the imaginary restraints, when I finally wore myself out, then and only then was I able to hear the truth in my own words when I related different things that had happened to me.


When I considered the number of times I had woke up in my own vomit and had not choked to death while I was passed out, was that not a sign of something greater than myself protecting me? Was I still going to insist that it was just dumb luck that I was laying a certain way that allowed all the bile to come out of my mouth instead of going back into my windpipe?
  
When I thought about my blackouts, waking up in my bed with no memory of how I got there, could I still deny the existence of a power greater than myself? After all, something had to have kept me from falling down a flight of stairs and bashing my skull in. When I stepped off the curb, could I say with confidence that I was the one who kept myself from walking head long into traffic? When I was on the train platform, could I explain how I could have stood at the edge of the platform without falling onto the tracks or in front of the train as it pulled into the station?


When I wrote out the things that I had done that could have ended my life, I couldn’t deny it any longer. There was a Power greater than myself at work here. While it may not have been a physical form of protection, there was something looking over me that was stronger than luck or coincidence. How could I rationally explain away these facts that were before me in black and white? I couldn’t, especially when I was always the first one to admit that there are things in the world that are beyond our comprehension.  If I was willing to believe in something like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, then why couldn’t I believe in a Power greater than myself?


Once again, as I moved down this path of least resistance and just stopped and breathed and sat with this new idea of a force, a Power greater than myself, I could hear the static in my head turn down a notch. I could feel my body relax ever so slightly. For the first time in a long time, I felt something akin to hope. With hope, I didn’t feel quite as unhinged as I did before.


This was the beginning of my restoration to sanity. With it came an understanding of how things work in the real world, not my drunken suits-me-fine world. There are simple tasks that I can do, like making my bed or doing my dishes, help maintain my sanity. I continually strive to educate myself, to keep moving forward in my career and life. That sense of accomplishment gives me a greater sense of self and that helps maintain my sanity. I had to learn how to talk to people, but more importantly, I had to learn how to listen. Being able to admit that I don’t know everything helps maintain my sanity.


I have seen someone die in the parking lot of a hospital from an alcoholic seizure. Even seeing someone hemorrhaging from every opening of their body wasn’t enough to convince me that alcohol will kill me. When I went out on a relapse, it was the farthest thing from my mind. Unlike that moment when I learned not to touch the hot stove, perhaps seeing that person die in front of me wasn’t enough because I wasn’t emotionally connected to the lesson.


I’m not smart enough to know how to fix the world.  I’m not an authority on finance or romance. I’m not an expert in the areas of psychology, philosophy or religion. I only know what I have learned from those times that I was paying attention. I am only an expert on myself. Even then, my knowledge is questionable. Thus, with the care of a Power greater than myself, I have daily reminders that humility is the key to being teachable.  And knowledge, if used correctly, can be the key to a life of sanity.

Square One a.k.a. What the Hell Do I Do NOW?

Tomorrow morning I am going to Oak Park to attend an Open House for Resurrection University. ResU is the nursing school that is affiliated with the hospital I currently work at. After working for over two months as a nursing assistant, I have decided, with conviction that I want to continue on and become a registered nurse. Now if you’d told me that this is what I would be doing a year ago, I would have scoffed at the idea. 

A year ago at this time I was in my own business and my stress levels were such that I felt like I was completely at the end of my rope. I was overwhelmed and I had hit the wall emotionally and creatively. It was a difficult process to accept that now that I had reached the end of my rope, I had to let it go. I was certain that my life was going to be over. I had failed. I would get another job in retail and I would try to work around that dead place inside me that I imagine all my disappointment and heartache goes. 

The condensed version goes like this; the one business partner got a new business partner and they bought the business from my and the other partner. While there was a sense of relief, the feelings of loss and failure still held on. So rather than looking at what lay before me and trying to figure out which direction to go from there, I decided to go back to square one, aka what the hell do I do now? 

Here’s how that happened. After my best friend got sick a while back, I wanted to do something to help. He was stuck in another state and needed live in help. So I started looking at caregivers where he was. From there was a link to home health care. From there was a link to nursing assistants. Now all of this happened about a year before I left the business. He got his help and I filed this idea away in the back of my head and kept pulling away. When the stress of the business became too much, I pulled out the nursing assistant idea and dusted it off. 

Once again, I started researching nursing assistants and what the job entailed. I found a program that I applied to that was taught by the hospital I work at now. I called and scheduled an appointment to be interviewed for a spot in the class. I went and bought a new dress shirt and tie for the interview. I sat down and wrote out my resume, digging through old paperwork to get dates right. I went to the interview, filled out the application and talked to two of the instructors. I got a call back from one of the instructors telling me that I had been accepted and would need to come in and undergo a back ground check. I showed up at the place, on the date, with a check for the course. I answered the questions on the piece of paper from my social security number to what my last three addresses had been. My background check came back clear and gave them the check. On the first day of the class, I showed up, my check for the balance in hand. I was given my text book and told to take a seat. 

And that’s what going back to square one consisted of. 

I broke it down to these statement sentences to illustrate that I had to do each of these things, in the exact order that they were done. One action built off of the next. And so on. My initial problem when I was first considering changing careers was that I was trying to look at the big picture. And there’s nothing too unusual about that, because we’ve been taught to ‘look at the big picture’ when trying to assess the current situation. But looking at the big picture only paralyzes me because I lose sight of where to start. 

Everything has a beginning, a starting point, the first thing you have to do before you can do anything else. When I remember to break it down to its parts, keeping in mind that each part has its own starting point, the problem is a little more palatable. For example, in the process of trying to sort out all the things I need to do to enter a nursing program, I know that I will have to take some prerequisite classes BEFORE I can even start a BSN program. One of the things I need to take is a math course. 

Remembering a story I saw on Nightline about some online math tutoring videos, I did an internet search and quickly found what I was looking for. When I went to the website I saw that there are thousands of videos, not just on Math, but on Chemistry and Biology. Both of these are also in my prerequisites. While I may have been compelled to ‘check out’ the Chemistry and Biology videos, I didn’t. I focused on the basics of Algebra. 

Now I’d taken an Algebra class back in 2000 when I took a few classes at one of the community colleges. Because I’d been so awful at Algebra in high school I was really apprehensive about taking it then. But I applied myself and finished the class with a 104 GPA. I did all the extra work as well. So the idea of refreshing myself with these Algebra videos wasn’t as scary as it was bothersome. I assumed that everything I’d learned was gone. But I quickly found out that it wasn’t. 

And now I amuse myself by going through the math levels on this site. I always get a charge out of moving to the next level. My goal is to get all the way down to the bottom row of this Knowledge Map, which is Quotient Rule, Product Rule, Chain Rule 1, Parabola intuition 3. Don’t know what any of that is at this moment, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ever know it. If I do the first thing and build on that, then eventually I’ll get to the goal. 

I have a few other goals that I want to accomplish, many of them much smaller in scope than going to school to become a nurse. But one of the things that I’ve come to realize is that while some accomplishments are bigger than others, each one adds another layer of confidence that wasn’t there before. With confidence comes certainty. With certainty comes a sense of presence in the moment. That sense nurtures a feeling of being solid, whole and comfortable in my own skin. 

One of my new goals is to make chicken and dumplings. I don’t think I’ve had chicken and dumplings since my Grandma made them for me. And she passed away in 1979. So it’s been a while. The other day me and my friend Kookie went to the grocery store. As luck would have it, they had flour, butter and whole chickens on sale. Like I do with a lot of stuff I make, I’ll probably post a picture of it on my Facebook page when I make it. 

And I can promise you this; I will make it.

Me, Sober and Step One

So when I decided to start this blog, I had to consider how much of myself am I going to put out there? My first reaction was, well I’m just going to pick a topic and write about my thoughts on it. That’s fine and all, but one of the things that I find fascinating about people is their thought process. And how I look at the world is influenced by my experience. When it comes down to it, the most valuable thing I can share with anyone is my experience, strength and hope. 

I want to preface this by saying that I’ve been clean and sober since May 10^th, 1984. I made my first attempt in March of 1981, when I was 19. I am not one of those people who tries to get everyone sober. While interventions may work for some, they didn’t work for me. I am not one of those people in recovery who goes out and drags people out of the bar and takes them to detox. When people tried that with me, it just strengthened my resolve to drink. 

I am not out to convince or save anyone. Each of us as individuals has to convince ourselves to save ourselves. All I am doing here is giving you my experience as it relates to my journey of recovering from alcoholism. So if you don’t want to read it, don’t. It’s your choice. But if you do read it and if you have any questions, that’s fine. Ask me anything. If it’s something I don’t want to answer, I’ll say so. 

I will also add that I feel like I’m the last of the old fashioned drunks. What I mean by that is my primary addiction was booze. Nowadays, there are a lot of people addicted to meth and a whole host of other ‘club drugs’, in addition to your standards. I think the only reason I never went down that path was because booze met my needs. 

I smoked a little pot and for a while I was hooked on Black Beauties. But I mainly drank. Southern Comfort or Jack Daniels was the drink of choice, straight up on the rocks. I didn’t like beer. I hated scotch. I would drink gin, rum and vodka, but I thought of those in terms of being mixed with something else. Whiskey was the preferred drink. It was simple and to the point and a good whiskey can stand on its own.  

In hindsight I can see where the first step is what set the tone for my early recovery and my personal interpretation of HOW to work the steps. I’ll come back to this in a moment and explain what I mean. But in the meantime, when I first read step one, I was confronted with my first opportunity to take the path of least resistance.   

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable. My initial interpretation of this step seemed like it was just a mental exercise. All I had to do is admit that I can’t drink and when I do my life is a mess. Didn’t I just do that by coming into the door and sitting down at the table? What else do you people want? Do I have to give you proof? I told you what it was like and what happened, what more do you people want?

When I tell my story I’m telling you what I want you to know. When I do that, I am trying to fit in while keeping some of my shame hidden. I can tell about the night that I did all this, but I’ll leave that part out because I’m afraid of what you’ll think of me. Keeping secrets takes effort. It requires masking my shame, pretending that nothing is wrong. It generates worry that I’m going to be found out.

To take the path of least resistance frees me up from all of that worry and fear. When I admit my powerlessness over alcohol I remove hesitation. I wipe away my fear of what you or you or you will think of me. When I take the path of least resistance, I own my addiction. I own how much I drank. I own how much I spent. I own how often I did it. I own how selfish I was towards others.

When I tell my story about my unmanageability, once again, shame may keep me from telling the truth in just how unmanageable my life was. Especially if I was fortunate to have the intellect, the resources, the advantages that make someone look at me and think, “They’ve got it made.” Once again, when I stopped and was confronted by my unmanageability, I didn’t want to confess how badly everything had spun out of control.

To take the path of least resistance allowed me to abolish my fears of what you would think of me. I had to come to a place where I understood that I was here for my life. When I was unmanageable, I was acting out of character. I was the alcoholic, the addict. I wasn’t myself. Once again, I had to own the things I found myself doing to get money or booze. I had to own the fact that I had lied, cheated, stolen, physically hurt others and myself, all in an attempt to get manage my life. Unfortunately I believed that alcohol was what helped make it all better to deal with. If I could just get a drink, I’ll be able to handle this. But that wasn’t truth. Truth came only after I was able to look at how my world had become undone by my powerlessness over alcohol.

When I said initially how my approach to the first step set the tone for my early recovery, that upon first glance it seemed as simple as flipping a switch, I had to have three relapses before I understood that this  blasé approach had no conviction, no substance. When I came back to the rooms that last time, I had to be told, point blank, that I had to scrap EVERYTHING I thought the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was. Everything I had heard from that first meeting in March of 1981 up to that first meeting back in May of 1984, all of it had to be thrown out like so much spoiled food in the back of the refrigerator.

My initial reaction was to protest. I’d read the Big Book. I’d read the 12&12. I’d done 12 step calls, chaired meetings, made coffee. I’d been there and done that. Let’s get on with it, let’s just pick up from where I left off. It wasn’t very hard, but when the person I was talking to LITERALLY slapped my face, it was enough to shut me up and hear what he was trying to get through to me.

I had exposure to the program, but I had no connection to what I’d been taught. When I made a comment in a meeting, it was no different than when I was a kid and had to give an oral report on the Civil War. I was just parroting what I’d memorized from the book. To make the program part of me, I had to give myself to the program, he explained. To do that, I had to get out of the way.

The physical exercise of sitting down and writing all the ways I was powerless over alcohol was like reading a laundry list of things someone else had done to get booze. It was so much more than I wanted to admit to doing and so much more detailed than simply flipping that mental light switch. Seeing everything I had done, much of it secrets I had kept hidden out of shame, was humbling. The proof that I was powerless was undeniable. Even people consumed by greed of money wouldn’t have done some of the things I’d done to get drunk.

When I wrote down all the ways that my life had become unmanageable as a result of being powerless, once again, I was ashamed. I had let opportunities for education, employment, even love, slip right past me like it meant nothing. The school work would take up too much time, the better paying job would be more responsibilities, and the relationship would turn into constant nagging about my drinking. So I remained uneducated to the fullest of my potential and I was only able to get the lowest of paying jobs and I got into relationships with people just like me.

I was ashamed of my life and how things had turned out. I became angry and sullen. I began to believe that the world owed me something. Each time I acted on these beliefs, my life became more and more unmanageable. I came close to losing everything so many times, that it didn’t seem unusual to live so close to the edge of destruction. It was my normal.

For me the path of least resistance was to take action. Even if it was just the physical act of sitting down and writing out my inventory of powerlessness and unmanageability, it was still action. It opened my eyes to my behavior and removed any doubt that I belonged in these rooms. When I looked over what I’d written, I realized that people who can have one drink and be done, do not put this much effort into having that one drink. And as I would come to realize, this inventory that I was told to do, would become the foundation for the searching and fearless moral inventory that was coming.

A Different Kind of Identity Theft

I got a Facebook friend request from an old friend the other day that I used to work with. I accepted the request because it seems like this is a theme in my life lately, reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances. So in the process of catching up, he told me that he’d recently been a victim of identity theft. Well of course the first thing I thought of was ruined credit, fighting with the banks, police reports. I gave my condolences and then he went on to say that it was not what I was thinking.

He used to have a journal of sorts a few years ago that he just stopped updating. He made it clear that it wasn’t a blog because he wasn’t really interested in trying to think of content. I could see where you could define a blog as topic driven and a journal as well, “I ate too much cheese and now I can’t poop,” type of daily stuff. That’s how my friend explained the difference.

Apparently when he sold his old computer to his former roommate, he forgot to clean out everything. One of the things he forgot was his online journal with its ‘password remembered for this site’ option turned on. He said that the guy edited the title, changed the email, got rid of the pictures, and made it his own. Except he left the online journal as it was and continued to add to it.

My friend only discovered it because the two of them had two friends, one them a really good friend of his and the other one really good friends with his former roommate. So when the one guy says, hey, you should check out my buddies blog, because by this time it have morphed from a journal to blog, he started to recognize some facts and figures. Not letting on about his suspicions, he asked his friend if he could email him the link.

When he forwarded that link to my friend and told him what he suspected, he was stunned. Not so much that his former roommate had done. He wasn’t surprised to hear that because I guess the guy was a lazy malcontent. It was the fact that this dumbass was passing what my friend called his boring life off as his own. I guess the sad fact is this; the fact that eating too much cheese and not being able to poop may actually be a step up from where someone sees themselves.

So after a couple of angry emails, a few heated voicemails and apparently one face to face showdown, the guy took down the blog and promised to never pose as my friend ever again. The tougher conflict though was that my friend kind of took it as an odd sort of compliment. As a result, he took a deeper look at all the different elements of his life. Then he started to understand why his former roommate stole his identity.

He gets along with his family and every year they try to make time to see each other not just for the holidays, but during the year. He said that when they get together for Thanksgiving, they have a game that they play where they have three boxes. In the first one are the 12 months of the year. In the second one are four pieces of paper, numbered one through four. In the third box are places that everyone in the family has agreed they would like to visit. Before Thanksgiving dinner, while the turkey is resting before being cut, they have a family meeting and they draw one piece of paper from each box. And that is how they decide on the family vacation for the coming year. They spend the entire dinner, eating and making plans and dreaming of all the fun and adventures that they'll have.

And that is just one example of how this guy lives his life. There is a sense of being connected to the people in his life. There is an acceptance of the unknown. There is a sense of adventure. There is plenty of gratitude. There is a solid foundation of friends that care and family that’s there. As I put it to him, who wouldn’t want to have all that? And as he reminded me, sometimes we just need to look a little deeper at ourselves to see that we already have everything we need.

Hey Buddy, What's the Big Idea Here?

So here it is. My first blog posting. I'm taking the plunge and doing something that I've always thought would be cool, but wasn't sure what my motives would be for creating a blog. What do I think I have to say that anyone would want to hear? I don't know. But I know that I am honest about myself and that seems to connect with people. So that's a start I guess. It's not like I'm looking to create something that will be followed by millions of people. But at the same time, I want SOME followers.

Another reason for wanting to do this ties in with my life long ambition of being a writer. When I write, no matter what it is, short fiction, a stage piece, a poem, a remembrance, I feel SOLID. Like I'm here, in the moment, today. But I have to confess that I have this fear of being forgotten. And in some ways, a collection of my writings, even if they're rambling tomes that mean nothing to anyone but myself, they will be something of me that will hopefully be around in some way long after I'm gone.

So you may be asking, why did I name this blog The Path of Least Resistance. I know that the first thought may be that I'm into Eastern philosophy. And I will admit that one of my favorite books is 'The Tao of Pooh', but that's not it. I am touching on the beginning of the first piece I posted, so if anyone reading this thinks that some of this sounds somewhat familiar, that's why. But I need to be reminded of this daily. So it bears repeating.

In science, the path of least resistance refers to the direction an object will move through its system, or environment. Water will flow down a mountain, following the path of least resistance as it's pulled downward by gravity.

From a social standpoint, when I squash my own ideas and follow the crowd, I am choosing what SEEMS like the path of least resistance. When faced with a stressful situation or a difficult decision and I am compelled to choose the easiest and quickest solution, I am choosing what SEEMS like the path of least resistance.

So it's no wonder that I had come to equate the term with meaning little or no effort. I wasn't surprised to find an image of someone cowering, as if to duck a blow, when thinking of that phrase. I had an idea that the path of least resistance equaled laziness, fear, people pleasing and just simply letting life slip right on by.

But if I consider the science of the term, as applied to myself, choosing the path of least resistance is a call to action. It is the natural progression that occurs when I get out of my own way and stop putting roadblocks in the way. It takes a lot of energy to do nothing, to be immovable in my opinions and stuck in my anger and resentment and despair.

So I try to take the path of least resistance, so that I am doing something and taking in new ideas and doing what I can to have some sort of peace of mind. I have been told that the only thing I have that cannot be disputed or discounted by anyone is my Experience, Strength and Hope. And if something I share about myself sparks an idea or inspires someone or brings a needed smile, then I guess the purpose of this blog will be fulfilled. Thanks for reading. I look forward to you sharing your Experience, Strength and Hope as well.