Had a great meeting last night and it gave me lots of food for thought. Just was thinking about stuff between the lumberyard and the job site and decided to pop into the office before work and write a little. Aloha- Toby
Im what they call a high functioning alcoholic. I sometimes laugh at this term because it could be interpreted to mean that youre functioning at a high level of proficiency or it could just mean that youre functioning high.
I managed to hold shit together for a long time while drinking. A lot of people didnt realize that I was struggling with alcoholism. Im sure it was pretty apparent to the more perceptive people around me, but even still- Id careen across the charts out of control, my life all over the place, barely managing to quell each disaster right on the brink but in all of that wild careening sooner or later Id swing past a moderate success and nab it and people would pat me on the back and say youve still got it and this would lend a little false validity to my madness, just enough to keep me drinking.
If youre in your first months of sobriety you probably feel like youre knee deep in shit and theres absolutely no way out. For some that feeling will stop in days, for others it will stop in months or years. I guess for some it wont stop at all- I dont know- Im one of the lucky ones who achieves a modicum of peace in a relatively short period of time not drinking.
It may seem like everything is hopeless and youre terribly screwed up, but you need to keep things in perspective, especially in this tough transitional period where a slip up could seem like the end of the world. Believe it or not, if youre breathing and your heart is beating, theres more right with you than there is wrong. It may seem like your whole world is out of kilter, but you probably have two arms and two legs and probably can walk and talk, youre breathing and awake and aware and living. This program has historically had a pretty decent record with the living; not so good with the dead.
I like to think of getting straight as coming in out of the fog. Its like youre trying to operate a telescope while standing on a waterbed- you can set it up and look through the thing but its not going to operate with any kind of efficiency. Getting sober is getting your navigational compass back on 100%. Youve been flying blind and its lucky you havent stepped in front of a moving train or stepped off the top of a tall building, but now you realize the foolishness of operating like that and its time to get the eyes open and the mind clear and to resume navigating by the compass.
I think when one is drinking and drugging it seems like 85% of your life is screwed, when really just breathing and functioning has you at like 95% to the good. Even normals who dont have substance abuse troubles struggle with that last 10%- that would be spirituality, compassion, honesty, loving yourself- important stuff like that. We of the booze and drug dependant just use booze and drugs to anesthetize ourselves and inure us from the pain of day to day life, but dont fool yourself into thinking that the other half have it licked either. And dont think for a second that the shortcut of booze and drugs will work for any length of time because it wont. But if you're reading this you already know that.
Yeah Toby I can really identify with your post, for years I would pull back from the brink , I couldn't be an alcoholic i would tell myself, I never drink in the morning , i can keep a job, and the list went on and on . Things turned for me when I got divorced 5 years ago after that i wasn't so "high functioning" anymore, lost a job, lost a car, barely kept my apt, stil bought beer every night though. now that the fog has lifted i feel as i've gotten a part of me back that I didn't know I'd lost. compassin ,love, honesty even my sense of humor, life is good and i never want to go back.
Bryan
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Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Romans 8:6 , The Message
Yeah Toby I can really identify with your post, for years I would pull back from the brink , I couldn't be an alcoholic i would tell myself, I never drink in the morning , i can keep a job, and the list went on and on . Things turned for me when I got divorced 5 years ago after that i wasn't so "high functioning" anymore, lost a job, lost a car, barely kept my apt, stil bought beer every night though. now that the fog has lifted i feel as i've gotten a part of me back that I didn't know I'd lost. compassin ,love, honesty even my sense of humor, life is good and i never want to go back.
Bryan
Well thanks!
Funny- on May 1 it will be five years since my divorce. But I didn't start really practicing an active drinker's life until about two months prior to that- before that I was strong, strong, strong. Just goes to show what you can manage with a chaperone and a little guilt. ;) Left to my own devices I was a pretty decent garden variety beer drinking alcoholic, though.
Even now though I so cant imagine myself having any need or want or urge to drink- it's so wierd. It's almost like a switch flipped- I know that sounds hokey but really there were like two times right after I got sober when I felt the urge to have a beer and beyond that just this empty space where my drinking life was which was quickly filled with more work, time with kids and the GF, meetings and more meetings, tons of reading, pursuing and more clearly exploring my spirituality, a little quiet time for some much needed daily focus and meditation, some side projects in my shop. Geez- I even have the lawn mowed and the dogs are relatively well groomed and sans fleas.
Like I said on another thread- there were things that made me sad that came and went independant to my drinking, and I admit I drank a bit because of that but really the two were quite seperate, and beyond that I was a relatively happy person despite the effects of my alcoholism. But there's no doubt about it without the drinking I have so much more time to be a happier person that it's just unavoidable that I am a happier person. And that's undoubtedly good.
