A REACH FOR HAPPINESS

The topic at the meeting was what happened at your first program meeting that caused you to go to your second. It was remarkable how few of the recovering addicts in the circle could even remember their first meeting. Between the haze of time and the impenetrable fog of drugs, memories of first meetings tend to be patchy at best. I remembered mine, though.

It was an AA speaker's meeting in the midst of a blizzard that second night of mine in rehab in Minneapolis. I'd been almost thirty hours off drugs and was busy comparing myself to the war stories related by the AA speakers. I hadn't been to jail, hadn't gotten divorced, hadn't lost my house and car, hadn't lost limbs in a horrific traffic accident, and hadn't experienced a lot of things the speakers had experienced. I was busy putting together my argument that I wasn't either an addict or alcoholic, and this was all good solid evidence. Then came the next speaker.

She was a frail, little old woman and her story was that she had never taken an alcoholic drink or had a mood altering drug her entire life, until her husband died when she was in her mid seventies. Because of sleeplessness, she began drinking an ounce of alcohol each night. In short order her life began revolving around that one ounce of alcohol each night, the obsession driving everything else out of her life. She never had more than that one ounce a night, but her choice was to either increase the number of drinks or get into the program. She chose the program.

Well, comparing what I'd done with all that she hadn't done ran me up on the rocks double quick. If she was an alcoholic then I was, too. That was the night I learned to identify instead of compare--a baby step toward sanity. There was obviously more to learn about addiction, so I stayed in rehab and continued going to AA and NA meetings. That was my recollection.

Then a fellow talked about his first few meetings, and how he spent them in his car, in the parking lot, using. The only thing he got out of those meetings was that the men and women going in and coming out of that door seemed to be a lot happier than he was. Eventually, he put down the chemicals and went through that door to see why those folks were so happy.

We got into the chemicals because we thought it would make us feel better. In my case, it worked--for awhile. But one day I woke up and discovered I was a slave, everyone close to me was in pain, and happiness was a lost cause. The best I could hope for was to pop enough pills and soak up enough booze to keep from screaming. Then I was introduced to a program that allowed me to become a free, caring, responsible, happy human being.

No, I can't say I'm giggling all the time in recovery. Most of the time, however, I'm happy. Most of the time the people I'm close to aren't in emotional pain because of me. And I only scream when Army loses yet another Army-Navy game.

THE NEXT TEN MINUTES

I have a high school reunion coming up.  It's an all-class event held every year by the alumni committee of a military academy that closed down in the mid Seventies. It's a chance to meet again with those men who, when we were boys, shared many of the same experiences, all of us affected more than we knew by the school's motto: Truth, Duty, Honor.  There are faces I expect to be there; In fact, there are faces I take for granted will be there. But no one has a lock on the next ten minutes. One face I took for granted would be at the reunion won't be there. Another of my classmates let me know last night that our friend and fellow classmate Dave Feagans died from complications following a motorcycle accident.

Okay, the class of 1960 is around seventy years old, plus or minus, funerals of persons I know are getting all too frequent, I know how close I've come to that final checkout in recent years, and the TV news can't get enough of celebrities whose lives are cut short by drugs, murder, or mayhem. This doesn't even factor in all of the suicide bombing nutcases out there, drunk drivers, muggers, addicts acquiring the wherewithal to buy drugs, workplace accidents, and so on. Find an old geezer and get him to talk on the subject of life, and sooner or later you are going to hear, "Life is short." Yeah, we all know this. Yet I still take that next ten minutes--that next ten years--for granted.

I expect to be alive ten years from now. I act like it's a done deal. I expect you to be alive ten years from now, and I act like that is a done deal. In very real terms, though, that means I'm taking your life for granted, and even more distressing, I'm taking my own life for granted.

How to turn this around? Not taking anyone's existence for granted would mean valuing every moment spent in the now. It would involve getting closer to those we love and respect, telling that man or that woman what he or she means to you. It means becoming vulnerable, loving, open to love, and humble enough to accept that the ticket we each have on this ride will not last forever.

Life is a very precious gift despite all the bumps, potholes, and wrecks. That's why I got clean and why I stay clean: Life. I love being alive. I also love you being alive. Take care today and do whatever it takes to stay alive.

Thinking about my dead friend, and others who passed out of my life, I opened my front door this morning and learned that it had snowed last night. This is what I saw:

TWO WOLVES

Today's Just For Today reading (see Links, column right) deals with some of the attitude changes we need to make to be happy about being clean, rather than stumbling along as a big white knuckle. It brought to mind a story sent to me by a friend in Pennsylvania about an old Cherokee who is telling his grandson about a fight that goes on inside most men and women, and just about every recovering addict I've ever met..

"Grandson," the old man began, "the battle is between two wolves within us all. One wolf is Evil.  It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The young boy thought about it for a moment then asked his grandfather, "Tell me, then. Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee replied, "The one you feed."

A thought: Today, with my actions, my goals, my attitude, and my outlook, which wolf am I feeding?

* * *

"There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading; The few who learn by observation; The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves."

---Will Rogers

ADDENDUM

I started this blog in 2004, made an entry almost every day, then wound up in the Maine Medical Center with triple bypass surgery followed by two surgeries to fix a boo boo made during the triple bypass event, followed by years trying to rebuild my brain after spending more hours on a heart-lung machine than is good for it. My wife tried to keep up with the blog, but the guy who had been stumbling around her house for all those years was in trouble and that took priority (lucky me).

Recently, after a stretch of health and the death of a close friend, I've gotten back to the blog, and since I was again sick (with a cold) I decided to see what was new with the Blogspot site designer, themes, options, and so on. I like the hummingbirds. If you don't, let me know. Anyway, among the tools there is a spam detector in which I was cautioned to look through every so often. There was no spam in there; The spam I found was old and mixed in with all of the comments that have been made since 2004.

While I was going through and deleting the real estate and penis enlargement pitches, I also read the comments, realizing as I did so that I had never seen most of them because of my various illnesses and abscences from LIFE SUCKS BETTER CLEAN. I'm very glad I read them.

First, many apologies to you all for my abscences, and for failing to read the comments I've missed. Next, Thank you very much all those who sent in comments, even the fellow who wondered why recovery programs have to be silted up with banal platitudes and boring truisms. In fact, when I was in early recovery and would hear "Keep an attitude of gratitude" at a meeting, I'd usually mutter, "Keep an attitude of platitude." *Grump* I hope you're still clean, man. If it wasn't for soreheads like you and me, Yesterday's Tomorrow never would've gotten written.

The poster child for Alateen? Although you're probably not in Alateen any more (some years have passed), I hope that you're still clean, too. In fact, all of you are in my prayers (the spammers less so). I am not a guru passing out program wisdom. This blog is a clearing house for funny, gritty, gut-wrenchingly direct unauthorized program wisdom supplied by those in recovery and those trying to get there. This blog is a two-way medium of communication, and what gets sent to me helps me as much or more than the messages I send out helps others.

Hope to hear from you,
                                    Barry

LOOKING FOR A BETTER DEAL

The main speaker at an NA convention once put it this way: "Some days it's just putting one fucking foot in front of the other."

"Do you mean it's not all sweetness and light once I stop using and enter a program of recovery?" you might ask.

Duh.

"Life on life's terms." It's hard to get through a meeting or a talk with one's sponsor without hearing that phrase at least once: Life on life's terms. During our using, life's terms seemed too steep and we were in the market for a better deal. Life on addiction's terms, however, turned out to be much more steep and quite a bit more brief. So we stumble into the program, start going to meetings, put down the chemicals, and then discover that all of the stuff we avoided or put off during our using days is still there. Oh joy.

Comedian Bill Cosby pointed out that pain killers do not kill pain; they only postpone it, allowing little "pain buddies" to gather and really kill you when the anesthetic wears off. It only seems like life saved up all its problems to drop on us in early recovery. The problems have always been there; when we were using, however, either we didn't notice them or didn't give a crap. But now we're clean and---Oh no! Illness, legal problems, unemployment, underemployment, suicide bombers, the dollar going down, prices going up, relationships, career glitches, armed debt collectors for past purchases, friends and loved ones dying, your favorite TV show gets cancelled, your sponsor doesn't return your phone call, the dog gets into the garbage can, you runn out of dental floss, and on and on and on . . .

What to do? In the program, meetings and literature, we hear about the tools of recovery. Recovery is a structure that needs to be built. Building requires tools, and in the program we have a most effective set:  Pick up that ten-ton telephone and call your sponsor (and if you don't have a sponsor yet, go get one NOW). Read the Basic Text, Just For Today, one of the dozens of Information Pamphlets, telephone another addict, do something nice for someone else, volunteer for NA service work, ask your HP for help (and if you don't have an HP (Higher Power) yet, go get one NOW), write about your problem, ask yourself "What can I do about this situation?" and begin planning how to make a dent in the problem, say the Serenity Prayer and listen to what the words mean, go to a meeting, share at the meeting (and if you haven't been going to meetings, go get your ass into a meeting ASAP).

We have a disease that knows if we get miserable enough, we'll go out and use. Letting life's challenges pile up on us until we get crushed makes us miserable. So, we deal with the problems, one-at-a-time, as they come at us, with the proper tools, and we don't use. It's not always fun, but it's a way better deal than you get with active addiction.

A friend of mine passed this along to me: It's a link that brings you the Just For Today reading for today: http://www.jftna.org/jft/index.php Copy it into your electronic device and you'll always have it handy, as long as you keep your device charged.

Funny. It works that way with us as individuals, as well: We will always have recovery handy, as long as we keep ourselves charged up. And where and how do we get charged up? Meetings, phone calls, contact with sponsors, reading program literature, working the Steps, doing program service work, doing 12th Step work, and not picking up one-day-at-a-time.

***

They asked the oldtimer how he managed to acquire his forty-five years of clean time. He answered: "I didn't use and I didn't die; the two are connected."

THE MONKEY LIE

It has been almost two months since writing of the passing of Uncle Jimmy, and I confess it was a hard posting to put behind me. But the disease doesn't issue slack to anyone because of grief. In fact addiction uses grief like grease on a steep staircase, preparing the complacent recovering addict for that next "slip." The recovering addict either grows toward recovery or begins sliding back to the nightmare, so we move forward. What brought all this to mind was the closing meeting at this year's Unityfest, a very small, very intense NA convention at the Notre Dame Spiritual Center in Alfred, Maine.

The subject was gratitude. After the intense sharing, tears, honesty, and damn hard work done by the folks at Unityfest, recognizing the gratitude each individual felt at the end was a lot like counting your receipts at the end of a very profitable business day. It was great watching the speaking turn go around that big circle, each speaker sharing what he or she was grateful for. Man, it was all sunshine and lollipops until I heard a newcomer say, in effect, that she couldn't imagine using drugs again after such an experience as the Unityfest.

The chills her words caused me reminded me of all the times I've seen the Monkey Lie and shook my head in despair. What is the Monkey Lie? Many refer to addiction as "a monkey on my back." NA convention tee-shirts and sweatshirts sometimes print a picture of this monkey on the recovering addict's back, but the creature is depicted as sound asleep. This is supposed to represent recovery. That is the Monkey Lie, because that monkey never sleeps. When you think he's sleeping, he's really over at the gym working out, getting stronger, leafing through his data base on you to see what Step you aren't working.

The evidence is helping to fill the world's graveyards. It's a stock saying in NA, AA, and other Twelve Step programs: "If you go out again, you don't pick up where you left off; You pick up where you would have been if you had never stopped." I've heard too much testimony from those who have researched this phenomenon first hand to need to repeat the experiment for myself. This doesn't keep me safe, however.

Hang around the halls long enough and you'll hear about the guy who had three, five, fifteen, or twenty-five years clean time and then went and picked up! Everybody thought the monkey was asleep! What happened?

The monkey doesn't sleep, and neither does the dragon. In my area, we refer to addiction as the "Dragon," and there are way more dead addicts than there are dead dragons. I have a little gift that keeps reminding me of how vigilant my disease is. Every time at a meeting, during the reading of "What Is The NA Program," there's that line: "If you are like us, you know that one is too many and a thousand never enough." When whoever is reading finishes that sentence, there is this little echo in my head. It says "...a thousand..."

"...a thousand..."
"It's not enough," says the echo, "but it's a lot!"

I have just over thirty years clean and sober, and I still get little messages, dark little desires, and an occasional yearn for a quick answer to a chronic pain? You're damned right I do, which is why I still go to meetings, why I share at those meetings, why I work the Steps, do service, sponsor newcomers, have a sponsor myself, and use my own sponsor. That's why I go to Unityfest, Brothers In Spirit, and The Miracle. I am not a recovered addict. I am a recovering addict who now has the ability, by the grace of this program and fellowship, and a Higher Power, to stay in recovery if I stay alert one day at a time.

Enjoy your recovery--that's what it's there for. Bathe in the peace, the serenity, the sheer joy of being a human free of addiction. However, never forget the price. That monkey is awake. You'd best be awake, as well.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." --Thomas Jefferson

UNCLE JIMMY

This morning I was lying on my side at the foot of the bed, profoundly weak and tired, the TV on some discussion show that interrupted the talk for a commercial break. I must have heard this particular commercial a hundred times before. It's the Values.com high school basketball one in which the hero, Alex, huddling with the rest of the team, confesses to his coach, "I touched the ball before it went out. It's their ball." One of his teammates says, "C'mon, Alex. The ref did not caught it." Agony, oh, agony. The coach chokes down this pill, sends his team back out on the court, and says to Alex, on his way to confess to the referee, "Good call, Alex."  The word "Sportsmanship" pops up, and the voiceover says, "Sportsmanship. Pass it on."

"The issue is not sportsmanship!" I snarled at the TV.

The issue was in what Alex's teammate said: "C'mon, Alex. The ref did not caught it."

Did not caught it? Caught it?!

No, man! The issue was why the entire English department of that high school wasn't stripped to the waist, strapped to gratings, and each given fifty lashes per word of Alex's teammate's sentence: "The ref did not caught it."

What with the objections the NEA would raise, perhaps a firing squad armed with M60 machine guns would be better. The anti-water boarding faction might object to those wretchedly miscast English teachers being broken on the rack. I don't know.

"The Ref did not caught it."

Perhaps we could all get together on at least using hot irons followed by beheading those particular English teachers.....

And that was how my thinking was going when I realized I was taking out my pain on this stupid TV advert. There are an amazing variety of ways to try and hide from feelings, judgmental anger being only one of the many. What was really going on?

A friend dear to me, a very important friend, died the day before New Year's Eve.  I was among Jimmy Monteith's many friends and family members at the hospice when he died, and all of those dreaded feelings of pain and loss I'd medicated away for so many years had returned and were all over me. But using drugs in response to the death of this man would not be to honor him, although he, more than anyone else on earth, would understand and forgive.

Life sucks better clean. We say it in the meetings and it usually brings up a small wave of sometimes bitter laughter. But it is no joke. Jimmy's death leaves a lot of pain and a lot of loss, an enormous hole in the hearts of so many persons. By being clean for his death, though, I got to share in the magnificent appreciation of his life, not just what he meant to me and to his friends and family, but an appreciation of the man—the example—he was every second up until he drew that final tortured breath.

Jimmy was a recovering drug addict, seventeen years clean. He had one eye, was balding, was full of jokes, was a bee keeper, a fixture in Southern Maine NA, and one of the very few persons on this planet I can honestly say does unconditional love. I say "does," because I don't know if he believed in unconditional love or not. We never had that conversation. One reason for that omission was because he was such an obvious vessel of unconditional love, I don't know anyone who doubted him in this regard.

I don't know what he was like before he got clean. His story is much like all of our stories, so he was probably much like we were when we were using drugs. But the man, clean, growing into becoming a fully realized human being? No one ever had to earn their way into Jimmy's heart. If you were a recovering addict, or a human being, his love was there. Take it and bask in its glow, or leave it until later—no matter. Patience, love, tolerance, a helping hand when you needed one, an ear to complain in, a shoulder to cry on, a mobile place to share laughter and tears, these are only a few of his qualities and why he will leave such a hole in so many lives.

He died of liver cancer. The first two things he did when he got the diagnosis that he had cancer and perhaps a year or a little more to live was marry the woman he had been living with and buy a new pair of downhill skis. I asked his wife which came first, and she wasn't really sure. I do know he loved his wife and that he loved dancing with the mountain. He was a member of the Blokes, a bunch of recovering addicts in NA who get together three times a year for a few days each, to ski when it's light and share good fellowship when aching bones and muscles make it down from the slopes.

I had been acquainted with Jimmy ever since he got into the program. I was asked to be a member of the Blokes a few years ago, and got to know him better. That first year, he was my roommate. I was also just getting back on the snow after a couple of what seemed to be horrific medical procedures. That first time out at Sugarloaf, the snow on the usual trails was boiler-plate ice, and I couldn't handle them. I spent the rest of the day skiing the resort's bunny trail. Jimmy, a very accomplished skier, spent half his day skiing with me so that I wouldn't have to be alone. "No Bloke ever has to be alone," he said to me. Time after time, up and down the bunny slope, accompanying this feeble wreck on boards, never a moment of impatience, always positive, always with a joke, a laugh, a friendly hand on my shoulder, and a hug.

Years passed, and we'd trade friendly shots at each other at the house the Blokes rent, talk skiing, recovery, about the people we love, about his spirituality and mine. Then came the diagnosis of liver cancer. The way the rules are, he didn't qualify for a transplant. And we watched as month by month he wasted away. This ski season, he was going to be too weak to ski the steeps, and I was looking forward to doing the bunny slopes with Jimmy again. Before I was allowed back on the snow after a couple of operations, however, Uncle Jimmy died.

That's how he introduced himself at meetings: "Hi, family. I'm an addict called Uncle Jimmy." And he was everybody's favorite, loving, uncle; Faith, hope, humor, and a helpful strong arm when you needed one.

He's dead, and that sucks. Liver cancer sucks. Not being able to joke with him, hug him, ski with him sucks—all excellent excuses to pick up that drink, that drug, and slide back into that nightmare that makes a summer Jamboree out of Hell by comparison. But here's what I got by staying clean another day:

I was there, among his friends, as the end approached. By the time I arrived, Jimmy was drifting between sleep and a wakefulness filled with confusion caused by the toxins building up in his body. Accepting that he was out of it, I went to his bedside thinking to say a goodbye that would probably fall on deaf ears. When I looked down at him, though, his one good eye was looking back at me. I moved a little and his gaze followed. I bent over and said to him, "Jimmy, I love you and we're going to be skiing together again."

He smiled.

I kissed him.

He kissed me back and smiled again.

An hour later he was gone. He was in his mid-fifties.

Yeah. Life sucks. The Law of Probability Dispersal says, "Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed." We each can't pick which parcel of life's woes will fall into each of our laps. At times it seems as though the range of human misery is inexhaustible. The wad we are issued, whether heart disease, Parkinson's, addiction, crippling wounds, childhood abuse, the deaths of loved ones, poverty, or insanity, that is out of our control. What we each do with the circumstances life deals us, however, is in our control. Do I sit in my misery and cry, "Look what's happening to me!" or do I say, "What can I do about this?" and then reach out for the help I need?

While you're pondering which way to go, keep this little vignette from the life of Uncle Jimmy close to your funny bone, and to your heart. In the hall at the hospice, waiting for the end, one of Jimmy's closest friends told me that he had talked to Jimmy a few days before, as his pain was increasing and his organs were shutting down. His friend asked him how he was doing.

Jimmy answered, "Well, I pissed myself; but it was warm."

Uncle Jimmy made whatever transition death is clean, sober, surrounded by love in the form of family and friends who were also clean and sober. After he died we held an NA meeting in his room with Jimmy's pitifully shrunken remains a part of the circle. It was the most powerful and beautiful meeting I've ever attended. Would I have preferred to keep from seeing and feeling all this by sitting alone in the dark with a bottle and a bunch of pills? Not on your life.

Yeah, life sucks; but it sucks better clean every time.