COVID-19! SHORTAGES! CANCELLATIONS! WHAT'LL WE DO? WHAT WILL WE DO?

I have had to cancel out of my high school reunion which means I will be available not to attend a conflicting NA retreat. A friend from Boston called to say that the hospital in which several AA and NA meetings were held has closed down all meetings. Our own local hospital, which hosts several AA and NA meetings, has also closed down all meetings. The slogan is: "Meeting Makers Make It." If the meetings are cut by 70 to 90 percent, what then?

A lesson a new downhill skier or snowboarder gets early in his or her instruction is: If you get into a tight spot and it looks as though disaster is only a second or two away: Do Not Panic! Do the best you can at what you know even though things things look bleak. Try. You just might get through it and look damned good doing it. The one thing guaranteed to bust you up and possibly kill you, however, is to give in to panic. This applies to life and to recovery, as well. It certainly applies to what health services, nations, and businesses are doing these days to help lessen the spreading of the Covid-19 virus and how those measures affect those in recovery and those attempting to get clean.   

Nothing new. You do what it takes to stay clean and sober. Instead of sitting at home and playing with resentments, watching TV, or eating bonbons, now might be a good time to dust off that Basic Text or Big Book and read about recovery. We are told to look for the opportunities in adversity, and if your meetings are cancelled, what a great opportunity to get to work on that next Step. Perhaps you can pick up that sanitized telephone and call your sponsor or someone else in the program. There is always program literature to read, and the recovery tool of writing. Take that warren of worries in your head, write and put your feelings on paper (works better than tapping on a keyboard; Don't know why).

Alcoholics Anonymous pioneered solving the problem of recovery in isolation. Through the mail, through the telephone, and now through the net and social media we still have a program, meetings, and recovery.  Those in recovery can share here and in their social media specific information regarding Facebook recovery groups, online and telephone meetings for all Twelve Step recovery programs.

As the newcomer was explaining all of the complex issues and reasons making it impossible for him to come to meetings, the old timer said, "You're wearing yourself out. If you want out of the program, any path will take you there." 

The excuses for skipping meetings now have never been better. Please share below what you are going to do.

 

HUGS AND BUGS

So, another great set of excuses for not going to meetings is spreading across the world. This time it is the Corona Virus. Colds are okay excuses, and there is always the flu. Now that NA has some decades behind it, we also have a gaggle of aged oldtimers, many with underlying medical conditions and compromised immune systems. 

Funny the Dragon should mention that: about the "possibly fatal illness." I already have a more than possibly fatal illness called "addiction." In addition, its fatality rate makes the Corona Virus look like a case of sniffles in comparison.

My disease of addiction absolutely loves these moments. They present countless opportunities to sabotage my program of recovery. "Drop meetings," it says. "It only makes sense. I mean, they hug at those things! Do you want to catch a possibly fatal illness?" "Put the step work aside for now; It's time to clean the house and stock up on canned goods." "No point in calling my sponsor; He's probably becoming a hermit."

 
"Jails, institutions, and death." Left untreated, those are the end results of addiction. Over the course of my recovery I have had endless excuses and some pretty good reasons to skip meetings, avoid my runny nosed brothers and sisters, mostly to "look out for myself." You know, "protect my health."

Protecting my health, back when I was using, was my disease's rational for me to switch from rum to "diet" beer. I was saving thousands of calories a day and I couldn't understand why I was gaining so much weight. Then my disease suggested I quit the diet beer and drink rum. Rum had even fewer calories. The point here is that the suggestions my disease makes to me regarding health and medical issues, relationships, choices in clothing, parenting skills, or whether to attend meetings are by design aimed at one purpose: to get and keep me back in the nightmare.

There are sensible precautions one can take during cold and flu season and throughout the occasional pandemic. Possibly your meeting could forego the traditional closing hug. If that is not agreeable, those at risk (old, immune compromised) could stand aside from the hug circle during the closing. If you are sick, wear a mask to keep from spreading it. Wash your hands, use the hand sanitizers, stay hydrated, don't touch your face, and avoid putting stuff in your mouth handed to you by someone else. 

There are telephone meetings and I can see virtual meetings through the net and social media coming into their own. Stay in touch with your sponsor, keep on with your program, use the telephone, read the literature, check in with your HP, keep up with step work, and hit those meetings. Should you live so long and make it back to a meeting after a relapso grande, do you really want to say that why you stopped going to meetings was because you were afraid of catching something? If you are like me, you already have something and it is a disease that is doing its best to kill me. There is a proven way to arrest my disease which does not involve either separating myself from the program nor isolating myself.  

Be careful out there and do not let the disease choose your day.

 

NEW DAY'S RESOLUTIONS

The new year (2020) begins for those in the US's Eastern Standard Time Zone at midnight (EST). It is different all over the world, but one thing is the same: New Year's resolutions. What's it going to be this time? Losing weight? Making it to the gym? Stopping smoking? Reading more books? Taking that course? Studying more and upping grade point averages? Eat healthier? Rekindle old friendships? Get and stay clean?

Speaking just for myself, new year's resolutions never worked for me. A year is a rather large chunk of time. To eat healthy and in moderation, in other words: uproot and rearrange my entire life for twelve months was a goal that became compromised then tossed out after only a few days. My resolution to quit smoking tobacco lasted four hours and sixteen minutes. I had taken all my pipes and tobacco out in my back yard, burned them, and in mere hours was back in the local drug store buying it all back, plus adding cigars! I was facing an entire year of no tobacco, and the deprivation blues were too much.

I eventually did stop smoking, but it was for thirty minutes. At the end of that thirty minutes, I asked my HP for another thirty minutes smoke free. I had added nicotine to my list of drugs in NA, and if I smoked another pipe or cigar, I'd have to pick up a white beginner's key-tag and start my clean time all over again. At the time I had two years in the program and was very proud of that time. At the end of the day, I was still smoke free. The next morning I took on not smoking for another day, but this time an hour at a time. Then I had two days. One day at a time I lasted a month at the end of which I realized when I went to bed, I had gone all day without thinking of smoking. Yesterday marked my 38th year clean from mood altering drugs, and my 36th year free from tobacco.

Tackling problems one day at time works, and I'm not just referring to drugs, alcohol, nicotine, or overeating. That garage or basement that is cluttered with junk may seem too overwhelming to clean. But take one little part, throw away or sell the stuff, clean the surfaces, then look at it the next day and decide again. Clean another little patch? Why not? The first one was no big deal. Clean another little patch, then the next day another, and one day you will look up and the whole place will be clean.

Do what you need to do, one day at a time, get the help you need, and understand and use the principles of the Serenity Prayer: "serenity to accept the things I cannot change and courage to change the things I can."

Happy New Day everyone, and may you have many more.

THINKING ABOUT REHAB?

I just had occasion to reformat my novel Saint Mary Blue and make it available again as both Kindle and trade paperback. To do that I had to read it again. It is the story of a group of patients going through treatment at Saint Mary's Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis. I wrote it one year after researching this novel the hard way and graduating from Saint Mary's. That particular rehab is now owned by Fairview Rehabilitation Services. That may have changed but inside it's business as usual: putting down the stuff and relearning How To Be A Human.

 

Working on the republication of this work brought it all back from my nightmarish flirting with suicide, the intervention, my foggy sick arrival at rehab, and my stumbling first days fencing with the disease of addiction, with the rehab staff, with my fellow group members, and even with myself. The work is fiction but there is nothing fictional about it. In a few days I will be celebrating my 38th anniversary clean and sober. I owe a very large part of that success to rehab and to its follow-up program.

There are all kinds of rehabilitation facilities, and of all degrees of quality. If you want to get clean, if you want to get sober, and if you want to stay that way, a professional treatment center can give you one hell of a good start. An incompetent treatment center is often worse than no treatment at all. At the time I thought rehab was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Through a lot of pain and much humility I found that it gave me back my life, my family, my career, hope, tears, love, and laughter: A good deal at any price.

 

LIFE SUCKS BETTER CLEAN ~ TABLE OF CONTENTS

Getting to past LSBC posts has always been tough with Blogger, so I have put together a table of contents on my Authors Guild website, each title links to its reading, The link is on the right at the top of Learn More. Any time you want to go to the table of contents, click on that link. This should make it easier to find those recovery gems of yesteryear.

HOW TO DESIGN A HIGHER POWER

A few minutes after meeting my new sponsor at his home, he sat me down at his dining room table, put a piece of paper, and a pencil in front of me. "Now what we're going to do is design you a higher power."

He sat next to me, faced the paper toward himself, wrote a line on it, and faced it toward me. The line read: "Has the power to keep me clean for a day when asked."

"That's all I require from your higher power," he said. "Throw on anything else you want."

Wow! Did my inflated intellect and barely subdued disease ever want to have fun with this! "What?" I said. "This piece of paper?"

He shrugged. "Pretend it's a teddy bear, a sunset, a favorite chair, Allah, Vishnu, or the keychain in your pocket if you want. But if you ask that piece of paper for the strength to keep you clean for a day, you will get another day away from the nightmare." Then came the big lesson, which I have mentioned in this blog several times before: "You don't have to believe in this shit for it to work. All you have to do is do it."

The search for a Higher Power and figuring out how to fit one into your life and recovery can be difficult, particularly among rabid god-haters such as I was. I wanted to take this nonsense, discount the whole thing, and throw it in the wastebasket. I didn't, though, because I told my sponsor I would do what he asked.

I don't think I personified my paper HP nor borrowed any of the available gods and goddesses from current and ancient religion. Unnamed and "up there" somewhere, I asked for another day clean. I not only got that next twenty-four hours clean, it was easy.

Since then I have added on a few things. They are in my mind since I lost that piece of paper a long time ago. My HP needs to be okay with me testing it. I needed to see it work in my life and in a manner I could understand. One time, looking for a parking place, and frustrated on that account, I came up with my first test. "Okay, give me parking places." I found a parking place, and the parking places I've gotten since are embarrassingly great. My HP listens to me and answers every prayer, sometimes with "No."

There are a number of other things I added to my list, but I do not need to know and understand my HP. What I need is to be clean one day at a time and grow in recovery. Every now and then I need direction on what to do. How it works, why it works, and so on are not my questions to answer.

Keep it simple. 

TAKING MIRACLES FOR GRANTED

Shaker Wall at the Center

Brothers In Spirit, the annual men's retreat at the Notre Dame Spiritual Center in Alfred, Maine was meeting for the 20th time. I was program chair, our theme was "That Higher Power Thing," and for the previous couple of weeks I had been sweating cannonballs. The program, essentially, involved discussing and sharing on probably the most difficult and personal subject in NA, the Higher Power problem, as well as one of the most explosive issues in the world: believing, not believing, in which god, how to use or be used by this or that supreme being, which message or messages to follow, which set of rituals, which raiment, which set of dietary laws, which set of scriptures, which holy beings in which sect to follow to be good with the spirit world, good with my fellow temple, church, synagogue, mosque, circle mates, and keeping, as well, those in differing sects from throwing bombs through my window and slaughtering everyone with swords and submachine gun fire.

Addicts, especially those new in recovery, are not the most tolerant of persons. Neither are they usually patient, forgiving, non-judgmental, understanding, nor open-minded. These are skills and qualities one develops after years and decades in recovery. One cannot count on old-timers, however. As with modern education, I have known those who managed to go through the entire process of recovery without learning much nor changing a thing. So, we proposed to take this bunch, mix them up with the world's most controversial subject, and see if we could learn anything from the process. I should add, we did not provide metal detectors nor pat-down body searches at the meetings.

Check out this program:

Came To Believe —or Not! For many the biggest stumbling block in recovery is the “came to believe” part of Step Two. Why do that? How do you begin believing? How to get around a life of unbelieving.

The Decision: Wills & Lives In recovery, what does turning one’s will and life over to an HP mean? How is it done? How to detect reservations.

To Find, Have & Use an HP Talk is not cheap if your Higher Power is nothing more than words. How to find and use your individual Higher Power in recovery and in life.

Sending & Receiving Sharing the prayers we use and the ways we meditate, not just to achieve a closer contact with our HP’s, but to stay clean, grow in recovery, and live life.

Journeys In Spirituality We find our HPs each on our own path, but many get stuck along the way. Sharing experience, strength, and hope in our spiritual journeys.

There were tears, laughter, and men sharing their deepest fears, pains, hopes, loves, and aspirations. We all learned from each other, picked up what we could use to apply to our own lives and recoveries, got help where we needed it, exchanged numbers and made bonds of friendship and fellowship. What we did not do is argue, judge, nor attempt to dictate or control what another believed, how they prayed, nor even if they prayed. What we all did was shut up and listen to each other.

When a recovering addict speaks in the circle on what he believes or how he communicates with his HP, we listened. We didn't stab him to death, blow up his room, smear his name in the media, nor slaughter four hundred innocent passersby in protest. We listened, often celebrated his achievement, and even learned a thing or three we could apply to our own spiritual journeys. It was a miracle that outshone any bright lights or burning bushes and we almost let it pass without recognizing it for what it was. Thankfully, a couple of speakers pointed it out at the last sharing session. You don't want to let those miracles zip on by without notice.

There is an old newspaper yarn about what constitutes a newsworthy story. "Dog Bites Man," is not newsworthy. "Man Bites Dog" is. Churches, mosques, synagogues, and those of various faiths being torched, blown up, and worshippers slain in endless horrific ways is almost so commonplace it isn't newsworthy unless the body count is so high it in itself becomes remarkable.  Well, under the heading of "Man Bites Dog," in a tiny town in Maine, Jews, Christians, Islamists, Pagans, Buddhists, and atheists got together to peacefully discuss spirituality, higher powers, recovery, share their deepest beliefs, and learn from each other. And they did.