Intimacy.
One of the least discussed and most personal aspects of recovery is intimacy. There are many different kinds of intimacy and I’m talking about them all. For recovering addicts, there will be challenges with respect to nearly every type of relationship. Intellectual, emotional, romantic, and sexual. Alcoholism pervades our whole beings, saturates all of our relations when we drink. And like everything else we do, it poisons the way we interact intimately.
I drank for about 12 years. And I came to intimacy late in life. I was already a drinker when I started having intimate relationships. As my drinking progressed, it overwhelmed all my attempts to establish deeply intimate relationships. My ex-wife used to tell me that I was choosing alcohol over her. It made me furious. Because it was true. But I didn’t understand why she couldn’t let me have both. I didn’t understand that she was a real person with real needs and desires and that having a drunk, petulant husband wasn’t on either list.
When we finally enter recovery, and start doing the 12 steps, one of the things we address in the fourth step is a sex-conduct list. We lay out who we’ve wronged sexually and what we’ve done, so as to establish what amends we need to make, and what resentments we need to process. I’ll venture to say that most alcoholics have been less than sterling examples of healthy sexual conduct in their drinking careers. And that process is crucial to our recovery. But it doesn’t prepare us for what comes next.
Intimate relationships can be incredibly painful for me, in the midst of all of their wonder. Feeling deeply connected to someone and sharing with them brings with it a deep pain. A pain that reflects, I think, all of the times when I longed for – needed! – intimate support when I was young and didn’t get it. Sometimes, the most painful words a person can ever say to me, the words that cut closest to the bone and provoke the greatest hurt, are “I love you.” Learning how to be loved is an astonishingly difficult process for most of the alcoholics I know. We are deeply ashamed of ourselves, and do not believe we have the right to happiness or joy or love or intimacy.
Sex brings with it a whole host of other problems. When you spend a number of years only having sex drunk, it can be difficult to have sex sober. Some alcoholics suffer from erectile dysfunction, or premature ejaculation (I’m sure the list of female sexual dysfunction in sobriety is long, but I know little about it.). Shame can compound these problems. I was very fortunate. My ex-wife and I stayed together for about two years, and managed to have a pretty healthy sex life during that time. So I learned to have sober sex while I was with a partner who was devoted to getting it right.
But now that I’m divorced, new sexual relationships are often nerve-wracking. Frightening. And that’s compounded by the pain and shame and hurt that I feel when someone actually cares about me. But the excitement of new relationships is the same, I think, for us recovering alcoholics as it is for others. It can take time to get intimacy right. It can take time to shed the baggage of past relationships, past sexual traumas, past betrayed intimacies. And I think it’s important to talk about how sex changes. One of my first confidants in sobriety was a 70 year old man with 30 years, and he told me: “Sex is going to be different.” He was right.
But you know what? I am capable of flights of intimacy now that I never was before. Because I’ve learned how to be vulnerable, open, honest. I’ve learned how to recognize that trust takes time, and that missteps are surmountable. And now, when I am intimate with someone, it’s better than it ever was before. Because I know how to be me, within an intimate relationship. And by being comfortable with me, I am more open to the discovery of another person. By being sober, and healthy, I can share in new ways. Better ways than I ever knew before.
Why is Alcoholism Different from Cancer?
Yesterday on twitter I had a brief conversation with @Dirk57 and @drugmonkeyblog about treatment of alcoholism. It started with @Dirk57 (who is also in recovery) tweeting a question about why we don’t do more to treat addiction with compassion rather than condemnation. I responded that it is not cruel to say: “I can not participate in your illness.” I then went on to say that I believe in “Compassion with boundaries, and honest appraisal. Pussyfooting around doesn’t help.” And @Dirk57 agreed that otherwise, compassion can simply be enabling.
At this point, that agent provocateur (and highly regarded addiction researcher) @drugmonkeyblog chimed in: “Do that for cancer, depression and you are an ass – why different?”
It’s a really good question. Now, I’m not going to address the depression aspect (and I said that in the twitter conversation too). I’ve been diagnosed with Major Depression more than once in my life. I have found that treating my alcoholism has treated my depression for the most part. When I have gotten situationally depressed in sobriety, I have sought medical attention from a psychiatrist, and have taken short runs of SSRI-based antidepressants. My depression has resolved completely and quickly. Now, I treat it with exercise. It works for me. I do not claim to have any insight on the treatment of depression.
I do claim to have some insight on the treatment of alcoholism. It’s opinion, of course, but it’s opinion based on more than five continuous years of diligently working a program of abstinence and emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual maintenance. I have seen treatment succeed, and I have seen treatment fail. I read a lot of the current literature in the epidemiology of addiction and the various predictors of success. I have deep concerns that the medical community at large remains incapable of understanding how addiction is treated successfully. In part because the way that science measures success remains largely irrelevant to successful recovery.
However, strides are being made. And the fact that addiction researchers like @drugmonkeyblog are interested in engaging with us, the hoi polloi of the recovery community, in order to understand our philosophy of recovery is very encouraging. Unlike some recovered alcoholics, I do not dismiss the efforts of science to improve our odds at better lives, free from addiction. But I think that there may need to be wholesale changes in the reductionistic means of examining addiction in order to do so. The fact that preeminent scientists are willing to engage is very encouraging to me.
So how do I answer @drugmonkeyblog’s question? First, I said that refusal to enable is part of an addict’s treatment. Getting a job, paying our own bills, making our own food, these are things that help us recover. When people relieve us of these requirements, they give us what our addiction wants: lack of responsibility, more shame, more isolation. When we break down the false ego of feeling like we’re above work, and above responsibility, we can start to build the real ego-structure of useful adults. We talk a lot in recovery about breaking down the ego. But really, what we mean is basing our ego on real things, rather than inflated senses of entitlement.
To this, he responded that cancer patients make horrible treatment decisions too, and that there’s room to judge there. And that may be true. I’m fortunate enough never to have been involved in the treatment profile of a cancer patient. Especially not one making decisions that I think are against their best interests. So I responded: “We all have the right to say, ‘I will not help you make yourself sicker.'” And @drugmonkeyblog agreed.
For me, alcoholism and cancer share many basic aspects: serious diseases that often kill, that need to be understood and treated aggressively, and from which sustained remission is often a perfectly reasonable goal and outcome. But alcoholism has a behavioral element that makes the way people legitimately respond to the sufferer a factor. We don’t yet know what makes an alcoholic choose to attempt to recover. But we do know that those who enable alcoholics do themselves and their alcoholic loved ones no favors. We alcoholics in recovery say that we turned to recover when the pain from our addiction became to great to bear.
No one I’ve heard of says: “Look, I just want a little bit of cancer now and then. I can handle it.” And then refuses treatment because they like the way cancer makes them feel. But addicts do that all the time, and our loved ones help us. We all have the right not to help people make themselves sicker. And for the recovery of the addict, I personally believe it is imperative.
Restorative Exertion.
I was always a lazy person. I come from a long line of lazy people. My grandfather used to say, “Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down, and when you lie down, go to sleep.” He probably didn’t make that up. I have never been a person who truly enjoys exertion, either physical or mental. I hate puzzles. I seriously hate puzzles. What’s the point of doing all that mental energy and then at the end, all you’ve done is solve a meaningless problem? Why not do something useful if you’re going to do all that work? That’s why, if you may recall from my old blog, I once blogged an algorithm which solves all Sudoku puzzles*. Because, fuck Sudoku. It’s not interesting.
As a result of having a lazy, addictive personality, I ended up, at 33, a fat addict. My journey from there to here is well documented in the preceding pages. Today, I just wanted to comment about how glorious it is, how wonderful I feel, to be in the position where I am today. I haven’t just changed what I do. By being consistent and diligent about what I do, I’ve changed how I feel.
When I solve a problem with my simulation, or I observe a new process in my hospital, or I work out a better way of engineering a system, I’m excited. I’ve done something difficult and useful. I’ve earned something. It’s good. But I need to recover from that. I need vacations, or down time. Rest. Mental efforts are efforts, and even though they can have rewards when whatever I was working on comes to fruiting, I am still exhausted by the work.
Physically, though, I am turning a corner. I haven’t lost any weight in a year. I’m stuck around 190, which isn’t fat but also isn’t going to get me any underwear-modeling gigs. But I’ve been working steadily. Running. Lifting. I’ve started doing the planks. It sounds easy: hold a push-up position and don’t do any push-ups. But it gets difficult fast. I’ve held a plank for 213 seconds, and I can routinely do about two and a half minutes.
This weekend I engaged in a lot of very restorative exertion. It’s amazing to me how much my body has recovered from the grey depths of addicted dereliction it once fathomed. Where once I was sallow, flabby and feeble, I have become vigorous and hale. And I like it. That’s what’s become amazing to me. Yes, running is work. Core work can be agonizing. And some part of my body is usually sore these days. Right now, my abs and chest feel a bit like they were run over by a truck. But I feel fantastic. Centered, alive, upbeat.
I guess, I wish I could tell all of the addicts out there, squatting in misery and shame, that there is so much worth having in the real world. That beyond the veil of compulsive addiction and misery there is life and health and love and excitement and thrilling, illimitable joy. That’s what I’ve found, where I am today. Stupidly happy and feeling as healthy and engaged with life as I ever have. There’s just so much here to love.
____________________________________________
*Here is an mathematical program which will solve all Sudoku puzzles, using the Simplex Method. Quit wasting your time with them:
Define r(i,j), s(i,j), … , z(i,j), such that
r(i,j) = 1 if location (i,j) is equal to 1, 0 else.
s(i,j) = 1 ” ” ” ” ” ” 2, 0 else.
.
.
.
z(i,j) = 1 if location (i,j) is equal to 9, 0 else.
R(k) represent each 9 square 3×3 ‘Region’ from 1..9.
Objective:
Max SUM(i,j) {r(i,j)+s(i,j)+…+z(i,j)}
Subject To:
SUM(i) {r(i,j)} = 1 For All j
.
.
.
SUM(i) {z(i,j)} = 1 For All j
SUM(j) {r(i,j)} = 1 For All i
.
.
.
SUM(j) {z(i,j)} = 1 For All i
SUM(i,j) {r(i,j)} = 9
.
.
.
SUM(i,j) {z(i,j)} = 9
SUM(R(k)) {r(i,j)} = 1 For All k
.
.
.
SUM(R(k)) {z(i,j)} = 1 For All k
Initial Condition Constraints:
For each known initial condition, take the value and location of that condition and add (for example):
v(4,7)=1
There. That’s it. Sudoku is over.
Healthcare Engineering Fieldwork.
Most of my work is sitting at a computer typing out code or processing data from one giant array to another, trying to formulate it in a way readable by the second-rate code I write. Building simulations of systems. But everyone once in a while, I get to go out, into the field, and do some cool observations. Science fieldwork is the sexy side of science. It’s the gorillas-in-the-mist, pigs-in-space side of science. Going out into the world and examining things as they really are. Seeing how nature and the elements interact. I know people who do truly exciting fieldwork, stomping through African jungles and savannahs, diving in Fiji. I even know people who are applying to astronaut programs to do science in space. It’s really cool.
By comparison, my fieldwork is pretty dull. Instead of typing at my computer in the hospital basement, I go up to the surgical tower and strap on a bunny suit, so that I can observe surgeries. Sometimes, I go into clinics and emergency departments. The last couple of years I was doing that in New England at ECU’s affiliated hospital. But I didn’t do much of that fieldwork myself. I had research assistants who took the data and monitored the processes. Most of my work on that project was typing at the computer.
But today I got to spend about three and a half hours in real-world, honest-to-Pete observational science-mode in the field in MECMC’s operating rooms. I’ve visited before for a minute or two, taking a look around. It’s exciting, and can be a little intimidating. Since I’m not a regular OR worker, I don’t own scrubs. This means I need to put on a disposable “bunny suit” so that I don’t contaminate the clean areas. My goal for this project is to understand how OR turnaround is accomplished.
OR turnaround is the process of cleaning the room after one patient, and preparing it for another. Our goal is to accomplish this task as quickly as possible, because the operating rooms are one of the main financial drivers of any hospital. It costs thousands of dollars an hour to keep an OR in service. OR idle time is phenomenally expensive, both in direct costs and in opportunity costs for patients who could be being seen. But of course, it isn’t just money that drives it (and I don’t even know the real numbers, nor will I include them in my simulations). Believe it or not, hospitals and health care professionals really do care about providing the best care to the most patients. It’s not entirely cash-driven. Most surgeons like to operate because they like fixing people, not just because they collect airplanes.
OR idle time means fewer surgeries performed, which means a longer wait for surgeries that are performed, which means that people suffer while waiting for surgery. The whole field of medicine exists to claim ground in the battle against death and suffering. Every minute an OR is ready for a patient that isn’t in it, is time and treasure wasted in that battle. So my job is to help figure out where we can eliminate waste and duplication in the effort of turning over an OR. Everybody wins. When we can do more surgeries, we relieve more suffering. We generate more revenue. And we can reduce the cost of individual procedures through economies of scale.
So I made observations today. Which is one of the first steps of doing science. I’m not even taking data yet. Just observing the process so that I can understand who is doing what, what the jobs are, and what has to be done in what order to prepare the OR for the next patient. One thing was fairly obvious from the get-go. Sometimes, surgeons (or anesthesiologists) will run two ORs at the same time, so that one patient can be prepped while the other is still in surgery. This maximizes the surgeon’s productivity by ensuring that a patient is waiting for the knife at all times.
However, it also means that ORs sit idle while waiting for surgeons (or anesthesiologists) to become available. There was a time when a surgeon’s time was probably more valuable than the ORs. But that’s no longer the case, by a couple of orders of magnitude. It would be far less expensive to hire a few more surgeons, and pay them to wait, and keep those ORs clicking. Of course, if you’ve ever met a surgeon who will tolerate waiting in a professional context, you should write in to Ripley’s.
So, there’s today’s little primer on Healthcare Engineering Fieldwork. This is just a tiny corner of the world of it, of course. MECMC has partner hospitals all over the country and the world. It would be exciting to be able to go and study them, deploying simulation to the far reaches of the globe. For now, my fieldwork is in a local field. But that’s no less exciting. I get to watch the real world of medicine unfold in front of me. And I get to play a role in making it better. It’s exciting and humbling to be able to do that here. I love this job. This place. This life.
Privileges and Pains.
One of the things I’m most grateful for in sobriety is the opportunity to help people who are suffering from alcoholism. It’s an amazing privilege to be able to step out into the world as a sober person and be the float on a line that helps haul a new drunk from the swallowing sea and into the rafts of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. There’s very little that gives me as much pleasure and satisfaction as seeing a newly sober drunk struggle to their feet and start living again. My former sponsee, whom I transferred to a friend when I left St. Louis, is one of those people. He’s coming up on nine months sober now. Working. Contributing. And he has even started a hobby. He’s building furniture at home. Compare that to drinking himself to death and playing video games. Boy to man, nine months. And of course, I hope you read the recent guest post from my friend with a year.
A person who is as close to me as any ever has been is now taking her first steps into the program. She had about 6 weeks sober and then a small relapse. Just the equivalent of about two cocktails. Now she’s got about a week again. She’s working very hard. She got some bullshit static in the rooms too, about “relapse means you weren’t working the steps hard enough!” That’s a crock of shit. In early sobriety, those first six weeks, many people working incredibly hard relapse. And AA is supposed to be a judgement-free place. We all know that any of us could have relapsed in the early days. Now, with five years behind me, yes, my sobriety is more contingent upon working my program well and not neglecting it. In the beginning, sometimes there’s just too much. Relapse happens. Dust off. Come back. Which is what she’s doing. And I’m so proud.
Recently, I’ve had a different privilege. I’ve been talking to a person whose spouse is the alcoholic. Divorce is imminent. The drinker keeps drinking. My friend is suffering. I’ve been trying to support my friend, someone I admire greatly, while they come to grips with the idea that the person they married is gone. And cannot come back. There’s grief to endure.
And I think that that’s what happened in my own marriage. My ex loved me once. And I loved her. And I will always love the things that I loved about her. But as my alcoholism progressed, the person that I was, that she loved, vanished. And when I got sober, he didn’t come back. A new person – for me, a better person – emerged instead. I am neither the person I was before I drank, nor the person I was while I drank. I am a new thing, still marbled with traces of all the persons I’ve ever been. Talking to my friend has helped me see this process from the other side. And I am unimaginably grateful.
And I am deeply affected by my friend’s suffering. Because I see how I was in the reflection in my friend’s eyes. I see the alcoholism of my friend’s spouse and I can see the things I used to do, the lies I used to tell, the selfishness and bitterness that I used to harbor. I cannot imagine a greater lesson about my need to embrace my program, dedicate myself ever more fervently to my recovery. There is so much in my past I need to never return to. But I cannot simply dismiss it, deny it. I own it.
It’s painful. Painful to see the anguish that this disease causes in both those who suffer from it, and those who suffer at the hands of the people who suffer from it. It’s painful to be reminded of the things I’ve done. But it is an unimaginable privilege to stand where I stand now. Ready to help. To intercede. To shoulder burdens for those who cannot carry the weight of theirs anymore. Because that is how I stay centered, how I stay in the middle of this garden, blooming in sober soil, helping to guide others from darkness to light. And so I thank them all, for saving my life.
A Quick Trip to Boston.
I went to Boston this weekend. I was in the city for almost exactly 24 hours. And I was on the train for something like half that. The east coast of the United States is a tiny bit larger than I thought. I love train riding, I really do. And spending six hours on a train in the morning to hang out with friends in the afternoon is not that big a deal. But – and I say this with love – I don’t think that we, as a nation, need all of Connecticut.
I went to Boston because that’s where this year’s Experimental Biology conference was, and I have a lot of friends who are experimental biologists. I don’t know how it happened. It just did. Don’t judge. I also have a friend in the math department at one of Boston’s several universities, and my collaborator from ECU, which is near enough to Boston for government work, came down yesterday for brunch.
I had a truly exceptionally wonderful trip. I was able to see a couple friends (SciTriGrrl and Katiesci) I hadn’t seen since the Great Chicago Tweetup 2012, and meet some new friends that I’ve known online for a long time, but hadn’t met in person until this weekend, like Doc Becca, who is just as beguiling in real life as you’d expect from her online presence. And Biochembelle, who does something in biochemistry I can’t even begin to pretend to understand and who is currently tweeting the hell out of Experimental Biology with the hashtag #EB2013. Go follow her.
I think what was truly remarkable about this trip was how comfortable I felt. If you recall my reaction to the Great Chicago Tweetup, you know how when I’m in social situations, I often kind of freeze up, and feel outside and isolated. It’s disorienting and I think it prevents me from making closer friends sometimes. I don’t know how to connect in the group, and so then when it’s time to interact one on one, I don’t know how to transition. As a result, I often fail to advance friendships simply because I don’t know what to talk about. I feel stifled and clumsy.
But on this trip, I had wonderful interactions with everyone. I got the chance to perambulate the Boston Commons with SciTriGrrl and it was comfortable and nice, like seeing a good friend. Which is exactly what it was. At dinner with a bunch of tweeps, I felt like I contributed and was a part of things. It’s a nice feeling. And it represents advancement from here I was a year ago. I like being a part of the crowd, and I’ve finally found a couple of crowds, in AA and in the online science community, where I belong.
And so posting this is now the cue to start feeling insecure and embarrassed and nitpicking every little thing I did that might have embarrassed myself. That’s part of my disease. My brain is constantly on the alert to drag me down, and tell me I’m worthless and useless and shameful so that I’ll isolate myself from other people, and despair, and drink and die. I used to just surrender to those feelings. There’s a perverse pleasure in feeling useless and ashamed. But I don’t let those fears and feelings rule me today. I acknowledge them. And then I look at the world again, and see it for what it really is. A place where I have finally, after half a life as an outsider, found a few places to call home.
A Special Guest Infact.
Today, we bring a special Guest Infact from a dear friend who yesterday celebrated her first anniversary, a whole year without drinking. A year of recovery. I’ve been privileged to be a part of it, and I encouraged her to share it here. I hope you’ll read her incredible story. AA works. Here’s the proof:
What it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.
What it’s like now is a whole lot better than what it was like on this day a year ago. There aren’t words to express how much gratitude—and amazement—I have at the changes that have happened in my life in the last year. I am a sober alcoholic, sober for one year, as of today. It is easy for me now to share my story in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, because I do that four, five, six times a week. The heart of the program, the community, is one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic about things we understand that most other people don’t understand. We don’t lecture, or demand, or scold, or command. We share our stories. In the vocabulary of A.A., we say that we share our experience, strength, and hope, following the general format of what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.
It is easy now for me to speak in a room of alcoholics, but it is not easy for me to write to you, all of you out there, who may or may not know me. Very often, when someone sits down to speak at a meeting, to lead the meeting with their story, the speaker will confess that it is nerve wracking to be sitting in front of the room, that they don’t know what is going to come out of their mouth, and that they hope something they say will be of use. And then many of us will quiet the nerves by taking a deep breath and repeating the format like a comforting mantra. What it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now.
I started drinking when I was fifteen years old. I didn’t grow up in a drinking household. My mom didn’t drink at all. My dad drank occasionally and moderately. To this day, I’ve never seen either of my parents drunk. My mother warned me from a young age that there was alcoholism in the family and that I should be careful. I didn’t see anyone in the family who drank, and I suspected she might be exaggerating. When I was old enough to ask her who the alcoholics were, I didn’t necessarily agree with her assessment about what constituted problem drinking. Her assessment was pretty much textbook and correct. There is a body count associated with the drinking in my extended family.
I was an awkward, shy, isolating kid. I got bullied a lot. It sucked a lot. There was a lot of pain and fear at home because sometimes the gears of a family don’t move smoothly. There were happy times, but in the difficult times, in the soul crushing times, there was little or no relief. When my parents divorced, it was like an icy cloud lifting. That was just before high school. I made a friend who was new to our little town, liked me for some reason, and was one of the cool kids. She taught me how to be in the world. She and I are still friends, and I owe her more than she knows.
Through high school, I worked hard enough at school, but not as hard as I could have. I had two jobs—the same two jobs—through high school and until I went to college. I went to church, which was a requirement in my family. I took care of my younger sister. I was responsible. On the other hand, I partied a lot. I did plenty of things I shouldn’t have done. I was hungover in church or at work on the weekends on a fairly regular basis. But I showed up and didn’t raise any alarms. I was more functional than most of my friends.
College was a different story. I drank my way out of my first year of college. There were blackouts. There were embarrassments. There was a lot of fun, but there were also consequences. Looking back now, I believe I was an alcoholic by the time I was 19. An unusual set of family circumstances involving a death and a couple of births catapulted me into adulthood, and I embraced it. I drank very rarely for most of the following decade, and those were good years. In retrospect, when I did drink, there were times when I drank more than I had intended, which is a warning sign for alcoholism. I was wary, and felt guilty when I felt I had had too much to drink. Another way to put that is that I was managing my drinking, which is another warning sign. In all likelihood, the problem was always there.
Life moved on. I accomplished some things. I lost some things. Some painful things happened. A heartbreak, or two, or three. An estrangement here, a frustration there. A lack of support, a burden too heavy. A drink, and another. This is very dangerous ground. This is the essence of why I need Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 steps in my life. Left to my own devices, the line between what has happened to me and where I have played a role blurs. Left to my own devices, I can take actual pain and magnify it. Left to my own devices, I can build a case that the world is a much darker and colder place than it actually is. That’s what I did, and in the end, in the last few years, at least (though it’s hard to count), I was drinking every day. I had to drink every day. It wasn’t something that people saw, or commented on. In fact, we had good times together, you and I. But there were problems, and they were building fast, and I didn’t have a choice about whether I would take care of what needed to be done or whether I would drink. I had to drink.
What happened is that a part of me wanted to be well and survive, but my destructive behavior had a lot of momentum. I had very few face-to-face interactions with people. My drunk typing was apparently pretty great, both in content and syntax. No one was around in real life to see how bad things were. My world was very small, and mostly digital. I had started telling health care professionals that I had a problem. I was actively and honestly asking for help. I had several conversations that went nowhere. What happened next was amazing.
What happened is that I had gotten to know Dr24Hours a little bit online. He shared with me by DM that he was thinking about posting his blog, which was about his sobriety. Nothing clicked. No spark of recognition that we had the same disease. Then he shared his story—his experience, strength and hope. What it was like. What happened. What it’s like now. The dateline on the second installment of that story is April 17th, 2012, which is my sobriety date.
This is the key to what we do in A.A., and it’s why I’m writing now. It’s not that our stories are the same—they’re not. It’s not that our drinking was the same—it wasn’t. It’s that I identified with the emotional content, the experience, the powerlessness, the unmanageability. And here was someone saying that there was a way out. That he knew the way out. And more than saying it, living it. This is how I remember the next conversation:
Me: I liked your post.
Dr24Hours: Thank you.
Me: I think I might have a problem with my drinking.
Dr24Hours: [I don’t remember, my world was already in upheaval.]
Me: [Gibberish.]
Dr24Hours: Do you want to talk on the phone?
That was the first day in a long, long time that I didn’t drink. It wasn’t easy. Dr24Hours paved the way by calling Intergroup in my city (the main phone number for A.A.) to tell them that some nutty woman half out of her mind might screw up the courage to call, so please help her find a women’s meeting. Or something like that, I assume. He told me that if I called in the next five minutes, there would be a woman I could talk to, which was a nice way of encouraging me to do it now and not later (never). I called the number and broke down crying. Because it was starting to be real. The more I talked about the things that weren’t fit to be talked about—the shame, and fear, and isolation, and the fact that I didn’t know how to not drink anymore—the more they became real. The woman on the other end of the phone was calm, and comforting. She sounded like she knew what she was doing. I certainly didn’t know what I was doing. She suggested a meeting that was easy for me to get to. I went that night, and it’s a meeting I go to nearly every week. I met the woman who would become my sponsor there that night, and other women who have become friends. It worked the way it’s supposed to work, the way it has worked for millions of alcoholics. “Alcoholics Anonymous is the net that catches you when everything else has failed.”
Early sobriety is hard. The suggestions are simple, and they work. Don’t drink and go to meetings. Get a sponsor. Work the steps. Go to 90 meetings in 90 days. Don’t let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Much of my memory of that time is hazy, but if I can’t remember something, I can ask Dr24Hours, because he was there every step of the way. I can ask the women in my meetings (I stuck mostly, but not entirely to women’s meetings, though I have many mixed meetings that have been important in my recovery). I put my hand up to share in nearly every meeting, even (and especially) when I don’t want to. It connects me to the group. It lets people get to know me. It keeps me from being invisible.
In the first week, I was angry. I was pissed. Not at anything in particular. I was having mood swings. Then I was depressed. Then I was depressed in a way that terrified me. I probably needed to be in rehab and supervised, though I had no idea things had gone that far. I went to more meetings. I talked on the phone to other alcoholics. I sought help from mental health professionals, and that was a disaster. But I’m here. I went to more meetings. I didn’t drink. I got a sponsor and started working the steps. I was solidly insane for at least two months. They told me it would get better, and it would get better fast. As long as I didn’t drink. I had nothing inside me to suggest that anything could get better. I used to tell people, “I’m going to believe you, because that’s all I’ve got.” Who was I to think that what had worked for millions of other people couldn’t work for me.
It got better, and it got better fast. I got fired. I got unfired. I nearly got evicted. I didn’t. I took service commitments, and I kept showing up. I took suggestions. Gradually, my mind started to settle. Physically, I started to get healthier. My physical health had become very poor. I was sure there was something terribly wrong with me. As it turns out, there was. It just wasn’t what I thought. “If the cure works, you probably have the disease.”
It’s not that my brain doesn’t act up and try to create drama where none is necessary. It still does. Part of this probably has to do with being a human being. Part of it is probably exacerbated by the fact of being a human being with a serious disease. I needed to go through the insanity of early sobriety the way I did in order to realize that I really can’t safely drink alcohol. The first step says “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” I certainly knew that my life had become unmanageable. I didn’t believe I was powerless over alcohol until I stopped drinking and saw how serious the backlash was.
Tonight I did service at a meeting that was celebrating the 55th anniversary of the group. There was someone there with 45 years of sobriety, and someone with two days. I was on the decorating committee. There was a lot of food, and a lot of laughter. There is a lot of laughter in the rooms of A.A. My sponsor gave me her one year coin, with a card that read “Pass it on to keep it.” The person helping me put up streamers was a newcomer with less than 90 days of sobriety. I asked how it was going, and the response was typical. It’s hard. It’s really hard. I told him it gets better, and it gets better fast.
My sponsor told me this evening that tonight I can think about a year. Tomorrow, it’s back to 24 hours at a time, because I have a daily reprieve from this disease that—make no mistake—wants me dead. But will settle for miserable. Today I am happy. Life is good. I have choices, even on days that are bad. Especially on days that are bad. I can choose to go to the gym, to go to a meeting, to call another alcoholic. There are a million things I can do—and there’s one thing I can’t do. I can’t pick up the first drink.
If you’re reading this and you’re wondering if you have a problem, know that you’re not alone, and you don’t have to be alone. I read a blog post and I got my life back. That’s pretty amazing, don’t you think? I am filled with gratitude. Beyond words. Thank you for my sobriety.
Good and Bad in Sobriety, a Thought about Boston.
Yesterday I was asked on twitter about my use of the word “different”, and how I seem to prefer it to “good” or “bad”. I thought it was a subject worth talking about a bit, because my perspective on things has absolutely changed in sobriety. Before I became sober, I was definitely someone who focused on how things affected me, whether the outcome was good or bad for me. I was selfish, and I was self-centered. I paid attention to how the world impacted me. That was my perspective: “Does this event make me happy or unhappy?”
It is something of a childish perspective, I think. Things are bigger than me, and their effect on me is not necessarily deliberate or relevant. It’s a happenstance of chance. I know some people like to say (and lots of AA people say) that “Everything happens for a reason”. And that’s comforting for many people. But I’m often comforted by the idea that things happen for no reason at all. They’re just things that happen. Sometimes they impact me, sometimes they don’t. But it’s not about me. The randomness of life is bigger and more important that I am.
In sobriety, I tend to see things much less as good and bad, because I look less at how things affect me, and more at how I can influence the things that matter to me. By embracing my powerlessness in life, by accepting the things that I have no control over, and thus are implacable with respect to my efforts, I am liberated in powerful ways. I can stop expending enormous energies trying to change the tides, and start focusing my energy on paddling with the currents. Suddenly, “good” and “bad” seem to fall away. But change and chance are constants. So there will always be “different”.
Obviously, some things remain unequivocally good or bad. But most things are simply things that happen that I get to choose my reaction to. That’s why we say that when I am upset, it is something in me. It’s not really about the outside world. It’s about how I respond to it.
And so when something unequivocally bad happens, like the bombings yesterday in Boston, of course I’m upset. I’m angry. I’m baffled. I’m sad. And I become determined. To do something, I don’t know what, to make my word better rather than worse. To engage with those I care about. To be kind to strangers. To be someone who does things that elevate people.
Yes, there are a few hateful lunatics among us. Yes, some of us will always bleed for their madness. But we are not made dimmer for brushing up against that blackness. The rest of us shine brighter, luminous in relief.
Spring.
Spring is breaking out all around ECC. It’s a beautiful city – at least around where I live – and the weather over the weekend was gloriously resplendent. I took the opportunity to go running. I ran for the first time last week, doing four miles on Sunday afternoon. My legs screamed at me for three days. Which is fine. But this weekend I really wanted to get some mileage in. Not for the sake of running of course. I hate running. But I do love how I feel after I’ve run. And I do love not having diabetes.
So Saturday I went out and ran 6.5 miles. There’s a river path near my apartment that supposedly one can run marathons on if one wants to (This one doesn’t.). But there’s a bridge almost exactly 5K from where I live. I didn’t know that when I started this weekend, but when I saw it in the distance and figured I was closing on 5K, I made it my goal. Then I turned around and walked most of the way home. I’d have done more in the way of intervals, but I got a phone call from a colleague who is embroiled in personal and professional intrigue that ought to be fiction, it’s so absurd. He deserves better. But I did get a few intervals in before I got home.
Then Sunday, I decided that I would go out again, even though I was sore and my ankles hurt. I intended to go less distance, but I found myself at that same bridge. It ended up being 6.3 miles, because I took a tiny bit of a different route, but still a great distance. And like Saturday, I ran the whole first 5K without slowing, and then did intervals on the way home. Real intervals this time, no 30 minute walk. So in all, I did two whole 10K runs, in addition to about 5 miles of other perambulations about the city. This morning my ankles and nipples hurt, but my quads are surprisingly un-shredded. I guess my start-up run last week took care of that.
And of course, they say spring is when a young man’s fancy turns to love, but I’m not so much a young man anymore. And I don’t currently have any fancies. I went out on a lunch date with a woman on Saturday, where I felt like I was being interviewed for the potential quality of my sperm. She was very pretty and undeniably brilliant; very ambitious. But showing up 15 minutes late, telling me “I’m ready to be a mother”, and then quizzing me on my goals and exercise habits felt awfully off-putting and invasive. Though I suppose, if she’s looking for someone to have a baby with right away, maybe that’s a good way for her not to waste her own time. I just think that even if I were interested in having a baby soon, that would not be a winning strategy with me, personally.
So who knows. It’s been fairly easy to get first dates here in ECC. Second dates have been more elusive. And in both directions. A couple of women I’ve wanted to see again didn’t like me, and a couple of times I haven’t liked a woman who did want to see me again. Finding something that feels right is difficult. But I’ve always been willing to do difficult things when there’s something rewarding on the other side.
I’m settling in to my AA world here. The men’s meeting is really good. My Sunday meeting is pretty strong. I feel like I’ll find a good home. I miss my St. Louis meetings. I miss my people. But I’ll make new friends as time goes on, and I’ve already begun. Life is good here. Different. New. But good.
Progress Toward Goals.
Today I received notice that MECMC considers me qualified to lead Human Subjects Studies, provided they have no direct patient contact, only data. Which is exactly as it should be. I have no interest in attempting to conduct clinical trials, etc.. I live strictly in the Quality Improvement arena. My desire is to continue to publish computer simulations of health care systems, and the effects of applying systems engineering methods to health care delivery. I’m not going to be involved in any research that intervenes with specific patients.
So, I now have a document that officially declares me a Principal Investigator at MECMC. Pretty exciting. Of course, I still haven’t negotiated all the hurdles associated with research training, and that sort of thing. It’ll be some time before I’m actually doing research. Probably several months. But I am, at least, not going to have to fight about being qualified to submit my own studies to the IRB.
The hardest part, I think, is going to be getting my colleagues who have never done research to do the training and plan the IRB submissions ahead of time, rather than trying to be retrospective about it. My intention is to submit basically everything I do to the IRB, so that in the event anything publishable comes out of it, we will have prior approval. So, I’ll need my team members to go through the training so that they can work the protocols too. At least, if they want to be authors. Which I’m sure they will. I think.
In any case, I’m making progress, but continuing to pursue the avenues of interest to me. As a result, today I am a PI again, at MECMC, and that’s exciting to me. But it isn’t my real work. My real work is solving problems. So I’m going to go get back to that.
Infactorium 