Robots on Mars. Pride. Anguish.
Last night, scientists and engineers from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory landed a rover on Mars, in one of the most daring and intrepid extra-terrestrial excursions ever attempted. It’s the size of a small car. It’s powered with a thermocouple that generates voltage based on the heat generated by a dollop of plutonium. It is a mobile chemistry lab, there to search for organic compounds, which will hopefully reveal that there was yet another crucial building block of life on Mars, to go along with liquid and energy.
After being flung from earth on a rocket, sailing in a widening helix against the gravitational pull of the sun for eight months, travelling hundreds of millions of miles, it successfully negotiated a landing so implausibly engineered as to make Rube Goldberg blush. A parachute. A retro-rocket. A hovering sky-crane. All autonomously. No interaction with any human controllers.
This is engineering. This is the soul and the face of what I was taught to do. As a systems engineer, I was trained to do exactly what these incredible people did. As a graduate student, I studied optimal control. Manifolds. Coordinate transformations. Quotient spaces of vector spaces. All the mystifying and alien mathematics required to do exactly what was done to land Curiosity on the Red Planet.
I wasn’t very good at it. I was good enough to get by of course. But I wasn’t great. The reason? It wasn’t that I wasn’t smart enough. It was that I wasn’t dedicated enough. In 2003, 2004, when I was learning that mathematics (nonlinear dynamic systems), I was drinking too. Generally at least two bottles of wine a day, or maybe three-quarters of a bottle of bourbon. I studied, but it was too hard for me to truly grasp it and to drink as much as I wanted to at the same time. And drinking came first. For the alcoholic, drinking always comes first.
As I watched the NASA scientists erupt and celebrate, and surge from their chairs, I couldn’t help thinking: I could have been there. I could have done these things. I was trained for this. And I was caught in a terrible sadness that welled up with the pride. But of course, the truth is, I had already decided to work in medicine. I was never terribly interested in space explorations. And even if I had been, the competition to work at places like JPL is such that even if I’d never been a drunk, and worked and thrown myself into it, there are still a lot of people both smarter and better than me.
I like my life. I like working in health care. I’m happy with what I am and where I’ve gotten. I don’t regret that I’m an alcoholic; I’ve learned so much I’d have had no other way to learn. I’ve become a participant in life in a way I never would have known how to be otherwise.
But oh, for a moment, the terrific anguish, as I looked at those magnificent men and women in their moment of triumph, as great engineers once again expanded the sense of what it means to be human. How I longed to be among them. This is why I became an engineer. To build the things that change the world, that change all the worlds. The things that change humanity. Roll on, wheels of Curiosity.
Update on Job Stuff.
I received a note today from the headhunter’s office that the department head of the university in Singapore that is considering me for a professorship will be meeting with the selection committee on Monday, which is Sunday night for me. So I expect to hear something, hopefully, in the next week about whether they want me to come to Singapore and give a job talk. I responded to the note by sending off a couple of lines that have been added to my CV in the past two weeks, saying that I didn’t know if it was apropos, but here it is anyhow.
I had a poster accepted to a medical conference in Turkey (a colleague will be presenting it), and I got a low-to-middle five figures supplemental funding award for my current grant, which I’ve already complained about here. Those things will hopefully be relayed to the selection committee. Any time there’s reportage of science, and receipt of funding, that looks pretty good to a university, presumably. In my less jaded moments, I still think that universities care about producing science, and not just about managing an endowment.
I also had a cool conversation with some people in Pittsburgh about an engineering idea to study and hopefully address a health care delivery problem. They are interested in funding it, they said. This isn’t a grant, it would just be direct funds paid to my institution for some of my time. I guess consulting would be a basic way to describe it in concept, expect that they Pittsburgh group is under the same large umbrella organization as my institution.
I was able to send some of my funds from my supplemental award to Local Research University (LRU), which is working hard on securing funding for my line, and so buying some statistical support from them for my current study will actually likely help fund my own future position in an indirect fashion. I’d very much like to work there, and it would mean a joint position with my current job. All of it would still be pure soft money, of course. But I’m starting to realize that there are unexplored sources for that, and that my engineering skills can be deployed in ways that solve problems, look like consulting to one group, and research to another.
But as more time passes, and I think about it seriously, I am warming, significantly, to the idea of moving to Singapore. If the job is good, the funding lines are high, the collegiality is strong, the salary significant, and the city is nice, then the only problem is that it’s far from home. Well, I don’t have a problem with that, really. I am already far from family. How frequently I see them is not going to be affected by an additional 7500 miles. It’s still just a plane ride every eighteen months or so.
I like my job. I really do. I want to keep it. I want to add an assistant professorship at LRU. And I know that every department has its own idiosyncrasy and SNAFU. But my current place is so dysfunctional it’s painful. I was talking with some tweeps today (@doc_becca, @namnazia, @neuropolarbear) about administration and management. They have glittering, functional administrations that submit grants for them and solve problems. I don’t have that. I have to redo all the administrative work, it seems. My administration is an impediment to research, not a facilitator of it.
So maybe it is simply time to make a massive sea change in my work life. I don’t know. I know that this is a strange, unexpected, and welcome opportunity that I am going to make the most of. The rest will sort itself out.
We Have no Opinion on Outside Issues.
Now, obviously, despite the title of the post, I have opinions on all sorts of issues, many of which I share here. Some of which I don’t. However, I try to make it both obvious and explicit that these are my own opinions, and may not represent the opinions of AA. Indeed, even my opinions about the nature and treatment of alcoholism are my own, and may not reflect the opinion of AA. My opinions on alcohol are informed by AA’s opinion, but may not be exactly the same (and in fact, I am certain there are areas where I diverge somewhat, from AA’s published literature.) as those adhered to by AA world services, whoever they are.
However, AA, as an organization, has no opinion on any issue not directly related to the recovery from alcoholism. And indeed, they have no opinion on some issues that are directly related. For example, AA neither endorses nor opposes treatment centers, medical research, or judicial involvement with regard to the treatment of alcoholism. Even when people are sentenced to attend AA, and must bring slips to prove they’ve attended? No official representative of AA signs the slips. I won’t sign them at all. If a person who attended the meeting chooses to sign the slip, they do so on their own. Not for AA.
AA as an organization has no political agenda. They have never endorsed a candidate. They do not have a policy statement. And I say “they”, rather than “we”, because I personally have no official involvement with AA. I’m a member, that’s all. And the only requirement to be a member is a desire to stop drinking. No dues, no fees. Not even sobriety. Just a desire to stop drinking.
Ok. So now I’ve written a three paragraph introduction so that I can, I hope, talk about last night’s men’s meeting and the interesting thing that happened. One member, K, a guy I tremendously respect, about 56 years old and a pharmacist, sober more than 30 years, shared that his daughter had come out as a being in a relationship with another woman, for five months. He doesn’t know how she self-identifies yet. K didn’t describe his own feelings other than to be obviously a bit unnerved. He talked about wanting to talk with her.
I was struck by the various reactions in the room. this group is a very tight-knit group of men, most with quite a bit of time sober, and between my generation and my parents. A lot of men in their late 50s, early 60s, with 20-30 years sober. Another man, who I greatly respect, said, “That’s a kick in the head.” I turned to him, and furrowed my eyebrows and asked, genuinely interested, “Why? I don’t think it’s any big deal.”. But the meeting went on. And I don’t know how he meant it. It could simply mean that it’s surprising and disorienting. Even the most supportive parents must grieve some for a homosexual child, because they will so often encounter hateful people.
Now, I know there are homophobes around, in any heterogeneous group like an AA meeting. And I know there are racists. But here’s the thing, and it makes AA a special place: I’ve seen people who are total racists, like, personally avowed racists, hug and shake the hand of a person of the race they say they despise when they show up at a meeting. Same with homophobes. I’ve seen people who say vile things about gays embrace and welcome gay people to the meetings. That acceptance doesn’t always make it back with them outside the meetings. But in the meetings, we are all just alcoholics.
Last night, there was no discussion about homosexuality. We are there to support each other. We support each other because having a community of accepting and supportive men helps us not to drink. Keeps us centered. That’s our only agenda. And so, if K had been devastated about having a (possibly) lesbian daughter, we’d support him. My personal means of support would have been to tell him he kinda had his head up his ass, and she’s the same daughter she always was, and suggest he invite her and her girlfriend for coffee.
But K wasn’t devastated. He seemed a little disconcerted. But no differently than he might have if his daughter had told him she were joining the Air Force, or taking a job out of town, or anything that would be a large revelation of uncertain outcome. And the few men who were there, and obviously saw it as some kind of tragedy, as if she’d said she had cancer, all saw me, and several others, take it in stride and wonder what the big deal was.
And of course, I’m not in AA to correct anyone’s opinion about any issue. It is neither the place nor my position to argue about the acceptance of homosexuality, or any other thing. It is a place where people can express themselves free from judgement, and receive support for living their life in a way that allows them to find serenity free from alcohol. I regularly encounter people who I believe are wildly off the mark politically, socially, or simply with regard to common sense. Unless they ask me for my opinion, advice, or guidance, it’s not my business.
It is something that is truly special about AA that we are people “who would not normally mix.” And I think that that mixing, without judgement, has changed a lot of hearts about things like race and orientation. Because what we are all there for is recovery from alcoholism. And while we’re in the rooms, that truly is the only thing that matters. I have never seen racism, or homophobia, or sexism, acted on in a meeting. Before and after, maybe, but not during. And people who behave threateningly, or create an environment that is hostile to recovery, they are dealt with. But AA is not a “safe place”. It was never intended to be. It is a place where drunks and reprobates come to improve themselves. And everyone, without exception, is welcome, if they have a desire to stop drinking.
I’m not sure, after all this run up, that I have a point to make. Except to be greatful to have found a place that truly understands tolerance in a real way. All are welcome. Everyone is allowed to believe what they believe, and ask for support through any difficulty. And I am ready to give support, even to someone who might believe things I think are utterly wrong, if it helps that person stay sober. Because we all grow. I’ve held beliefs in my life which were utterly wrong. And through counsel, love, acceptance, argument, and engagement, I’ve changed.
Unacknowledged Progress.
It is very difficult for me to see my accomplishments. Part of the reason for this is that I feel really lazy a lot of the time. I don’t think I work very hard, especially compared to these scientists I see on twitter who are putting in 70-80 hours a week and tweeting from the lab at 2 am on a Sunday morning. That’s not me, and never really has been. And it never will be. I don’t have that drive.
My sponsor tells me, and I tell others, never to compare my inside to other people’s outside. We never know how people really are. Maybe that scientist is in the lab at 2 am because if she has to spend one more minute watching her spouse sleep, she’ll stab him in the eye with an ice pick. The point is, I don’t know. I’ll never know. So I create an image in my head of some superscientist, doing better than me. Smarter and working harder.
And I am not, objectively, extraordinarily productive. A couple of papers and a couple of grant submissions per year. That’s what I do. Hopefully, it’ll be enough. I’m working on putting together several projects. I’m submitting a couple of papers from my funded study (one in review, one ready to submit). I have a grant under review and a project that is likely to be funded by a non-granting entity, that provides funding for engineering problems. I’m not sure how to characterize it for the CV, but I’m sure I’ll find a way.
But if I look back, from where I am to where I was, I’ve made enormous strides. From an unemployed drunk to a PI. I made that transition in three years. That’s not nothing. I’ve published papers in good journals, I’ve had a couple of medium-sized (ok, small) grants and awards funded, and I’ve been promoted at work.
I have a friend right now who is at the beginning of their journey (I’m using plural pronouns because I’m not revealing gender, not because I’m an idiot.). They’ve been sober a bit more than three months. And, like most of us, they had huge problems. We’re fond of saying, in AA, that no one gets here on a winning streak. We show up, we reach out for help, because our lives are totally unmanageable. In addition to drinking problems, my friend was having work problems, housing problems, financial problems. And three and a half months later, they’re all in the process of being sorted out.
And it’s been nothing short of a privilege to be there through it. Talking, sharing, crying, laughing, admonishing, teaching, learning. And I’m not even their sponsor. But it’s been incredible to see the progress. Yesterday a major event improved this person’s standing on a major and trying issue. Today, they said: “OK. I can build from here.” I had to say: “Look both directions. You’ve been building all along.”
It’s hard for them to see that. It’s hard for me to see my progress. But if I simply list the things that I’ve done in the past four and a half years, in sobriety, without thinking of them as things that I’ve done, but instead assign them to some random individual, a placeholder, they’re pretty impressive.
This guy was an obese, unemployed, drunk; smoking a pack a day. He stopped drinking. He got a job. He did the steps. He stopped smoking. He published some papers. He won a grant. He got a promotion. He got lost 50 pounds. He was appointed as an adjunct professor at a fine medical school. He published some more papers. He won another grant. Now, he’s on a short list for an international tenure track position at a fine university, and another fine university has already offered him a non-TT assistant professorship (but it isn’t available yet… damn funding issues).
And yet, I can look back on all of that and think: I’ve been lazy. I’ve accomplished nothing. Because my mind doesn’t connect reality to my sense of self. I know that other people have these same issues with self-perception. I wonder, sometimes, if it isn’t something like the same mental process that leads anorexics to see their reflections as still overweight. I do not see myself, or judge myself, the same way that I see and judge other people. My reality is often not real to me.
This is why the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is so important to me. I have a community of people who look at me and see me as I am, remind me where I am, and help me correct my perceptions. And that correction, like a pilot making tiny adjustments to an aircraft’s course, keeps me in balance. It saves my life.
On Grief in Sobriety, and Elsewhere.
Yesterday I wrote, “I am not grief-stricken that I cannot drink”. That’s true. But it wasn’t always. I think I learned something about grief and sobriety, that I learned outside the rooms of AA, but which is fully applicable there (And which I have heard people in the rooms also say, after I learned it elsewhere.). And what I learned about grief has served me well in other places in my life as well.
One of the looming obstacles to sobriety, the enormous leviathan we cannot see around, is how we will live without drinking. When alcoholics are ready to begin the journey to sobriety, at least, alcoholics like me and my compatriots in AA, they come to a point where drinking is truly intolerable. It is horrible and revolting. And yet it is a strict compulsion, that we have no way around. We cannot fathom life without the drink. Literally. We do not understand how to live, how to get up in the morning, move through a day, and go to bed at night, without a drink. Those concepts are utterly foreign to us. We don’t know what a day is for, if it isn’t for getting drunk.
So the idea of sobriety is bewildering, in the first place. Because there is a gulf between the alcoholic and the world, we don’t know how to exist in the world without swimming a river of alcohol to get there. And it’s terrifying. Because alcohol is how we suppress our fears, unrealizable dreams, social anxiety, failure, rage. Of course, it doesn’t actually suppress those things. Too many people who know alcoholics know that when we drink, these things may come bursting out of us at any time, untelegraphed. But to us, we feel like those feelings are suppressed, because we don’t have to engage with them in a meaningful way which might resolve them.
Eventually, hopefully, we find someone or some institution, who understands what we are going through and can help us begin to take the first ginger approaches to sobriety. The work we do before step one. Seeing that we truly cannot take another drink, it is killing us. Realizing that we don’t have any practical way of not taking another drink. If we succeed at this, and we don’t die in detoxification (a real concern for serious alcoholics… see a physician), then we generally go through a second phase of bewilderment. Euphoric recall.
This is when we look back at our drinking, with the perspective of a few days, or even a few weeks, of abstinence, and we only see the good times. We see parties where we met the girl, or sporting events where we drank to victory. I saw elegant dinners, and cooking risotto with white wine. Beer with my father while playing chess. I saw the things I enjoyed about drinking, and I suddenly had difficulty seeing the things I hated, the pain I caused. Fortunately, I was among other alcoholics with a bit more time than me, and wonderful counselors who knew how to upbraid this common period of early recovery. Euphoric recall kills a lot of alcoholics.
I was taught to grieve. Grief had always been something thrust upon me, unready, uncertain, unfair. Death or divorce or uprooting and relocation. I was often comforted, sure, but not in a way that allowed me to learn to process the feelings and grow from the experience. So I calcified. A slow fibrodysplasia began in me, from childhood, through youth, into adulthood, and I saw grief as an emotion to be battled. Defeated. I saw most emotions as unwelcome intrusions: suffered, endured, disposed.
I learned to grieve. I came to see, through the nearly miraculous work of some truly gifted counselors, grief not as the spasm of anguish and rage that comes with loss, but the process of examining myself through the lens of departure. Yes, I was losing something. Something I loved. But I was being made better for it. All change is, in one way or another, a fire. For me, anyway. It is painful and excruciatingly hot. Transfiguring. Existentially terrifying.
But ash is purified. And fireweed is a blossom of grace and elegance. Grief, as I have learned to experience it, allows me to honor what I’ve lost, and sets the cornerstone of what comes after. Grief is the process of emotionally stockpiling to rebuild, for me. It is the respite before the muster.
When I grieved for alcohol, I was able to see what it was that alcohol gave me: shelter from an endlessly risen tide of astonishingly painful emotions. Courage. Shamelessness. And I was able to see what alcohol took: industry. Ambition. Dignity. I was able to accept that I was losing something I loved. Something I thought I needed. And I was. Because my grief was not simply for alcohol. I was losing part of my self. A part of my identity. A part of the person I had chosen to be.
I have come to see grief as one of the foundational strengths that I can deploy to move forward in life. I may not have this job next year. I hope I do, but I don’t know. If I don’t, I’ll grieve for it. And then I’ll find the next stage. If that means moving to Singapore, I’ll grieve for my friends, my city, my country. My life here. I’ll grieve for what I was, for the image I had for myself in this place. And then I’ll build a new life, in a new place, having marshalled the resources that have always been within me, but which I now know how to find. I have my dignity back.
The Lubricated Social Environment.
I find that frequently, people can be cautious when I am involved in situations that also involve alcohol. Even virtual situations. Since revealing that I’m an alcoholic over on twitter, I’ve had a fair number of people apologize for talking about alcohol, or ask me if it’s ok to talk about alcohol, or just generally make trepidatious movements around me where alcohol is concerned. Last night I got a DM from a friend there specifically asking me if it was insensitive for them to be going on about booze “around me”. I was struck by framing the question that way, considering how dreadful the charge of ‘insensitivity’ has become.
My relationship with alcohol is my own issue. I am open about it because I believe that I have the opportunity to help people. But it is not my business what other people’s relationships to alcohol are unless they choose to make it my business. If I were to feel uncomfortable in a group, online or otherwise, with the discussion or consumption of alcohol, that would be my own problem, and no one else’s. I think the only insensitive thing would be if someone were to try to convince me to drink alcohol, or attempt to (literally?) throw it in my face.
But even then, my relationship to alcohol is my own issue and no one else’s. People don’t owe me sensitivity. I would argue that while sensitivity is a positive trait, it can also become its own kind of tyranny, when people are vilified for failing to adhere to the zeitgeist regarding the application of a particular sort of newly recognized sensitivity. But that starts to waft political, I suspect, and I’m not going to venture too far into those waters.
It has been quite a while since I left a place because I felt uncomfortable with the alcohol present in the situation. Actually, when my sponsor turned 50 (real years, not sober years) about three years ago, I left his party. I’d been sober about 18 months. He had an ordinary 50th birthday party. With beer and wine and cocktails and barbecue, the way normal people do. His wife keeps alcohol in their home, and it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. But I didn’t feel right at the party, and I’m not entirely sure why. The alcohol was part of it. So was the fact that my then-wife had once again canceled plans to go and be social with me. I felt isolated and uncomfortable. So I left.
The entire reason I got sober was so that I could have an ordinary, happy, comfortable life. I wanted to be a useful and productive member of society. Comfortable in social groups. Contributing in all the ways an ordinary, healthy man contributes to relationships, social circles, friendships, and society as a whole. Being sober means having a realistic perspective on the world, looking at myself as I am, and accepting where I fit in society. All while working hard to better myself and be of greater use to my fellows, and being a sustaining member of the systems which help others who need it to achieve and maintain sobriety.
I can’t do any of that while hiding from the world, from alcohol, or from my responsibility. Moreover, I don’t want to. If I have to isolate myself from situations that involve alcohol, then I am not free of alcohol, it still controls me. In that ridiculous and hilarious (and hilariously inaccurate) South Park episode about AA, they assert that not being able to drink safely is still allowing alcohol to have control over you, and that addiction is, essentially, all about will power. This is, of course, well-known nonsense. But there is a tiny kernel of truth behind it, and that is: I do not need to be drunk to allow alcohol to control me.
If I am so afraid of alcohol that I refuse to engage with people who consume it, if I am so callow as to need to bulwark myself against discussion on the internet with people who enjoy alcohol safely and responsibly, then I remain shackled to it. I remain powerless in a way that is not intended by the first step. I am powerless over alcohol, yes: when I consume it. I am powerless to control the fact that my body and mind respond to alcohol differently than most people. But I am not powerless to see images and participate in discussions. I am not overwhelmed by insensitivity when people who can drink normally talk about enjoying drinking normally.
Because I have no desire to be a person who can drink normally. I am not grief-stricken that I cannot drink. I am not avaricious for a taste of some new concoction invented by a friend on twitter. I actually enjoy the discussions, most of the time. If I don’t, I do something else. Because I have agency with regard to alcohol now. My decisions matter. I used to make decisions that didn’t matter about alcohol all the time: I’d decide not to drink that day and then three hours later I’d be pouring vodka into a 20oz plastic bottle of diet sprite and hoping no one noticed.
My agency with regard to alcohol means that people never need worry about offending me or being insensitive when it comes to alcohol. Now, of course, some people can be dicks about it, and try to tempt me, or whatever. That’s fine. Because I get to choose to not be friends with those people. Because my relationship with alcohol is my business. Other people’s relationships are their business. And if anybody wants to change their relationship to alcohol, I’m here to help.
Please note though: if you are still in early sobriety, you’re probably not there yet. Avoiding social situations with alcohol, and friends who drink, is an appropriate temporary intervention while you do the steps and unentangle yourself from alcohol. Don’t take this to mean that you should be comfortable immediately. You aren’t, you shouldn’t be. Take the time you need.
Peculiar Funding Rules.
I have a grant, which ends in about two more months, which is my only funding. I’ve done a good job, and I have a paper out there, and another which I just finished up. I’ll be writing a follow-up to this grant. It was a pilot and now it’s time to write the R01 equivalent based on the preliminary work I did. I’m proud of it. I just hope my institution feels the same way. I have a lot of irons in various fires, and I need at least one of them to strike, or I’m in job trouble.
But I’ve talked about all that before. Something happened yesterday, though which is strange but good but not as good as I wish it were, etc. I was offered a chance for supplemental funding to my current grant. Hooray! Right? Well, sort of. Obviously, grant money is good! And I’ll be able to use this new funding to grease some wheels that were otherwise ungreasable. But it will also have to be spent in the same two month period that the rest of my grant money had to be spent.
So, I get to spend a lot of money over the next two months. Which is nice. And the indirects will make my institution very happy. They’re having some financial problems related to the end of the fiscal year, which basically means they have to dump cash, which means that I have to dump cash, which really means that they didn’t fund enough applications, or they wouldn’t have this problem. Now, my own unfunded application wasn’t right on the line, so I’m not too frustrated that this means I was passed over despite available funding. But somebody was. Several somebodies.
What’s really frustrating is that I am not allowed to extend this funding to the next fiscal year. Though, several people are working on stupid accounting tricks to make that happen, which is very odd to me. But I’ll be able to make important contributions with this money in ways that were not possible before, and it’ll curry favor with some colleagues. Including folks as Local Research University, who are still trying to hire me.
It’s a strange world, grant money. Excesses and absurdities, followed by drought and famine. All because I’m forbidden from treating the money with reason, circumspection, and stewardship. Ridiculous.
My Alcoholic Mind.
I had dinner last night at a relatively new tapas restaurant and wine bar in Webster Groves. It’s one of those vague pretentious but very good places that serves a lot of cheese plates and charcuterie. They also have a rather extensive wine list, as you might expect from a place like that. Including what must be some very fine wines.
There was a time when I knew my wines somewhat well. I really liked Chablis (I had a case of the 1996 Chablis Valmur Grand Cru. Magnificent.), and I was very fond of the Australian reds, like the Dead Arm Shiraz. I could tell you about what wines went with which meals, and I had strong opinions about things like chalk, acidity, and tannins. I didn’t actually have anything like a comprehensive knowledge, but I drank a lot, and I spent a lot of money, and I was really good at making up bullshit wine-speak which is, let’s face it, mostly bullshit. This story from the New Yorker reveals that many very experienced wine drinkers, including professionals, cannot tell red from white.
So, I was having dinner with a friend, and as we sat down, of course the waiter goes into his long spiel about the wine list and flights and various other libationary excesses and I pay attention and nod politely. Listening doesn’t bother me. I don’t mind going to bars and that sort of thing. I don’t mind when people drink around me. Even if I felt uncomfortable being around alcohol, it would be inappropriate for me to impose that discomfort on others by requesting they not drink. The solution would be for me not to attend outings with alcohol.
Towards the end of his monologue, the waiter came to a description of the wines “off the menu”. His final pitch was for a “light, crisp, summer wine” (it was 106 in St. Louis yesterday) – perhaps a lambrusco? – which had “lower alcohol content; only about 10%”. And my mind did a somersault.
Something about that phrase, “only about 10% alcohol”, which, like “Play it again, Sam”, had never actually appeared intact in his delivery, inverted my senses for a moment. It was a peculiar and disorienting sensation and I immediately thought: “Well, I could have that then!” Of course, that sensation, which I’ve had before and will have again, lasted only the briefest of moments, perhaps a half of a second. It was accompanied by a shockingly vivid memory of a lambrusco I’d had some 10-12 years ago, on the deck of my apartment, mildly carbonated and light and crisp. I used to get tipsy on late summer’s mornings, early on, before it got too bad, and then write poetry or play piano.
My point is that it never ends. Something in my mind will always be trying to lead me back to a drink. I have a disease that is constantly plotting to fulfill its need for more alcohol. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it says that sometimes we find ourselves with no practical defense against the first drink. That’s crucial for me to remember. I never have any defense against the second drink. Once I’ve had one, I’m totally doomed. What I need to remember is that from time to time, despite everything I know, the first drink will still look good.
Because I’m an alcoholic. Drinking is what I do. I need to remember that carefully, and be vigilant. These little experiences pass quickly, and are rare. It wasn’t even a craving. Alcohol cravings, thankfully in my past, are serious and horrible and feel as though I have an army of worms burrowing through my muscles, all writhing in death-agony. It was simply the fulgurating sensation that it would be a lovely and wonderful and permissible thing to have that glass of wine.
And that’s why I go to my meetings. And why I call my sponsor. And why I write here. Because I am so grateful that I don’t live the way I lived, feel the way I felt. I don’t teeter on any precipice. I am soundly rooted in the center of this place of sobriety. I was never at any risk, last night, of making the fateful choice. This is what the center looks like. This is what being grounded in sobriety means for me: recognizing those occasional impulses for what they are, meeting them honestly, and accepting what I am. I am an alcoholic. But I don’t drink anymore.
On Healthful Behaviors.
I’m pretty healthy these days. To the best of my knowledge anyway. I was fortunate enough not to sustain any irreversible hepatic insult during my drinking days. I’m sure I will remain at increased risk for liver and pancreatic cancer compared with never-drinkers. And at elevated risk of lung cancer compared with never-smokers. But the level of elevation is likely to be small. I’m speculating, of course, but it seems like a reasonable speculation based on my conversations with physicians. It’s worth a quick review of my basic health from about five years ago.
I weighed about 235 pounds. That put me into the realm of the mildly obese; definitely above the ‘overweight’ threshold. My blood pressure was routinely measured at 140/100. I smoked a pack of cigarettes daily, sometimes more. I drank a bottle of vodka daily, sometimes more. If you’re not an alcoholic, not a smoker, go ahead and give that a try one day*. Let’s just say that 4 out of 5 physicians do not recommend that as part of your daily intake.
So, four and almost-a-half years ago, I quit drinking. Almost three years ago, I quit smoking. And about 20 months ago, I began working out; about 16 months ago, I began running. Slow, steady improvement. Steps taken as I could take them. No giant leaps. I didn’t try to do everything at once. When I began working out, I did 10 push-ups and 25 crunches a night. That grew to around 50 and 100, respectively, before dropping off again as I began running.
When I first began to run, it took me 45 minutes to run 3 miles. I say running, but most of it was walking. Intervals, they call it. I couldn’t go a quarter of a mile before slowing to walk. Gradually I forced myself to improve. Nearly each day, I would go either a little further or a little faster. Now, on a good day, I can do 3.1 miles in under 30 minutes. I even ran 10K in 65:22, which is averaging a ten minute and 30 second mile for more than six miles in a row.
I have a personal trainer now, whom I see once a week. She’s in AA too, I met her at my Sunday meeting when she spoke. She’s one of those incredibly fit, irritatingly happy people who is powerfully encouraging and makes me work far harder that I could do if I were doing it myself.
Now, I’ve lost about 50 lbs. I weigh 185 on my scale (naked), and about 190 on the doctor’s (clothed, but not 5 lbs worth). My blood pressure is routinely about 115/75. My cholesterol, formerly about 220, is down to about 185. HDL up, LDL down. I’ve changed my eating habits too. I rarely eat red meat, cheese, or processed foods. Mostly, I eat whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. Lots of natural peanut butter. I still take in too many calories. But my last HbA1c was 5.8. My fasting blood glucose was 103. These are slightly elevated, but not diabetic. In addition to wanting to look good naked, not developing diabetes is my primary fitness goal. And I’ve succeeded so far.
Fundamentally, I find that fitness and healthful behaviors are a lot like sobriety. Every day I do something to maintain, or improve, my condition. I try to think about healthy choices. I learn to appreciate good things, instead of ruminating on missing bad ones which I enjoy. I feel good. Life is good.
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*Do not go ahead and give that a try. You may very well die from acute alcohol/nicotine poisoning. Seriously. It could be fatal.
Leaving Scientopia Behind.
I’ll be back to my regular blogging schedule here tomorrow. Thanks to the folks at Scientopia, for letting me sully their pristine environs.
Infactorium 