Tag: Peace in Recovery

Perfect Silence

Perfect Silence

I remember driving around behind Meteor Crater in Arizona, off Chavez Pass Road, on a deserted bare-bones dirt track. I was deliberately (perhaps illicitly?) skirting the crater from the outside, instead of looking into it from an officially-sanctioned observation deck. The crater visitor’s center had, honestly, offended my burgeoning amateur-astronomer sensibilities. It had a certain Diz-Nee no thanks, don’t mind if I don’t vibe, and the fee to venture onto the deck was exorbitant for me in my salad days. It seemed like someone had executed a daring daylight robbery, and ugly baseball hats with flaming meteors streaking across them sufficed to distract entire tour groups from even noticing.

 

I felt despair. This was ours, or at least I thought it should be, like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon or Yosemite. And yet it belonged very specifically to someone, and they didn’t really care what I thought.

 

So in a vanishingly small act of rebellion, I took a drive instead.

The Truth Behind the Perfect Pictures of Sobriety

Evergreen Rotting with the Turkey Carcasses and Wadded Up Wrapping Paper

I spent way too much time on social media during the week between the holidays. I usually post about my writing and podcast, then turn it off, so anything more than a few minutes a week makes me feel gross. I probably only scrolled fb and IG for a grand total of an hour, but I still needed to take a hot shower, scrub my eyes with bleach and submerge my phone in Windex.

 

In case I’ve been unclear, I don’t enjoy social media. I think my dislike stems from my borderline-perverted curiosity about your messy, dysfunctional lives. I don’t want to see your family’s strained smiles wearing itchy sweaters in front of a dead evergreen adorned with LEDs and third-grade craft projects. Great – someone held Preston down long enough to comb his hair, and Bill really did a nice job sucking in his gut for the ten seconds until the timer on the phone camera ran down to zero. Precious. Send it to grandma. I want the truth, damn you!

It’s Not Her Fault

It's Not Her Fault

The most temporarily effective thing my wife and I tried to help us get along during my alcoholism was simple: Be nice. I describe this plan as temporarily effective because while it created moments of peace in our house more successfully than anything else we tried for the ten years of my active addiction, it ultimately didn’t work. So it was the most effective ineffective path we went down to fix our marriage.

 

Here are the details. Before we said anything to each other, we were to run it through this filter: Is it nice? Yep, we banked our marriage on the childhood mantra, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

He’s Not to Blame

He's Not to Blame

I’ve always known he did his best. That was never in question. For many years now, however, I wallowed in my belief that his best wasn’t good enough – that he should have done more and known better. But time, when combined with an open mind and considerable reflection and contemplation, is a powerful potion to heal old wounds.

 

I’ve long blamed my dad. Now I’m not so sure…

Making Progress: Exorcizing the Demon

The Exorcist

October is scary movie season for me. While watching The Exorcist a couple of weeks ago, it struck me how far we have come in the treatment of mental illness. The movie was made in 1973, and having the possessed girl talk to a psychiatrist was the absolute last resort. Psychiatrists were seen as kooks. The preferred treatment option, before talk therapy, was to drill into her skull and remove part of her brain.

 

I guess that is less an example of how far we have come, and more evidence of how recently we have been completely ass-backwards as it relates to mental health.

The Shameful Truth of an Alcoholic Fatherhood

The Shameful Truth of an Alcoholic Fatherhood

I was shocked when he said it. Not only did he admit to letting his drinking get in the way of spending time with his children, but even when he was actively engaged with his kids, he didn’t enjoy it. He wanted to be somewhere else. The connection with his own flesh and blood was empty for him.

 

For a proud father, that was a bold and vulnerable admission. I know a thing or two about vulnerability. I have written and spoken publicly about some of my most despicable behavior. But I have never admitted to hating spending time with my children.

 

Until now.

The Naked Truth about what Sheri Likes

The Naked Truth about what Sheri Likes

I was naked before the hotel-room door closed behind me. I love the rare occasions when we are behind the locked door of a hotel room – just me and my wife, Sheri. No kids. No neighbors. No one who hasn’t seen me naked more times than she’d like. I threw back the shades and walked straight onto the balcony. Our room was one of the few with a solid, three-foot-tall, concrete and plaster railing, rather than the metal slats with three-inch gaps leaving nothing to the imagination of anyone peering up from the pool or hot tub below. “We could have sex out here, and no one would know,” I thought, but was smart enough to not say out loud. I’ve come a long way in my sobriety, and the associated adolescent immaturity shedding.

Alone in the Crowd

Alone in the Crowd

If you think reading about the impact of alcohol and recovery is therapeutic, you should try writing about it.

 

If you are battling a compulsion to drink, or if you are the loved one of a heavy drinker, you are probably protecting a closely guarded secret. It is the kind of secret that will eat you up from the inside while the poison does mental and biological damage to you, the drinker or second-hand drinker. The erosion of self-esteem, relationships and capacity to manage are all universalisms, yet we protect our secrets like we are somehow unique in a nation with over 15 million alcoholics.

 

And we protect our secrets because we can’t find a safe place to let them out.

“Authenticity is My Superpower”

Authenticity is My Superpower

I’m not just looking for the cure to addiction. I’m looking for the solution to the pain of the human condition. That is what I am researching, and when I find clues, I am eager to share them. So when I heard a fellow writer in a story-writing group read about the power of authenticity, I knew immediately that more people needed to receive the gift of his insight. He chooses to remain anonymous, but I’ll be forever thankful for his friendship, and for these words…

 

***

 

Authenticity is my superpower.

 

I learned many years ago that I can literally become bigger than life when I show up authentically. When I share my self or my story from an authentic place, I can share a powerful example of connection that can reach across aisles, oceans, generations, and color lines.  I think that my authenticity is most powerful when it is as natural as a gentle breeze, as unique as a snowflake, as refreshing as a drop of rain.

The Opposite of Addiction is NOT Connection

The Opposite of Addiction is Self-Esteem

“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety.” When journalist Johann Hari made that statement as part of the conclusion of his TED Talk in 2015, I didn’t disagree with him. I mostly didn’t disagree with him because I was still drinking in 2015 and didn’t give a shit about a speech titled, “Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong.” But even now, today, I think Hari got that first part right. Sobriety doesn’t fix anything. It is neither the solution, nor is it the opposite of the addictive behavior that has brought millions of us to our knees.

 

It’s the second part of his concluding statement that has been increasingly adopted as indisputable fact in the recovery community for the past six years. Hari ended his talk saying, “The opposite of addiction is connection.” From the first time I heard it, until a few months ago, I thought Hari was right. Now, I’m convinced that while the concept is useful, it is incomplete.

 

I believe the opposite of addiction is neither sobriety nor connection. I believe the opposite of addiction is self-esteem.