Painful Truth

I hate admitting when I'm full of shit. Doesn't everybody? But there's no escaping it. I am.

I went to FARB's book-signing last week (see: "Famous Author Rob Byrne's" blog in my preferred reading list, below to the right). It was in a gay bar in Hell's Kitchen Clinton, here in New York City. Ordinarily I don't go into gay bars because I'm in recovery and, as I often tell myself, I have "no business being someplace full of people who drink." That's one thing I tell myself. Another thing I've been telling myself for the past 11 years is that I'm not dating because I'm "afraid of repeating past mistakes" in terms of picking the wrong people to get involved with.

Lies. All self-deluded lies.

I realized, almost as soon as I arrived at the bar, that I was exceedingly uncomfortable. Not because other people were drinking and I wasn't, but rather because I was in a roomful of gay men, without the benefit of a 12-Step structure (i.e. a "group" or a "meeting") and I had nothing... absolutely nothing... to buffer me from the prospect of having a regular conversation with regular guys.

An "on-line" acquaintance of mine, a gay woman whose name is irrelevant here, walked in and I practically threw myself into her arms, I was so relieved that at last there was someone I could talk to without the added pressure of that person being a male.

Unfortunately, that didn't work out so well because, it turned out, she was there on a mission -- to check me out as possible dating material for another gay male friend of hers. I wanted to scream when she told me that.

As I was trying to find Rob to say my "goodbyes" for the evening he tried to introduce me to a couple of other friends of his, male of course, and by then the pain was so great I practically sprouted wings and flew down the steps and out the door. Talk about being "light in the loafers!"

Humor aside, the next few days have been painful. I am not the person I thought I was (I always thought of myself as Mr. Gregarious). Yet without the benefit of loud music, a dance floor, cigarettes and gallons of booze, I simply don't know how to act around gay men.

I've been sharing about this at all my 12-Step meetings since last Friday (including an LGBT meeting I attend in Pennsylvania on Saturday nights). I've been sharing about this with my sponsor, too. And with other members of my so-called "executive committee" of close recovery friends (all men, all straight, all married -- another friggin' clue that I might have "issues" with gay men).

Sigh. Yet more work to be done. I am a work in progress. And as we're fond of saying, it's Progress.... not Perfection.

You Can Always Tell A Codependent

But Not Much.

The other morning I splurged after my morning 12-Step meeting and went out for coffee with some of my tribe. As we settled down in the far corner of the coffee shop section at Barnes & Noble, the subject came up, as it often does with newcomers who don't know any better, about how other people in the program REALLY need help and what can be done to help them.

I do my best to squash such gossiping before it gets out of hand by pointing out that prayers are always good and that no matter what, we really need to keep the focus on ourselves throughout our sobriety. Fat lot of good that does.

In 10 years of continuous sobriety I've met few recovering alcoholics who weren't, to some degree or another, also recovering codependents. Especially people who are also Adult Children of Alcoholics (boy, does it come with that territory!)

And if there's one thing CODA's are good at, it's taking the heat off themselves by putting it on somebody else (a drunken parent, sibling, significant other, the guy or gal sitting across from them at meetings, etc).

The difficulty comes when you have 10 years, like I do, and you know that your primary purpose is to stay sober and to help another alcoholic to achieve sobriety.

When, then, is it appropriate to discuss what clearly is the borderline mental illness of a group member? Who becomes the anointed adult in a group, charged with approaching someone like that with the advice that their needs are "clearly beyond the scope of any 12-Step program and, therefore, we advise you to seek professional assistance outside of the rooms?"

These are ticklish and uncertain issues for us. Bill W. (one of the granddads of 12-Step programs) never hesitated to jump right in, no matter the consequences, with lots of advice for people, helpful or otherwise. But times were different then.

The temptation to succumb to the need to "fix someone" is at the very core of a codependent's addiction. That addiction being to do everything within their power to avoid having any attention drawn to their addictions (it's tricky, but runs along the line of "as long as everyone is looking at Uncle Joe's drinking problem, nobody will notice what a drunk I've become!"), or, in the case of someone already in recovery, to not have attention drawn to their own (possibly marginal) efforts by focusing a beam of negative energy on someone else's recovery. Someone who may lack the mental or emotional resources to have the sort of recovery many of us desire.

But like all human behaviors, codependency is fraught with pitfalls. Not the least of which is that we run the danger of eventually having that same spotlight shone on ourselves, and our peccadiloes.

You know, I've gotten so much self-awareness in the last 10 years that it seems to some of my friends that I do nothing but spend most of my time self-co-dependently analyzing my every thought, word and motive. We even have an expression for that (surprise, surprise!)

We call it "analysis until paralysis." And yes, I'm guilty of that a lot of the time (not all of it, though).

Like Buddha, we are all seeking "the Middle Way." Balance.

Have an angst free weekend everybody. And remember to keep the focus on yourselves (unless you're a newly minted grandparent in which case it's perfectly alright to keep the focus on the baby).