High-Class Problems

I'm in agony right now. It's a week to my 12th-Step anniversary (10 years on March 8th, thankyewverymuch) and all I can think about is:

a) where are we going to vacation this summer?

and

b) when should I have my gastric bypass?

My life never used to be full of high-class problems like these. It used to be full of high-class problems like "when the fuck is the liquor store going to open?" and "how can I get rid of all these empty scotch bottles in the middle of the night so the garbage men won't suspect me a being a drunk?"

And no, I'm not kidding. My mind really did used to think of things like that.

I found myself thinking this morning (never a good idea), during the mind-numbing bus ride into the city, about how much money I'm saving versus how much money I am putting aside for my medical FSA (flexible spending account) versus how much I am withholding for my 401-K.

Those are awfully "adult" sorts of subjects for me to be pondering at 6:20 a.m. Time was, at that hour, I was just getting home from the after-hours clubs. And SAVING money was never on my mind, only spending it. There was plenty more where that came from!

This weekend I plan to have no problems whatsoever. I'm seeing the podiatrist tomorrow morning for my quarterly inspection (all diabetics should get... and SEE... a podiatrist.) After that I've got 2 or 3 12-Step meetings planned, maybe a movie. Perhaps something with Will Ferrell? Spare me the groans, I'm entitled to some cheap laughs now and then.

I want lots of "Easy Does It" and "One Day at a Time" this weekend. Not to project the wreckage of the future or anything, but next weekend I'm going to be a friggin' basket-case.

Inside Job

My sponsee was sprung from rehab on Wednesday. He spent that night with a friend of his in Philly. She was good enough to find out times for 12-Step meetings in her neighborhood. Naturally, he didn't go to one that night.

But, he did allege that he went to one yesterday.

He showed up, with the friend, at my doorstep last night, at a pre-arranged and agreed upon time in order to collect his house keys. I could tell that he's on shaky emotional ground right now. The reality and enormity of his loss has finally started to sink in.

It's a funny thing about "bottoms." Everybody in recovery has one. Some were gentle bounces and some were full-fledged thuds (mine was one of the later). The point is that soft or hard, a bounce or a thud, everyone in recovery was absolutely, positively, 100 percent

MISERABLE

when they came stumbling into their first 12-Step meeting with a giant neon sign attached to their foreheads that flashed "NEW" and "PLEASE HELP ME" and with a "deer caught in the headlights look" upon their frightened faces.

When they show up it's my job, and the job of others like me, to do what we can, within boundaries, to offer all the love and support we can until the newcomer finally learns how to smile again after which we set them on the road to more permanent contentment and serenity through the 12-Steps.

That transition happens, usually, around day 50. After 49 days of showing up looking like they'd stayed up all night sucking lemons, one morning they'll come in in and the misery will be gone from their faces. They'll look refreshed because they actually slept all night. They'll smile because they're actually glad to be in the room where they know they are safe, a room full of people who genuinely care about them (and aren't after something).

After nearly 10 years of recovery, I live for moments like that now. I look around the room at my Friday morning beginner's meeting and I see a half dozen people just like that.

A few months ago they were hopeless, miserable, soulless wretches. Now they're ready to become productive members of society again.

When I'm asked why I do what I do to help newcomers my response is the same response I got from MY sponsor, when I had 45 days of sobriety and asked him the same question.

"Because one day you'll do the same for somebody else."

The feelings of fulfillment and joy I get from helping fledgling recoverers fills me with indescribable happiness.

I hope and pray that my sponsee, fragile and delicate at the moment, will someday find what I have found.

That happiness is an INSIDE job.

Where the F*ck Have I Been???!

Well, nowhere actually. Last week I was a cranky bear. I blamed it all on a sponsee who is in rehab. I had a telecon with him (and his counselor) Wednesday morning and all I could think of, for the rest of the week, were the things I wish I'd said, but didn't.

Then, of course, there were all the things I should've been getting done in time for Festivus, but wasn't. Oh, I'd bought cards and made labels, but they sat on the living room floor like so many paint samples for Jake & Justin's dining room.

I could feel the clock ticking all late last week, the self-imposed pressure mounting (gee, I love being an adreneline junkie!) until I thought I'd explode by Sunday afternoon.

Then I did it.

I pulled the bag up onto the Ottoman and got the labels out of the manila folders.

A measly two hours later I was done (I don't go ape-shit with the cards --- mostly my nearest and dearest family and friends). I had two which were going overseas. The rest were domestic and I actually had enough "Holiday" stamps for those.

The cards all got mailed this morning, including the two to Europe.

I have a real sense of accomplishment today. It won't last, but it feels nice right now.

Oh, and I still don't know what's happening with the sponsee. I haven't heard a word out of him or the rehab since last Wednesday morning.

I hope they're curing him.

Codependent, thy name is Alcoholic!

One of my sponsees collapsed a week or so ago and wound up back in rehab. The counselors there determined that he really needed to go to a slightly longer-term facility (28 day). I'm all for that. They packed him off to the new place yesterday. He's in a temporary blackout from the world, but can have visitors starting Sunday IF they've spent Saturday in some sort of training session, first.

One of the gifts of getting my brains back is that I recognize when someone needs more help than any mere 12-Step Program can offer. Sometimes people need to be locked up for their own good.

Which is not to say that they totally give up their old ways.

Such is the case with "Mr. X." Mr. X was in a long-term relationship with someone prior to getting sober. Prior to that he'd been in another long-term relationship. The problem with both of these relationships was that Mr. X didn't have a "real life" of his own. His life was lived with and through his relationship to his two partners. Their's were the real lives. His was merely an adjunct to theirs. They provided the housing. They provided the career. They provided the friendships (pretty much).

It wasn't Mr. X's fault. He'd been raised by Mittel-European Jewish couple who kept him away from the world, mistrustful of everyone and then, when he was in his 30's, they both died within 6 months of each other.

He was very much like Chance the Gardner in "Being There." An innocent abroad in the world. He didn't know, really, how to make a living or to have friends or to stand on his own two feet.

Well, eventually both lovers grew tired and bored and eventually Mr. X. sensed that something was awry and he started drinking. A lot. Lover #1 left him. Lover #2 got tired of co-sponsoring his bullshit and, after repeated attempts to get him sober by sending him off to detox centers and rehabs, finally just threw him out a couple of months back.

That's when I came into the picture. Mr. X, who'd dabbled in AA for a couple of years, asked me (out of desperation) to be his sponsor. I agreed. I didn't know how extensive his codependency issues were.

And now I'm finding out.

The ex boyfriend has put his foot down and told Mr. X that he will no longer continue to be a source of support and comfort to him. Mr. X has turned around and nominated ME to be his next victim ("Would you please call xxxxxx and arrange to get the house keys from him? I'm going to need some stuff from the house if I'm going to be here for awile.") As though these were my problems. Which they are not.

This goes right to the heart of my childhood ACOA, CODA issues. I have to set boundaries with him.

He's incredibly needy. I cannot allow that neediness to force me into doing things I do not want to do. Mr. Codependent needs to learn to ask others for help and to do it humbly and gratefully and not with a sense of entitlement.

And both of us needs to grow up. I'm not his daddy and he's not my needy child.

===================================================
Male Sex-Toy Update!

You've got to see this. It's hysterical (and more than just a little intriguing).

Divine Retribution

I see that the religious dingbats are now proclaiming I-35, which runs from north to south somewhere "out there" where I never go have declared it to be some kind of cleansing highway, sent by the Lord, to rid the country of homosex.

Or some bullshit like that. SAY "HALLELUJAH!"

I don't know much about God, but I do know one thing, and it's the same thing that the Greeks knew about their Gods. They will not be mocked.

The Greeks even had a special word for the sort of pride which garners the attention of the residents of Olympus -- and pisses them off to the point where they inflict very Godlike retribution on the poor earthly schlub who was dumbassed enough to mouth off.

That word was "hubris." It sort of loosely translates as "overweening pride" but it actually goes a lot further than that.

Greek mythology (and ancient Greek plays) are full of dumbassed jerks who piss off some God or Goddess and wind up gouging their own eyes out, or killing and eating their own children, or neat stuff like that as punishment for being such assholes to begin with.

Rule Number One in Greek Mythos: "There are Gods. You ain't them. Don't piss them off."

Now I must tell you that today, I am duly chastised by the Gods. Yesterday I posted a piece about a feeling I had regarding the aging population and my opinion that many of us would eventually be faced with the dreadful decision to do ourselves in rather than face financial ruin and become wards of the state.

Apparently I shouldn't speak of such things, not even philosophically.

This morning I received a disturbing voicemail from a sponsee of mine. He apparently attempted to kill himself last night, wound up in an emergency room overnight, and this morning they packed him off to a psychiatric rehab for a week or so.

I know I'm not personally responsible for this. I've done my best to be a good sponsor to him, not yelling at him when he has "slipped" before, but rather trying to be gentle and understanding at all times. Still, I've always suspected that he hadn't really faced up to the magnitude of his bottom. He was always too eager to "yes" me, rather than taking a moment to delve into his thoughts and feelings to tell me the truth of his pain.

It is the single most difficult thing anyone in recovery has to do, to reach down inside, through the brick wall that we ourselves have constructed within ourselves, to pull out shreds of truth which we can share with others and, finally, acknowledge to ourselves.

Apparently he found that brick wall, all alone, last night. In his call this morning, from the ambulance carrying him away, I could hear his voice shake as he cried that he had, indeed, finally "hit bottom."

I finally tracked down the place where they took him. It relieved me greatly just to know that he was someplace where he'd be taken care of (and couldn't hurt himself). He's not allowed to have any contact with the outside world while he's there -- or at least, not yet.

Every night, before I hit the hay, I hit my knees. I've done this pretty much every night since I got sober. At a minimum I thank God for my sobriety today and beg Him to keep me sober tomorrow.

I also pray that God look out for, and over, all the sick and suffering alcoholics and addicts in the world.

Humans, drunk or not, are so frail you see -- each of us needs all the help we can get.

Including me.

Trigger

No, not Roy Rogers' horse. I mean "trigger" as in the buttons your family can push with ease because a) they installed them and b) they know where they are.

I used to think that one of my addiction triggers (as in, "if I hang around this long enough I'll have NO CHOICE but to get snot-slinging, commode-hugging, projectile-vomiting, technicolor-yawning, falling-down, drunk", was crazy women. I thought this because a) I'd spent my entire childhood surrounded by them.

There is no "b)".

However, lately, God has seen fit to saddle provide me with plenty of growth opportunities in the form of "sponsees." Sponsees are what we in recovery used to refer to as "pigeons." That was before recovery got all politically correct. Pigeon means somebody who a) shits all over you and b) flies the coop. Sponsees used to do that a lot. Nowadays it's very easy to track them down and kill them.

Anyway, these sponsee/pigeons are giving me fits. They seem to have mental meltdowns over nothing (or what I think is nothing but which, apparently, means a lot to them, like utility bills or Thanksgiving or shit like that there). They call at inopportune moments (like between midnight and dawn) when they have plenty of free time to work themselves into states over bullshit and can't understand why I don't share their enthusiasm for their latest load of insanity.

Oh, and to make it even more enjoyable, because He knows how much I adore lawyers, God has seen fit to saddle provide me with one of those as a sponsee, too!

I am blessed these days. I hardly know where to begin to express my gratitude. I don't have any time to wallow in my own insanity, that's for sure. My days fly by between work and talking my sponsees in from the ledges several times a day.

Was I this nuts when I was new?

I take back every bad thought I ever had about crazy, alcoholic women.

It's alcoholics in general that I can't stand.

And I oughta know.

I am one.