It is now in the high 40s outside and we all are beginning to think we live in Florida. The sun is out. The birds are singing. Hell yeah!! I think the winter was really starting to wear me down. Now I have no real excuse for any lack of motivation due to snow and cold. I still have these mood shifts. I still flip from idea to idea. Maybe that is what not working means. I think the external structure that work provided was good for me. I would look forward to my time off and to occasional vacations., but I always would go back to the job. Now I have this big long vacation. Today one of the guys in our breakfast club was late and he told us time just got away from him because he really doesn’t have any time now. We all started to talk about that. The every day is Saturday is OK most of the time, except when it isn’t.
I just finished the David Carr book “The Night of the Gun”. Good book! At times it was like a lot of drunk-a-logs and TIW (There I Was) stories, but it confirmed again the importance of accepting addiction as a disease that you don’t get better from. He was a very passionate guy and I’m glad he got back in recovery before he died.
His website is interesting too. What he did was buy a video camera and an external hard drive and go around and interview people who knew him when he was using, and when he was in recovery. I started to think about the possibility of doing something like that about recovery. We’ll see how that goes.
I still go back to how important it is to find meaning in life. I still don’t think you can tie up all your meaning to a relationship with another person. What happens when that person dies? Or the relationship ends? I have seen what happens in my own family. My mother was lost despite having two young children still at home. My cousins, who have lost their spouses, still have a difficult time. They begin to feel as if they have lost half of themselves. The grieving is important, but you still have to hold on to your own center while you go thru it.
The thing about recovery is that it doesn’t mean just stopping alcohol/drugs/etc. It means that you have to find some meaning apart from the addiction. Sometimes the meaning is there and it is clear as glass, but then it begins to cloud up. Victor Frankl’s opening statement to his patients about what stop you from suicide is still important. Where do you find meaning? ? It’s easy to get lost in materialism. Get more things!! Get new things! No matter how much you have or get, sooner or later, it is just not enough.
The whole concept of accepting a higher power is essential. This doesn’t have as much a religious meaning as a spiritual one. I remember one guy who told us a bus was his higher power. Just before we were going to commit him, he explained it. He couldn’t drive and this bus would pick him up and take him to his meetings and to his treatment. He began to talk to the drivers and they were always supportive. In a way it made sense because he was a very lonely guy. The support groups he was in meant everything to him. They helped in his process of finding himself. I think all good relationships do that.
Maybe what I am trying to clarify for myself is still about growth and self-discovery. I keep thinking that I understand myself and my own process and then it just slips away again. We would always make jokes about people who spent all their time contemplating their own navels. I am not talking about that so much as being comfortable in my own skin. I can’t expect perfection or the constant insight into myself. I just want to understand the process better.
One Christmas Eve many years ago, I was putting together a very complicated toy for our children. My wife was wrapping presents and kept asking me how it was going. I kept telling her how hard it was. She finally asked, “What do the instructions say?” I never looked at them because I thought I could just do it by myself. It was a lot easier with the instructions. I know that there is no real set of instructions for this apart from keeping at it. I just have to keep working on this. Domeena Renshaw, the sex therapist from Loyola, would often tell our patients a story. She said that if all you focused on during sex was the orgasm it was like taking a trip to the Grand Canyon with your eyes closed. If you finally opened them up at the Grand Canyon (orgasm), great! —but you missed all the scenery along the way. I would like to enjoy more of the scenery on this journey.