I went to another meeting. Once again, nothing terrifying happened. I think I was right that putting myself face to face (or rather side by side) with other people is something I need to do. I didn't actually talk to anyone or anything as bold as that. There's no hurry. What I did do is listen to the people who spoke, and watch the people in the room, and notice my reactions. And that was illuminating.
Here's what I noticed: my reactions to being there swung wildly back and forth between thinking it was a good idea to vowing I could never come back. And that was just in the five minutes or so before the meeting started, when I was just sitting in a chair, waiting. Also, I was watching people get settled, deciding who I thought was interesting and who wasn't. How hilarious is that? Apparently I know this sort of thing about people on first glance. I didn't know I did that! I caught myself thinking all this, and realized I was reacting to everyone else because I was nervous, and it's way easier to decide who's great and who isn't based on appearances than it is to just feel nervous, isn't it? So for a couple of minutes, I was just uncomfortably nervous. And I survived.
The meeting started when someone read a text, and I once again reacted strongly to the words. Oh, I could argue with that text! But I looked around, and I could see that lots of people seemed to be sitting politely but not getting all caught up in the words, so I thought maybe I could do that, too. I just ignored it, thinking maybe that's not for me right now. No argument required.
Then some guy talked. I managed to stop myself see-sawing between thinking "I belong here" and "I am never coming back" and actually listen. And he said some things that really helped me. Yesterday, Primrose wrote what I thought was a great post about being willing to change, and how that seems to have to include getting connected to other people. I loved what she had to say there. The speaker talked about such similar stuff, so it really resonated with me. Then a few other people spoke, and at different points, everyone said something that struck me deeply. One woman talked about Carl Jung as having said (quoting roughly), 'If you find spirituality in the second half of your life, the first half was worth it.' At that, both me and the young woman next to me teared up and caught each other's eyes for a moment, and smiled. Hard to say why that was so powerful, because the words don't cover it. Words matter, but this is about way more than the words. The experience of sitting listening with people is where the power comes from. I'm not much given to certainty, but I feel sure of this.
A number of years ago, I used to do some serious Zen meditation, but I decided sitting meditation wasn't for me. I spend enough time alone in my own mind, so silently observing my thoughts any more than I do can send me into a spiral that isn't so great for me. More recently, I have tried to listen to the various meditation gurus that get talked about on sober blogs, but they just make me angry. And yes, I know that anger is all about me, not them, but that doesn't stop it from happening. But I try to use the zen training in my own way. For me, it's better to watch my thoughts while I'm out walking or biking, or when I'm sitting in a classroom. It's a kind of meditation in action, and it suits me better. Seeing how I react in real time, that's what I've been trying to do.
And on that score, I think the meeting was good. Because just listening and paying close attention to my own reactions showed me how wildly I do react to what people say, or just the way they look, how quickly I jump on some opinion in my mind, even while I seem calm and balanced. And I could see that when I get uncomfortable, I am very, very quick to interpret my discomfort as disliking someone or something. It's easier, right? If some person or event is annoying and that's why I'm annoyed then I have a kind of equilibrium. It's false, though. And when I caught myself getting annoyed--as I did about a hundred times in the hour--instead of falling into believing that the person talking was at fault, I was able to notice my reaction, and accept that I was feeling uncomfortable, and then try to open my heart to my own discomfort and to the person speaking. And in that openness, sometimes I felt connected. The speakers were uncomfortable sometimes, too. And sometimes they were funny, and everybody laughed. More than once most people were in tears, as was I. Whatever was happening, we all seemed to sit in it together, sharing a little bit of human connection on a rainy Saturday morning.
While I was there, I realized that today I am 13 months sober. It was nice to quietly share that in person with people who would get it. And I did feel like I was sharing it, even though I didn't talk to anyone. So that's my second meeting. I still don't know my way about in all this, but I think I'm OK with that. I'm paying attention, anyway, and sitting with other people. And maybe that's enough.
Thanks for reading. Peace and joy to you. And love.
Showing posts with label AA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AA. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 February 2015
Saturday, 31 January 2015
Other people
I'm starting to think I'm in a second stage of getting sober, or of being sober. The first year, it was all about how to live with myself. I was pretty big on acceptance all year long. And that's going to be an ongoing process, but I tell you, I'm doing a lot better now on that score than I was a year ago. But these past few weeks, there's something new going on, and I think it's a different kind of acceptance: accepting other people. Lately, I'm paying more attention to learning how to live with others, something it seems I don't know all that much about.
People have said that things shift once you get a little sober time. And they do. I'm less reactive than I was. I feel myself getting caught in problems, but it's slower, and I have some time to pull away and think. But a few months ago, I got kind of swamped by the emotional tensions in a group situation that weren't all that much of my own making, and I didn't see it clearly until well after the fact. I tried to talk to a counsellor about this, but I felt like I talking wasn't going to be the answer on this one. The thing is, I think I don't much know how to be with other people. There are exceptions, of course. My partner and I have a great relationship, and I get on well very with his family, and I have some friends who I genuinely feel close to. But these all seem like exceptions to me. In the general run of things, when I am in a group of people, I often feel as though I am somehow a little off to one side, as though I'm somehow not really there. Classes are usually an exception to this, because then I'm engaging intellectually, and I'm very comfortable in that realm, as long as it stays there. But when the situation is more social or emotional, I don't quite know how it's supposed to go. I used to call this doing "people as a second language," and I have probably written about that here before. Like lots of people working in a second language, I can do it, but I'm not completely fluent. I don't always know the idioms. What happens next?
None of this is new to me. But now, I've been sober just over a year. (And that only came after kicking against the fears and the wisdom of other people on the folly of drinking again and then realizing, after drinking, that it didn't much matter what they said. Booze was sucking the life out of me. The very life.) Now, sober, I'm feeling that my sense of alienation is a restriction I don't much need anymore. I don't quite know how to get rid of it, but I do think that's the next thing I need to work on.
Blogging has been amazing for me. It's let me learn from others and figure things out for myself and get to know some amazing people online. Still, when I'm here, I am sitting alone in a room, typing. I have laughed and cried and felt real warmth from people online. But that's not the same thing as being in the same room as other people and feeling that. It's not bad, and it's not fake. It's just one step removed, somehow. When sober bloggers have met face to face, and talked about how amazing the experience has been, I've felt envious. And when people who attend meetings talk about fellowship, I have felt a longing for something like that.
Anyway, I decided to do something about this, something more direct than thinking about it or talking about it. So I went to a meeting. And it was all right. Yes, I was nervous. But it felt pretty good to sit in a room full of people, all in different stages of dealing with pretty much the same problem. People had all different kinds of ways of listening to the speaker. Some were entranced. Some fidgeted. Some smiled in recognition at different bits that were said, and some looked at each other significantly. As it happens, I liked the main speaker, and felt a kind of connection to her story. She was talking about living in her head for so long, and how she has had to learn to live in her body, too. Now that doesn't sound like much when I repeat it. But it was powerful, sitting in the same room, feeling connected. There were a lot of people and I was nearly late, so I sat near the back and off to one side. I could barely see the front of the room, as there were maybe a hundred people there! (So many alcoholics! Who knew?) At one point, someone in front of me shifted how she was sitting, and I had a direct view of the speaker. And I had one of those moments I sometimes have, where the world seems to break open for a moment, and everything feels different. It's hard to describe, but it happens to me sometimes, moments like this. I have come to think of them as grace, maybe. Time slows down, and everything sounds different, clearer, and the world seems to glow. Or maybe vibrate. Anyway, at the meeting, I had one of those moments, and in that moment, I felt like the woman at the table in the front of the room was speaking directly to me. And I was listening.
Of course, she was speaking to everyone. Soon the crowd shifted slightly and I couldn't see anymore, and the room settled back to normal. Then some guy talked, and he was annoying, the way people sometimes are, and that was fine, too. Afterward, I didn't stay and chat with anyone. This was enough for me for one day. I think I will go back though. There is something here for me to learn. And I think it's a kind of physical learning, something I just can't get from reading or writing, as good as those things are. I know we are a social species, and there's a lot about the non-verbal ways we communicate that's not so well understood. Of course, I would like to understand it. But the most important thing might be for me to actually experience being with others, being a part of something they are also a part of, and not trying all that much to figure out how it works.
I've been reading a little of the Belgian philosopher, Isabelle Stengers, and in one interview she talks about the "care of the possible," something she takes from William James. I like that a lot. Her point, as I understand it, is that we pass over so much experience, but a different approach might be to consider the possibilities that our actual experience opens for us, rather than only acknowledging what we accept as the facts. (I have not at all done justice to Stengers' wonderful work here, but I am making sense of the world with it as best I can, and I'm OK with that.) I used to care a lot about what was called addiction and what wasn't, and whether I was an alcoholic or not. When I thought about those things, I thought about them as if they were somehow real categories, things that either applied to me, in truth, or did not. I think this is the way we are taught to think. Now I am trying something different. It seems to me that "alcoholic" is a pretty good concept, in that it opens the door to a new way of life, once you accept it. If you don't like it, don't worry. Find a concept that works for you. And in going to a meeting, I'm not worrying too much about any single version of the truth. I expect the truth is more in the practice, in the experience of getting together with people and listening to them (and yes, one day maybe even talking to someone there!) What I need to learn from it is more in the experience of being with the others, and feeling a glimmer of belonging. The experience of that, not the objective proof of it's efficacy.
I'll see how it all goes. This feels like a new kind of acceptance to me, one that includes other people: their wisdom and their follies, yes, but mostly their very presence.
This was a bit more complicated to write about than I had thought it might be, and I'm not sure it's all clear, even to me. I'm just figuring this out. So if you're still here, thanks for reading! Peace and joy to you. xo
People have said that things shift once you get a little sober time. And they do. I'm less reactive than I was. I feel myself getting caught in problems, but it's slower, and I have some time to pull away and think. But a few months ago, I got kind of swamped by the emotional tensions in a group situation that weren't all that much of my own making, and I didn't see it clearly until well after the fact. I tried to talk to a counsellor about this, but I felt like I talking wasn't going to be the answer on this one. The thing is, I think I don't much know how to be with other people. There are exceptions, of course. My partner and I have a great relationship, and I get on well very with his family, and I have some friends who I genuinely feel close to. But these all seem like exceptions to me. In the general run of things, when I am in a group of people, I often feel as though I am somehow a little off to one side, as though I'm somehow not really there. Classes are usually an exception to this, because then I'm engaging intellectually, and I'm very comfortable in that realm, as long as it stays there. But when the situation is more social or emotional, I don't quite know how it's supposed to go. I used to call this doing "people as a second language," and I have probably written about that here before. Like lots of people working in a second language, I can do it, but I'm not completely fluent. I don't always know the idioms. What happens next?
None of this is new to me. But now, I've been sober just over a year. (And that only came after kicking against the fears and the wisdom of other people on the folly of drinking again and then realizing, after drinking, that it didn't much matter what they said. Booze was sucking the life out of me. The very life.) Now, sober, I'm feeling that my sense of alienation is a restriction I don't much need anymore. I don't quite know how to get rid of it, but I do think that's the next thing I need to work on.
Blogging has been amazing for me. It's let me learn from others and figure things out for myself and get to know some amazing people online. Still, when I'm here, I am sitting alone in a room, typing. I have laughed and cried and felt real warmth from people online. But that's not the same thing as being in the same room as other people and feeling that. It's not bad, and it's not fake. It's just one step removed, somehow. When sober bloggers have met face to face, and talked about how amazing the experience has been, I've felt envious. And when people who attend meetings talk about fellowship, I have felt a longing for something like that.
Anyway, I decided to do something about this, something more direct than thinking about it or talking about it. So I went to a meeting. And it was all right. Yes, I was nervous. But it felt pretty good to sit in a room full of people, all in different stages of dealing with pretty much the same problem. People had all different kinds of ways of listening to the speaker. Some were entranced. Some fidgeted. Some smiled in recognition at different bits that were said, and some looked at each other significantly. As it happens, I liked the main speaker, and felt a kind of connection to her story. She was talking about living in her head for so long, and how she has had to learn to live in her body, too. Now that doesn't sound like much when I repeat it. But it was powerful, sitting in the same room, feeling connected. There were a lot of people and I was nearly late, so I sat near the back and off to one side. I could barely see the front of the room, as there were maybe a hundred people there! (So many alcoholics! Who knew?) At one point, someone in front of me shifted how she was sitting, and I had a direct view of the speaker. And I had one of those moments I sometimes have, where the world seems to break open for a moment, and everything feels different. It's hard to describe, but it happens to me sometimes, moments like this. I have come to think of them as grace, maybe. Time slows down, and everything sounds different, clearer, and the world seems to glow. Or maybe vibrate. Anyway, at the meeting, I had one of those moments, and in that moment, I felt like the woman at the table in the front of the room was speaking directly to me. And I was listening.
Of course, she was speaking to everyone. Soon the crowd shifted slightly and I couldn't see anymore, and the room settled back to normal. Then some guy talked, and he was annoying, the way people sometimes are, and that was fine, too. Afterward, I didn't stay and chat with anyone. This was enough for me for one day. I think I will go back though. There is something here for me to learn. And I think it's a kind of physical learning, something I just can't get from reading or writing, as good as those things are. I know we are a social species, and there's a lot about the non-verbal ways we communicate that's not so well understood. Of course, I would like to understand it. But the most important thing might be for me to actually experience being with others, being a part of something they are also a part of, and not trying all that much to figure out how it works.
I've been reading a little of the Belgian philosopher, Isabelle Stengers, and in one interview she talks about the "care of the possible," something she takes from William James. I like that a lot. Her point, as I understand it, is that we pass over so much experience, but a different approach might be to consider the possibilities that our actual experience opens for us, rather than only acknowledging what we accept as the facts. (I have not at all done justice to Stengers' wonderful work here, but I am making sense of the world with it as best I can, and I'm OK with that.) I used to care a lot about what was called addiction and what wasn't, and whether I was an alcoholic or not. When I thought about those things, I thought about them as if they were somehow real categories, things that either applied to me, in truth, or did not. I think this is the way we are taught to think. Now I am trying something different. It seems to me that "alcoholic" is a pretty good concept, in that it opens the door to a new way of life, once you accept it. If you don't like it, don't worry. Find a concept that works for you. And in going to a meeting, I'm not worrying too much about any single version of the truth. I expect the truth is more in the practice, in the experience of getting together with people and listening to them (and yes, one day maybe even talking to someone there!) What I need to learn from it is more in the experience of being with the others, and feeling a glimmer of belonging. The experience of that, not the objective proof of it's efficacy.
I'll see how it all goes. This feels like a new kind of acceptance to me, one that includes other people: their wisdom and their follies, yes, but mostly their very presence.
This was a bit more complicated to write about than I had thought it might be, and I'm not sure it's all clear, even to me. I'm just figuring this out. So if you're still here, thanks for reading! Peace and joy to you. xo
Monday, 24 February 2014
Round 2, Day 49: I love being here. Get me out of here.
This being sober is a strange business. I feel better overall. My skin is clearer. My eyes are clearer. I know I am emotionally starting to be more in tune with real life. My foggy thinking is getting a lot better. I don't want to go back to drinking again, because I know there's nothing there for me except oscillating between oblivion and pain, and I would much rather figure out how to live without having to numb myself out of any meaningful existence. (Does that all sound like I'm coughing up a big recovery-induced hairball? I don't know. It's true though, no matter what it sounds like.)
But last night, oh my god last night, I wanted to go to the wine store and buy a bottle of Joie Rose and drink it, and then go back and buy some red wine and drink that, too. Any thought of not wanting to be numb was, at that point, sheer nonsense. I was one giant prickly mess of "Get me out of here!" I can't tell you where "here" is, but I wanted to check out of it into fuzzy oblivion, pronto!
I didn't go to the store, or drink any booze. I pretty much knew I wouldn't. But it was very, very hard to ride it out. I told my partner that I was having a hard time of it and didn't want to talk for a bit, then sat on the couch and read blogs and wrote a bit until I got a grip. The moment (OK it was an hour) passed, and I felt a bit better later. Quiet and a bit knocked out, but better.
How is it that one person can, at the same time, know that drinking is a really bad idea, and really really really want to drink? This addiction thing really plays with your head, doesn't it? Because I know, of course, people are all riddled with contradictions. But those contradictions are so much more comfortable when they are happening to someone else, or when you see them from a safe distance, looking back at your formerly unenlightened self, as opposed to when they are happening to you right now. Last night, sitting on the couch, I felt like I was two people at once. I was me, the person who has committed to the not drinking plan, and who sees that it's a better way. And I was also me, the person who has, for years and years, drank, so much so often that it had become part of the fabric of who I am. I wanted to find a way out of living through the moments of painful contradiction, maybe not be either of the people for a while, but of course, there is no way out. Maybe it sounds like I'm over-dramatising here, but it doesn't feel that way.
So all that stuff I was saying a few days ago about not drinking not being that hard? Sure, that's true, except when it's freaking hard! Drinking won't solve anything, and I'm not going to do it. It won't get me out of anything, unless consciousness is what I'm trying to avoid, and if that's what I want to be clear of, then I can just go to sleep. But I can't stay asleep.
Not a lot of wisdom or answers here today. I am wondering whether I should consider going to an AA meeting. I went twice early last year, and I had what is probably a predictable reaction. The first week I thought, "I love these people!" The second week I was appalled, and I thought, "I have nothing in common with these people." Neither is true, of course. I would probably like some and have trouble with some, and I would have something more or less in common with all of them, but I wasn't ready to call alcohol the problem it really was at that time. Not yet. Now I know it is one. I would still like an easy way out, one where I can just put the drinking behind me and smile my way into a whole new better way of being me. The fact that reality doesn't work that way doesn't stop me from wanting it sometimes, any more than the fact that drinking really sucks doesn't stop me from wanting that sometimes, too.
Anyway, here I am, 49 days sober and holding on, feeling pretty darn good about that in the big picture if a bit uncomfortable in some of the moments. I'm not going anywhere. I won't drink, and I will figure this out. For now I'll just sip my fizzy water and stare out the window at the snow that's been piling up all day. It's pretty. And I'm not out in it. I'm grateful for that, and that's a good moment to be in.
Thanks for reading. Peace and joy to us all.
But last night, oh my god last night, I wanted to go to the wine store and buy a bottle of Joie Rose and drink it, and then go back and buy some red wine and drink that, too. Any thought of not wanting to be numb was, at that point, sheer nonsense. I was one giant prickly mess of "Get me out of here!" I can't tell you where "here" is, but I wanted to check out of it into fuzzy oblivion, pronto!
I didn't go to the store, or drink any booze. I pretty much knew I wouldn't. But it was very, very hard to ride it out. I told my partner that I was having a hard time of it and didn't want to talk for a bit, then sat on the couch and read blogs and wrote a bit until I got a grip. The moment (OK it was an hour) passed, and I felt a bit better later. Quiet and a bit knocked out, but better.
How is it that one person can, at the same time, know that drinking is a really bad idea, and really really really want to drink? This addiction thing really plays with your head, doesn't it? Because I know, of course, people are all riddled with contradictions. But those contradictions are so much more comfortable when they are happening to someone else, or when you see them from a safe distance, looking back at your formerly unenlightened self, as opposed to when they are happening to you right now. Last night, sitting on the couch, I felt like I was two people at once. I was me, the person who has committed to the not drinking plan, and who sees that it's a better way. And I was also me, the person who has, for years and years, drank, so much so often that it had become part of the fabric of who I am. I wanted to find a way out of living through the moments of painful contradiction, maybe not be either of the people for a while, but of course, there is no way out. Maybe it sounds like I'm over-dramatising here, but it doesn't feel that way.
So all that stuff I was saying a few days ago about not drinking not being that hard? Sure, that's true, except when it's freaking hard! Drinking won't solve anything, and I'm not going to do it. It won't get me out of anything, unless consciousness is what I'm trying to avoid, and if that's what I want to be clear of, then I can just go to sleep. But I can't stay asleep.
Not a lot of wisdom or answers here today. I am wondering whether I should consider going to an AA meeting. I went twice early last year, and I had what is probably a predictable reaction. The first week I thought, "I love these people!" The second week I was appalled, and I thought, "I have nothing in common with these people." Neither is true, of course. I would probably like some and have trouble with some, and I would have something more or less in common with all of them, but I wasn't ready to call alcohol the problem it really was at that time. Not yet. Now I know it is one. I would still like an easy way out, one where I can just put the drinking behind me and smile my way into a whole new better way of being me. The fact that reality doesn't work that way doesn't stop me from wanting it sometimes, any more than the fact that drinking really sucks doesn't stop me from wanting that sometimes, too.
Anyway, here I am, 49 days sober and holding on, feeling pretty darn good about that in the big picture if a bit uncomfortable in some of the moments. I'm not going anywhere. I won't drink, and I will figure this out. For now I'll just sip my fizzy water and stare out the window at the snow that's been piling up all day. It's pretty. And I'm not out in it. I'm grateful for that, and that's a good moment to be in.
Thanks for reading. Peace and joy to us all.
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