First Year Sobriety

[honeydumplin]

This runs a little lengthy, but to have shortened it would have
had compromised it. I do hope it helps you as much
as it has, and continues to help me.

Kevin


First-Year Sobiety
When All That Changes Is Everything
By: Guy Kettlehack
Chapter 3
Having Feelings, Not Being Them
pages 76 through 83

"I always felt like a turtle, " says Sharon, a recovering addict
with ten months of sobriety. "The least threat, and zap, back into my
shell. Where, in the old days, I kept a fully stocked pharmacy." Now
that the "pharmacy" has been emptied, Sharon is getting the courage
to keep her head out of her "shell" a little longer, open her eyes a little
wider. And she's slowly discovering that it's possible to experience the
World Out There without descending into a state of abject terror.

"I've had to learn everything from scratch," admits Sharon,
who has worked for a number of years as a freelance editor. "It's
been very humbling. Because for so long, I'd pretended I knew
everything--and sometimes I almost convinced myself I did. I
could name drop with the best of them. I'd had a few glamorous
jobs as an editor early on with a number of conspicuous suc-
cesses, big bestseller. God, I milked those for all they were
worth. I left the company I was with just before they were about
to discreetly suggest that perhaps I'd be happier elsewhere; I
hadn't gotten any of my books in on time for a couple of yeras,
and those that got through were disasters. But I had it announced
in all the trade papers that I was going greelance. One magazine
even did an interview with me: I went on endlessly about my
'need for 'freedom.' Truth was, I couldn't hold down a job in a
company anymore. But I rode on my early stellar reputation for
years. And it worked, for a while. I mean, when I was on Valium
and other downs, I did everything I could to convey this image of
total competence. 'No problem,' I'd say about anything to any-
one. And frankly, I often believed myself. If you were as 'mellow'
as I regularly got on drugs, you wouldn't have thought anything
was a problem either! People would buy into it for a while too.
Who doesn't like to hear that there's 'no problem'? But then, in-
evitably, they wouldn't get the work they commissioned from
me on time. I became positively ingenious with excuses. But
even those wore off. I lost client after client. And one day I got so
doped up I nearly killed myself."

Sharon sighs. "It's been a long way back. Now that I've been
through an outpatient clinic, and I'm going to NA meetings, I'm
in a whole new world. As I said, I realize I have to learn every-
thing from scratch. How to vacuum my apartment!" Sharon laugs.
"For years, every so often I'd call in some expensive cleaning ser-
vice and they'd send some poor crew over who would gasp at the
mess I'd made of my home and work for two days to clean it up.
Now I can't affor them, and I'm having to learn to take care of
myself. I'll never forget the first time I actually found myself
scrubbing my kitchen floor, on my hands and knees. I wanted to
call in the neighbors and say, 'Look what I've done!' It was a big
triumph for me. It still is."

Slowly, Sharon is beginnning to establish herself as an editor
again, taking on smaller projects, projects she feels she can han-
dle in these early, baffling days of sobriety. "At first I couldn't
read anything; a big liability when you're and editor! Now I can
read and actually edit articles and book proposals. Maybe, who
knows, someday I can get to the big stuff."

Recently and old client, from what Sharon calls her "grandiose"
days, called and invited her out to dinner at an expensive
restaurant to talk to her about a "really big" job. Sharon knew
she wasn't ready for something too taxing, but she was intrigued.

"God, it was weird," she says. "This was the ex-president of a
major company who'd bounced around from publishing com-
pany to publishing company for years--not an uncommon oc-
currence in the book business, but I saw, now that I was sober,
one of the major reasons why he'd never been able to stay in
one place. He was a roaring alcoholic."

Sharon found herself far more fascinated by how her dinner
companion was acting than by any "business" he was allegedly
there to conduct. "It was quickly clear that the dinner was an ex-
cuse for him to write off yet another meeting on his current pub-
lishers's expense account. Which basically meant he got to drink
as much as he wanted to for free. It was amazing watching him.
I never really drank all that much when I was 'out there'; pills
were my drug of choice. But I did downs, so I knew the zonked-
out state this guy was feeling, the escape he was after. And that's
what was so strange, fascinating, and sad. Moving, even. The
more he drank, the childlike he became. I felt I was in
some clinical laboratory watching him. He mad these associa-
tive leaps, just like a little child does, not able to hold one
thought for longer than a moment, quickly moving on to the
next feeling or thought. Inhibitions washed out of him with each
glass of wine. He spilled out his marital troubles; he was on the
verge of a divorce. Nobody understood him. Which reminded
him of a trip he wanted to take to Venice. Or was it Corfu? Oh,
who knew. He did love to travel. Didn't I? Yes, we should really
work on a travel book together. Perhaps a travel novel, yes, that
would be lovely. Maybe, to hell with it, we'd stop being editors
and write it ourselves. Who knew more about writing than two
old pros like us? And by the way, was I sure I didn't want a drink?
Why was I so quiet? I really was so much more fun when I had a
few drinks...

"What struck me most was that he was so desperately trying
to escape any pain--and desperately, it barely consciously, seek-
in to make contact with someone. He seemed like one of the
loneliest people I'd ever met. And I identified--God, how I iden-
tified with him! How alone I felt when I was still drugging and
drinking! I was convinced no one, no one at all, could ever un-
derstand what I was going through." Sharon frowns. "I'm still
not saying what moved me most, though. It's just this: My terr-
bly drunk dinner companion reminded me that I'm after exactly
the same thing now that I was when I drugged and drank--a feel-
ing that I'm all right. A feeling of oneness with the world. Self-
acceptance. The ability to stay in my own skin. An escape from
hating myself. An escape from fear. The ability to tolerate life--
to enjoy it. Or, in Bill Wilson's words, to be 'happy, joyous and
free.'" Sharon closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them;
her face is full of new light. "That's the revelation. I saw this
poor drunken guy trying, vainly, to do what I am starting to be
able to do sober; accept and get comfortable with my feeling.
With who I am. All the pills I was taking weren't the answer,
though, God knows, I tried to make them be. This guy, still
drinking, hadn't learned what I was now sure was true: Drinking
wasn't going to give him the peace he was after. All drinking
could do was make him drunk. Sever him from himself. Keep
him from being who he wanted to be."

Bombing out on downs hadn't ever helped Sharon to attain
the sense of self-acceptance and serenity she now realized she'd
always been after and also now realized she at least had a chance
of attaing, sober. "What began as a way to get rid of my inhibi-
tions--zonking myself out with drugs--ended in paralysis,"
Sharon said. "I see now that I took pills because I was so desper-
ate to feel good about myself, but they never really helped, even
if, for a while, I thought they did. All that ever happened was
that vacant, childlike, transient state I'd seen in my drunken
friend. The pills were only a cover-up. But so was any attemp to
find self-acceptance or self-esteem in my job. Even when, in the
early days, I had my big professional successes, nothing really
touched me deep inside; nothing really made it easier to accept
who I was."

The "small" triumphs Sharon can lay claim to today--cleaning
her home, buying groceries, taking on manageable projects and
getting them done when she says she'll get them done--thes are
all immensely more gratifying to her than any flashier success in
her drugged past. She now feels, she says, "at least a glimmer of
the serenity my drunken friend and I were starving for, out of it
on booze and drugs. It's a real serenity. Something that comes out
of who I am. Not some ephemeral 'feel-good' state temporarily
imposed on me by a drug, by something external. I've earned
what little serenity I feel. I'm developing it, cultivating it in my-
self. And it's real--in fact, all of my feeling are real--in a way no
other emotional state ever was before. I can cherish, depend on,
allow feelings to enrich my life and make me open to more and
more things. Less apt to retreat back into the old shell."

This is the ideal, anyway. Sharon admits that she still panics;
she still feels overwhelmed by life, by the swings of her moods,
by sudden doubts about her future, fears about whether she'll be
able to continue her professional ascent, confusion about just
who she "really" is now that she's not losing herself in drugs.
But alread, helped in a strange way by seeing how lost her
intoxicated dinner companion seemed, she's begun to see, as
many people begin to see in their first year of sobriety, that self-
acceptance might after all be possible in sobriety. The instinct for
self-preservation, the fierce desire to live, not die, that seems to
characterize many addicts' and alcoholics' first moments of re-
covery, is one that can be nurtured, cultivated, brought to bloom.
The "flower" is a feeling of genuine self-acceptance, the knowl-
edge, the certainty that feelings don't have to be toxic. Feelings
are a kind of mental weather that will eventually pass and
change into something else, not something you get trapped in
forever. This is what is meant by "Feelings are not facts."

"I realize that saying 'I'm angry' when anger hits isn't pre-
cisely true." Sharon says. "It's truer to say "I feel anger." Its im-
portant for me to remind myself that I am not my anger; anger is
a state I happen to be in, temporarily. Not that ther might not
be some very good reasons for being in that state, reasons that
bear looking into. But my anger, or any other feeling I have
doesn't have to kill me. Or make me pick up a drug."

It's the experience of so many recovering people that sobriety
breeds flexibility. The more sober we become, the more difficult
it is to categorize ourselves in any rigid way. Once again, Sharon
illuminates: "I used to think I was the type of person who never,
oh, I don't know--liked baseball, say. Or who would never get
peeved when somebody cut in front of me in line at the grocery
store; Iwas always too mellow to be bothered by anything so
petty. Now, sober, I'm finding I do sort of like baseball. In fact, I
was ready to hurl a few baseballs at this pushy woman at the
market the other day who barged in front of me in line!" Sharon,
like many other recovering people, is discovering she isn't a
"type" after all. She's capable of any number of responses, and
capable of feeling any number of emotions.

A big lesson that Sharon helps to teach us is simply this: We
don't have to become our feeling. Improtant as feelings can be
as signals, markers that tell us what's going on inside, we come
to realize that feelings are not "facts," especially as we allow
ourselves to witness their coming and going. "This too shall
pass" may be, at different times, the most exasperating and the
most reassuring slogan you'll hear at Twelve Step meetings.
What it seems to remain, however, is true. The only constant
in sobriety (or in life) seems to be that however you're feeling
now isn't how you'll be feeling tomorrow. Or later today. Or in
a moment.

But something beneath this doesn't change quite so precipi-
tously. At least, this is what recovering people who've got a few
months of sobrity under their belts tell me. As we allow our-
selves to witness our feelings (rather than identify ourselves
completely with them), we seem eventually to become aware of
a deeper "river" beneath all our surface emotional turmoil--a
sort of calm, reliable, deep flow of serenity that doesn't go away,
no matter what's happening back up there at the surface. We
learn, in fact, that we can always come back to this subterranean
flow for sustenance and direction and peace. Making contact
with this river seems to be an organic consequence of sobrity.
We seem to give ourselves the best chance of sensing it as we al-
low ourselves to experience feelings with judging them,
allow what we feel to come out, whether in a trickle or in a tor-
rent--all the while hanging on to our decision that, no matter
what, we don't have to pick up a drug or a drink. This river of
serenity seems to make itself felt too, when we reinforce our de-
cision not to drink or drug by doing something we know from
experience is positive, such as going to a Twelve Step meeting,
making a phone call to another recovering person, or doing
something else we know will bolster our decision to stay sober.
We learn from all of this to "hang on" so that we can truly "let
go" of feelings that seem to assail us, that seem as if they would
put us under. We learn they don't have to. We've got options--
not the least of which is simply waiting until whatever feeling is
tormenting us passes.

It's clear to me from talking to people in recovery that these
revelations about feelings don't all come at the same time or rate
or as completely for some people as they do for others. Often the
only thing that makes sense to any of us in the first year of sobri-
ety is that reliable standby: "Don't drink. Go to meetings." But,
perhaps in a quiet moment, you may begin to feel the deep flow
of that "river" I've described, and realize, as Sharon realized, that
you're cultivating more peace of mind and self-acceptance that
you ever thought you could before. Conciousness of this flow
seems to increase the longer we stay sober. As you begin to work
the Twelve Steps and keep renewing the pact with yourself not
to drink or drug, the pull of that serenity deep within you can't
seem to help but get stronger.

However, don't worry if all you can feel right now is the tur-
moil on top. In fact, dealing with that turmoil constitues a very
important aim for everyone who grapples with sobrity, no mat-
ter how long they've been sober. Staying sober is a day-to-day
(sometimes minute-to-minute) process with some very practical
realities.