The Pink Cloud.

I'm currently working on several entries. There's one on "Trust", one titled "Guilt and Shame", the long-awaited follow up to "Good Orderly Direction (pt. 1)", a summary of my time in treatment and one on my feelings about going to meetings. I feel kinda shitty right now though, so here's a short, impromptu one: The Pink Cloud.

In treatment, at least towards the end, I felt pretty darned good. I "got" it. I wasn't just going to be sober, I was going to be sober, happy, productive; a real world-beater cadsarn it. Golly, nothing was going to get me down. Heck, I was stepping in for the counselors when it seemed like my troubled treatment cohorts were having a hard time grasping the concepts I now felt like I wrote. Once I got out, that feeling evaporated rather quickly.

It's said that many individuals experience life on the pink cloud after treatment, they carry that feeling of complete confidence with them for days, even weeks at a time. While there are most likely rare exceptions, the pink cloud doesn't last. To a large extent, we've spent the majority of our adult lives relying on alcohol and drugs to medicate, smooth out or completely dull our emotions. All emotions. I used when I was depressed, and I used to celebrate. I used to be sociable, I used to be alone. I used to get me through the day, I used to help put me to sleep. I used because it was raining out. I used because it was a beautiful day. For ten years I eschewed sobriety in a variety of ways and now I'm facing reality for what it is. I'm actually kind of grateful I didn't get the pink cloud feeling; I don't need any more artificial emotion.

So, I'm feeling shitty right now. There's no real reason for it per se, I mean, sure I can make a list, but in early recovery, even if I'm doing "all the right things" I have to expect this. What's frustrating is that it's the exact type of butterflies-in-my-chest pseudo anxiety that I know three substances I used to have on hand all the time would take away immediately.

But the feelings always come back. So I continue with sobriety because I'm told things will get better. You can't rely on the food you ate a week ago for nourishment today, similarly I won't rely on the positive behaviours and spiritual work I put in a week ago. I want to be happy, humble, honest; the kind of person that I'd look up to and I have to keep working for it.

So, I feel rotten right now.

That's okay, I never expected the pink cloud anyway.

Restless, Irritable and Discontent.

At this point, I've decided to put my recovery first. I'd been trying to balance a sense of my old life with my new and found myself frustrated with what I was seemingly missing out on. I wanted to still be the guy that was always around, up for anything, the guy that played lead guitar in a band, that sat around conceptualizing idea upon idea, the guy that was always there for his friends, the guy that readily embraced the unknown with the promise of adventure. I didn't want to let go of my caustic self, my judgmental holier than thou witticisms; they seemed integral to what made me me. I found that meetings were time stealing annoyances, that calling members took me too far outside of my comfort zone; I didn't want all of this, I wasn't even sure I still wanted my sobriety.

I also didn't want to have to walk this path alone. It didn't seem fair, to be the sole individual from my circle of friends to embark on this sombre sober sojourn while everyone else could maintain the status quo, apparently free from retribution. I set myself up to feel miserable; not surprisingly, I succeeded. I'd been taught a lot in treatment (something I'll discuss in a later post) but once I was out, I didn't want to accept anyone's help, I didn't want to accept that this is what I needed to do and, if I was going to stay sober, I was going to do it my own way. I was back to believing that will power could be employed, that my thinking patterns were part of who I was, that I was a unique individual. I was bigger than AA; the program might work for the feeble and weak minded alcoholic and addict, but that I was different, I was special. Alcoholic thinking, I assure you.

My natural state is one of dissatisfaction. I'm irritable, restless and discontent. I think about myself before all others, how situations affect me. I can live in the most disgusting of states, not shower for a week, have no money in my bank account and still be judgmental of a stranger I pass on the streets. I don't need to have my own house in order before passing judgment on others because I'm better than them. I'm never satisfied with what I have, don't know what I want, and sure as hell won't work toward getting somewhere or something different. I embrace the circular thoughts that race through my head, caught in the centrifuge of my apparent brilliance – I think therefore I am, and I am David.

Recently, I haven't felt this way very much at all. Somehow, I remain David.

It's amazing to me how tightly I cling to this notion of an identity. How, if I'm not somewhat miserable and judgmental, I lose my sense of self. Drugs, alcohol and temporal distractions helped to alleviate my self-centred worldview (not that I recognized it at the time) and without them, I was at the mercy of my true problem: me.

So, after trying to do it my own way, I've decided to give AA a real shot. So far, I have to admit, I feel a whole hell of a lot better. I'm not looking to analyse it too much – that's what I did throughout treatment – because, at it's core, it's a stupidly, absurdly simple program. It's just a bunch of addicts and alcoholics hanging out, keeping each other sober by sharing their experiences. That holier than thou, self-centred worldview I talked about? Yeah, they all feel the same way about themselves. It's alcoholic thinking. The more I hear my own story in bits and pieces coming from other members, the less “special” I'm able to feel. And that's a good thing.

I'm not a different person. I never will be. My thoughts will always be somewhat screwed up, I just have started to realise that I don't have to simply submit to them, I can consciously change my thoughts, take new actions and not give into old resentments or fall into old patterns. I'm better than that, and I don't want to have to resort to drinking or drugs to relieve me from the bondage of myself.

It's hard being sober.

At least I'm finally being grateful for all the help. And learning to accept it.

The Anatomy of a Meeting

There are several different kinds of meetings you can attend. First off, there's the difference between AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), CA (Cocaine Anonymous) and NA (Narcotics Anonymous). All three take their teachings from the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous) and tend to follow the same basic structure. In AA, participants must only have the desire to quit drinking, but the use of any other narcotic is considered an “outside issue”. With CA, the prime directive is altered to say that participants have a desire to stop using cocaine and all other mind or mood altering substances. Obviously, this includes the use of alcohol. For NA, there is no one substance that you must have a desire to stop using, it is all inclusive, you want to stop everything. I've been to all types of meetings, but now mainly go to AA because, quite simply, there are so many more meetings for AA on any given day. The message is the same, the steps are the same, and after going to a good cross section of these meetings, the people and the stories tend to be the same as well.

At first I was rather uncomfortable identifying as an alcoholic. I mean, sure, I used alcohol and, yes, I used it to excess, but I figured my problems really stemmed more from my drug abuse then a few tall cans in Trinity Bellwoods. Upon closer self-examination, however, it was easy to see that, if I was going to drink, my goal was to get drunk. There seemed to be no other purpose to picking up a drink to me. Since I was a poly abuser, a drink was usually just a means of getting me to a drug, but if the alcohol was plentiful and it seemed to be the choice of the people I was with, hey, it was good enough for me. Also, if I set out for an evening of drinking and was low on funds, I would allot a certain amount of money to limit my spending (also an alcoholic approach). Another sure sign of my alcoholism: I'd always spend and drink more than expected. I still try to make it to a CA meeting here and there, but for the most part I've found that AA works just fine.

First, there are “Open” and “Closed” meetings. An Open meeting is, well, open to all. Family members, friends, curious members of the public, homeless people trying to get in out of the cold. These are generally “Speaker meetings”, wherein an AA member who has completed the 12-Steps discusses their story — the evolution of their alcoholism, how they got into the program, how they're doing today as a result of doing the work. Closed meetings are for alcoholics only; for people who want to stop drinking. Closed meetings can be a Speaker meeting, a Discussion meeting, a Step meeting or a combination (generally Speaker-Discussion or Step-Discussion). In a Speaker-Discussion meeting, a person tells a truncated version of their story (20 minutes or so) and then the moderator will lead the group on a topic discussion (ie. Spirituality, Participation and Action, Resentments, etc). Basically anything that might come up in recovery. With raised hands, individuals are then selected by the moderator to speak. And, yes, we begin by saying “My name is _____ and I'm an alcoholic.” And, yes, the group then choruses back “Hi ______.” This is done to remind us that, no matter how much sobriety you might have, you are never not an alcoholic (or addict), you never “graduate”, you are never cured.

Side note: I'm 45 days sober as of today.

In Step meetings, the moderator selects one of the 12 Steps to discuss and only members who have completed that step may “share”. (Sharing is what we call any personal experience being talked about. Speakers share, people who raise their hand in Discussion share, people who can talk about their step work share).

Members are encouraged to find a “home group”. There are hundreds of different groups functioning throughout the city, but getting a home group is essential to committing to a smaller, more intimate community. (My home group is the Primary Purpose Group – PPG – that meets at Yonge and St. Clair). Members of a home group are assigned duties at business meetings and run that group for other AA members. Duties include: greeters, coffee and snacks, secretary, librarian, etc. Different members will be assigned to be moderators, changing meeting by meeting.

Standard flow of a meeting:

Stand outside a church smoking en masse. Five minutes before the meeting, make your way inside, shake hands with the greeters, say hi to familiar faces, take a seat. The moderator brings the meeting to order, calls up pre-selected individuals to read the 12-Steps and the 12-Traditions and there is usually one other reading, different depending on the meeting. Announcements are then made, generally upcoming members “birthdays” (ie. “John A of the Midtown Group will be celebrating 5 years of sobriety on December the 11^th, all are welcome”), or special events being put on through AA. Moderators then qualify themselves as an alcoholic thus permitting them to chair the meeting. Generally a very quick example of their alcoholism, concluded with “... and I believe that qualifies me.” Then the speaker is invited up, or the discussion is made open. At the close, celebrate the seventh tradition, which states that AA will remain forever autonomous, not accepting funds from outside sources. There are no dues or fees to be a member, but they pass around baskets in order to pay for the rental of the space, to purchase coffee and snacks and it is up to the individual to contribute or not. To close, stand, join hands with the people to your left and right, say the Serenity Prayer, continue holding hands and pump them vigorously while saying “keep coming back!”, stick around for “fellowship” (talking with members, drinking coffee) or leave.

Next post: “My Name is David and I'm an Alcoholic”: My Meeting Experiences.

A Day in the Life

5:30 a.m. – Alarm goes off. Startled, I wake up to slightly grating classical music, lurch out of bed, consider and reject the idea of a morning shower, get dressed and stumble to the bathroom with a sprightly cat dancing about my feet.

6:00 a.m. – Coffee is in a travel mug, bagel is shoved full of assorted food stuffs, five dollars in coins jangle in my pocket. I smoke a cigarette while staring into the persistent dark sky.

6:20 a.m. – I'm pulling into the South lot at Kipling station. The CBC news on the drive over has sufficiently distracted me from the over eager motorists demanding their way into the city. I pull up to the coin slot for the automated gates and strain out my open window to deposit the assorted change I scrounged up. Access granted, I descend underground.

6:55 a.m. – Sunlight remains reluctant. I'm pushing the button that alerts the guard to my presence. He ignores my plaintive tapping for a moment and then the green light signals to me that I may now enter the majestic Roger's office building at one Mount Pleasant. I sign in, trade my license for a security card, swipe it at a screen and nudge my way through the turnstile.

7:02 a.m. – Having donned a chef's jacket, over-sized black pants, ill-fitting safety shoes, a horrifying skull cap and slightly stained apron, I swish through the industrial kitchen, making sure to say hi to the various cooks. Carol, the Jamaican woman who dances and sings along with Flow, Sandy the young Spanish prep cook who teases me in a language I don't understand, Andy the Chinese assistant who gets to wear the cool looking black chef coat, Nigel the sous chef who plays the Angry Black Man until I'm sufficiently intimidated and then laughs at me, Michael the head chef who almost became a Marine and hasn't missed a day of work in 34 years. I come out onto the floor and am met by Donald and Norman, the grill cooks that Michael refers to as “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum”. Norman, a hunchback who fancies himself a ladies man and Vegas crooner, greets me with a poorly sung, bastardized song and soft shoe shuffle. I work with Blanca, the rotund, matronly Mexican woman who calls everyone “dear”.

8:15 a.m. – I get a 15 minute break. It's unnecessary as I really haven't done much at this point, but I drink a coffee, eat a danish and chat with Mayella, the head cashier who flits about with the kitchen and Roger's staff like a queen bee.

11:30 a.m. – I get a half hour lunch break, unpaid, but I get to eat anything I want. I sit outside, stare at passing traffic and send a few text messages.

3:30 – I'm forced to clean up and leave the remainder of shutting down our station to Blanca as the temp agency doesn't allow me to work any longer than 8.5 hours.

4:00 – Aching and exhausted, I'm finally free to do anything I want for the next 2.5 hours. Unfortunately, I have nowhere to go and nothing to do.

4:30 – I'm sitting on a couch at the treatment centre, writing a blog entry. As a former resident (they call us 'alumni') I'm granted free access to the house whenever I want.

5:00 – James gets in touch and we arrange to meet at Nirvana.

6:10 – Our meeting went long, the street car is packed and I'm speed walking up Bathurst, my piston-like legs somehow more sluggish than usual as the rain begins to pour down.

6:35 – I arrive to an After-Care session at the treatment centre and am mocked for being late.

9:30 – After-Care complete, I make my way to the subway in the hopes of resting my eyes on the trip back to Kipling.

9:34 – A Leafs game has just let out, it's standing room only and everyone is enthralled with the home team's big win. I stand beside an excitable young boy who is enjoying a rare ride on the TTC by trying to maintain his balance without the aid of handholds. He collapses into me several times with an eruption of laughter.

10:02 – I arrive at Kipling, it's a torrential down pour, my bones are asleep.

10:32 – I arrive home, stand on the porch, smoke a cigarette while staring into the persistent dark and rainy sky.

10:40 – I check to make sure my alarm is set for 5:30 a.m. and collapse into bed.

This was an example of an average day from this past week. The amazing thing is, despite being tired, I actually enjoyed myself. I mean, I wouldn't want my life to be like this forever, but for now it works; I'm making money, I'm busy and there's absolutely no chance of insomnia at the end of the night. I'm going to After-Care and AA meetings, calling my sponsor, calling other members and, lo and behold, I feel pretty good.

Some pretty exciting things have come up recently, but I'm not going to jinx them by revealing anything yet.

Next entry: The Anatomy of a Meeting.

Pity Party!

It's Sunday evening, coming up on six o'clock and that all-too-familiar feeling of wanting to tear off my skin has uncomfortably settled upon me once again. It gets to the point where I just want to zero in on all of the absurdities of this program, fire my sponsor, never attend another meeting, get wasted and shove my middle finger into the eyeballs of every asshole I encounter.

Instead, I'm sitting at a Second Cup a couple of blocks from an AA meeting, due to start in a few hours.

My brain is trying to convince me to just skip it. My body is trying to convince me to run around the block seventeen times in the hopes of physical exhaustion. My jaw refuses to stop clenching, though its purpose is lost on me. I'm short with people I care about and feel like I'm trapped inside a faulty sack of skin, bent on acting out against my better judgment. I want to feel awesome and I don't. So, ultimately, I'm stuck feeling like a failure; bored, scared, sad, alone. I make a mistake and then try to make up for it by making more mistakes and I don't know where the good feelings have gone and and and...

I got a job. I started on Thursday and will be working all next week, but it's through a temp agency so who knows how long it will go for (eeeeyore). I'm cooking at the Roger's building, 1 Mount Pleasant; my shift is from 630am to 330pm and while it's nice to be making money again and it's nice to have a thing to do, I'm (obviously) finding it hard to be positive right now.

One day I'll look back on this entry and laugh, right?

I hate feeling this way, I hate how it makes me act and I wish I could just go on auto pilot until things start to get better. Wah, wah, wah.

I'd send out invitations to this pity party but I bet no one would come.

Boy, writing that last line made me realise how annoying this entry is. Not just that, but how much I look to other people for support, pats on the back or empathetic commiseration.

It's gross that I'm feeling so enthusiastically sorry for myself in such a public forum, but hey, maybe I'll embarass myself enough to get my head out of my ass.

Pity party over, everyone get the hell out.

Good Orderly Direction (pt.1).

There is the claim that, if not for the spiritual aspect of the program, Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, would've easily claimed a Nobel Prize. After all, at its inception, AA was found to be the only salvation for the incurable alcoholic, write offs of the medical community who had tried every scientific approach with these desperate and hopeless cases. While the CAMH's of the world are funded for their research into harm reduction and lofty intellectual, scientific and medical approaches, AA has kept millions of people sober using two basic principles: fellowship and spirituality.

When I entered treatment, I was a pretty self assured atheist.

I was born into a Roman Catholic family. We went to church, I attended a Catholic elementary school, I was baptised, went to catechism classes and got communicated. I opposed simply sitting in an uncomfortable pew while at St. Christopher's and actually marched down with the procession, Bible held aloft, and read from the gospels to the congregation. I made jokes with the priests and was even a participating member of the youth group.

As I got older, the repetition and lack of relevant daily application became more and more apparent and I slowly began to turn my back on the church. The more I learned about organised religion, the less purpose it seemed to have for me and I began to see it as a coping mechanism for the masses. The over-sized, angst ridden paintings I created for my final art project in high school were a final "fuck you" to simpler times. I had too many questions I felt were based in reality that religion simply couldn't answer. In University, a World Religions course just further emphasized my realisations: all religions followed similar paths, confused all to hell by human interpretations.

I said I was an atheist when I entered treatment, but what I actually labelled myself was an Absurdist Nihilist Humanist. Read: There was no point to life, you could do anything you wanted, but try to be a good person.

I was considered a real problem case in treatment because of my intelligence. AA is a very simple program and I still wanted answers to all of my questions. I wanted things based in fact, science, medicine -- what I really wanted was a way out, but I didn't realise that at the time.

In AA they use the term "God", but they expand it to say "a God of your understanding". This is also termed "a higher power". They tell you that you must be willing to turn your life and your will over to your higher power because sobriety is not a thing you can achieve under your own will power. It's akin to telling a diabetic to use his will power to process sugar or yelling at a cancer patient to stop being such a wimp. Trying to shame an alcoholic or addict to stop using simply doesn't work.

Here's a condensed version of how I began to embrace the spiritual side of the program:

"You're a pretty smart guy, huh?"
"Yeah!"
"So, you have irrefutable proof that God doesn't exist then?"
"... well, no."
"Okay, so you're not atheist, you're agnostic."

Pft, whatever, semantics.

"Do you have a conscience?"
"Yes."
"And your conscience knows the difference between 'right' and 'wrong'?"
"I guess so."
"Can you ever fool your conscience into thinking that doing something wrong is actually right?"
"Uh, no, I guess not..."

This is where I started. Using my conscience as a "higher power starting point", I was asked to list out the ideal attributes of my higher power.

My list included:

Love, compassion, humility, honesty...

When I was done, I was told to do my best to be like my fictional higher power. That was it. Did I want to be those things?

"Yeah, I guess so..."

And what if you find it hard to be those things, what can you do?

"I dunno."

Pray.

Well...  shit. Now there's a sticking point. But I'll talk about prayer later.

So, I'm working on this. To be honest, it's kind of nice to have your own personal "God-In-My-Pocket" on your side. Most people in the program still have difficulty with their higher power, describing it, understanding it, but they do credit their sobriety to it and right now I'm willing to do almost anything to feel at peace in my own head.

So, call it God, Good Orderly Direction, Great Out Doors, a Higher Power, your conscience or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but I need to keep working on my own understanding because it has worked, undoubtedly worked, for so many who came before me.

You're in the right place.

I keep hearing that line, as though it's supposed to make me feel better.

I've been sober for one month now, the longest foray into clear-headed living I've attempted since my first year of University approximately ten years ago. Though, "attempted" makes it seem like a cordial effort on my part and I can't quite say this is as noble as it might appear. I hate this. Some days I want to tear off my skin just to escape my body. The anxiety, the depression, the disgruntled, discontented delirium; the isolation, the self-induced separation from society as I know it...

"You're in the right place."

Go fuck yourself.

I also get, "You're right where you should be," "Keep coming back," and, "It does get better," repeated ad naseum by smiling goons coming out of the shadows of church basements throughout the city. Yeah, no, this isn't a cult at all.

You're in the right place: This is in reference to Alcoholics Anonymous in general. Or Cocaine Anonymous, or Narcotics Anonymous, depending on the night and my mood. This is their attempt at reassuring me that, indeed, I am an alcoholic-drug addict and this is the best place to seek salvation.

You're right where you should be: This is actually an emotionally-based mapping system. People come up to you and ask how you're doing, but don't attempt to give them the standard,"Good, how're you?" 'cause they don't buy it. So, I tell them about the skin-ripping off thing and they generally laugh, clap me on the back and give me the line. Generally followed by:

It does get better: Self explanatory, and a promise. People only a year into their sobriety claim that their lives are so much better than they ever thought possible just by committing to the program, getting a sponsor and working the steps. I'm a month sober, three weeks of which were spent in a treatment facility, and I seem to remember cavorting around with friends being a bit more fun then bad coffee, uncomfortable seating and Jesus on the cross staring at my judgmentally from the basement of a church I've never been to. But what do I know, I'm a fucking addict.

Keep coming back: This is said several times throughout meetings, it's one of the slogans of AA and it's chanted in unison at the end of every meeting (after a prayer, us all holding hands, pumping them up and down in time -- Keep! (pump) Coming! (pump) Back! (pump) -- like some sort of perverse game of Red Rover or a bad collegiate cheer). The idea, of course, being that if you keep coming to meetings, life will improve.

And so, a month in and I have a home group, a sponsor, a growing phone list of members who assure me I can call at any time, after-care meetings through my treatment facility twice a week and an addictions therapist. I'm also not having very much fun.

This blog will track my life as it "does get better" or "not". I'll write about my past, rehab, the inner workings of AA and a life of sobriety. Sounds like a fucking blast, right? Bookmark this one for all your entertainment needs.

Updates to come when I'm bored. (read: all the time).