Mr. SponsorPants

Things I learned (or was reminded of) this week. An ongoing series.

 

Praying for people I resent always helps me feel better.  But sometimes it helps me feel better just a tiny bit more slowly than I like.

 

When I doubt that God is giving me what I need -- and that it is infinitely and profoundly better than what I want -- the best thing I can tell myself consists of just three little words:  Wait and see.  Because when I do, when I look back over a stretch of life and see just how things came together, I'm always dazzled  and moved at the graceful synchronicity of it all.

 

More meetings generally equals a quieter head.

 

Service is a joy, and the times when I have been fully present for a sponsee, focused intently on listening to them and helping them, are some of the times I've felt closest to something Bigger than myself -- a connection, a channel, to a Higher Power.  It is a privilege, and something for which I will always be grateful.

 

Don't

 

 

 

"I'm afraid I have to let you go..."

"I'm sorry, ________, I'm afraid I have to let you go."

After I sit them down in the office, when I have to fire someone, that's what I start with.  No "I hope you know what a great person we all think you are..." or "I realize you've made a real effort here but..."

Just... out with it.  I have come to believe that when it comes to bad news, it's best to rip the band aid off quickly.  Be direct.  No dancing.  Then, after I lower the boom, I sit quietly and give their brain a moment to go "Wait, what did he just say?" and replay it to themselves.

"I have your final check here."  I hand them their check -- although it's sealed I always make sure the math is right; that payroll didn't accidentally add insult to injury.

I terminated two people today, one right after the other.  One of them -- the first one -- didn't take it well. 

At all.

After he collected himself he asked me if he could "go out the back way" so he didn't have to see everyone.  I said of course and walked him to the back door.  I always walk people out.  I hope that it feels like a kindness.  I try to be calm and gentle, but it's also because I have a responsibility to my employers to make sure that there aren't any incidents as they leave.

I never feel good about it, no matter what the cause.

Today I felt like hell.

If I make it to that point with someone I assure you I've done everything in my power to help them straighten out and get on track.  It quietly kills me to see how for some people they just aren't capable of taking the help in, whether it's from a crappy attitude or a lack of aptitude. 

I flash back to when I was a foolish, drunken boy, fumbling and burning my way through educational and career opportunities.  I think about the many people who tried to help me, to reach me -- and I just couldn't hear them.  Sure, some of that was just stupid, careless youth... but in my case it was also the air raid siren of my alcoholism shrieking in my head, drowning out the possibility of hearing anything else but its driven, destructive, seductive song.

To make it worse, one of the kids I fired -- the one who didn't take it well -- phoned me earlier in the day to confirm their shift, and asked if it was a mistake they were being called in early, and wondered if their shift would be short enough for them to catch a ride home with a friend after.  Feeling like the fraud I had to be in that moment, I did my best to be honest and still honor my responsibility to the job:  "Yes, I need you to come in early.  And yes, it's likely going to be a shorter shift today..."

("As in, fifteen minutes long," I thought, the glib betrayal like bile on my tongue.)

"Why?" he asked, genuinely clueless as to what was coming.

"Jesus" I thought.

"I have to make some changes to the schedule today."  Also true, but still deliberately misleading.  It's never good when I begin parsing the spirit of the truth from the letter of it.  Dangerous for an old compulsive liar like myself.

I remember in one of my very first AA meetings a woman shared who, in talking about something else, almost as an afterthought said "It was in AA I learned how to stop lying."  It was one of the first times I felt that electric zing in my gut when someone shares a truth about themselves in a meeting which until that very moment I hadn't been able to see in myself -- what an amazing place an AA meeting is, to give the chance to hear such things; freely shared, offered (mostly) via personal experience and in the spirit of helpfulness and recovery.  I hope I never really take that for granted.

I keep a termination quick.  I gently refuse to be drawn into debate about the grounds for termination.  I just broken record whatever brief reason I have to offer them.  Most people, once it sets in, aren't interested in prolonging the experience.  My boss happened to be there today (though he didn't sit in on the terminations), and was, he said, quite impressed with how quickly I dispatch these conversations -- and one right after the other, no less.

I just shrugged and told him I've found that's best for all parties concerned.

I'm the boss now.  It's my job.  I can tell myself that it's almost a form of enabling to let people stay on and keep screwing up -- and it's not fair to the other people working there, as keeping someone who can't pull their weight  in one fashion or another can make the rest of the team's jobs that much harder -- not to mention undermining morale.

I can tell myself that and on the days I don't fire people it sounds really good and healthy, like the Mission Statement at a Recovery Center's HR Department.

But on the days I fire people -- blessedly not that often -- I just kind of feel like an asshole.

In AA I've learned not to make things all about myself.  I can be clear about how I feel of course, but comparatively speaking I'm not the one who had a bad day, when you tally up the score for this 24 hours.

It's still a tough job market, so even though I shouldn't have, I told them each that they could use me as a reference.  I told them I would say they were let go because we didn't have enough hours to give them.  What the hell, no one will know, those calls will come right to me.  And with all the second chances I've had, who am I to not do what I can to give someone else the opportunity to get it right on their next gig.

That's not rigorous honesty, I know, to tell their next prospective employer such a thing.  Oh, I could write here that the full sentence in my mind is "We didn't have enough hours to give them because if I gave them all the hours in the world they'd still not have had the aptitude -- or the attitude -- the job requires" but that's just playing a game.  I wouldn't offer to be a job reference to someone fired for stealing, or a grievous offense along those lines, but... this is different.

To me, anyway.

And maybe this is their wake-up call, job-wise.  Maybe they will do better in their next gig.  If I believe in God -- and today I do -- I know they have a Higher Power and this is part of what they need to grow in the way they need to grow.  In AA I have seen countless examples -- including my own -- of people who were able to eventually experience real change in themselves.  But we 12 Steppers don't own that.  Maybe a lot of stories don't go that way, but some do.  Who am I to say I know how the next chapter of someone else's story will unfold? 

Regardless, with all that said I'm still willing to lie and be a neutral job reference for them.

Maybe it's a mark of recovery that at least I'm not kidding myself about what I'm doing.

Being a grown up is hard sometimes.

AA helps me manage it more gracefully, I know that down to my bones.

But, with grace or without, some days have more of the suck to them than others.

In rereading this I want you to know that I see the contradiction.

I talk about how it is dangerous for me to parse the truth, about feeling terrible for having to be untruthful, and then turn right around and decide to lie.

It is a contradiction, yes -- yet it feels clean to me.

And what the hell, I'm a drunk who doesn't drink.

By definition I AM a contradiction.

It's just one day at a time, I try to keep moving in the right direction.

Disciplined but not rigid,

finding my way by listening to the little voice in my heart

and not the alcoholic one in my head.

another example of simple but not always easy

 

 

 

"... oh, I'm just sick of hearing people in meetings say that their worst day sober is better than their best day drunk..."

 

 

"It's just stupid"

He was ranting but I let him go on.

"It's fucking stupid to always compare every day I'm sober to the worst day of my using.  What the hell is that, anyway?  Every day I go through life I should think back on the time I was curled up on the floor of my closet with shit filled underwear and lips blistered from my crack pipe?"

"Poetic" I murmured.

"Well?"  He glared first into space, presumably at the conjured memory of whatever person he was actually angry with, and then at me, the lucky stand-in for the true target of his ire.

"What brought this on?"  I decided to fish a little.  What the hell, I had long ago found the answer to his implied question -- an answer which satisfied me quite well.  Whether it would satisfy him was actually his problem, not mine.

"Oh I'm just sick of hearing people in meetings say that their worst day sober is better than their best day drunk, or whatever the hell that saying is."

I bobbled my tea bag and thought about how nice it was to be sitting down.  Ever since I started working in a restaurant again I've developed a keen appreciation for a well made chair.

"Oh, are you playing at being inscrutable?"

I looked at him for a minute.  "Number one:  Good word.  Number two:  No.  Number three:  My available time is much more precious to me than it used to be.  If you're going to be a di..."

"Okay. Okay. Sorry."  He held up his hands and deflated a little, which meant only that he sat back and stopped looking like any minute now spittle would begin to fleck the sides of his mouth.  In a much more reasonable tone he went on.  "Well?"

I stopped bag bobbling.  "You're deliberately being a literalist in order to pick a fight with an imaginary opponent based one part on your memory of something and another on the judgment of yourself you're projecting onto someone else.  Someone who is not even here at the moment..."

His eyes narrowed then widened a little.  "You...but... that's..."

I help up a finger.  (No, not that one.)  "Also, I understand feeling frustrated with certain slogans in meetings.  Every so often it just seems like one will be in heavy rotation and it can get under your skin.  Plus, I agree with you."

"You do?"

"In part.  No, of course you shouldn't compare every single day of your sobriety to your worst day using -- the spirit of that sentiment is certainly not about dwelling on the darkest memories we have.  Gah, that would be dreadfully maudlin."

"You've been watching BBC again."

"Huh?"

"You always say 'dreadfully' after BBC'ing."

"Oh shut up.  Did you want me to answer your question or not?"

"I'm not even sure exactly what my question was now, but yes."

"Then you can take my answer and reverse engineer it to whatever question you have which it might answer best.  Because the answer is, this:  Not always, but sometimes, and once in a great while, often."

"'Sometimes and once in a while often' what."

"We should compare a bad day sober to a supposedly 'good' day using, fairly regularly, and by that I mean once in a while, and when we're in very rough patches we should probably do it often."

"Why?"

I sipped my tea -- now a little too cold, damnit -- and gave him a hard look.  "If you actually need me to answer that, one of us has been wasting the other one's time for well over a year now."

"You're much grouchier since you started working at that place."

"I'm not grouchier.  I'm more to the point."

"Ah, that's what you're calling it"

"Oh shut... I mean... be quiet."

always, always, always something

 

(No, really, there is.)

 

 

Stop Comparing Yourself

 

 

Plus, comparing yourself to others

feeds self obsession,

since you're really not thinking about the other person

so much as you're thinking about you,

and only using the other person

as some kind of yardstick.

Dear People Who Don't Believe in God...

 

Dear People Who Don't Believe in God,

When you describe the God you don't believe in, I'm like, "Cool!  I don't believe in that God either!"

See?  We kinda have more in common on that score than you might think.

Cheers!

Mr. SP

p.s. That's why my faith (usually) works: 'cause I found Something I can believe in -- which can be hard to do, I know -- but mostly only because it's so easy to do.

... I did find myself wanting to shout at the screen for a minute.

 

 

A character on a television show I just watched (thanks, internet!) had gotten sober and gone to AA "offscreen."  (He is a very minor character on the show.) 

The running gag in this episode was his attempt to "do his Step 9" with people at work.  He would apologize with grave sincerity for ridiculously trivial things, or tell people things they didn't need to or want to hear, the apology apparently constituting the sum total of his Step 9: "I need to say I'm sorry for my recovery." (Though to be fair, later in the episode, he briefly mentioned accepting the consequences of his actions).

I will be the very first to admit I am likely a little sensitive to how AA and the 12 Steps are generally portrayed in modern film and television.  Over the course of this show's run 12 Step things have snuck in around the edges, so a producer or head writer or some such is probably in one 12 Step Program or another.

But I did find myself wanting to shout at the screen for a minute.

"It's not about apologizing!  It's about making things right!  It's about restitution!  It's not about forcing your amends process onto anyone who doesn't want it!"

As I said, it was a minor character, and so I understand they had limited time in any given scene to explain what he was doing on the way to setting up a punchline.

And I can even believe that it was a well intentioned inclusion in the story... but dear god that makes me nuts sometimes.  I would wager that, right after the whole "it's a religious program" thing, believing that Step 9 is just about saying "I'm sorry" is the most common misconception regarding all things 12 Step.

It's not just about saying "I'm sorry" -- though certainly that's often one appropriate thing to be done.  It's about righting the wrong, balancing the ledger, owning the damage we did in whatever form and making whatever restitution we can.

And it's not so we can be "good" people -- that's just sort of an accidental, occasional result.  It's so we are relieved of the things like guilt or arrogance or shame or denial which, left inside us, fester and poison us.

An apology can offer relief from a guilty conscience, that's certainly true; but an amends offers freedom from sickness, and heals a tormented spirit.

 

Questions via Email: Should we let our daughter move back into our house?

 

 

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

My daughter has had problems with alcohol since middle school. She quit college after multiple problems and arrests related to her drinking. She is the kind of drinker who occasionally becomes violent, even getting physical with her mother and I, after which she repeatedly said she was sorry and would stop drinking.  She had her only DUI a few years ago, and was in a fairly serious car accident, but thank God no one was killed. As a result of this she had to complete a 6 month in-patient rehab and 6 months in a sober living to avoid jail. She paid some of her fine, but her mother and I paid for the rest: The rehab, the medical debt, the defense attorney, the court fines...

After we got through that mess and the sober living was completed we told her that we would no longer pay for anything -- she was a grown woman and would have to stand on her own.  The only work she says she can find is bartending/cocktail waitress type work and she's been doing that for a while and, to her credit, hasn't asked us for money since we drew the line.  She says that she's going to AA meetings but working nights makes it hard to go regularly.

Last week my daughter asked if she could move back in with us to save money and maybe go back to school.  But recently I discovered she's had another arrest involving drinking some time in the last few months.  

We are scared. We love her so much. Both my wife and I must travel regularly for work, and so if we let her move in she'd eventually be here on her own.  Do you think we should let her move back in?

Father in Turmoil

 

Dear Father in Turmoil,

Your email ripped me up. 

My relationship with my own parents was fraught with dishonesty and abuse (from me) and enabling (from them).  It took me a long, long time to forgive myself for what I put them through (understanding in my gut what it means when we say addiction is a disease was the cornerstone in that process), and an even longer time to stop wishing I were a better, stronger man who hadn't allowed them to enable me as much as they did.  (That one was the source of some near suicide-inducing pain at one point.)

So I have some experience to share with you, and some suggestions for you to consider, based on that experience.  In AA we try hard to stay away from "should's" though I admit that to someone outside the 12 Step world that may seem like a bit of a word game.  After all, what's the difference between an experience-based suggestion and a "should"? 

(The difference, for those of you wondering, is this:  I do not presume to know what someone should do.  What I can do is use the intellect God gave me to review my experience and offer how I have used AA's spiritual tools to address something, and then suggest that those tools might work for them since my experience seems applicable to what they're dealing with.  Thus, the difference between setting myself up as someone who "knows what others should do," versus someone with experience to offer which might be helpful, but one can take or leave as they see fit, is perhaps a small difference -- almost a word game -- to some, but a vast and critical one to me.)

Here is my experience, based on the worst times in my relationship with my parents:

I didn't mean to lie to my parents, and I felt guilty doing it, but my need to get what I wanted from them usually far outweighed any pangs of conscience I had.  And there's some sort of sick slippery slope that happens once you decide you're a terrible person (which I decided I was).  It sort of gives you permission to do terrible things.

From what you shared in your email it sounds like, since you had to "discover" that your daughter had another drinking episode involving the law, she did not volunteer this information.  So your daughter is withholding information -- which is a form of dishonesty -- or, to put it plainly, your daughter is still lying to you.  And I can tell you that whatever my parents found out about, it usually wasn't even the half of it. While this was behavior which started in my Junior High School years it lasted well into adulthood, and actually never stopped until I got -- and remained -- sober.  (Though I'm afraid some of the enabling spilled into my sobriety as well.)  If an alcoholic is lying about one thing, then they're likely lying about a lot of things -- that was how it was with me.  The hundred little lies which I never meant to tell, but which hopped out of my mouth like a toad in a rose garden.  If your daughter is lying about her drinking then she is not rigorously honest, as AA suggests we need to be.  But not to be some kind of "good" person, but so that the noise in our heads -- the guilt, the shame, the fear of discovery -- doesn't fuel more drinking (even though in our warped alcoholic mindset the lying and the drinking are usually unrelated).

You described in your email at length what you are afraid of (and I apologize for all the edits).  My experience is that what my parents were afraid of when it came to me and my drinking was all for very good reason, and they were kidding themselves by using the phrase "I'm afraid that blah blah blah is happening/will happen..." because they were right.  They just couldn't admit it to themselves.  So I'm sorry to tell you this, but in my experience you have the answers to all your questions, it is just the fear of seeing the truth, fueled by your love for your daughter, which is preventing you from admitting it to yourself and drawing boundaries/taking action on those admissions.

You know, I'm not a bad guy.  But while my alcoholism was running me, when it came to my parents I was a ruthless manipulator and a compulsive liar.

I would do almost anything to not have to have typed that.  Maybe I wasn't always that way, but I was that way enough -- and really, ANY amount of such qualities between child and parent is too much, isn't it?

 

As for night work getting in the way of AA meetings:  Bullshit.  Almost any city now has morning and/or noon meetings.  But using work as a dodge is not uncommon.  I once had a sponsee tell me that they couldn't sponsor anyone because they were a bartender and it would somehow give a sponsee permission to hang out in bars and drink.  To which I first had to say "Huh?" and then had to say "Bullshit" until finally it clicked and I said, "Oh, you're drinking again, aren't you..." at which point in the conversation they hung up on me.  I wish I'd been wrong.  Their story had an ugly ending.

 

In my experience -- not just me, but with my siblings and their children too -- one of the hardest things to determine in a family dynamic is where helping stops and enabling begins.  What I know from my own AA meetings is that there is incredibly powerful medicine in listening to people who have used 12 Step tools to deal with what I had to face and recover from.  It sounds to me like you and your wife are trying to deal with this all on your own.  If I hadn't gotten to AA I don't think I would be alive today, so, based on that experience I'd like to suggest that you GET TO ALANON.  GET TO ALANON.  FOR CHRIST'S SAKE GET YOURSELF TO ALANON.  Sometimes the most powerful help we can give to the people closest to us is when we say "No."  But saying no rips us up and is hard to maintain.  Other parents who have dealt with these things can give you far better experience, strength and hope than I when it comes to learning how to draw boundaries, when to say "No," and how to stay strong in the face of the manipulation an alcoholic child will be powerless to stop themselves from trying to use on you.

To that end, I encourage you to click this link.

It might be one of the hardest things you've ever read.

It also might save your sanity, your savings, your marriage and possibly your life.

 

There are many, many online resources for parents of addicts as well.  Start clicking around you'll find a whole online community to supplement the in-person one you'll find IN ALANON.

 And there are many, many people who have walked your path and seen their families healed.  Things are hard now, but there is help and there is hope for you.

Remember:  If you don't help yourself, you'll never be able to healthfully, in a sane, balanced, helping-her-stay-sober way, help your daughter.

Good luck, my prayers are with you.

Love,

Mr. SponsorPants

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