Mr. SponsorPants

Questions via Email: Why can't I smoke pot and "keep" my sobriety?

 

Dear Mr. SponsorPants,

I've been sober a little less than two years.  Previously I was sober for almost 10 years, but then I had to go back out for 7 years.

In the previous period, I was not working the AA program, but was attending Al Anon. It's not really relevant, just thought I'd say it.

 

Anyway, I haven't had a drinking dream in more than a year probably, but I still have pot smoking dreams with some regularity. In them, I have smoked the dope and then thought, damn, now I have to change my sobriety date and start all over again. And then I start justifying it to myself and saying that I didn't drink, so why should I have to change my sobriety date and thinking about not telling anyone, etc. I've had this dream more than once.

 

So, my question is, actually, why would occasional pot use ditch my sobriety? Back when I was young, pot was my preferred drug. When I discovered it, I virtually stopped drinking, but was a regular dope smoker. Then, I got involved with someone who had something of a moral issue with pot, but loved drinking, so I mostly gave up the pot and took up the drink. I would occasionally smoke dope again (but not during that period of "sobriety"). Now it seems to me that occasional, very occasional, recreational use of pot might be fun and while I do have fun in sobriety, I really can and do, that little mind alteration thing IS fun and different. I have heard that Bill W. was a rather routine LSD user. It just doesn't seem fair to me that pot is considered breaking sobriety when people smoke cigarettes all the time, frequently switch to eating disorders or mind alter with love affairs, shopping, what have you, and still claim their sobriety dates when they stopped drinking.

 

I guess I am not entirely certain that if I smoked dope my resolve to not drink would remain solid while I was stoned, but generally, the two didn't mix that well for me. Well, actually, probably, in the later years when I occasionally did smoke pot, I would have come to the conclusion that it was a good idea when I had been drinking.

 

Any thoughts you have on this would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Dreamer

Dear Dreamer,

Oh dear.

Oh dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.

[holds head in hands for a minute]

Okay let me try and pull a few threads out and follow them through.

But before I do, I want to really re-emphasize that everything I say here is just one sober man's experience and opinion -- I am not a spokesperson for AA (there's no such thing) and I am not an authority of any kind, medical, spiritual, psychological or otherwise.  I'm just a mildly wacky middle-aged sober alcoholic who found a solution to his drinking in AA.  Just because I write it here and put it up on the internet doesn't mean I'm right.

Ok, ready?

Let's start with the idea of "fair."

You wrote (and this is the heart of your question, I believe.  All the background is nice but this is the crux of the matter):

"It just doesn't seem fair to me that pot is considered breaking sobriety when people smoke cigarettes all the time, frequently switch to eating disorders or mind alter with love affairs, shopping, what have you, and still claim their sobriety dates when they stopped drinking."

 Let's break these down into bite sized pieces and then sort of put it all back together.

1. While nicotine certainly has an effect on brain chemistry, let's not try to say that smoking a joint and smoking a marlboro red are the same thing, okay?  Put another way, I have no objection to the surgeon who's about to operate on me stepping outside to have a quick cigarette before picking up the scalpel.  I have a huge objection to Dr. Homeboy sitting around the Hospital Lounge doing bong hits with his cronies before cutting me open. 

 

2. Yes, people in recovery may suffer from more than one addiction, whether they were both present when they stopped drinking or the other manifested as a coping mechanism some time during their sobriety -- yes, that happens.  I can't quite sign on for sliding "frequently" in there.  You're coloring your argument in a subtle way to minimize both what happens to some people and your maybe pot smoking.  "Happens all the time" is a great device for that, but I don't think it's a fair characterization at all.  And when it does, are you saying that that's what you want for your life?  More addiction?  It's not about getting to keep your chip, it's about living in the Sunlight of the Spirit -- happy, joyous and free.  And yes, people "act out" their fears and frustrations and juvenile, stubborn unwillingness and defiance in other self destructive, even addictive ways, but no one every got arrested for "shopping driving" or crashed a car because they were sleeping around.

 

3.  I claim my sobriety date as the day I stopped drinking because (ready?) IT IS THE DAY I STOPPED DRINKING.  You can play with definitions and make word games all you like (and you've certainly come to the right man to indulge that).  But really now, my sobriety date is the day I am clean and sober from (ab)using any chemical which effects me from the neck up  (I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT MEDICINE UNLESS ITS BEING ABUSED -- poke around for the other blog posts on that topic if you take umbrage to that brief parenthetical aside).  My sobriety date is not the day I became free from all problems, escape mechanisms or self destructive compensating behaviors.  EVERYTHING alters the brain chemistry in one way or another.  My interpretation of your logic is that it's flexible enough to equate going without sleep for several days as a kind of slip, since that changes your brain chemistry too, so how come someone who hasn't slept can say they're sober?  If they do then I should get to smoke pot and say I'm sober too because that's not fair!

 

4. No doubt as you read this answer so far you had a number of "but what about...!" come up.  That's using hypotheticals to argue your point, and you can do that all day if you want to:  "But what about someone who crashes their car because they're so obsessed with someone they're not watching the road?"  "But what about the way someone's behavior changes when they crave a cigarette -- that's mind altering!"  Here, I want to play too:  "But what about how when people listen to music through headphones too loud it can effect their inner ear and their balance and so it throws their brain chemistry off?  Isn't that mind altering?"  "But what about people who drink too much coffee?  Caffeine is certainly effecting them from the neck up!"  Here, I'll put it very plainly:  While we certainly talk about mental, emotional and spiritual sobriety in AA, the fact is, the bottom line is maintaining our physical sobriety from alcohol and drugs -- not from every single thing you might do which can change your mood.  And certainly NOT as some sort of moral scorekeeping exercise (as it sounds like you're drifting into), but so that it doesn't trigger the phenomenon of craving.  Period.  The rest is about warding against the chain of alcoholic reasoning which will try to convince me that it's okay to use again... <ahem>

 

5.  Yes, I've heard that Bill experimented with LSD as a part of his spiritual quest.  It was the mid-20th century, and LSD was considered a tool to expand your consciousness by some, not a recreational thing.  Bill used to take massive doses of Niacin too, thinking that might help the alcoholic brain.  Bill slept with another woman while he was married to Lois.  BILL WAS NOT A SAINT.  He's the guy who, along with Dr. Bob, virtually stumbled across the recipe for how to recover from alcoholism, cobbling it together from some of Dr. Jung's work, from information he got from Dr. Silkworth, and from some spiritual structure he was given in the Oxford Group.  But just because Bill cheated on his wife I don't know that translates into the idea that all the married guys in AA get a pass to cheat on their spouses.  Bill is not the moral guideline, the inspired writing in the AA literature is the guideline -- yes, he wrote it, but Bill the man is just a man.  If Bill jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge...

 

Dreamer, I'm not here to convince you not to smoke pot.  You go right ahead and fire up that secret stash (come on, its even money that if you wanted to smoke you could put your hand on a joint in no time at all, yes?)   If you can smoke pot and not drink, and smoke pot and not have it take over your life, then by all means you should smoke pot.  I love(d) pot and I don't think there's anything wrong with it for people who aren't addicts.

It sounds to me like you are more than half convinced that you're not really an addict -- and you very well may not be.  The Big Book suggests, when people aren't sure if they're an alcoholic or not, that they experiment with drinking until they're sure.  Who am I to harsh your buzz?

I'd like to point out that if you're dreaming about smoking pot that is a form of mental obsession, and hmmm... that's a little odd for someone who thinks "Now it seems to me that occasional, very occasional, recreational use of pot might be fun and while I do have fun in sobriety, I really can and do, that little mind alteration thing IS fun and different."  I'm not sure how dreams which occur with "some regularity" indicate that if you do smoke pot you'll only do it "occasionally... very occasionally."

Dreamer, I think I've been a little bitchy in this, and I'm sorry, but that's kind of the chord that got struck.  Frankly, from what little of your drinking and using history you shared, it doesn't sound to me like if you smoke pot again that it will be some 'very occasional' thing.  And that's where I think you should consider this:  "It is the great obsession of every alcoholic that someday he will be able to control and enjoy his drinking" (Big Book)  Isn't that exactly what is happening with you?  You are obsessing about being able to control and enjoy smoking pot, pulling justifications from all kinds of crazy places.

You asked, and there's my answer, but again, I'm not here to talk you out of (or into) anything. 

I know I'm an addict.  I know that if I were to smoke pot two things would happen almost instantly:

I would want more pot.

I would want to drink.

And I would do both, because the phenomenon of craving would be active in me, and I am powerless to fight it.  No one tricked me into believing that, I have accepted that truth from the facts of my past drinking and using.

What are the facts of yours, Dreamer?  Do they indicate that you're an addict, or do they lead one to conclude you can indulge on a "very occasional" basis?

If the facts when you look at them -- without distractions, without "what ifs" and "not fairs" -- show you that you ARE an addict, you are on very dangerous ground, and with all my heart I hope you reach out to people around you -- and to a Higher Power as you understand them -- for help.  Since addiction is progressive.

And usually fatal.

 

Mr. SponsorPants

 

 

 

self knowledge (alone) avails us nothing...

 

Believing that knowing you're an alcoholic will help you control your drinking is like believing that knowing you have fair skin will keep you from getting a sunburn at the beach.

 

Things I learned (or was reminded of) this week: Surrender

 

 

Surrender can happen in stages.

 

At it's heart, surrender is about telling myself the truth.

 

  In my experience, real surrender is rarely marked by a dramatic gesture (as grand and cathartic in the moment as that can appear to be). It is more often a quiet admission, wedded to acceptance.

 

I don't have to know what happens next to surrender to whatever happens next.

 

When it comes to real addiction, people who don't surrender to something (the need for help, a 12 Step Program, a Higher Power, a particular spiritual belief system... something... anything) generally don't survive.

 

And when it comes to recovery, surrender is an act of strength, not of weakness.  It takes far more to stop, face the truth and embrace a new way of living than it does to keep flinging yourself pointlessly against the implacable, unyielding, endlessly repetitive cycle of addiction.

the chief characteristic of the alcoholic

 

 My dead sponsor was fond of observing that defiance is the chief characteristic of the alcoholic.

I would bite my tongue from responding, "No it's not!"

 

Sometimes the problem is not that I'm unwilling.

Sometimes it's merely that I am instantly, instinctively, destructively defiant.

 

 

(And sometimes... I get off on it.)

 

 

remember: things fall apart

 

 

lucky blessed

 

You'll guess the punchline well before the end, but still, for me, the tale's worth the telling.

 

The day was, to use a word from my wasted youth (pun intended), cruddy.

The dew never quite got it together to burn off, leaving the morning a little sodden around the edges, swinging listlessly between not quite overcast and not quite clear -- meaning that whatever you chose to wear when you left the house you were not quite comfortable; either clammy or sweaty.

Mornings like those I'm always secretly convinced my deodorant is going to fail me and I'll develop sweat marks in personal areas which will make people point and titter -- or in this Age perhaps point and twitter, with a click of the cell phone uploading my shame for the Internet's disdain and amusement.  I walk along, surreptitiously checking under my arms and elsewhere for any spreading sweat stains, and think about all the people I wish I were, eventually noticing with grim satisfaction that my name is not on that list.

 

And thus does my alcoholism find itself on fertile ground.

 

This is a very, very poor attitude to go in to work with.

Especially when you deal with the public.

And you're the boss.

And you're supposed to help motivate people to be upbeat.

And smile.

 

But if there's one thing about sober drunks, it's that back when we were drinking we clawed our way through hungover mornings at work that were so painful, so marked by roiling waves of nausea, so punctuated by stabbing pain in our heads, so riddled with guilt, shame and fear over what we haven't done, and even more fear, shame and guilt over what we have, that something as simple as low grade self loathing and a mild case of the restless-irritable-discontents is not much more than a hitch in our git-along.

I pasted Smile #5 on (no teeth, eyes a little crinkled) and tried using the Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It School of psychic self defense to fight back against the nagging drumbeat of fuck-it-fuck-it-fuck-it-fuck-it in the back of my head.  And to be fair, some progress was made.

 

Then we opened for business.

It was like I got Twilight Zoned into a Jim Morrison song.  People were strange, and I was a stranger.

The day didn't roll along, it ground down, grinding me up along with it.  The second hand on the clock stopped moving, and suddenly the drumbeat in my head was all I could hear.  Smile #5 started to slide south.

And then they walked in, all smiles and warmth and good manners and gratitude:

 

"Hi, we've invited about 20 people to join us for lunch.  Do you mind if we push a few of those tables together?"

"No, that's... that's fine."

"And we brought this cake, it's our friend's anniversary, can we leave it up here with you so we can surprise him?"

"Oh. Sure.  Of course."  I looked at the cake.  Happy 10,000! ran across the top in a loopy, uneven chocolate icing script.

Their just-plain-so-darn-niceness started to work on my crew.

"Oh my god, those people are so nice!"  Said in Spanish and English, in about four different ways.

(I told you you'd guess the punchline well before the end.)

"'Happy 10,000', what do you think that means?"

I knew.

He was 10,000 days sober, and they were a bunch of AA's rolling over to my restaurant after a meeting to celebrate.  Instead of 20 it was about 50 by the time they were done showing up, and naturally, in the way of sobriety always making a small town experience even in the midst of the biggest cities, I knew some of them.  Hugs and silliness and laughs and it was like a flash flood of love in the middle of my desiccated self-pitying desert.  And I don't care if that sounds over the top because that's exactly what it felt like.

Sometimes we really do get lost in the dark -- sometimes it's not completely self-induced.  Sometimes your ism sneaks up from behind and quietly begins wrapping piano wire around your throat.

And because God, if there is one -- and I have such ample proof that there is I should probably stop putting it like that -- will do for me what I cannot do for myself, shines a light into my dark to show me this:

"No, what you think is important, what you think is your life, who you think you are... no.  You forgot again.  This is important: Transformation. Recovery. Miracles.  This is your life: Fellowship. Celebration. Endless opportunity to grow closer to others and Me.  This is who you are: Part of something big and subtle and powerful and kind and wonderful and life-saving and important.  This.  This is what you are and you just forgot for a little while again, but that's okay I'll always try and help you remember.  You're looking at the night.  Don't look at the night.  Look at the stars.  See? It's this. This."

 

They ate, they sang, they hung out, they talked.  (They're in AA. Dear God, they talked and talked.)  But eventually, they left.

 

Afterwards the busboy came up to me, a little puzzled. I asked him what he was doing, did he need help with anything.

"No," he said.  "No, there's... nothing to do."

I was a little surprised.  "We just had fifty people in the front of the house.  There's nothing to do?  What do you mean there's nothing to do?"

"Yeah."  he said.  "They cleaned up after themselves."

I started laughing.  "Of course they did."  I laughed a little harder.  "They cleaned up after themselves.  Of course they did." I could feel the laugh start to bubble, and possibly tip over into something else, so I excused myself and went to the bathroom and let the silly giddiness and the gratitude and the emotionalism move through me.

What a baby I can be.

What a lucky blessed bastard I am.

 

it is a prayer asking "what?"

 

It struck me today, listening to someone share in a meeting, that when I pray for "knowledge of God's will for me" it is a prayer asking "what?" -- but not a prayer asking "why?"

In other words, being given knowledge of God's will for me does not guarantee that I will understand God's will -- nor do I need to for me to be willing to pursue it.

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

 

 

If there is a God, He doesn't do dishes, even if you pray really hard for Him to.  And if there is a God, and He were to respond to your plea for a Kitchen Sink Miracle, I believe He would likely say something like this:  "They're your dishes. You do 'em."

 

Responding with as much authentic kindness as you can to toxic behavior is the best way to maintain your equilibrium in the face of spiritual sickness.

 

We are not saints.  Ok. Then what's the point?  The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.

 

the unconscious expectation with boundaries

 

This has come up several times over the past couple days -- when that happens I sometimes think Someone is trying to tell me Something...

 

When I set a boundary, it's very easy to have the unconscious expectation that because I have powerfully/forcefully/warmly/strongly/kindly/clearly/heatedly/whateverly set that boundary with someone that they will now, having been served notice of the consequences of their actions, change their behavior.

But that's making the boundary about an expectation -- and that's a really, really bad idea for an alcoholic, since expectations are usually midwife to my resentments.

What's best for me is to remember that the boundary is about communication.  If you do this (or don't do this, or whatever) then I will do that (or not do that, or whatever). 

In short, it's about what I will do, not what the other person will do.

Remembering that helps me set healthy boundaries without the set-up for a resentment built in.

 

masters you