Mr. SponsorPants

I regret to inform you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things I learned or was reminded of this week: to only come this far

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My sober life is a big one, albeit perhaps not in the ways I imagined it would be when I began this journey.

And a day at a time there's no reason it won't get even bigger.

 

Drinking gave me the illusion of having a big life while never getting up off the bar stool.

Sobriety gives me all the choices and chances I care to create for myself.

 

 

I needed this reminder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what I wish I could have told him

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

over and over

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.

To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again.

To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

 

-- Henry David Thoreau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

all the same people you do

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shooters - Quick shots from meetings: "Man, that is a perfect metaphor for my alcoholism..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

"So, I've always been an avid reader. And at one point in my early sobriety I became a little obsessed with death, so I was poking around all the used bookstores in my neighborhood for books that were a little... well, macabre, I guess. Anyway, I found this one book that was all about the Eskimos and surviving -- or not surviving, maybe -- winter in the extreme North. I don't remember much about it except this one thing: In the worst part of the winter, when hunting was at its hardest and everyone and everything was pretty much starving to death, the wolf packs would start to track the Eskimos as they followed their own game to hunt. And what the Eskimos would do is they would take a knife, and sharpen it and sharpen it and sharpen it until it was to the finest edge they could make it. Then they would cut one of the dogs and get the dog blood all over the knife blade.  Then they'd stick the knife, hilt down, blade up, in the snow. The wolves driven by starvation would be in a frenzy when they smelled the dog blood on the blade of the knife, and before they could stop themselves, would lick the blade, cutting themselves until they bled to death. Every sense they had told them to lick the knife, and every lick of the knife moved them closer to bleeding out. And I thought, "Man, that is a perfect metaphor for my alcoholism. When I'm in a frenzy, my every sense tells me to drink, tells me that THAT'S what I need. And every time I drink I move closer to kind of... spiritually bleeding out. And that can absolutely lead me to death as certainly as those poor wolves freezing in the snow."

 

 

 

 

born this way

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure I was born an alcoholic.

 

As much native intelligence the good lord might have blessed me with, 

(and however much that might be or once was is certainly open for vigorous debate)

knowing how to stay sober wasn't in the original programming.

 

I hear people share in AA meetings fairly often that they felt, 

when they were young, 

like everyone else just "knew how to live" 

but them.

 

That they did not arrive on Earth with the 

Instructions for Living.

The inference, often, is that this is common among alcoholics and perhaps 

unique to us as a class.

 

I don't fully agree with that idea.

Common? Yes.

Unique? 

 

I think that wanders perilously close to "I'm a special snowflake" territory.

 

Personally, I believe 

feeling like everyone else knows what they're doing and you're just faking it is

part of the human condition.

What makes us -- or marks us -- as alcoholics is that 

drinking "solved" how that felt.

 

Regardless,

speaking for myself, ('bout time!)

I had an addictive bent from the very beginning, and once I started drinking it was

freefall;

I felt both special and dishonest,

fancy and phony:

 

a rented luxury car with bad brakes.

 

My drinking "career" (as we say)

contained episodes which felt

glamorous and repulsive all at once,

like seeing a beautiful naked body in the water and then realizing

it's a freshly drowned corpse.

 

The way I lived as a drinking alcoholic titillated me.

The way I lived as a drinking alcoholic disgusted me.

I felt so very clever with all my lies.

I felt so desperately ashamed of all my lies.

 

For pretty much every alcoholic I've every spoken to,

drinking felt like it solved 

everything

while it ruined 

everything.

 

But drinking was part of the original programming.

That I knew how to do from the onset.

 

Like I said, I am pretty sure I was

born a drunk.

 

But not drinking? Living sober? That almost magical (sometimes. no, really.) state which feels 

both special and plain,

like thick clean socks slipped onto bone cold feet?

 

As simple as it is:

just... don't drink! (Riiiiiight...)

that's been a totally

learned skill.

 

And some days, man,

that learning curve is

still steep.

 

  

 

don't have to believe

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't have to believe a process will work for a process to work.

I just have to do the process for it to work.

 

If I did not believe that lifting weights would build muscle, but I lifted them anyway, I would eventually build muscle.

 

(Sure, sure, believing in a process can help me be willing to do it, or help me focus my energies so that I get the maximum result from it, but I can get a result from a process solely through action; belief is not required.)

 

That's been an important thing for me to learn.

 

 

 

 

not doing it to you