From My High Horse

This may become a regular series. I'm also thinking of one called "My Heros, Unhorsed".

(And this has nothing to do with horses. How odd.)

There have been two A.A. meetings this week about psychology and psychiatry, and I've barely heard a word, as I sit there composing in my mind what I've got to say, and then why I shouldn't say it.

I brood sometimes, wanting to blame my condition on my day and age, more than any individual. No one ever did me much wrong in my life, and I've had very few enemies, if any, since my public school days.

But now I focus a little more on my experience with professional counselors, contrasting those with my experiences with the 12 Steps. It's a resentment, a chip on my shoulder still. If I ask myself what part I played, the answer is, I lapped up the attention.

The attention was always, in my experience, positive.

I was first sent to a psychologist at 17, when I was skipping school, complaining of depression and an almost crippling shyness. By then I'd discovered that alcohol was a relief but no cure.

Also I'd started using "psychedelic" drugs (god knows what was really on those blotters of 'acid' in 1978). Mushrooms, mescaline, and marijuana.

I had a circle of friends and wasn't lonely. Also I was a fairly contented bookworm.

My depression was probably from my misconception that everyone was having sex but me. Or that no young woman would ever have me. I don't know. I was depressed about my body image since I was --anyone would grant this---freakishly thin.

But I think now about how honest I was to these counselors about my drinking and my use of drugs, and the friends I'd made, most of whom weren't friends at all.

Drinking daily, yes.
In the morning, yes.
Drugs whenever I could find them, (I'm on a journey of self-discovery!)

Then I'd discuss what books I was reading. Alan Watts' books about the similarities between Western and Eastern religions, for instance. Summerhill, a book recommending Free Schools (as in, the children should rule). Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian. And then the famous writers of Psychology, Freud and Jung, Maslow, Ellis.

Unfortanately it was 1978 and every psychologist I had was basically this guy.

Or this guy.

In short, they dug me. They thought I was very uncommon and special and maybe even a promising sign for the next generation.

Resentment: they waved away my fairly obvious alcohol dependency and drug use.

How this effected me: I "learned" my dependency was simply a problem that sensative little punk geniuses like me were are prone to.

My part in this: I sought to be 'enabled' to live with my corrupt motives and their consequences. I sought to continue a fantasy that I was living the life of privileged superiority.

Cos, you know, I was some kinda 99th percentile type, there seemed no doubt in their minds about that, despite my math scores. I'm sure I knew how to keep them convinced too, never missing an opportunity to quote Emerson or Thoreau. Or to scoff, if they ever dared mention someone on the best-sellers list.

What little discussion we'd have about my drinking would always be rather philosophical. Say, about the honesty and the loss of inhibitions. Was that good? Perhaps not. Perhaps not... But it would always be mentioned that so many writers and artists, really great artists, like Hemingway, Falkner, and Fitzgerald were alcoholic.

It wasn't until I was an adult I began to enjoy visiting psychologists just to debate them. I think by then I was getting an inkling that I was fucked up and my morals were fucked up. So it was nice to go in there and be assured that, nah. We live in a corrupt society, John. Your reaction is quite typical, not to want to work. You'll have to work, of course, and learn how to cope. Let me give you this book, "Born To Win".

My ultimate resentment though, is toward the psychiatrist I went to for depression after my dad-gone and died, and I'd been seperated from my (then) wife, and I was unemployed. I told all, and at the top of my list of complaints was: "I am drinking at least a case of beer a day, living in my mother's basement and stealing her money and her codeine pills."

I walked out of there with Prozac and Klonopin.

I'll give her this, though: she set me an appointment with a Chemical Dependency Center. Not surprisingly (this day and age, now the 1990's) there was a two month waiting list for inpatient treatment.

(Watch out for any addict who is on a waiting list for treatment, by the way. They tend to whoop it up, imagining they're going to be saved.)

The Klonopin would be all right, she told me. She used a pen and paper to show me.

"Most tranquilizers do this to you : ^ ^ ^ ^. But Klonopin does this: ________. You'll be more calm but you won't get 'high'."

Naturally I tested that out.

The first Klonopin felt good.
The second a little better.
The third frustrated me so I took about ten. All while drinking of course. And remember almost nothing.
*
I know I'm blaming. I know the part I played, and that this really should have been in my 4th and 5th step. I also know that there are truly wonderful Psychologists and Psychiatrists out there, saving lives. The majority are doubtless a great help to their patients.

But as I see it now, counseling is looking for root causes outside of you, for instance, PTSD, or AADD. Sponsorship and the 12 steps are about a moral housecleaning and therefore spirituality. (So perhaps I shouldn't even compare the two.)

I know that drinking was not my problem. My day and age was not my problem. My illness, quote unquote, was my weak character, and my shortcomings. I had to become aware of them to become deliberately 'well', and work each day to consciously, prayerfully overcome them.

This is finally bringing me a sense of contentment and self-esteem. It's made my shyness virtually disappear. As "the promises" mention, I seem to know intuitively how to react to certain situations. I'm hardly myself at all, it seems.

Friends are good,too.



Ma Kettle

Thanks for listening. I pass...

(again, really, less and less of this later).