Snap The Damn Picture Already! he yelled

photo by Renee

I was a bit 'teched' today, as they say down here a south of Ioway. Teched, I mean, "off", I mean "dry drunk", argumentative, not nice, resentful. Fuzzy connection with my H.P. Jesus Christ, son of the living God. I guess that's what it was.

Self-centered to old extremes.

Didn't cross my mind to drink. Crossed my mind to kill, yeah, but I'm still sober and without any compulsion to ...drink.

Nothing happened, except I had my third day off work in a row, which evidently is not good for me. Also I was unhappy with something I wrote. And there was a strange Noon A.A. meeting which surprisingly went scherzo.

Most unusual.

A man wanted to talk about the Sixth Step, and his "remaining character defects". The room was full and there were three newcomers and a number of sober anniversaries. Usually we confine our discussions to the first three steps in that case, but this seemed all right. It would relate back to first, admitting powerlessness, or, as the original steps put it in the early 1930's, that "We admitted we were licked".

The man said his particular defect was sexual self-control and infidelity.

Still, well, ok. Usually subjects like that are best left for the Fraternal or Sisters groups, but no one objected.

He didn't expound with any unneccesary detail. In fact it was stupid and awkward, the way he closed. I put this up for discussion over the next hour. Sexual infidelity. (That's how some heard it, anyway).

A respected sponsor spoke up and confined himself to the 6th step in general, but mentioned his lack of will power over internet porn. "I'm getting a hold on that, though..." he said. (No intention to be humorous at all.)

Next guy seconded that. (Said something like "it's open says a me, nowadays!". Heh. Wha..?)

Then an old woman spoke of her compulsion to shoplift and how she'd been using the 12 steps of recovery to master that. (She said "master that", yes. It's funny how our language starts to bend a little when sexual issues are in the air. I remember Clinton being unable to avoid double-entendres and such for weeks.)

Finally Cindy spoke up. I'd been watching the steam rise. (Almost wrote 'magma'). In full self-control, not stern, but quite serious, she said this is Alcoholics Anonymous, and we have new-comers here who desire to stop drinking. Not to stop stealing, not to stop jay-walking, she said.

It would be best to stick with the first three steps, please.

Awright.

I admired her courage for taking the chance of being disliked, and I guess I even admired her apparent willingness to allow the first few speakers to blush or get mad, even.

But then she made a mistake, in my eyes, and got up and left the meeting.

(She's like that. I've seen it before. Hell, we're all like that on certain days, just sort of already up-to-here, fed up, maybe over other things too.)

I think I started downhill from there. And with all those people, now there was a silence which for some reason I ended up being the first to surrender to. Usually there are about ten people who can't stand such a silence but apparently it was up to me, or I imagined it was. Like this was my production and the play was going badly. (Such alcoholic thinking, that.)

So I gabbed about the first step, which is admitting we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. Sounds simple, and obvious, but it's one I always made complicated, I told everyone now.

I was never ashamed of admitting I was alcoholic. I never doubted I was alcoholic. My problem was claiming powerlessness. I explained that it always struck me as an excuse for my bad behavior and said "if I told my family I was powerless, that'd have pissed them off even more, I wasn't going to do that..." etc.

It's like claiming innocense. It's asking for a get out of jail free card. It's asserting the disease concept. I am willing to believe we all suffer from some sort of personality disorder though...

ya ya...

So. With that, I almost derailed the meeting. One of the others picked up on the steps, and everything was fine after that. Except I felt small. And ignored.

Down then to a coffee joint to meet Pa Kettle, pictured above. I'm one of the fortunate ones to retain my friends outside of recovery, and he's brought ten or eleven new friends (counting the kids) in the last few decades.

We talk like this:

What's up.
(short answer about the future, the kids, etc.)
What's up with you?
(short crazy answer about something bugging me )
What are you planning to do about that?
(long crazy out of control answer)
You're crazy, man.
(Conversation then officially begins and goes everywhere and every-when til a meter runs out).

Lots of laughs. Good time for me anyway!

"Later, 'gate!"
"Aw right. See ya online maybe."

Still no peace. I get to where I'm having precautionary thoughts of what to say if a stranger stops me and asks what right do I have to take up so much sidewalk. Or, I see ahead some dim possibility of a conflict with someone, and I start the argument/debate right away, in my head.

These sorts of days are less common now, though. I notice them, notice their frequency. People are around to laugh when I'm being surprising, so that's feedback.

Tomorrow I go back to work and everything's ducky again, I suppose.
____
Also notable today, a visit from my pre-recovery friend J the T, along with her new baby Scarlet! (whom I keep accidently calling "Savanah" for some reason, probably having to do with Gone With The Wind).

J is clean ten months, but only one by choice. We sat on the patio and talked and it was a short visit but hopefully she'll stop by regularly now she's back from Texas.

Thanks for visiting!