Reading over this entry I am reminded that perhaps a more pious life might suit me better that a life devoted to intensity. Piety, we tend to use the word pejoratively, saying more about our Godless world than the idea behind the action.
Today I crave piety, humility, silence..
Tres Triste urged me to go into one on one therapy. I will have nothing to do with that. I am bloated on my experience of one on one therapy.
I am, however, recommitted to the rooms of AA. I know that they understand because I am just like them. One on one therapy obviously suits many people but I don’t trust doctors, I don’t trust therapists who profit from the misery of others. I resent paying them. That I become their blank cheque. In fact, I resent paying all doctors because I come from a country where visiting a doctor is free.
AA is free. For fun and for free.
The simple fact is: I chose to abandon the principles of AA during the last few months. Not taking a drink is just a small part of what we do in those rooms. The rest of the time we help and guide each other toward sanity. During the past months I deliberately abandoned my principles and let my alcoholic head run the show.
Many people ask why I moved to LA. It really had nothing to do with film making. I came to LA to be closer to the rooms of AA where I found comfort, solace and peace. I made friends and found an extended family of people who understood me, who were always willing to forgive…no matter what. I felt as if I needed, as if I NEED a great deal of forgiveness.
After a few years I became disgruntled and disillusioned with AA and went to fewer and fewer meetings. As I did so my mind became more and more confused. If I do not do the work to keep me sane I very quickly unravel.
I believe in the power of AA. It is a church. It is my church. For all to see during these past months I threw away my sanity because I wanted to use..so I did. I used HIM. He is not even real. He is a bag of coke, a bump of crystal, my works, my baggy, my bottle, my paraphernalia. He is not real. Do I miss him? I miss him like a glass of Montepulciano. Full bodied red wine that I secretly want to drink when that day comes…and it very well might. Never take your sobriety for granted.
You think that I have been cruel but I needed him out of my life and sometimes keeping your dealers number is the way back to active addiction. If I had not jettisoned him that day I KNOW what would have happened. We would have remained friends, we would have hooked up, my head just could not take it.
I napalmed the poppy fields.
This morning I chatted with Tim about the past. A place one tends to reinvent as one gets older. It is invigorating having him there at the other end of the phone/skype. He is in Worcester waiting for his triple bypass. We are both waiting to have our skin cut open and our insides messed with by experts.
We talked about the power of prayer. Our spiritual lives. I needn’t tell you how important a loving God is in ones life but even though I know that prayer really works I am loathed to pray just in case is doesn’t.
That even God might let me down.
There is no doubt what so ever that for the past few months I used another man as my drug. Intensity, fixation, obsession etc. etc. Remember when you spent your last cent on drugs? When the getting and using was your main focus? Remember the risks you took? I am a crazy addict. Yet, it is somehow easier for us to understand a man who cannot say no to drugs than a man who cannot say no to his addiction to people. It is a far more complex and ultimately destructive addiction.
I think you have all been my witness to that.
I crave a healthy relationship with people who ever they might be, lover, family member, friend, shop assistant, telephone banker etc. I am powerless and my life becomes unmanageable. I am powerless over people, places and things. This powerlessness causes me such misery. Powerlessness, vulnerability, weakness of any kind cannot be tolerated and as you have seen…I will bring you down if you challenge who I am, get to the heart of me.
I don’t think I am so different from most of you?
Yet, I most definitely am. I do not think like normal people.
The idea that somehow, someday I will control and enjoy my thinking is the obsession of every abnormal thinker.
That was a quote from Bill Wilson with the word drink switched out for think.
Wether you believe it or not the rooms of AA are filled with men and women just like me. When we sit together sharing our similarities and not our differences then I become aware of the presence of God.
I have struggled with SAA.
There is a big difference between being an alcoholic and a sex/love addict. Alcoholics share the experience of abstinence. Sex addicts do not. The differences between sex addicts, when we share our stories, are all too apparent. The similarities..scant. Where there are few similarities I find myself divorced from God.
As I have reported in earlier posts, as the years pass and ones last drunk become a distant memory I am forced to deal with other more pressing, more destructive addictions.
The consequences of my actions are all too apparent. I have rampaged like a spoiled child through another mans life. Regardless of his part in it..I have only myself to blame. As I have said before, it is none of my business assigning blame or becoming an interventionist for others.
We all learn by our mistakes, by the lies we tell, by the havoc we wreak.
So, today’s prayer: God, relieve me from the bondage of self. Help me be kind. Let me be present. Let me tell the truth.
Bind me so my arms do not flail, gag me so I cannot speak, shackle me so I cannot walk, lay me down in some quiet place so I do not think.
