Month: June 2013

Much Suffering Is Based Upon Our Own Doings

It’s hard watching my landlord/roommate implode. Sometimes I feel it’s as if I’m watching myself during all those years where I was so misguided that I tried to find happiness in all the wrong places.

Somehow I already felt the other day that something was off with my roommate when I looked down at my phone and saw he was calling. I was on my long drive back from my partner’s home to my own place of residence in the Boston area when his call came in. While I wasn’t able to answer it seeing that I was already on the phone with someone else, my intuition was confirmed when I listened to the message he left me. In it, he indicated that his cleaning up process was still underway and not to be overwhelmed when I got home. I knew upon hearing this, that it wasn’t a good sign. I decided to meet with my sponsee after that long drive back instead of going home first for several reasons, one of which was based upon my roommate and his message. The main one though was that after several weeks of being away, I didn’t want to put the step work off anymore for someone who desperately needed it. But I have to admit that I also hoped it would give my roommate some more time to finish whatever cleaning up process he was attempting to do.

A few hours later when I finally pulled into the driveway, my intuition and some of my fears were confirmed. One look said it all. The grass was close to two feet high. The garden he had spoke of creating was still in the exact same state as it was when I left. There was a large wheelbarrow directly in the center of where I normally parked that was filled with dirt, weeds, and rainwater and appeared to have been there for quite some time. And unplanted flowers lay on the driveway dying.

As I walked into my residence, I half expected there to be dishes piled up everywhere and the place looking disheveled. Thankfully that extra time I had given my roommate seemed to have mostly done the trick as it appeared he had just finished getting things back in order. I did end up having to dispose of a plant that had died from not being watered and tossing some items in the fridge that were way beyond their expiration date. And other than needing to empty the recyclables bin which was overflowing, I was grateful to see things were mostly in order, at least in the common areas that is. I couldn’t say the same for his room though as I passed by it and noticed it was once again ransacked. Piles of clothes were everywhere. Bags of things were spread out. And the blinds were pulled down and completely shut making his room feel very dark and uninviting. Upon discussion with him later, he indicated his depression and anxiety had been much higher while I was away and that things had fallen to the wayside as a result. Sadly, this has been true with just about every time I have returned home.

I always say that how one lives is usually a good representation of how things might be within oneself. If things are cluttered and messy on the outside for someone, then there’s a good chance that the same is true on their inside. In the illustration with my roommate, this has often been the case. While I’m not currently a therapist nor do I have any aspiring desire to be one, I have lived with him for awhile now to understand that many, if not most of the causes of his clutter, inside and out, as well as his anxiety and depression, can be traced back to the way he’s living his life. With his avoidance of working through and releasing some of his inner demons that I’ve been able to see, and with him not believing that any Power greater than himself has ever existed, he does his best day to day to function by living with two main drives in life; make more money, and have good sex with a bunch of people until the perfect partner comes along. What’s sad is that this is a spitting image of how I once lived my life for close to two decades and why my life was usually a mess filled with misery and suffering.

The sad reality is that much of the suffering any of us experience in life can often be traced back to our own actions. In my case, on all those past days when my life got cluttered and I found myself complaining about my depression or anxiety, it was because I was trying to figure out life completely on my own. During those years God held little to no place within it or me. Because of that, I brought toxic people in my life and did toxic behaviors daily that did nothing but make me more toxic and miserable.

This isn’t so true for me anymore as the only sadness that remains within me today is directly based upon the physical pains in my body which come from how I once was living my life. In time, with God at my helm now, I know that they too will even dissipate. Knowing all this though doesn’t make it any easier to watch someone else like my roommate, make the same mistakes that I did. It’s unfortunate, but at the present time, he’s unable to grasp and apply any of what happened to me to his own life and instead tells me to leave the counseling to his therapist. I have to respect his wishes and do what I can now for him through prayer.

I hope one day soon he will wake up and see that most of the cause of his own misery and suffering is not based upon a chemical imbalance in his body and it’s not something a medication will ever permanently fix. It’s not something more money will make go away and it’s not anything a partner or sex can make feel better forever. For me it took hard work, spending time alone, getting to love myself much better, and a good leader who I found in God. I hope he finds that to be true for him as well someday too. I really do. Until then, I will continue to pray.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Another Mirror, Another Lesson

Have you ever asked someone to commit to doing a task for you in your absence and even after agreeing to do it, they never followed through with that agreement? Recently, I was faced with this specific situation in my Alcoholics Anonymous home group.

At that group, I am the General Service Representative (GSR). It’s my job in that position to go once a month to a district meeting where I’ll hear what’s going on in the AA world for the general area and report that information back to the group. Since taking on that position, I have been spending more and more time away from the area and slowly migrating myself to an eventual move in with my partner several states away. Given my travel schedule, I knew in advance I would be unable to attend any of this summer months GSR meetings beginning in June. One of the things I’ve learned in recovery over the past year is to make sure I continue to maintain any responsibilities that I’ve taken on, even when I know I’m not able to be present at them. In the past, when I lived more in self-centeredness and wasn’t practicing good recovery, I wouldn’t have cared about missing the meeting and would have allowed my brain to come up with some excuse as to why it didn’t matter if I was there or not. This isn’t so true anymore. Because of the dedication to my recovery now, I looked for an alternative person that could attend these meetings in my absence and found someone in my group that was willing to do so. After prepping them for the temporary job and giving them my GSR notebook, I headed out of town for my partner’s home. When a few days before the first of those meetings arrived, I sent a few messages over to this person’s phone to confirm they were still planning on attending the meeting in my absence. A day passed with no response so I tried calling them instead. When I was immediately forwarded into their voicemail, I knew then that they weren’t going to be attending for me. How did I know this? Because the behaviors this person was exhibiting were exactly the ones I would have done back when I didn’t care about keeping to my commitments.

When the next day arrived after the meeting night had passed, I called this person again, but this time from a blocked number. Unfortunately, I’ve learned in my life that’s the only way sometimes I can get people to answer when they are trying to avoid dealing with something such as this. My call was promptly answered and I could hear the surprise in this person voice when I identified myself. The long and short of it was that they did not go to the meeting and instead chose to go to a Boston Bruins hockey playoff game they got tickets for at the last minute. It took a lot of practicing patience, love, and tolerance for this person during and after that phone call. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed and slightly angry. But through prayer, I came to the realization that this person’s recovery was no different than mine once was when I would have done exactly the same thing that he did.

While I can see how going to a Stanley Cup game was probably much more alluring then going to a 90 minute meeting that may often be boring, there was a step they could have taken to handle this better. Although I normally wouldn’t cancel one obligation to go to another these days, there are extenuating circumstances that have led me to still doing it. When it has happened, I always contact the person I’m committed to helping out and am truthful to them as to why I have to cancel my obligation with them. More than not, I’ll even ask if they would like me to help find another person to keep the obligation so I don’t feel like I’m leaving them in the lurch. While this may still bring undue stress to the person I was supposed to help out, I at least gave them my honesty and time to find an alternative. Isn’t that what recovery is supposed to be all about?

I’ve decided I really can’t be angry with this person because of having done those very same behaviors to others all too often in my life. I also had to realize that it takes time to learn valuable lessons such as this in recovery and that this person is rather new to it all. I’m grateful to God for seeing and understanding this. God has truly shown me that in almost every situation when I find myself getting irritated or angry at someone else now, I have done those very same behaviors myself. That realization alone usually does the trick to remove any anger I might be feeling, and often it’s replaced with God’s love and light instead.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

 

“Willing To Go To Any Lengths…”

On Page 58 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous there is a sentence that is as follows:

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it – then you are ready to take certain steps…”

It took me five years of drinking and drugging and then twelve more years beyond that of white knuckling this disease with other addictions before I decided I wanted what everyone else had in the recovery rooms. Unfortunately, I wasn’t willing to go to any length to get what they had, so a portion of me continued to have my self-will run riot even as I tried to do the steps. The result was that I didn’t get very far in them nor did I seem to get any better. More often than not, I grew even sicker. Five years later, I became willing to climb Mount Everest if that’s what I needed to do, just to get what everyone else was raving about at every single meeting I attended.

Being willing to go to any length is absolutely, positively, 100% necessary in a person’s recovery, if they wish to get the full benefits from it. What’s funny is that most people who were active in any type of addiction usually were at some point willing to go to whatever length they needed to, just to get their fix, whatever that fix was. In my case, for way too long, I was willing to do what I needed to get drunk, or high, or laid, or gamble, or whatever it was I was always falling prey to. When I found the meeting rooms for different forms of recovery from any of those addictions, I initially balked at the statement of being fully willing to go to any lengths. I wanted my recovery to be handed to me on a silver platter and didn’t really want to stop doing the seeking of those quick fixes and quick highs that I was still doing throughout my life. It took me getting a lot more broken before I became FULLY willing to do whatever it would take to find true recovery from ALL of my addictions.

And when I became FULLY willing, it meant taking drastic measures in my life. I eliminated toxic friendships. I was completely thorough in my written step work. I began attending meetings on most days and developed a much better relationship with my sponsor. I volunteered both in the recovery rooms and outside of them as well. And I started spending more time in meditation and prayer to help me develop a stronger relationship with God. All of this has helped me to make much better decisions than the ones I used to make. It’s even helped me to find energy to do my recovery work during those times when I’m completely exhausted like I was today.

In a nutshell that exhaustion came from being on the highway today for over 13 hours as I drove back from my partner’s home. Most other people after a drive like that, would probably have gone home, eaten a little something, and headed to bed. The old me, the one that acted out in too many addictions, would have probably gone home and eaten some totally unhealthy fast food, looked at some internet porn, and avoided prayer as I went to bed. The new me arrived back in the town I’m living in and met with my sponsee to go through the next chapter we had left off last in our step work together. Upon completion of that, I went home and proceeded to clean up some areas of the house which had been slightly torn apart by my roommate in my absence. My evening is now ending with me making sure I continue to write at least one blog entry per day which is a goal I set for myself when I began this writing endeavor earlier in the year. And finally, I will end my day by writing in my grateful God journal and meditating for 30 minutes before falling asleep.

Some might say that this is going to just too many lengths. Well I can safely say in my case, it’s not because the last thing I desire right now is to act out in any addiction or do anything unhealthy. When I used to not go to these types of lengths, I couldn’t say as much. The bottom line is that I don’t ever want to go back to that addiction based life. If it means me dedicating myself even after an exhausting drive, then so be it. I actually feel pretty spiritually good inside because of all the work I did and thankfully, I’m much better than I was yesterday when I was felt nothing more than doom and gloom. I look forward now to resting my head on my pillow tonight knowing my relationship with God and my recovery is still intact and maybe even a little stronger too. Doesn’t that make it seem like going to any lengths is probably a good thing to do? I’d say so.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson