Step 1: Part 3

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

In the months that followed, I talked myself out of the God shot and into the coincidence. I talked myself out of the fear that had brought me to that meeting, telling myself I wasn’t that bad. Because I didn’t get a DUI or get fired or end up in strange men’s beds I didn’t really have that bad a problem. Yes, I got to work on time, and with make-up on. Yes, I put on a good show for the world, but I should have known better than to believe my own masquerade.

The fact was, when I poured “a glass” of wine and swore to myself it would be just a glass, it wasn’t. I worried about destroying my liver, because drinking an entire bottle of wine at least three nights a week had to be overtaxing its capacity to cleanse my blood of all the Malbec I was pouring into my system.

After I stopped drinking, I went to a meeting here and there, but didn’t do it consistently, didn’t get a sponsor. I told myself that I had stopped drinking because I wanted to, because I chose to, because I was strong enough to. I joined an online group where women like me – women who had good haircuts and drank good wine, who didn’t have bad teeth or bad grammar – supported each other in their sobriety. Some of them were in AA, working the steps, sponsoring and being sponsored, but others weren’t, having decided that online groups, podcasts and blogs were all the support they needed.

I thought so for a while, too. One of the blogs I read was by a woman who said enough and got sober, all on her own, with only her blog comments and Twitter feed for support. After three years of sobriety, she got a book contract to tell the story she’d been telling on her blog. It was a story of determination and accomplishment: I chose sobriety; I did it. It was the antithesis of AA, and I loved it, because I wanted to be the antithesis of AA. Yes, AA helped my dad get sober, saved his life, even, but I could save my own life, thanks.

Less than two months after that scary, awful, wonderful early morning meeting, I decided I wasn’t that bad, and was going to try moderation again. Aristotle said that every virtue is the mean between two extremes. “Moderation in all things – including moderation,” said with a sly wink, had been my motto, and I was going to prove myself a good Aristotelian who could moderate if it killed me.

I had “a” glass of wine, which turned into three or five or whatever it was that left me hung over, sick with shame and determined to go cold turkey again. I did it without meetings or the steps and so I didn’t do it for more than another couple of months, when I decided to “moderate” again. This time I was successful. I did have just one glass, and not every day, just now and then, one or two, being very Aristotelian and proud of myself. But having to think about it, which was exhausting and demoralizing.

The morning after the first time I had an entire bottle, I quit for good again. I can’t remember if I went to a meeting that morning, but I started going again, in a half-assed kind of way, not getting a sponsor, not doing anything that would require commitment or accountability, which being the daughter of a 12-stepper I knew was a bullshit way to do AA.

Bullshit notwithstanding, I stayed sober five months. Sober, but miserable, what they call a dry drunk in AA. As the one year anniversary of that first meeting, which sadly was no longer my sobriety date, approached, I was reading another sobriety blog, this one by a guy who had twenty years of sobriety and for all that time had been working the steps, both with a sponsor and as a sponsor. The things he wrote about service and sponsorship reminded me of the things my dad used to say when he was in his first decade of sobriety.  Back then, I would think, Oh, Lord, there he goes again with the 12-stepping, and try to look interested in “being of service” and all the rest of the recovery-speak. Two decades and countless gallons of ruby-hued poison with notes of ripe blackberry, warm spice and oak later, that recovery-speak sounded very different.  I looked at my reasonably affluent, reasonably successful middle-class self and thought, what the fuck is the matter with you? I knew what was the matter. Self-pity and ego and bullshit was the matter. I needed to work the steps was the matter.

So I went to a meeting early Saturday morning. I wanted to share, wanted to say I needed a sponsor, but there were a lot of talkers and I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I went again the next morning. It was a huge meeting, the biggest I’d ever been to. One of my neighbors was there, and a lady from my Zumba class. No sharing that day either, but someone who did share was a woman, who had been a speaker at an earlier meeting I had attended. I’d gone to hear her because someone I met at my very first ever meeting texted to tell me I should go because she was an amazing speaker. She was. The things she said that day had stayed with me, and when she shared at that Sunday morning meeting, I worked up the nerve to ask her to sponsor me, and she said yes.

It was like that first meeting, almost exactly a year earlier. I got scared enough, desperate enough, to step outside my comfort zone and do something I felt as though I needed to do, because I couldn’t do it on my own anymore. That is admitting powerlessness. That is Step One. I thought I had taken it a year ago, then stepped back and spent a year in self-pity and ego and bullshit. I thought I had taken it again last week, but my sponsor said I might be on it a while. I said, as long as it takes.

Step 1: Part 2

Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

I admitted that a year ago when I woke up hung over at 4:30 AM and Googled “AA [my city]” instead of going back to bed in hopes another couple hours of sleep would help. They wouldn’t. For the first time, I knew, really and truly knew, that the only thing that would help was not drinking anymore, ever. Not exercising moderation better. I had tried and failed at that. My only hope was sobriety. It had saved my father, and it could save me.

I had just had a cancer scare. The day I got the wonderful news that the biopsy was negative, I learned a man I knew was dying of liver cancer. He was around my age, a good-looking, smart, successful professional whom no one would have guessed was that bad. I felt a cold lump of fear: that could be me.

So I went to a crack of dawn meeting, walked into that room with so many more men than women, some of them kind of rough looking, and forced myself to share. I was afraid that if I didn’t share, I would walk out of there without having talked to anyone, made any kind of connection, and might never come back. Might go home determined not to drink but by mid-afternoon would be heading to the grocery story to replace the wine I had poured down the sink that morning.

Sharing that morning was one of the hardest things I ever did. I am not afraid to speak in front of crowds. On the contrary; I love public speaking. But this was different. This wasn’t me in a smart suit and high heels clicking away at a PowerPoint. This was me hung over, clutching my coffee cup as though it was some kind of security blanket and being totally honest and vulnerable in front of these strangers, many of whom looked so different from me, and told stories of hitting a much lower and scarier bottom than I had with alcohol, but whom I could sense were kindred spirits.

I said those words: “I’m [my name], and I’m an alcoholic.” “Hi, [my name],” they all chorused warmly, because that’s what people do at AA. And I told them how scared I was, scared enough to come here and ask for help – their help, God’s help, whoever’s help – because I didn’t know what else to do.

After the meeting, several kind women came up to talk to me. One of them had written her phone number on an AA flyer, with a note that addressed me by name. When I looked at my name in her neat printing, spelled correctly, my breathing slowed. I couldn’t speak for a moment, kept looking at it, not quite able to fathom what I saw. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal. So she spelled my name right. So what? This is what: in some-odd decades on this earth, no one – not a single human being – has ever spelled my name correctly without my spelling it for them. And sometimes, even when I do spell it for them, they don’t write what I say. I’ve sat there and watched them spell it wrong, even as I’m spelling it aloud for them.

But that woman at the AA meeting spelled it right. On her own. I asked her why she had spelled it that way, and she said, “It’s funny. When I was starting to write it, I lifted up the pen and paused, not sure how to spell it. So I asked God.”

That may sound corny and ridiculous, but it didn’t feel that way to me at the time. It felt like the sign we always ask God for but never get, a sign that I was doing the right thing and I was going to be okay. That is what people in AA call a “God shot” and I would normally call a coincidence. But that wasn’t a normal day. That was the day I admitted my drinking was out of control and I needed help. That day, a ray of hope penetrated the spiritual darkness that had engulfed me since my divorce, and I called it a God shot, too.

Step 1: Part 1

Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

1a. I have a sponsor.

I was sober for more than 5 consecutive months before I got one, because, being a perfectionist, I thought I needed the perfect sponsor. Last weekend, I decided that I needed a sponsor now more than I needed The Perfect Sponsor someday. And as soon as I decided that, my Higher Power (can't get used to that term, which still sounds so AA Lola Granola to these old school Catholic ears) gave me the sponsor I needed. She is just about as close to perfect for me as a sponsor can get. We have a lot in common, and we have a lot that's different. We will no doubt get on each other's nerves from time to time, but it's still new enough that we're both on our best behavior. I know she isn't Perfect (and she wouldn't be the perfect sponsor for me if she was) but I think maybe I'm going to love her.

1b. I am working the Steps.

Well, I am working the first one, anyway. I titled this post the way I did because I think I may be on Step 1 for a while. Just as well, since Steps 4-9 scare the shit out of me, and even though I'm usually the type who wants to rush through everything at warp speed, there is something (Higher Power?) telling me to  s...l...o...w   d...o...w...n  on this one.

I took Step 1 exactly a year ago today, and then backtracked. So here I am, a year later, still in Remedial Step 1. Me! I was always a straight A student. I should have rocked this step stuff. I should have left Step 12 in the dust months ago and have 4 or 5 sponsees sitting at my feet in awe of my awesomeness by now, right?

I'm not sure whether AA is the first thing I've ever done that you can't ace and skip a grade in, or whether I'm just finally realizing that trying to ace everything and skip grades is kind of a half-assed way to do just about anything. And if I try to do Step 1 that way, I will fail, just as I failed last year.

Admitting I am powerless is hard for me. It's probably hard for most people. My very religious friends are able to do it. The Evangelicals do it best. They seem positively to revel in their powerless, positively luxuriate in their submission to the Lord. I see it, but I don't get it. You know what they say about Catholic girls. We're trouble. But my sponsor is one of those Catholic bad girls, too, so she knows what she's in for.

Am I an Alcoholic?

The other day, in an online sobriety group I will call XXX because it is anonymous, I posted a photograph along with the following commentary after several members of the group had posted things like, “I’m not sure I’m an alcoholic because I wasn’t really that bad…” Because I had had those thoughts myself more than a few (million) times, here is what I wrote:

For those of you who think you aren't that bad, who are trying to talk yourself into "moderating" and out of AA, this [the picture, which I will not share here, as this blog is anonymous] is me with a crippling hangover and waves of shame and self-hatred making me sicker than the waves of nausea and pounding headache. This is me last year hung over after I drank one night after nearly 2 months of sobriety. I don't look like a mess, do I? I look happy, physically fit and if I do say so myself, pretty damn fabulous for [my age, which is, let’s just say, way over 21]. I am with my awesome dad (sober 20+ years) and my adorable daughter. You would never know from the picture that I was a complete mess inside. But I was.

The longer I am sober, the more certain I am that alcohol was destroying my life, and that if I had gone on that way, the ugliness inside would eventually have been ugliness outside as well. I told myself I wasn't that bad, but let's be honest -- if you are questioning how much you drink, if you have to try hard to moderate (normal drinkers don't), if you are feeling shame and self-hatred, then you have a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol.

I don't know what made me finally ready to admit that when I did. I know I couldn't have gotten sober if I hadn't admitted it. Other people telling me I had a problem (they didn't, because I hid it so well) would have just made me angry. But if you are in this group, it's because you have told yourself you have a problem.

XXX is different from AA, and both are valuable in different ways. There, no one will tell you what to do. They will let you explore your feelings without judgment, realizing that you need to do that until you're ready. If you go to AA and get a sponsor, he or she will call bullshit on stuff that people in XXX won't. AA and XXX are different, like friends and family are different, and both are valuable. They serve different purposes, though, and one isn't a substitute for the other.

I thought I could be sober without AA, but I've changed my mind. I'm not telling you what's right for you, only what was right for me. I hope and pray that those of you who are struggling and suffering with the am-I-aren't-I? should-I-shouldn't-I? will find your way out of the forest of questions soon. It's a dark place to be, but for many of us, it was while wandering in that dark wood that we hit bottom, high or low, and decided to start walking the long, slow but suddenly and inexplicably clear path out.

What Other People Think

Just read this post on A in Sobriety about external validation. That is one of the biggest things I struggle with. When I feel self-hatred, it is often because I care so much about what other people think, and can't make myself stop caring even though I know I should. I know it shouldn't matter what anyone thinks.  I know I shouldn't take things personally, because what people say is as much (or more) about them than it is about me. I know all that, and yet...I still care.

My ex-husband used to tell me all the time that I cared too much about what other people thought. He hated that about me.  I hate that about me, too.

I know it isn't just me. I know other people do it. Most people do. Does everyone? Did my ex-husband only put on a big act that he didn't care what other people thought, but really he did, and in criticizing me for it, he was doing that thing we all do with the speck in our neighbor's eye and the plank in our own? Was he projecting his own self-hatred onto me, because he hated the fact that he cared what people thought, too? Or am I overthinking it, and he really was free of that problem but the fact that I had it just bugged the shit out of him?

If it wasn't a problem for a lot of people, there wouldn't be articles like this or this or this or this.   It's not just me. But it still sucks that it is me.

Update:  ....or this, on being worthy.