2002-06-27

Good Overall Direction

WARNING: another soul-search ahead. The previous entry is about Barbie dolls.

Something I heard yesterday -- in another one of those church basements -- from a heavily-tattooed ex-con celebrating three years of sobriety, that definitely made sense to me, since I'm not real big on getting on my knees and asking the Big Guy With The Beard to keep me from getting stupid drunk today: "God, to me, means Good Overall Direction." I think that pretty much says it all.

I get the impression, sometimes, that a lot of my friends are currently viewing me with equal parts fear and relief. Fear, because they can see that I've made what probably appears to be a decidedly uneven exchange, one that they worry they may have to make themselves one day. Relief, because when they learn about the extent of my drinking (all I will say is that it was textbook, baby, textbook all the way), they're glad that I'm untangling myself from it, but glad also that it's not happening to them.

I can relate to this, because I spent the last two years of my active, heavy drinking voraciously reading every book on addiction I could get my hands on, taking those Ann Landers quizzes, recognizing myself more and more in these stories with each passing month, then promptly stuffing the fear, regarding the reality of my situation, down with a combination of liquor and rationalizations that bordered on the absurd. "Well, I still don't drink as much as XYZ." "It's not like I'm putting anyone in danger; I don't drive."

This is not to say that I've pegged everyone as alcoholic. That's not my job. It's almost instinctive for me to do so, yeah, because I am an addict, and a hallmark of that state simply is an obsessive need to get everybody to see things my way. And I know that I'd most definitely take a kind of grim pleasure in seeing someone else in my circle take his or her place on the dance floor to do the Recovery Stomp with me, but I need to stop thinking like that. Constantly comparing myself to other people, rather than making the considerably more difficult decision to try and identify with them, is what got me into this mess in the first place.

Good Overall Direction. It sounds much easier than it is.

lisamcc at 9:28 a.m.

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