Prescription pills. My lord, I loved them. I loved to have a pocket of vicodin on the right, and a pocket of xanax on the left, and somas or narcos in my purse, and I would just juggle them until I got the desired effect. I’d add vodka to this cocktail, and I was good to go. I wanted to be numb. I wanted to feel normal, which for me, at that time, meant feeling nothing, like a sleepwalking zombie. I couldn’t handle feelings, nary a one.

I never stopped to think how dangerous this was. Pills seem so innocuous, just these little tiny things. No smell, no smoke, no paraphernalia. I remember when I was 17, a kid I knew stole my bottle out of my purse — my little pharmacy of valium, fiorinal, elevail, halcyon — all that I had discovered in my great aunt’s bathroom drawer. She had been a pharmacist. Very fitting. That kid who stole my stash went blind for 8 hours. I was terrified that I would get busted, that my drug use would blind him forever, that a combination of what I took could blind anyone, even me. I remember how it used to freak people out when I would pass out with my eyes open. And I remember waking up in the hospital in 4-point restraints, after having flat-lined from an accidental overdose at 18. None of this deterred me in the least. I thought it was epic, in my flaming youth. It was my intention to blaze through life, even if I had to flirt with death to do it.

That was a long, long time ago. I am no spring chicken, so when I speak of my teenage years, that was well over 25 years ago. It wasn’t easy to get those kind of drugs then — or, I should say, it wasn’t that common. Street drugs, at the time, were coke and pot, acid and ecstasy, and, if you were really hardcore, speed and heroin, and quaaludes to help you come down. What you did often was dictated by who you hung out with and what kind of music you listened to. It was a socially dictated sort of thing. And then, it wasn’t. As you explored your addiction, your friends would change to suit your drug. I went from punk rock to hippy to beatnik to LA nightlife to a mom with mother’s little helpers, and my drugs of choice changed with each scene. I still am not sure if I chose my friends because of the drugs or chose the drugs because of my friends. I just know it morphed as I went along. But with today’s pill usage, it is no longer dictated by one’s group or peers— it’s ever present.

But I digress. The point I want to make here is about the insidiousness of prescription drugs. Over the course of the years, they have been become more and more prevalent; now they dominate and eclipse all the street drugs from the past. One doesn’t even have to find a dealer — they can order this stuff off the internet if it’s not prescribed. Doctors prescribe all sorts of mind-altering pharmaceuticals for a plethora of different psychological conditions, which, if taken as prescribed, are perhaps fine (although that is a different conversation). But they often aren’t taken as prescribed, and/or taken with alcohol, and therein lays the rub. This fact is killing people. People are killing themselves, accidentally, and in alarming numbers.

I was trying to count how many people I know who have lost their lives to prescription pill abuse. Just in the past five years, it’s a stunning number, and a sad number. It’s too many. I know people who go out and shoot speedballs in their necks, get beat up on skid row and end up in jail and live through it nearly un-phased. And then there are people who take a couple of pharmaceuticals and drink a bottle of wine and die in their sleep. Recently, very publicly, there have been celebrities who died either in their shower, in their bath, or in their bed. Young people with bright futures, again, very public. And the same is true for scores of people who are not in the public eye. It is a very big problem, and it’s growing. It’s one of the most rapidly escalating causes of death, but the true numbers are hard to track.

Recently, a family member of mine was prescribed clonopin and zoloft for anxiety. He went out drinking and passed out in the bathroom of a club for an hour. If he had been in a bathtub, he would have drowned. It is usually women who will go fill up a tub and get in with a glass of wine once they have a good buzz going, so they are more likely to meet a terrible end that way. But what if my family member had been driving, swimming in a pool or in a hot tub? How often do people die and it isn’t traced back to the culprit of mixing prescription meds and alcohol? We can’t really quantify the real number of deaths due to that deadly combination, but suffice it to say, it’s staggering.

I have made a point of talking to my kids about this, extensively. I want them to have a fear of this, not a cavalier attitude. Not: “It’s no big deal; it’s just a couple of pills and a few drinks.”Or: “That won’t happen to me.” I tell them that everyone thinks that. No one thinks, “Oh, wow. That could be me. I might die if I do that.” I know that teenagers are popping xanax, narco, vicodin, and oxycontin left and right. They go out, drink and think nothing of it. I did it. I nearly didn’t survive it. We all think we are untouchable, and no one is as surprised as we are when we realize that we’ve gone too far, and that we may pay with our lives for that arrogance.

I am writing this because I know that someone who is now reading this won’t survive. I know that it might be you, reading it right now. I also know that it might not be you, if you heed this warning. In recovery, of course we want everyone to stay sober. We want everyone to stay alive. We want everyone to be happy and healthy and loving life. But that isn’t always the case. People die, they die a lot, they die young, and they leave a lot of very devastated people behind. They die when they least expect it. They don’t think they will, and then they do. If you are in recovery, just stay. Just do it. Stay sober and stay alive. If you are struggling, join us. Stay for today, and do the same thing tomorrow. We want to live, and we want you with us. If you are taking pharmaceuticals that are prescribed by a doctor, take them as prescribed, and talk to your doctor about the dangers of drinking with what you are taking. Do as he says. Your life depends on it.

Please don’t let this be another warning you don’t listen to.

Image courtesy of stock.xchng.com.

There are times when I stop and really reflect on my recovery. These times are sometimes brought on by seeing how often relapse happens in my community, or — as was recently the case — losing a friend to this disease. I can’t help but wonder how I have thus far been able to hitch myself to this wagon and stay hitched. Why me, and not them? I don’t run a perfect program, as they say; far from it if the guidelines of an AA program are truly the measuring stick of what recovery should look like.

There is an ebb and flow, for me, in my relationship with AA, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t the case. I would always be the first person to tell someone to do all the things that are suggested we do in AA because we have seen it can work where little else can. To say anything else would be dangerous. But at the end of the day, we do what we do, and it works or it doesn’t. And the mitigating factor is something internal having to do with surrender and no percentage less than 100.

At this point in my recovery, I can’t really remember what it was like to want to drink or use. I don’t remember the feeling of craving. This may be due to the fullness of my life now, and how inspired I am on a daily basis to do the right thing.

As a single mom of two teenage girls, there is little time to indulge in any sort of self pity. Often, when people ask me how I am doing, I have to stop and check in as I am; I really am; what I am doing — not how I am feeling. Feelings are secondary. I have a lot to do, and I don’t do it grudgingly. I have a gold thread of joy that ties it all together, whether it’s a day of work and feeding kids and driving to appointments and doing laundry, or a blessedly relaxed and rare day by the pool. I am not discontent. My life has purpose, and that fills the hole that was once a gaping maw of want and need.

There is one aspect of my recovery, however, that is without a doubt one of the biggest and least talked about. I am, for the sake of this dialogue, skipping over principles, and my Higher Power, and working with others, as I have spoken at length about in previous blogs. The aspect I am referring to is the element of PLAY.

Play and a playful attitude are pivotal to my very existence. It is something that, if you removed it from me, would render me lifeless; a zombie; a robot, which is what I was when I was using. Serving only my appetites reduced me to being a slave to them. But as I got sober, I realized how profound the playful aspect was for me. I need to do things like go to the beach to build sandcastles and hunt for starfish and run with dogs. I have to sing as loud as I can in my car, louder than my head and its incessant thinking. I need to end my day with a plate full of warm cookies. I need to go play paintball, and run around and get dirty and get paint all in my hair and hoot and holler. I need to dance in the aisles of the grocery store, to embarrass my kids. I need to interact playfully with the guy at 7-11 or the gas station or the woman at the checkout counter at Trader Joe’s. I need to hula hoop, even though I suck at it, and go to Disneyland or to ride roller coasters. I need to BOUNCE through my day, no matter what I am doing.

I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s THE gold thread that holds my life in sobriety together — it’s the playful loving golden thread of God. It invites the spirit of play into all my affairs, and I find that the universe plays with me in kind. There is love in playfulness, and the universe is always and ever loving. The only time it isn’t is NEVER, but we often are not open to it, and at those times it will seem like the universe is conspiring against us. So often we are so focused on ourselves that we do not see how the world has opened its arms to us, urging us forward into new personal adventures while we cling to our old ideas with a white knuckled death grip, insisting on taking it all personally.

The thing that gets my goat is that you can’t ever really tell anyone that they are holding onto old ideas, that life is amazing and that the seemingly unfortunate event they are currently in is a great blessing, that the universe is inviting them to play while they are busy indulging in outdated belief systems. This will only piss a person off. They don’t want to hear it. Usually they want you to recognize their suffering, to co-sign it, and that is no help, either.

The only person who I can tell this to is me. When I get confronted by scenarios that I don’t have any answers for, that I become fearful or worried about, I am the only one who can say, “Hey, this is a gift. You aren’t seeing it right because you are making yourself the focus. Snap out of it, homegirl. This doesn’t work. Plus it’s no fun!” All challenges are invitations to grow. Many of them I created by my own myopia, and I get to learn not to repeat that mistake. Sometimes they are a cleansing — things are removed from my life that have outlived their usefulness, and I need to make room for new experiences. And because I have a highly-developed sense of play, which has a bounce to it — a built in spring, if you will — I can easily bounce back from most things that I almost let tackle me. Even if I start to buy the ticket to the pity parade, that spring won’t let me do it. Why? Because the pity parade is BORING, and the bounce wants to bounce, and the play wants to play. Life is fun if you say it is, if you take a stand to adopt the spirit of play and inject it into everything.

There will be some who may think that there is no levity in their situation, and to them I want to say, they may be right. I haven’t walked in anyone else’s shoes, and there may be some situations that are so dark that light can’t get in there. Or maybe a little can, but not enough to smile about yet. For them I will say there is always hope, and there is always something to marvel at, and it could always be worse. It could always be worse. The only people for whom that isn’t true are not here to say it to anymore. If you are on this planet, if you woke up today, then it could be worse.

Here is my recipe for having a play-filled day. I challenge you to take it on. Especially if you are facing any sorts of problems or challenges.

1. First thing in the morning, howl when you wake up. First thing.

2. Choose a commonly used word (like, money, or door, or hello, or thanks), and every time someone uses it shout, “WOOHOO!” See if you can get your co-workers in on it — nothing is better than word of the day when played in a group.

3. Eat something you think you shouldn’t. A donut. Whatever. Once a day. Have a chocolate milkshake for breakfast.

4. Walk barefoot. Even if it’s just from your house to your car.

5. Smile at strangers. Especially kids and babies. Don’t look away from them like they aren’t there — they are. And so are you.

6. Buy five toothbrushes and toothpastes to keep in your car to give to homeless people panhandling by the side of the road. Go even crazier and put them in a bag with water, crackers, apples, socks and a T-shirt.

7. Hug some people. Especially family members. Try doing it right when you walk in the door. Look at them and tell them how important they are to you, how cool you think they are or how awesome they look today. That smile you get back will light you up until you can find your next victim. You will start to need those smiles; you will find you can’t live without them.

Try it. Let me know how it goes!

Image courtesy of stock.xchng.com.

Life is a trip. This is no revelation; but it’s worth saying.

On Saturday, I had to go get new tires. I drove through a part of town I don’t get to too much, but it’s an area where I worked for more than three years, and where I really hit my bottom. I would leave work and go to the liquor store for lunch, and slam down a bunch of those tiny bottles of vodka. I’d go to different stores every day so no one would think I had a problem. I’d joke with the clerks —“It’s one of those days; I’m getting ready for happy hour early!” Then I would go back to work, having had my lunch. It was bad enough that I was not worse after a few drinks, but better. I couldn’t function without it.

It was strange to have all of those memories flooding back, and the feelings that went with them. Now, eight years later, (five and change in sobriety, but a few dark years in between) I have compassion for that woman I was, what a sad little mess I made out of everything all the time. What a weird time in my life that was. I had tried to get in touch with my boss from that time when I did my 9th step, but she never responded, so I let it go. I had to drive by her old apartment on the way to the tire place, and I resolved, absolutely, right then and there, to find her. I would track her down and make the amends I owed to her, because that part of my life still felt unclean and unresolved, and she deserved the amends that was so long overdue. Eight years overdue.

I got my tires done, and had stopped thinking about it. I was trying to go to a small fragrance store that I had heard about but never went to, having an oddly free afternoon. It was tricky. I drove around the block three times and couldn’t find parking. I finally, being determined as hell suddenly, succumbed to the $5 valet. I went in and played with all the lovely scents in Le Labo, and then left. I stood there for a second. I am not a shopper, but I had just paid $5, so I decided to walk around a bit a poke around in the little shops that line 3rd Street. I went into another store, eyeballing the goods, when a small dog came over and licked my toes. I laughed and looked up at the owner, and it was her, my old boss, the one who I had an hour ago resolved to find—in the flesh. I got goosebumps and hugged her. She looked a little hesitant. We hadn’t parted on good terms and when I said I was working in treatment the past couple of years, she visibly relaxed and suggested we have lunch when she returned from Costa Rica.

Fast forward a couple of days later, and I am standing in line at Coffee Bean, and there is a man behind me with an empty Jack Daniels bottle. He is a nice looking man, wearing a good suit and a big smile. The manager of Coffee Bean, Abi, asks him what he was doing with that bottle. He says it’s a prop for an acting class or an audition or something and he needed to get it filled with cold coffee, no ice. He then followed up, good-naturedly, saying, “I haven’t had a drink in eight years.”

I love how we seem to love to announce this — I do the same. I turned and asked if he was a friend of Bill. He wasn’t, in fact he had gotten sober on his own. He smiled even bigger and said, “Isn’t it amazing how your entire life changes when you stop drinking?”

It truly is — above and beyond the ordinary. I was so glad I started my day with some guy holding a bottle of Jack Daniels asking me EXACTLY that question. I needed that. That I would have a random interaction like such as this, so serendipitously, set the tone for my whole day, like a spiritual alarm clock.

Sometimes my recovery is in the background, like a soundtrack; important, but not the focus. And then there is an event that requires the soundtrack to surge and you sort of wake up and realize that it’s been there all along, making everything … right; holding it all together. When I saw my boss standing there in that store with her little dog licking my toes, this woman who I had thought about on and off for so many years and who had just an hour ago occupied my mind so intensely, I was floored, completely humbled by the divine choreography of life doing its own thing. At moments like these, there is no disputing that there is a Higher Power; a Playful Consciousness; a Divine Order to things — at least for me. I didn’t go in that store an hour later, or 10 minutes after she left. I didn’t go in Coffee Bean 20 minutes earlier, or two hours later. I was EXACTLY where I was supposed to be. These are small miracles that remind me, lest I forget, that all of life is a relationship with that. It’s all a miracle. You are a miracle. Believe it.

Image courtesy of stock.xchng.com.

THE 16^thANNUAL PRISM AWARDS

Last week, I had the great privilege of attending the 16th annual PRISM Awards at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I didn’t have any idea what to expect. Being the perennial tomboy, my big issue was putting on a dress. Of course, this is symptomatic of the alcoholic mind. It isn’t about me; it’s about the achievements of others; it’s about ONE80CENTER sponsoring Renew magazine at the 16^thannual Prism Awards show! And here I was, obsessing about myself. I pulled it together, though, because just as self centeredness is a byproduct of the disease, a byproduct of recovery is a circle of friends who turn up to offer support —and I had three friends who lent me three different dresses to choose from. God bless ‘em.

The PRISM Awards show honors actors, directors and writers in TV and film who portray alcoholism/addiction/recovery and mental health issues in a way that informs and educates the viewers. It’s no secret that alcoholism/addiction and mental illness are two of the most misunderstood issues in American society. I’ll wager that there isn’t one single person in this country whose life isn’t touched in some way by one of the aforementioned issues — be it a family member, a coworker, a sister’s boyfriend or a best friend’s father or whatever. In some fashion, it’s around us all. And for some, it’s much closer. It’s a child, or a parent, a spouse, or our very own self. For something to be so pandemic and yet so stigmatized is a travesty. It is difficult enough to recover, or to learn to live with a mental illness, without there being such a mystery surrounding the process. Without recognition, compassion and understanding, these issues can become fatal tragedies, and too often are.

THE ART OF MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Thankfully, there are brave actors, writers and directors who are out to change this reality. Through accurate portrayals of the truth about addiction, or recovery, and of mental health issues, they illustrate the humanity behind the “curtain of shame.” I don’t really watch TV, so I had no idea that so much light was being shed on these all too pertinent social issues. At the beginning of the event, the military in the audience were honored. As they stood to introduce themselves, I was thinking how incredible it was, to be so courageous, and to be honored for one’s bravery in the face of extreme adversity. It then occurred to me that every nominee was also being recognized for their courageous performance, but also every nominee was standing up for every brave person that has ever struggled with the challenges their character represented. Then it hit me — I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I am one; I am part of this group. I am a survivor of a great battle, not unlike those brave soldiers. All of us in that category have been silently waging a war against our own demons, bearing up under the weight of our own crosses. We are not like other people; we just AREN’T. It feels good to be recognized and understood, not just by our own kind, but the rest of the world, too.

William H. Macy

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was part of the video clip from Castle featuring Stana Katic and Jon Huertas, and also in Days of Our Lives, both of which won. In another clip from the show Parenthood, a mother of two teens, while driving them to school, tries to tell them that their father was an alcoholic/addict, and that they also had the genes, and that they needed to be more careful than other people, that they couldn’t drink alcohol like other people who didn’t have the genetic disposition toward addiction. I spoke to the writer of that particular show afterward, and told her how it was identical to a talk I had had with my own two teenagers the week before, and it was stunningly similar.

William H. Macy was honored in a clip from Showtime’s Shameless, as a blathering, jabbering, street walking drunk on a rant. He was brilliant, spot on, and, with his wild gesticulating walking down public streets, talking loudly to himself, he brought to mind the kind of person we move away from when we see him walking toward us. He epitomized the disease of alcoholism at its worst—he IS US at our worst. We know that dark place, lost inside the labyrinth of the disease. And yet, he’s funny, its comedy, but no one is laughing harder than those of us in recovery. Emily Osment picked up an award for her work in Cyberbully, which depicted a teenage girl under attack on social networking sites, to the point of harming herself fatally. Cyberbully brings to light a new social dilemma that requires immediate attention, and is symptomatic of culture raised on contempt. Russell Brand and Helen Mirren were nominated in the field of Motion Pictures for their brilliant work in Arthur. Dr. Drew Pinsky picked up two Prism Awards, as he famously continues to shed light on these issues in his reality television programs, which reach millions of people.

Emily Osment

Many of these actors took to the stage and stated frankly that they too suffered from PTSD, or were in recovery from alcohol or addiction. Marriette Hartley, who I remember from so many television shows as a child, bravely said that her personal experiences with PTSD made her even more moved by what the Prism Awards stand for. She wrote a book called Breaking The Silence about her own experiences, and once said, “I believe there must be no shame attached to mental illness or suicide. It is essential to get help and to stay in close contactwith a psychiatrist and if pharmaceuticals are advised, to be completely honest about family tendencies and disorders. Often a misdiagnosis can be dangerous. And above all, share your story with others. I have a friend who was once an actress, and then she got smart and became a nun. She once said to me that ‘one’s deepest wounds – integrated – become one’s greatest power.’ I believe that deeply.”

Marriette Hartley

This quote alone expresses the spirit of the Prism Awards, and what I felt in the air that night.

Needless to say, I felt right at home at the awards show. In my life of recovery, and working in the field of treatment, all of the issues covered are normal in my world. I understand that which is perplexing to ‘normal’ people more than I understand so called ‘normalcy.’ It made me think of all the times I spoke to ‘normies’ the way I speak to people in recovery. You really can’t do that — you really can’t, when asked by a normal person how you are doing, REALLY tell them how you are really doing. I recall the time I was hired to work in a law firm, making calls regarding class action law suits, and one of the attorneys who was training me asked me how my weekend was. And I told him! I told him exactly how my weekend was, and how I felt about it, with the standard intimacy we share in the tribe of recovery. He looked at me as if I was an exotic fish that had just swam into his office. If I had said that to anyone in recovery they would have understood, implicitly. I learned then the biggest difference between those of us in recovery and those of us who aren’t is this thing of understanding each other.

All of the nominees of the Prism Awards, past, present, and those yet to come, all endeavor to bridge that gap between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ In the world at large, we are not isolated instances, we are part of a continuous fabric of humanity. We are surrounded by family and friends, lovers, spouses, coworkers, all who either understand a little about our inner struggle, about our triumphant recovery, or about what it takes to live with a mental illness. Maybe some of these people have no idea. We may keep it to ourselves, out of fear of being stigmatized, or judged. We may only talk to others of our own kind about it. But wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it be really epic, if the world at large understood what types of things are handicaps for us, what sorts of things trigger us, so they can be sensitive to who and what we are? Wouldn’t it be utterly cool to be understood? Wouldn’t it be awesome if people knew that alcoholism is a disease, not a moral shortcoming, not a weakness, but a literal disease?

Dr. Drew Pinsky

I firmly support anything that unifies people, levels the playing field, allows for more harmony and respect and less contempt prior to investigation. The people involved in putting on the Prism Awards show, the EIC, the FX network, the actors, the TV shows and movies, the writers, the directors, everyone who is willing to put themselves out there to accurately depict these issues, are heroes. These people are truly living the “art of making a difference.” We should all endeavor to do the same.

The 16th annual Prism Awards will air on FX Sept.16, 2012. Renew magazine, sponsored by ONE80CENTER, took a ton of great photos and did interviews with the winners and presenters. Look for more in the July/August issue of Renew.

PRISM Awards photos courtesy of Frances Iacuzzi Photography for Renew sponsored by ONE80CENTER.

There is a certain point in sobriety where you really have to take a hard look at yourself. I thought I already had done all of that, but right now I am experiencing a different level of delightfully grueling self examination. It comes as a result of a recent shift in my own reality, one that has left me feeling whole, complete, integrated and not lacking in any way.

After returning from Indonesia with this self unifying and connective experience under my belt, I was suddenly able to identify certain ways of being that are no longer aligned with who I am. For example, after a recent family crisis involving one of my kids, I found that I wasn’t shaken up or frantic. I had not hit a panic button, or lost my shit, which under the circumstances was not only warranted, but expected. The few people I communicated this crisis to were very sweet, and asked, with a great deal of concern, “But how are you? Are you OK?” I was nonplussed. I felt that I was supposed to say I was devastated, to comment on how hard it is, but I wasn’t devastated. I was fine. The situation had not compromised my serenity in any way, and now I almost felt bad about it.

It was a great opportunity for me to pause and look at why I would feel bad about maintaining a state of serenity in calamity. At the moment my caring friends asked me how I was, I felt how their sympathy offered my recently laid to rest martyr/victim space to unfurl. It was compelling to say, “It’s hard, yeah,” and take their consoling words and basically wallow in them, feeding the “bad wolf” of my ego in the most insidious of ways. To even have to own that this is what I have done for years was an ugly truth to face, and its little consolation that I wasn’t aware of what I was doing. I unwittingly disempowered my own self with the kindness of others.

Now there is the feeling bad about being fine—what’s up with that? There is the old ego again, worrying about how I look to others. Will they think I am not concerned enough about my daughter? Will they think me too cavalier, or perhaps even disconnected from reality? Why, oh why do I care?

I care because I am a human, subject to all the frailties that crave approval. It’s the human condition, and being an alcoholic is the human condition on steroids. I could feel that urge to play into the assigned role and cave in for all the wrong reasons, but the difference now is that instead of acting on it, I watched it and casually bypassed the whole mess by saying, “Thank you much for asking. I am really good. I am sincerely OK.”

Did I possibly see a shadow cross their faces, as if I perhaps was wildly inappropriate to be fine at a time like this? Who knows. I thought I saw it, but it’s this kind of thing that is one of the greatest tools of my ego, and my disease. Maybe it was there, and maybe it wasn’t. But the nice thing is this: once I watched this whole subtle and yet intense scenario play out, I realized it truly doesn’t matter what people think. It doesn’t matter if they approve, or if they disapprove. I know where I stand, at long last, and I don’t need to justify it or shrink to fit or do anything but just be exactly what I am committed to. This may mean some people fade out of my life; some are there because I played the game with them, the mutual cosigning and commiserating. Those relationships won’t have enough air to breath. And some relationships will become stronger. And better yet, new ones will form that will be built on honesty and lack of emotional manipulation and self gratification.

We get to stop holding ourselves hostage by identifying with conditioned responses. And we get to stop holding others hostage as well. We get to live authentically in each moment, responding with our truth, relaxed in knowing that everything is happening exactly the way it is supposed to. When we resolve our inner conflicts, we get to love ourselves unconditionally, and then we no longer need anyone else to. People in our lives are then free to be exactly who and what they are, and we are able to embrace them unconditionally with love and respect as well.

What does this have to do with sobriety? Everything.

When I came into recovery, I was told to expect a life beyond my wildest dreams. It’s funny where a self centered newly sober person will take a statement like that — for me, it was wealth and leisure, designer clothes and massages. I would never have been able to conceive of the true gift of self, of having my skin fit, of living organically and responding to the moment at hand, instead of reacting and taking everything personally.

But the hits just keep on coming. Once we get to a point in our sobriety where we get accustomed to a certain level of serenity, dignity, and living with the constant grace of our Higher Power, we also find ourselves open to opportunities that we never considered were in our grasp.

For example, since getting sober, I have done a dream board every year in January. I’ve done them for years, but for the first time, they were not so outlandish, foolish and ego centered. On my last one that I did in 2010, I had a whole corner devoted to traveling — not just anywhere, mind you. Indonesia, Tahiti, maybe, but pretty much that whole section of the world dominated by all the thousands of little islands between China and Australia. So, I had all these pictures, and I also put a picture of a passport, because it suddenly dawned on me that (DUH) I won’t be going anywhere without one.

And then it really struck me — here is my alcoholic thinking at its finest! My house is covered in maps (the one in my room takes up a whole 10-by-13 wall), globes, travel posters and vintage suitcases. Obviously, I have wanted to travel for a long, long time. I wasn’t really even aware of it. It’s kind of weird to collect all of these things and not notice they represented a desire to see the world. When I looked at my dream board, and looked around my house, I was struck by how incredibly blind I was, how we all can be when dealing with our addictions, before we start waking up to ourselves. I had placed it so far out of the realm of possibility that I had hardly entertained it as a reality, just as a decorating scheme. Hello!

Realizing as well that no worldly travel can happen without a passport, it occurred to me that I had these notions of travel without really doing the due diligence to make it happen. How often do we float around and daydream, but don’t take the necessary steps to make those dreams real? A lot, I’m afraid. And here I was, catching myself in the act. So I did the next indicated action — I got a passport.

I had that passport for a few months when a friend invited me to Bali. Out of the blue, I got the text, “Wanna go to Bali in September?” And I was able to say “YES.” No one, in my entire life, has ever asked me if I wanted to go abroad with them. Once I was prepared, though, it happened. I can’t help but wonder about that timeworn phrase, “Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.” I know that alcoholics and addicts have lived lives of meeting their most immediate needs, filling a God-shaped hole with everything but God, prepared for very little. Opportunities, if they came, could knock us in the head and we wouldn’t even know it. If you understand what I am saying, you will also understand the revelation of that invite, that for the first time, I had prepared myself to be able to say yes to this dream of mine.

I just got back from Bali, Indonesia, on Friday, Sept. 29. It was life altering, to finally be leaving this country for the first time, and to go somewhere so immersed in love and devotion of God. I was able to really get centered—this was also my first vacation in 16 years—and settle into a new level of serenity that I could not have imagined previously. Who knew? I sure didn’t, I had painted such a small picture of my life while using, that this ever expanding realm of awareness continues to surprise and delight me. I am, like you, divinely guided and protected.

I knew it during the two rough years, 2009 and 2010, when I was on food stamps after having been laid off, struggling to keep a roof over mine and my kids’ heads—I didn’t feel deserted, though, I felt blessed. I knew that so-called “rough patch” was a great gift that would only open me up to new miracles. I understood certain things in me needed to be burned to the ground so humility could take the place of self centeredness. I was leaning into recovery. And so I did not feel more gratitude for this recent adventure, or less, either—just an overwhelming sense of awe at how things unfold when I, when we, practice principles over personalities, do the next indicated action, trust God, clean house, and help others, all the things we are guided to do in recovery.

If I was running on my own steam and not leaning into recovery, things would not be like this. Without my recovery and my Higher Power, I’d most likely be dead, and if not dead, I would be in a little room somewhere wishing I was and drinking myself in that direction. My life is the opposite of that, and that truly, TRULY, is a life beyond my wildest dreams when I came into recovery.

I say this because some people need to hear it. I say this to remind you to keep hanging in there and trust the process. I say this because it gets dark before the miracle happens—in fact, it is a requirement, in my experience. The rough spots inform me that miracles are on the way. That being said, if you are having a rough patch, lean into your recovery and know that it’s burning down the old structures of your alcoholic thinking so it can make room for the miracles that are eager to get to you. Let them. Just relax and trust that it’s all happening the way it’s meant to, skip the drama, and stay open for the awe and wonder of this thing. Like Einstein says – “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.” … Everything is.

Image courtesy of stock.xchng.com.

A couple of days ago, I had driven my daughter to an appointment in an area of LA that isn’t the greatest—not the kind of neighborhood you want to be in at night. Her appointment was from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., so it was almost night time. It seems that I fell asleep in my car with it running. I had left it on for the heat, and was reading while I waited for her. I was awakened by my car making a strange sound, and then dying.

My first thought is that I had run down the little gas I had—I was planning on filling up the tank right after her appointment. I tried to text her to tell her that I was leaving the car and walking to the gas station, but she didn’t answer and the door to the building was locked. So I went as fast as I could, with only 15 minutes before she walked out of her appointment into the parking lot, at which point the door would lock behind her and she would be alone in the lot, not knowing what had happened to her mom. That was all I could think about as I walked as fast as I could to the gas station. So, I bought the $15 gas container, and two gallons of gas ($4.70 here in Los Angeles, for those elsewhere). As I was filling the gas can, a man pulled up and asked if I needed a ride. Normally I would say no, but I had to get back to my daughter, who I had been worried about the whole time. As we were driving, he told me he had stayed twice at the half way house up the street, both times he got out of the penitentiary. Wow! Yeah, that isn’t the kind of thing you want to hear when you jump into a stranger’s car. But he then went on to tell me how he spoke to his son for the first time ever just the day before, and he told me his son’s name and that he found him on Facebook. He then dropped me off and was on his way.

I put the gas in my car. Annnnnnd … it didn’t work. The only place that was around in the area, sharing the parking lot with doctor’s office that was open was a mental hospital. Yes, this is a true story. So I went there and tried to find someone with jumper cables. I found two ambulance attendants, who were very helpful and came and put the cables on my car. Fifteen minutes later— nothing. The battery was completely dead. And then, so was my phone. My daughter and I got in the back of the ambulance and they dropped us off at an Autozone, about eight blocks away. I didn’t know if I was going to try to learn how to install a battery, alone with my 13-year-old in a dark parking lot, if I was going to carry that heavy thing up the eight-block long hill—I had no idea.

As we stood in line, in a state of awe at the weirdness of the situation, I felt a nudge. An invisible nudge. It nudged—almost pushed— me toward a Hispanic man who was standing at the register. I asked him if he knew how to install a battery. He said yes. I asked him if he could help us, and he said yes. His name was Daniel. He had to repair his own car, in the parking lot, so we sat on the curb for about an hour. My daughter and I wrapped in his sweatshirt that he gave us because we were cold, watching the people doing various street businesses on the corner.

Finally, he was done with his car. He didn’t speak English well enough to understand how to get to my car, so he told me to drive. His van seemed like his home—meaning, I think he lived in it. So I drove his van to the parking lot by the mental hospital, and he was able to install the new battery, our new friend Daniel.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

 What was truly amazing about this adventure, and the point of this blog,is that every single time I needed someone, they showed up, like clockwork. It took four people to help—ambulance drivers, an ex-con, and a homeless man who barely spoke English. But they were there, and I couldn’t question for one second the force that put everyone where they should be. Because really, that battery would have died eventually, and it could have been a lot worse.

There was a time when this adventure would have been a terrible chain of events— I wouldn’t have seen anything good about it at all. My daughter was inclined to get negative about it. I had said to her, “This could have been so much worse!” And she rolled her pre-teen eyes at me and said, “It could have been so much better, too.” To which I replied, “Maybe, but the way I am looking at it keeps me grateful and positive. The way you are looking at it will always make you a victim, and unhappy.” She smiled, and said, “Mom, you’re weird.” Later, though, she did concede that it was pretty wild how there were people right there, giving rides and helping install batteries and jump cars. I was glad she was there to experience it—stranded by a mental hospital in a bad part of town with the phone dead. It was like the setting for a slasher movie, and saved by four not-so-random angels. I love these awesome adventures in sobriety.

The moral of the story? It depends on how you look at it. Perception is everything. EVERYTHING. We learn this in recovery; it’s a pivotal lesson for us. The world adjusts to our personal frame of reference. It shows up exactly as we call it, based on what we choose to see. Because I perceive this to be good world, where I am divinely guided and protected, then it is. It is a good world. I am divinely guided and protected. And so are you.

Truth is Truth

I love how it happens when I am reading various spiritual books and I come across the same truths that we learn in AA. For instance, the concept of contrary action. This seems to be axiomatic in many schools of thought. Recently, in my Fourth Way group, we were all told to sit for 5 minutes every morning, upon waking. Not in a normal meditation kind of way, but upright, on a chair, back straight, feet on floor, hands one inside the other. Easy, right? Think again.

Of course it’s easy—it’s not like they asked me to bend spoons with my mind. In fact, the idea of its easiness is exactly what helps illustrate how unwilling most people are to do even the easiest of things.  I am using myself as an example. I know all about contrary action—I write about it a lot, and I practice it often. It is a lynchpin of my personal philosophy. However, when confronted with doing this simple thing, I have had the hardest time adhering to it. Now, here are my reasons, and they are, seemingly, valid: I’m a tired single mom, I work a lot, I don’t get enough sleep, I roll out of bed and hit the ground running, I have two teenagers to wake up and get moving, etc.

These are not just reasons, these are excuses. EXCUSES. Reasons are just excuses that make sense on some level. I am able to totally justify my not doing this one little thing. And yet, by the simple act of putting all reasons, excuses and resistance aside and simply doing the damn thing, I may experience a new level of consciousness.

Am I a Robot? Errr… apparently.

How is 5 minutes a day going to give me a new level of consciousness? Could it really be that easy? Well, the new level comes not just from the sitting, but by the whole process of watching all the automatic resistance that comes up for me. In all spiritual traditions, the concept of “waking up” is very relevant. In Fourth Way, part of the waking up process is called Self Remembering. To remember my true self, I have to understand my false self, the one that is a robot. I have to see how programmed I am to do certain things certain ways all the time, consistently. I have to observe how I play small and make excuses. I justify my limiting behavior. I procrastinate. I look for an easier way. I’m on automatic pilot more often than I realize. It wasn’t easy to see before the 5-minute morning exercise, because it isn’t easy to really see ourselves at all. I can see only what I know — but it is finding out what I don’t know that liberates me from the bondage of self.

For the past few weeks I would drive to work and puzzle over why I didn’t do my sitting exercise, or why I kept having such a problem with it. At first, I really didn’t know. I said to myself, “I can’t do this. My life is too busy.” But for crying out loud, it’s FIVE MINUTES! FIVE! So then I really started to observe myself, and watch myself; NOT sit. I watched myself do everything BUT sit. And I learned a lot that I didn’t know.

The more I understand how I work, what makes me tick (Know Thyself! Of course!) the more I will learn to master what is a robotic function and become more of what I was before I became programmed by life. There is an essential, true core self in all of us that is trying to break through. In recovery, we have taken the first step in this adventure when we surrender a way of life and a way of being— the only way we know— and commit to a life of abstinence from drugs and alcohol. This is a great launching place for the rest of the spiritual journey. The more we reveal our true natures, the more authentic we can show up in the world. We remove the barriers that keep us from experiencing the ebb and flow of life—when we fight it, we are like a drowning person, flailing at the injustice of it all. But when we are living in our truth, we surf. And if you know any surfers, they will tell you, surfing is when they feel closest to God.

Photo courtesy of stock.xchng.

I have been noticing that at a certain point in recovery, many people start to want to go to the ‘next level.’ What that means, exactly, is really up to the person experiencing it, but one does know when they have come to a plateau in their personal development and need something to stimulate further growth. Many people look to AA and the AA community to be that thing that inspires and creates growth, and it just isn’t always going to be able to do that. For me, the answer is not to go to more meetings, because more of the same thing is not my Next Level. I needed something different, something else, something to add to my existing program.

I think its dangerous to have this feeling and not seek an outlet for it; I have seen this turn from a spiritual restlessness and desire for growth into a spiritual malady and desire for drink if its not addressed. It almost makes me think that our original desire for a drink stems from a spiritual restlessness. This may not be true for all, but I feel like its true for me.

I had disconnected from the God of my family, the Southern Baptist, judgmental God. I wanted nothing to do with him, but that doesn’t mean I wanted nothing to do with something bigger than me, something I could turn to, something that helped me feel safe in the world. Its like someone who is estranged from their father - being estranged doesn’t fix the problem of feeling lonely, missing the relationship with the father, being resentful at the isolation from the source of comfort and safety. And so, I was like that - estranged from God but missing God. And then… there was alcohol, and the spiritual suffering was numbed to some extent.

Even during all my drinking and using, I was obsessed with books by illuminated souls, like Joseph Campbell, Howard Thurman, and Pierre Tielhard de Chardin. I would constantly read about other religions and spiritual practices. I wanted something, but since I made alcohol and drugs my Higher Power, all I could do is intellectualize about it. I couldn’t have it for my own, that experience of being connected to the Source. I was reminded of the scriptural saying of my early days, which said that God is a jealous God and would have no other before Him. In this situation, it was true, but in a different way- no jealousy involved, but truly when I put alcohol and drugs (or anything, for that matter- love, money, fear, you name it) before God, then I do not have access to the true Source. And so it was - I worshipped alcohol; I worshipped drugs; I worshipped the high, the oblivion. And there was no room for God.

When I got sober, I slowly got to know my Higher Power. It really helped that I was encouraged to find a God of my understanding. One thing I know for sure is that I can not ever understand my Higher Power. The second I think I do, I have to know that its no longer my Higher Power, but my idea of a Higher Power, which will always be more than I can conceive of. The God of my understanding is a God I don’t understand. My Higher Power is truly a mystery, has a playful sense of humor, is generous and loving, sends me into situations that cause my heart and soul to expand and grow. I do not have a name for It, or a gender, or an idea of what It looks like, I only know that I am having an amazing relationship with this Grace that holds all things together, and I love it. I love this relationship for providing all the things I always wanted - I am safe, secure, protected and guided. I am encouraged to Know Myself, and to love myself, so that I can more fully love and accept others. And, I am happy. Every single day.

So then there is the Next Level. It got to a point for me where I wanted to really go beyond where I am right now. I want to know who I am and what I am doing, which of my behaviors are programmed and how to de-program myself so I am coming from an authentic and true place. I have to discover what my Truth really is, so I can know how to come from that place, and I have to discover what is false, so I can reject it in favor of the Truth. I have heard it said that if you kill yourself in the first five years of sobriety, you are killing the wrong person. I am a few months shy of my fifth sober birthday, and I can tell you, that is so true. I am so much more ME than I was when I came in - when I got sober, and for the first few years, I was just a bundle of programming, reactions, raw nerves and issues. I was run by resentments and fears and desires. I did what I did because I didn’t know what else to do, it was automatic, like a robot. Even if it felt spontaneous or original, like I was making my own decisions, the underlying truth was that I really wasn’t.

Once I started to reject my script, and respond, not react, right in the moment and based on the truth of me, I found a liberation that can not be put into words. I can’t even describe it to you, except that the experience of it is worth living for. Its inspired and inspiring. I wanted to dive deeper into it, to understand more. I am a seeker, and I know where to look, and as such I have been very involved with my own personal Next Level. But I have seen people who are not seekers by nature who are hit with the spiritual restlessness and, like I said before, not knowing to use it to motivate them into a spiritual inquiry allowed it to turn into a spiritual malady. Its easy at that time to start questioning AA, and recovery itself. People in this phase tend to go to fewer and fewer meetings, and grow ‘bored’ of the recovery community. When we don’t work the steps, we lose our footing. The 11th Step is an ongoing step, and it can be a real doozy for some.

If you feel yourself wanting more than AA, don’t turn your back on AA, just grab onto something else to supplement what AA is. Its important to know that AA isn’t everything. It isn’t claiming to be. It encourages you to deepen your relationship with your Higher Power IN ADDITION to going to meetings, being of service and letting go of resentments. If you are church minded, find a great church. Find a meditation group, or go to Yoga. There are a million great books that can inspire a spiritual journey to blossom- I suggest Deepak Chopra’s ‘Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire’, or Marianne Williamson’s ‘Return To Love’, or the book she refers to throughout it, A Course In Miracles. I have become seriously interested in A Course In Miracles, and also a system of teaching, or a school of thought, called The Fourth Way, whose basic principle is to Know Thyself. Kabbalah is fascinating as well. Any and all of these give the spiritual support system that a really inspiring program of recovery should have as part of its arsenal for success.

I bring it up because I have spoken to yet another friend, (of the many who have hit that spot, that spiritual restlessness, between their third and fifth year) and he opted out, decided to try a little controlled drinking. I am close to him so I watched how easily he went from wanting more light to tossing himself into the dark. We do have the disease of ‘more’, but if we are deliberate and aim in the right direction, that desire for more can serve us well. There is nothing wrong with more light, more love, more service, more connection to a Higher Power, more grace, more harmony, more unity. The definition of the word ‘sin’ literally means to ‘miss the mark.’ If you aim in the wrong direction, you are bound to do just that. When we use our weaknesses (our desire for more) as our strength (our desire for more used rightly in the name of Grace), we do not miss the mark. We do not ‘sin’. We create a better world for ourselves and others, and that is the opposite of missing the mark; thats the whole point.

I was thinking the other day of something I heard about years ago. It was a story about how important it is for a baby chick to fight its way out of the egg. It is quite a struggle, and the impulse for any kind-hearted person would be to help the little guy out. So someone did that, and the baby chick died shortly thereafter. Apparently, the struggle to emerge activated necessary muscles that the chick would need for survival outside the egg. It needed to strengthen its neck muscles with the pecking and squirming, its little legs with the kicking and scratching.

  It is the same for us.                              

We develop muscles and skills in our emerging process in recovery that are critical to our survival in sobriety. That is why they say to carry the message, and not the alcoholic - if we carry the alcoholic, they may not gain the musculature they need for the future. It isn’t always easy to know the dividing line between being of service, and being an enabler for other negative behaviors.

When I was first in recovery, I certainly didn’t know the difference. I found myself running after women who had gone out on a run, banging on doors where they were holed up with their junky boyfriends; running to hotel rooms to drag drunk women into a detox (more than once for the same woman); I’ve been thrown-up on by women and once was peed on; I’ve held their hair while they threw up in the toilet; trying to count the number of pills that were undigested. I’ve carried women who weigh more than me up stairs. I could keep going here, but you get the idea.

I will say this - my heart was in the right place. It was. But errantly so; these things did not ultimately help any of these women. I remember calling the sponsor of some of these women who said: “I don’t run after wet ones,” or, “I don’t get involved in the madness.” I couldn’t understand it. My own sponsor, in one of these situations, got really angry with me. She said they were not willing, they were drunk, and when they sobered up and got willing they could give a call. I remember thinking this sounded wrong; weren’t we supposed to do everything in our power to help?

I really don’t know where that line is. But I do understand that no human power can relieve us of our alcoholism, and also I do understand that after many of these scenarios, I am not in a hurry to go running after someone who is out there using. I have seen that it isn’t effective. I have seen how ugly and crazy it is, and that talking to the disease is fruitless. It lies and lies and says what you want to hear. It’ll realize that the only way out is to act sorry and clean up a little and get me off their back so they can go use again.

One friend I used to always go running after would feign an utter lack of being able to do anything. She made herself seem so incompetent, as if left to her own devices she would crumple into a wad of discarded paper, like a small child. I would make calls to get her into treatment, to find people to help her move, donate money to the storage, take care of her dogs, you name it - and every time she would get a couple of months and disappear again. After one run, she picked up the phone and made some calls herself, and got herself from the crack den she was living in to a sober living, all on her own. She was literally the baby chick pecking her own way out of the shell. What I had done was tried to take the shell off for her, robbing her of the struggle that is so vital to her ability to stay sober.

There are no hard and fast rules to it; we are here to help another alcoholic achieve sobriety. Some people put newcomers up in their homes; some give rides to them; some take their phone calls or escort them to court to offer support. Keeping the metaphor of the baby chick in mind, we can listen to the newcomer and try to discern where we can really offer support, without doing the work for them.

I knew a woman once who I met at a 9 a.m. meeting. She was a little wobbly, and she was stressing about the time in between meetings at that location. There were meetings all day, but about 1 or 2 hours in between. She wanted someone to take her home and bring her back to the meetings instead of sitting there in between and waiting, if need be. I did that; that same meeting, I just sat there in between and talked to whoever was also hanging around. It was awful for me as a newcomer. I felt lame and like everyone had somewhere important to go to except me. I was the one loser hanging around the church waiting for the next meeting. But for me, it was incredibly humbling exactly because it was so uncomfortable. I conveyed this to her, and she ended up doing the same. I saw her over this past weekend at a brunch spot and she came up to hug me, and thanked me for suggesting she hang around in between meetings, because she had met some of her strongest support team members in the lull.

What do we rob people of when we make it too easy on them? The self esteem that comes from doing things themselves, on their own steam. We won’t always know where to draw the line, but its worth thinking about when we are offering to be of service. Don’t break the egg for the baby chick. And don’t let anyone do it for you! But one thing is for sure, I still, to this day, err on the side of caution. It may not ultimately help that person stay sober, but it will me!

What is free will?

This is an age old question and one I am not equipped to answer. But I am prepared to establish a good inquiry, because I think about it a lot. And I have some ideas, but they are by no means conclusions. It’s more of an ongoing dialogue and one that interests me quite a bit.

In AA there is a lot of talk about God’s Will. My understanding has always sort of been that God’s Will was the basic unfolding of life, without me trying to force my schemes and plans and such onto it. This seems pretty clear, right? But what if I exercised none of my own will, and operated only by God’s Will. Would God’s Will get me out of bed? Would God’s Will get my kids to school? Please understand me here, I am not IN ANY WAY questioning the beauty and grace of God’s Will. I am just wondering how it works with Free Will, with my Will. How they work together and how they don’t.

When I really give it some thought, it takes MY free will to do God’s Will. I have to freely succumb to the way life is unfolding, and it is my will that gives me the commitment to take on the next indicated action, my will that allows me to choose to pause when agitated, to recognize when my personality is trying to trump my principles. I read recently that in steps 6 and 7, becoming entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character and to humbly remove our shortcomings, the point is that we have to ask. We become ready to have them removed because we finally understand, after a thorough inventory, what slaves we have been to the damn things.

It has to be our free will that willingly asks for them to be removed. We have to want it. It was suggested that God can only work with our free will in that department—for our shortcomings to be lifted without our first asking would be sort of like a cosmic cheat. We have to be willing to let them go. WILLING. Without our willingness, none of it can happen. And WILLingness is our own Free Will in action, choosing the light over the darkness.

Free Will In Action

And at times our free will doesn’t choose the light. We all know this: it’s the basis of all religions and spiritual journeys. It’s the fundamental sticking point. It is what makes choosing the light such a diabolical challenge and also the single most relevant victory—because the dark can be so incredibly seductive and compelling. It knows our weak spots, maybe better than we do. My character defects are tools for the darkness—I get a feeling that my fears, my insecurities, my judgementalness or desire to be liked, my hanging on to old hurts and behaving from that wounded, entitled, place of long suffering victimhood will ultimately be my undoing, if left unchecked. It’s all Ego, or Disease, or whatever you like to call it. And it only wants one thing—to dismantle me until I am a walking black hole or six feet under—whichever comes first.

I don’t know with any certainty about any of it, I only know that I wonder about it. I can’t possibly know the mind of God. And I can only try to know my own mind, and to try to overcome my own errant and self serving belief systems enough to see the truth. It’s not a pretty thing, to do the work of getting to know how our minds operate. In my experience of step 7, asking God to humbly remove my shortcomings was not an instantaneous thing—I didn’t just ask, and then they were plucked out of my being like stray hairs. For me, I am constantly given situations that bring my character defects into the light, and if I do not examine them right then and there as they present themselves, then more of those situations will come until I understand the lesson, observe myself acting in the grip of said character defect, recognize it, and do something different. You have to be able to identify the broken part, to look at the damage, (Step 4 and 5) and then, at least for me, I have to see how they ‘work’ (or don’t) for me in my life—broken parts create broken results.

And like a game of Whack a Mole, they keep popping up, as there are a multitude of them, trying to run the show. Like the chapter of St Mark in The Bible, when there is a man who is known to be filled with unclean spirits, who no man could tame, no chains could bind, who spent all the time crying and cutting himself with stones- is that not like so many of us, in the depth of our despair? And he came to Christ, and Jesus asked of the man “What is your name?” And he said, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And so it is like that, we are possessed with so many defects and agendas and belief systems and fears and desires and addictions that when we are able to master the addictions to some extent, there is still the Legion, and only the light of truth is able to bring us back to a whole and holy state.

Here is another challenge, and it’s extremely tricky—we are very, very attached to the Legion. They have been ingrained in us, and we think they are intrinsic to who we are. What they do is rob us of the precious gift of Free Will. If we are behaving as puppets, reacting to external stimulus without thinking, just being ‘who we are’, then we are not in a state of choice. We are not practicing free will. We are just doing what we are programmed to do, like a microwave or a blender. We love our suffering and our chaos. We can’t live without our loneliness, our boredom, our dissatisfaction. We do things to create more suffering, more dissatisfaction—on autopilot, nonetheless. Autopilot! We don’t even know it. We just call it life. But there is so much more to it.

Steps 6 and 7 begin to really restore our free will to us. We get the opportunity to observe our actions and reactions, see what does not work, and choose something different. In that choosing, we are liberated from the slavery of our personal history, our robotic programming, our autopilot mode, our self sabotage. We have free will, and FREE is not an accidental designation; there IS freedom in it, there IS liberation in it. And that free will is free to choose to align itself with God’s Will. If it looks at all that is being offered, all the entire banquet of life with all its myriad choices, and chooses to act by principles in spite of the comforts the personality demands, then it has placed you squarely outside the prison walls, liberating you from the bondage of self. In that place, you can learn to trust that it is all unfolding just as it should and that there are no mistakes in God’s World. We pray for knowledge of God’s Will for us—that we will be guided and directed on our journey—And the power to carry that out—Our free will, used rightly, is that power. That is the ultimate freedom, more precious than any treasure. When you can walk in that truth is when you remember who you really are— “You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here.”

You are a miracle. You are a gift. Believe it.

Stories. We all have them. We live by them. We tell them to ourselves and we tell them to others, we tell ourselves stories about others and we tell others stories about ourselves. We live like they are true, even when they aren’t.

Know Thyself

Before I got sober five years ago, I had no real awareness that I was living, entrenched, in my stories. I had done a lot of work on myself, and I had an intellectual understanding about it, but I couldn’t really get behind the stories to the truth of myself. About 10 years ago, I did a workshop that proposed that, at about the age five or six, something happens to us, all of us. It could be as horrifying as physical abuse or seemingly benign, such as not getting chosen for kickball, but the severity is all relative. It was a defining moment where we went from feeling like we were enough, just as we were, to believing that we were not enough, and that something was terribly wrong with us. We were suddenly not smart enough or pretty enough or thin enough or good enough—and this is true whether we are alcoholics, or addicts or ‘normies’. At that moment, we write the script of our life. We spend the rest of our lives compensating, overcompensating, for that moment.

People who felt abandoned will become needy, or the opposite. People who were not included or accepted into the group will decide to do everything in their power to be on the outskirts of the group or society (tattoos, mohawks—well, back when those things ostracized one from the pack. Not like modern days—this stuff is normal business attire nowadays…) Or, if they didn’t try to fit out, they did everything in their power to fit in—status seeking, ambitiously over achieving, people pleasing. Women who were mistreated would trade themselves for validation. The scenarios are endless. We all have our modus operandi, our way of navigating the world according to our story.

I am not saying that this explanation is exactly 100 percent true, but it bears consideration, and it sounds plausible to me. We do start to tell ourselves stories. And then we become our stories. One of the main features of the stories, however, is the built in sabotage factor. Limitations are crafted and woven into the fables of our lives, and it becomes nearly impossible to see them and separate them from reality (because they ARE our reality), although the sadder part of this equation is not that we can’t or don’t see them, it’s that we are attached to our limitations. Some would even say we are addicted to them.

I will gladly give examples of this in my life, especially ones that I have done work on and am starting to be liberated from. I have, for many years, swaggered around saying that I don’t want a relationship, that the whole love thing is BS. I created an untouchable, emotionally unavailable persona. I thought I was cool, that I was untouchable, that I didn’t need anybody or anything. To make matters worse, I wasn’t alone. Many women I knew had their own version of the ‘untouchable swagger’ going on- their own guards and survival tactics, their own self sabotaging armor, and what we would do is get together and talk about how emotionally unavailable men were. We couldn’t even see that we built the walls of our own prisons, brick by brick, and lamented how distant and unreachable others were. There came a time when I was called out—it doesn’t matter how it happened, except to say that in sobriety, we just get to know ourselves, we get known by others. And the process of knowing oneself is rarely anything but messy and uncomfortable.

What I discovered is that really, I have very traditional values, and did believe in love and finding a lifelong mate, and in the necessity of family. I’m actually fairly old fashioned, truth be told. And here I was, 3,000 miles away from my own family, who I see every eight years or so, divorced with two kids, and determined to be romantically detached, the sole breadwinner, and never to co-habitate with a man again. What total bullshit! Seriously, I had told myself all these stories that were so NOT in alignment with my core self, all to protect myself from being hurt or disappointed. It’s the ‘you can’t fire me, I quit’ syndrome. Or ‘sour grapes’. As long as I could fool myself that I didn’t want it, then it wouldn’t bother me that it didn’t work out anyway.

Like I said, it gets messy when you are getting to know yourself. You have to look at the life you built on the stories you’ve told. Honestly, it wasn’t the life I would have endeavored to build, if I had been honest with myself from the start. But it’s my life, and I love it; I wouldn’t be who I am if it had gone any other way. I am happy I got to wake up and see it for what it is, and also what it could be. I would hate to die and suddenly, as the curtains are closing, suddenly remember who I am and think, “No! I need a re-do! I didn’t mean it!”

Now what happens when you get to the truth and you are surrounded by the old life? You simply begin to live your truth, where you’re at. It shows up in your actions, and interactions. And parts of the old life start to crumble. Sometimes it really hurts to let it fall apart. The impulse is to fix it, to go into a panic and try to tape all the pieces back together- it is, after all, the only life you have ever known. But if you are committed to living your truth, you begin to have faith in the process. You let go and let it unfold. It sounds passive, but acceptance is not passive, far from it. It’s hard work to trust. You have to fight your own self and your deep rooted fears. Your Ego/Disease flares up and starts laying on the lies and laying them on thick. “You aren’t good enough, you can’t do this, what are you thinking? You might get hurt!”

To Thine Own Self Be True

Here is what I’ve decided. I might get hurt. Yep. In fact, I probably will. Maybe I won’t, but the thing is, so what? Can I not survive it? I think I can. I know I can. I don’t want to live a life where I am not risking the BIG STUFF. Not just romantically; I don’t want anyone to think this only applies to romance, it’s just the example I used. I could just as easily have talked about career, finances, mothering, legal issues, family of origin drama, body issues, anything. There is just no sense in playing small here. I wasn’t put on this planet to walk on eggshells.

When I was active in my disease, all I ever did was walk on eggshells. Every drink, every pill, every line, was another layer I was hiding behind, tiptoeing around the truth of me, hoping it wouldn’t wake up and call me out. We are very brave to get sober and drop that first layer, willingly. And we are braver still the more sober we get, and the closer we get to the truth of our very being. One thing I can tell you—we won’t be disappointed by what we find to be true, only that we kept it covered up for so long.

We run from what matters most to us. We hide from the truth that calls us from the moment we are born. This is why it is so often said, “Know Thyself.” And then, “To Thine Own Self Be True.” Or, as my friend Mikey said to me once, many years ago, “You don’t have to be anyone that you isn’t. Aren’t. Ain’t.”

As anyone who has been reading these blogs knows, my main areas of interest are the spiritual journey and concerns about remaining as open, awake and aware as possible at all times. That alone will keep anyone busy, as the Ego is a worthy opponent that is constantly trying to undermine any efforts at living in truth and grace. The Ego is like a crafty old wolf, always lurking around trying to find a moment of weakness, telling lies and playing games. Addiction is one of the greatest tools of the Opponent, for the goal of the Ego is to block ourcontact with truth, with the Divine, with our selves—and our addiction covers all the bases quite nicely.

When we are active in our disease, we are in a trance of complete delusion—we are puppets with blinders on. As there are many types of addiction (from the obvious drugs and alcohol to the not so obvious drama addicts and rage-aholics who create strife in their lives and the lives of others in order to obtain a rush) there are many other people incarcerated inside of themselves, cut off and isolated, sleepwalking through life, who are not even aware of their condition. As alcoholics and drug addicts, we are gifted with an alarm clock that others are not. We have a chance at redemption others don’t always get.

When we wake up from the dream of addiction, we are confronted with a new reality—new for us anyway—it’s the same reality many people have been living for a long time. How to navigate without the puppet strings? How do we deal? It’s like the scene in the movie The Matrix when Neo is given the choice between the red pill and the blue and he chooses the pill of truth, and in doing so, the illusions are stripped away. He is plunged into reality—not one that is as attractive as the Matrix, which is a lie, a shared dream. In the real world the clothes are tattered, the food goop, there is no sunlight, no real creature comfort in sight—but when they look each other in the eye, it’s a real eye looking back, and to a seeker of truth, that one fact is more valuable than the entire world of illusion. Connection. Unity. Love. Service. Compassion. The entire Matrix is a trifle compared to the infinite value of these things, even in the smallest doses.

In Eastern thought, the veils of illusion that are used to bewitch us are called Maya, and the continuous but random drift of passions, desires, emotions and experiences inside the land of illusion is called Samsara. The Matrix is a great metaphor because the Matrix is Maya, and the people in the Matrix are simply dreaming life—Samsara. Once we surrender drugs and alcohol, we are still left with the rest of the illusory world and all its other temptations with which to replace the substance. Putting away the substance is hard enough, but then there is everything else! If we are lucky, we quickly get to the heart of the matter and discover how false and hollow these promiscuity, ambition, cheap thrills, gossip, gambling, emotional hostage taking, material possessions, power, victimhood, people-pleasing, rage and financial gain are.

We exploit them and find that they work at first. But then they stop working so well, and pretty soon they don’t work at all. Hopefully we discover a new value system at this point, one that doesn’t tolerate the False Idols. Sometimes we lament at the loss of these cheap thrills, but then we gain humility and maturity, we grow up, we stop wanting more and start wanting the Next Level. We begin to seek real experiences that nourish our souls, support intimacy in our relationships and sustain our recovery. We begin to love life just the way it is and stop complaining about the way it isn’t. We look to neutralize conflict or avoid it when possible (and healthy).

And hopefully we learn that when we are stripped down to our most undiluted essence, life also disrobes in a spiritual striptease that leaves only the naked truth, with nothing in between you and Supreme Beingness, the Source, God, whatever you choose to call it. Once you’ve experienced that, you will be loathe to ever let anything stand in between you and the Source ever again.

If you haven’t seen The Matrix in a while, I suggest you do. My favorite part is near the end, when Neo stops running from the Opponent (Agent Smith, who is as devious, cunning, insidious, and shape shifting as our Ego, our Disease), turns around, and dives right into that thing he has been afraid of. His faith became absolute—faith where there is no room for fear or doubt, only absolute certainty. That sort of faith changes lives, when we turn and face what we fear most, when we stop running. This is Contrary Action to the extreme and it is the basis of nearly every spiritual practice and certainly an important tenet in recovery.

There are lots of things we are running from when we are actively drinking or using. It’s one thing to put down the drink or drug, but entirely another to see what was lurking behind the drink that you were hiding from—from trauma and responsibility, from our deep sense of self loathing, feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure or success, rejection, or fear of nearly everything. When we put down the substance, there is all of that waiting for us, and the Opponent knows it. It will play mind games with you, compel you into absurd situations that will place you in the line of fire in order to find that weak spot, and manipulate with you with your own fear. Why not beat it to the punch and get really real with all that you are running from?

A Course in Miracles (one of my favorite books) says anything that is not love is not real. So I made a list of everything I had been running from, all the fears and false idols, and next to each I wrote—“Is this Love? No. Anything that is not love is not real. This is not love. It isn’t real.” Wouldn’t it be amazing if you came to know that you made it all up, and that you can co-create your own reality with the faith that you are safe, loved, that miracles are on their way and you need to be preparing for an awesome life instead of hiding from an unpleasant one? I think so. If your life isn’t looking like this then you might not be ready to let go of the suffering your mind is telling you is real and that’s okay, too. Most of us are addicted to suffering, and if not addicted, then very, very attached to it. But you are free to choose, and it’s important that you know this. We all have the freedom to choose to stay imprisoned by our hallucinations. You’ll choose to be empowered over disempowered when you are ready.

When we walk into the safe haven of recovery and choose a life of abstinence from mind altering substances, we sign up for the greatest adventure of all time. We wake up from one dream right into another, and we continue to wake up as we go. We shed the false and come to cherish intimacy, relationships, principles, work, spiritual practice. We perceive the world lovingly, with tolerance and compassion. But first things first; if you are new in recovery, rest assured that the terrors will pass. The cravings will pass. You are literally in the worst part of hell, and the Opponent, the Ego, the Trickster, the Disease, some even call him, appropriately, the Devil—is riding your coat tails. That is why you need a community to get you through that first year, you need a full surrender, to be teachable and hopefully desperate. After that, the next part of the journey begins. And the journey, as they say, is the destination. Your entire life has led you to this exact place. Which pill will you choose?

Toward the end, one of the biggest themes of my addiction was profound isolation. Even in a room full of people I could feel incredibly alone. I read recently that loneliness comes from the feeling that you have nothing in common with anyone, and often that feeling is worse in groups, in public. I think that is part of what drove me to isolate myself—at least I had something in common with myself.

What it was like ...

I recall waking up and reaching over for pills—I couldn’t leave the bed without them. The person who provided me with the pills would not put them there if he was angry with me, and on those days I would writhe in agony. He didn’t do that a lot, though, and I would take my pills (vicodin, narco, soma, xanax) and then look at the bleak day ahead of me. The best thing I could think to do was to find a movie on television; sometimes I would bid for stuff on ebay. At some point I had to get to the store for vodka—toward the end I didn’t eat much and would drink when I felt hungry.

Not to mention, I had kids to get to school and when they came home, they would run off and play with friends as I lay comatose on the couch. I had checked out of life and would soon formulate a plan to check out entirely, although I clearly didn’t follow through, and that is another story. I was a zombie, and I felt like the only zombie in the world, no other fellow zombies to talk to. All the party buddies all end up in a room shaking by themselves. That party doesn’t last forever and never ends well for those like me. I recount this because I love to look at how it was, and what it’s like now.

What it’s like now …

Last week, 15 days shy of my five-year sober anniversary, I was killing time in South Pasadena as my daughter visited some friends. I had spent about an hour looking at old photographs and old issues of Mad Magazine in a vintage store and then perusing through books in a used bookstore—the kind you don’t see much of anymore—scanning through volumes of poetry and psychology books. It was a really peaceful way to spend an afternoon. I decided to buy a volume of Rumi and a copy of Women Who Run With Wolves, which I always buy when I see it to give it away to friends.

At the checkout counter (an old-school desk where a girl handwrites the name and price of each volume) I overheard an older woman talking about Kabbalah and the 23-volume Zohar, which I have. I saw the books she was reading, all of which were books I either had or wanted. I jumped into the conversation—I had to know this woman. I offered to help her carry the many books to her car and she asked me if I wanted to get some tea. So we went to a lovely coffee shop situated by the metro tracks as the sun went down and I got to hear her incredible story.

Apparently someone had gotten mad at her over a business transaction and had sent a letter about how she had hundreds of old European paintings and that she had bragged about being the granddaughter of a Nazi warlord and he suspected that her art collection was Nazi loot. This went to trial, almost to the Supreme Court, one of the first landmark cases of internet libel. To clear her name, she went looking into her genealogical background, and discovered that she was actually Jewish.

Her family had come to the Free World and chose to pretend to be Christian Germans to avoid persecution and trouble. She had never known of this and continued her search, curious about what else might be revealed. She then found that she came from a long line of rabbis. She even came to discover that one of her ancestors was supposedly there when Moses came down with the Ten Commandments.

Being a spiritual person, she came to see this situation as incredibly significant. The libel trial caused much strife for all involved—people were fired from jobs and she had to sell her home and move back to the West Coast. But what she was given in return was a connection to her ancestors, her family, her blood lineage.

She looked at me as a train whisked by, as I drank my chai tea, as the sun was setting, and said, “Moreover, I get to make amends for my family, for the fact that they hid their religion and faith to survive, I get to bring the truth to light and release them all. They cannot have a portal in me without my knowing they are there, that they existed, that they are part of who I am. And so I learned Hebrew and I read the 23 volumes of the Zohar in its original form, in their honor. The universe is a minimalist. It burns away everything but what is essential.”

This afternoon was obviously a far cry from five years ago when I was hardly able to leave my house, much less make a new friend. To me, this afternoon was a little adventure, full of old photographs from other people’s lives and memories, and wise words from Rumi and the story of my new friend, the sunset, the clanging bells that alert of a train’s coming … all of these affected me in a subtle yet profound way. Five years ago nothing subtle would have penetrated, would have ever registered with me.

Things either had to have a numbing, zombiefying effect or be a wild rollercoaster, rock-and-roll or Hunter S Thompson freak-out. But a gentle afternoon like this one? Never would have happened. Yet, I wouldn’t trade this scenario for 50 nights of drunken debauchery. And I get to walk away from that with such an elegant, eloquent phrase that will stay with me forever.

“The Universe is a minimalist, burning all but what is essential away.”

If it’s here, it’s meant to be here, and if it goes, it was supposed to go.

This phrase was a great gift, yet another gift that my sobriety has allowed me to be blessed with.

Image courtesy of Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have been noticing that at a certain point in recovery, many people start to want to go to the ‘next level.’ What that means, exactly, is really up to the person experiencing it, but one does know when they have come to a plateau in their personal development and need something to stimulate further growth.

Many people look to AA and the AA community to be that thing that inspires and creates further growth, and it isn’t always going to be able to do that. For me, the answer is not to go to more meetings, because more of the same thing is not my Next Level. I needed something different, something else, something to add to my existing program.

I think it’s dangerous to have this feeling and not seek an outlet for it; I have seen this turn from a spiritual restlessness and desire for growth into a spiritual malady and desire for drink if it’s not addressed.

It almost makes me think that our original desire for a drink stems from a spiritual restlessness. This may not be true for all, but I feel like it’s true for me. I had disconnected from the God of my family, the Southern Baptist, Judgmental God. I wanted nothing to do with him, but that doesn’t mean I wanted nothing to do with something bigger than me, something I could turn to, something that helped me feel safe in the world. It’s like someone who is estranged from his father—being estranged doesn’t fix the problem of feeling lonely, missing the relationship, being resentful at the isolation from the source of comfort and safety. And so, I was like that, estranged from God but missing God. And then… there was alcohol, and the spiritual suffering was numbed to some extent.

Even during all my drinking and using, I was obsessed with books by illuminated souls, such as Joseph Campbell, Howard Thurman, and Pierre Tielhard de Chardin. I would constantly read about other religions and spiritual practices. I wanted something, but since I made alcohol and drugs my Higher Power, all I could do was intellectualize about it. I couldn’t have that experience of being connected to the Source as my own.

I was reminded of the scriptural saying of my early days, which said that God is a jealous God and would have no other before Him. In this situation it was true, but in a different way—no jealousy was involved, but truly when I put alcohol and drugs (or anything, for that matter—love, money, fear, you name it) before God, then I did not have access to the true Source. And so it was—I worshipped alcohol, I worshipped drugs, I worshipped the high, the oblivion. And there was no room for God.

When I got sober, I slowly got to know my Higher Power. It really helped that I was encouraged to find a God of my understanding. One thing I know for sure is that I cannot ever understand my Higher Power. The second I think I do, I realize that it’s no longer my Higher Power, but my idea of a Higher Power, which will always be more than I can conceive of. The God of my understanding is a God I don’t understand. My Higher Power is truly a mystery, has a playful sense of humor, is generous and loving, sends me into situations that cause my heart and soul to expand and grow. I do not have a name for It, or a gender, or an idea of what It looks like, I only know that I am having an amazing relationship with this Grace that holds all things together, and I love it. I love this relationship for providing all the things I always wanted—I am safe, secure, protected and guided. I am encouraged to Know Myself, and to love myself, so that I can more fully love and accept others. And, I am happy. Every single day.

So then there is the Next Level. It got to a point for me where I wanted to really go beyond where I am right now. I want to know who I am and what I am doing, which of my behaviors are programmed and how to de-program myself so I am coming from an authentic and true place.

I have to discover what my Truth really is, so I can know how to come from that place, and I have to discover what is false, so I can reject it in favor of the Truth. I have heard it said that if you kill yourself in the first five years of sobriety, you are killing the wrong person. I am a few months shy of my fifth sober birthday, and I can tell you, that is so true. I am so much more ME than I was when I came in—when I got sober, and for the first few years, I was just a bundle of programming, reactions, raw nerves and issues. I was run by resentments and fears and desires. I did what I did because I didn’t know what else to do—it was automatic, like a robot. Even if it felt spontaneous or original, like I was making my own decisions, the underlying truth was that I really wasn’t.

Once I started to reject my script, and respond, not react, right in the moment and based on the truth of me, I found a liberation that cannot be put into words. I can’t even describe it to you, except that the experience of it is worth living for. It’s inspired and inspiring. I wanted to dive deeper into it, to understand more. I am a seeker, and I know where to look, and as such I have been very involved with my own personal Next Level.

But I have seen people who are not seekers by nature who are hit with the spiritual restlessness and, like I said before, not knowing how to use it to motivate them into a spiritual inquiry allows it to turn into a spiritual malady. It’s easy at that time to start questioning AA, and recovery itself. People in this phase tend to go to fewer and fewer meetings, and grow ‘bored’ of the recovery community. When we don’t work the steps, we lose our footing. The 11th Step is an ongoing step, and it can be a real doozy for some.

If you feel yourself wanting more than AA, don’t turn your back on it, just grab onto something else to supplement what AA is. It’s important to know that AA isn’t everything. It isn’t claiming to be. It encourages you to deepen your relationship with your Higher Power in addition to going to meetings, being of service and letting go of resentments.

If you are church-minded, find a great church. Find a meditation group, or go to yoga. There are a million great books that can inspire a spiritual journey to blossom—I suggest Deepak Chopra’s Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire’, orMarianne Williamson’s Return To Love’, or the book she refers to throughout it, A Course In Miracles. I have become seriously interested in A Course In Miracles, and also a system of teaching, or a school of thought, called The Fourth Way, whose basic principle is to Know Thyself. Kabbalah is fascinating as well. Any and all of these give the spiritual support system that a really inspiring program of recovery should have as part of its arsenal for success.

I bring it up because I have spoken to yet another friend, (of the many who have hit that spot, that spiritual restlessness, between their third and fifth year) and he opted out, decided to try a little controlled drinking. I am close to him so I watched how easily he went from wanting more light to tossing himself into the dark. We do have the disease of ‘more’, but if we are deliberate and aim in the right direction, that desire for more can serve us well. There is nothing wrong with more light, more love, more service, more connection to a Higher Power, more grace, more harmony, more unity.

The definition of the word ‘sin’ literally means to ‘miss the mark.’ If you aim in the wrong direction, you are bound to do just that. When we use our weaknesses (our desire for more) as our strength (our desire for more used rightly in the name of Grace), we do not miss the mark. We do not ‘sin’. We create a better world for ourselves and others, and that is the opposite of missing the mark; that’s the whole point.

So if you are feeling mad at AA right now, resentful of meetings, wanting more but not knowing what, it’s a slippery time for you. Understand that it’s not AA’s fault; you simply are being called to go deeper. Feed your soul with whatever spiritual practice or words of wisdom or religious community you find works for you to support your sobriety, and don’t delay. Steps 10, 11, and 12 must be done on a regular basis. Constant contact with a Higher Power is an integral part of this thing. If you are feeling restless, you are being called into action, and feeding that spiritual longing with more Spirit is the solution.

Last Friday, Marianne Williamson spent an evening with the ONE80CENTER family. For those who don’t know, Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed spiritual author and lecturer. Six of her ten published books have been New York Times best sellers. Four of these have been on top of the New York Times best sellers list. A Return to Love is considered a must-read of The New Spirituality.

On a personal level, Marianne Williamson is a hero of mine. I love her message. I have read many of her books. I was introduced to A Course in Miracles through her, as her books and her lectures focus on using it to its fullest extent. That book has had an intense impact on my life—both my life as a person in recovery (by deepening my conscious contact with my Higher Power) and as a person in the world—a mother, an employee, a sponsor, a friend. My exposure to Marianne has had a profound impact on my own spiritual path, as it has on countless others.

Before I continue, I feel like I should talk about A Course in Miracles. There are many who have heard of it but don’t know much else about it. The name makes many think that it’s a lecture series or a seminar. People think Marianne wrote it. The truth is that it is a book—the first part being text and the second a workbook. The workbook consists of 365 days of exercises, one for each day. Here is an example:

Lesson 1

Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything. Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see:

• This table does not mean anything.? This chair does not mean anything.? This hand does not mean anything.

Then look farther away from your immediate area, and apply the idea to a wider range:

• That door does not mean anything.? That body does not mean anything.? That lamp does not mean anything.

The “Matriarch of the Blues” has died. Music legend Etta James died last Friday at Riverside Community Hospital in California of complications from leukemia. She was 73. She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in 1938. Her first manager and promoter cut up Jamesetta’s name and reversed it: Etta James.

Last night when I heard she passed, I was reminded of one night in the ’90s when I went to the House of Blues with my then husband. We went up to the Foundation Room, which at the time was rather exclusive, without knowing who was playing on the stage below. As we stood around drinking and talking to people (I have no recollection of who or why we were there) I heard the song “At Last,” coming from the television monitors placed around the exclusive club, showing the performers on the stage below.

Everyone knows that song; and I think for most people it has some significance, even if you can’t even say what it is. I remember my knees buckling a bit, and I wanted to get down to the concert area, but I also didn’t want to leave the monitor, hearing that song, and that voice, at that moment. I heard something in that voice calling out to me. It would have been the same if she had been singing my very name. She had my undivided attention.

What I didn’t know at the time was that in her voice was the struggle that I would soon face myself—the struggle for independence from the slave master of addiction and alcoholism. For many years, James battled the disease. At the time, I was still in the grip of it.

She is quoted as once saying this about her youth: “I wanted to be rare, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted to be exotic as a Cotton Club chorus girl, and I wanted to be obvious as the most flamboyant hooker on the street. I just wanted to be.”

This sounds like the battle cry of most female addicts and alcoholics. We want the glamour, we want what it promises--without realizing that the promise is empty and that glamour is a big lie. I hadn’t realized it yet at the time. I didn’t know I had a problem and I didn’t know I was invested in a lie.

Standing there in that club, in a clingy designer dress and stealing away to the bathroom to do cocaine and with a tumbler full of straight chilled vodka, I thought I was living the life. But there was a nagging sense that it wasn’t real, though I sought to shut out that thought with every drink, every line, every pill. Etta James and I had a lot in common, and I think I heard that in her voice that night. It gave me chills.

In 1960, James was introduced to heroin. This is not unusual for many of the great singers of her time, it seems. And the story isn’t that unique, either. Johnny Cash, Ray Charles—many succumbed to this substance, and lived to tell the tale. In her time, it was unique in that she was a woman, and was established as a force to be reckoned with in a mostly male-dominated culture and industry. She alternately made some of her best recordings during this time, while trying to maintain her drug lifestyle, which resulted in time behind bars. She spent all her money on drugs, almost sacrificed her career, bounced checks, forged prescriptions and stole from her friends. A judge finally gave her a choice: prison or rehabilitation. In 1974, she spent months in recovery at a psychiatric hospital.

At that time, Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones, a long time fan of Etta, wrote her a letter, telling her that if she stayed clean, she could open for the Rolling Stones on tour. In 1978, she did just that. It took over two decades for James to finally overcome her addictions, during which she spent much time in and out of Tarzana Psychiatric Hospital and The Betty Ford Clinic. By the ’90s, she’d reached a new generation of fans and won a Grammy. And I was one of that new generation. I felt like someone had pointed a finger at me and said, “You, yeah, you. She’s got your number. Listen up.”

She did. We both found our way into recovery, finally into a life of peace where our skin fits. We finally got to recognize the lie we so desperately wanted to be true. In her voice one hears the past heartbreaks, the grit of living hard, the soft and sugary tone like angels melting that comes from the deep and weaponless soul of a woman. You can hear recovery in her voice, the struggle to own oneself and the emancipation, when one is finally free.

That strikes a chord for anyone who has been there, or is there now. Like the sounds that only dogs can hear, it might be true that only we addicts and alcoholics can even hear it in her voice, it might be true that it might not strike the same chord in others as it does with us.

Regardless, she definitely struck many chords with many people. “Etta James was a pioneer. Her ever-changing sound has influenced rock ‘n’ roll, rhythm and blues, pop, soul and jazz artists, marking her place as one of the most important female artists of our time,” said Rock and Roll Hall of Fame president and CEO Terry Stewart. “From Janis Joplin to Joss Stone, an incredible number of performers owe their debts to her. There is no mistaking the voice of Etta James, and it will live forever.”

For any one of us to be able to pass out of this world into whatever awaits as a sober person is a great victory of the spirit. Our addictions are our prisons, and we are the key master of our own cage. To be liberated, to own oneself, to know oneself, and to die in this exalted state is the best way to exit this mortal coil. I am inspired that she fought to give this to herself in life, and in her passing moments, and I am grateful for the legacy she leaves behind.

Rest in peace, Etta James.