davaidavai

Something someone said yesterday resonated. You can't heal your insanity with your own insane mind. For years, I thought my thinking was air tight. Life is a sh*t storm, you've got to weather the good and the bad together, everyone gets drunk, it's a great and glorious part of civilization, take Dostoyevski for example. There are as many roads to happiness as their are fish in the sea, you are special, blah, blah, blah. Ratso Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy comes to mind. Someone who purports to knowing something and yet knows nothing but suffering.

The hardest thing is setting aside my ego so that I can uncover an ethical reality that exists beneath the random assortment of popular truisms which are so many pedestals to squat on.

My problems are common. I suffer from a spiritual ailment that makes thinking and seeing clearly very hard. This is a common problem. Drinking is a symptom of a deeply boring, imprisoned mental condition. In order to see clearly, and to not crave drink, I have to allow myself to take instruction. As suffering ultimately comes from a similar place, so the cessation of suffering involves walking a similar path. It's not a mental trick. It is chemical in as much as chemicals reflect an external experience. It's not a leap of faith. It's rationally recognizing through trial and error the facts therebye entering into a different awareness that is palpable and not boring. Here resides, call it God, call it truth and beauty, in every detail.

Whereas my insane mind says, facts schmacks! Figure it out on your own!

Although, I have been advised to take all epiphanies at this stage with a grain of salt.

winslynn

A sick mind can't heal a sick mind.Self knowledge and fear are not enough to make you stay sober.The alcoholic has no defense against the first drink,his defense must come from a Higher Power.
I found the Power in AA.After 5 months of trying as hard as I could to do AA I suddenly realized I hadn't thought about drinking for weeks.Who did that?

sugarbear1

very true!

of course, I got a little sober time and thought I could tell myself how to live life.....

ooops!

Today, I have a network and a sponsor and those people care!

Sapling

The only insanity that I can't live with..Is the insanity of picking up that first drink. Great post davaidavai.

davaidavai

Today, I found a chair. I've been eating in bed for the last 6 months. It's not a very good chair, but it's a start.

Thanks Winslynn for your comment. I suddenly hit upon a very Buddhist apprehension of higher power during my first 2 weeks in AA. I was walking around the city, my mouth literally ajar, listening to everything. Life felt like this tremendous project bound by rules, run through with chaos and order, sublime. The gateway toward that experience was AA, being in a room with people who had a similar intension, assessing myself honestly, with a pretention to rage against myself in order to beseach life for help.

The intensity of that feeling has diminished somewhat. And yet it lingers. I've chosen to believe in that apprehension of life and it's accompanying rules and graces emblazoned upon a sublime mystery. You give what you get. You receive pain when you cause pain. And we're all bound by harmony and chaos within the confines of an unsolvable phenomenon wherein reason and faith seem to blend into each other, where all rational, or irrational certainties decay and die, where good and evil seem like apt metaphor, where ancient wisdom is passed down from generation to generation, not because it is catchy, but because it really works.

So long as I carry an awareness of these things at the forefront of my thoughts, I have sanity. As the Orthodox say, we can know God's works and experience his energies although he remains ultimately sublimely unknown.

I am wondering if this conception can be useful to others who are equivalently put off by old time religion. It's not like the 'higher power' is despensing sanity as in a revival tent. It's that when we are aware of the mystery in an intense way, we are more sane, and drinking seems a trite and pointless diversion.

polaris

I felt somewhat compelled to comment here as well.

I have a somewhat complex story with the drink and life (as we all do), and I just got off a 6 month deployment in the Navy. Plus the two weeks after (generally there is a 4 week period called "POM" which is VERY relaxed) deployment I got screwed as an "FSA" and had to work almost every day. Then I realized a capacity to drink and party and still make it to work bright and early the next day. I met a friend who seems to be a prodigy in this regard.

I remember drinking and hitting the strip clubs (plus a house party) and leaving with just enough time to go change into our uniforms and go to work (drunk and with no sleep). Thats an awful ability to have.

I feel guilty when I post here sometimes since I still continue to be a drunk, and I do figure that determination to help others may be my only ultimate salvation. I want to be able to help without being a hypocrite as I loathe hypocrisy.

I have searched Philosophy and Spirituality long before I ever had issues with drinking. So...what conclusions are to be drawn from that? I feel that there is a seeking for something that Ive yet to find. I hope it can be found, as there are many temptations, but the constant pouring of poison into my body is quite detrimental and unproductive.

There are many things I still aspire towards and dying an alcoholic death is not among them. Yet, oddly enough, alcohol can make one feel so much more inspired.

Forgive me.

Sapling

Nothing to forgive you for. I'm an alcoholic too. Nice post.

Zencat

That insane thinking sucked. Having a change of mind sure can clear things up for me.

NYCDoglvr

If you're interested in why we're insane, here's a terrific book: "Addictive Personality: Understanding the Addictive process and compulsive behavior" by Craig Nakken, a shrink who specializes in addiction, head of a rehab and also a rabbi. It's on Amazon.

At a recent meeting someone with a lot of time said "when I want to prove to myself I'm an alcoholic, all I have to do is cut back on meetings". The more meetings I go to the more stable, sane and productive I feel. When I isolate, am left ruminating in my sick brain, my thinking becomes distorted pretty quick. What I saw when I first got sober is that my best thinking led me to a near-death experience as a drunk. Yea, I sure knew a lot! So coming into AA I said "I give up, I don't know what to do, you tell me" and followed suggestions.

Threshold

I very much relate to this part of your post. For decades I studied and debated, and pondered philosophy etc. Fascinating stuff...It made all sorts of sense on paper, on computer screens and in my mind, but supposedly understanding how or even why wasn't what I needed. I needed a different way to live.

My studying of philosophy was an interesting hobby, but it was also a distraction, a real good looking one, from me being honest about my own fears, frustrations and anger in my life. I used my knowledge as a smoke screen to hide behind.

I was on the math team in high school, but totally flopped as a cashier trying to count back change to customers.

Now I am finally learning to live, to face LIFE instead of juggle ideas about life.

Now I am not just studying the thoughts of great minds, but their lives...do they have what I want? or just the illusion of what I want, or just ideas about what I want?

I pay attention to the people around me. Their faces, how they carry themselves, the timbre of their laughter. A life well lived and a genuine sense of well being is what I am after.

tomsteve

i complicated spirituality and God for a long time.then when i was crushed by a self imposed crisis i could no longer put off or avoid( stop drinking or kill myself), i clearly faced the proposition that God( of my understanding) is either everything or nothing. He is or isnt. i decided He is and could help me if i sought Him. i cant, He can, so i let Him.