Hard-Ass Work

"Since the media is no longer here, no one is asking the questions, and BP seems to have the run of things. I have been in a deep depression the last two weeks coming to term with the fact that the nation's attention span doesn't seem to allow for any more real reporting about the spill. One of the main problems is that to solve this issue involves confronting our very own personal behaviors and habits, and it makes it a much harder thing to deal with day-in and day-out. We just want it to be rosey and good and for the birds to live happily ever after, and that's not the case."

The above quote is from Drew Wheelan who blogs for the American Birding Association and has been reporting findings from the Gulf that are much different than what you will hear on the evening news. Drew has become one of my heroes, along with most of the other organizations and bloggers I link to. For some reason, though, I was drawn more personally into the experience through Drew's covering it. In the past few months, Drew has awakened to a reality he finds difficult to face. And yet he continues to face it day after day, he continues to consistently report what he finds and try to gain attention, and he's man enough to tell us how dmaned depressing it all is - especially the head-in-the-very-oily-sand attitude of his fellow Americans.

He linked to this site by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. There is very disturbing video on this site - hundreds of dead birds on Raccoon Island, not necessarily oiled, but definitely killed by something.

I understand Drew's feelings all too well. I continue to experience depression and some anxiety as I learn about the true state of the world, my complicity in that state, and how very late it is in the game. Like Drew, I'm learning about these things in a very short period of time. These intense negative mental states were not new to me. My life-time struggle with alcoholism and mental health issues had wrought similar states in the past. Everyone assumes that awakening is a glorious, spiritual experience usually accompanied by states of bliss and oneness. I beg to differ.

Awakening is hard-ass work; it's mostly not fun at all and the frustration level itself can be paralyzing. But there is something through the other side and for me it's a burgeoning sense of purpose. Every day that I stay sober I beat the odds. Every time that I post about the crime in the Gulf, which is only a symptom of the larger crime being perpetrated, there's a chance the right person will read it. Every plan that I make and implement to live closer to the earth is an opportunity to feel my true place and share how I think such village living is a huge part of the answer to the world's woes.

My wish for Drew, and for anyone else struggling with anguish over our world, is that they find this same sense of purpose. That they know there is no small action now. Everything counts.

When we need comfort around here, we turn to our food. Slow comfort food. One of our favorites is roasted roots, rustic. Here's my favorite version:

Roasted Roots, Rustic

1 sweet potato or yam, sliced

1 yukon gold potato, sliced

1/2 red bell pepper sliced in strips

1/2 yellow or orange bell pepper sliced in strips

1/2 onion sliced however you want it

cloves or garlic, as many as you want, these turn out so yummy and are packed with myriad health benefits along with all the other ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp coarse ground sea salt

1/2 tbsp ground black pepper

few sprigs of fresh rosemary (optional)

Place ingredients in an oiled cast iron skillet. Drizzle olive oil over all and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour. Eat. Go to heaven.

Thanks, Drew! For all your hard work and commitment. You are not alone.

Teachability

Teachability is keeping me sober today. Tracy Chapman has a song I used to listen to back in the days when a pint of vodka per night was the norm. Part of the lyrics are, "I've done so many things wrong I don't know if I can do right." That was then. This is now.

Having alcoholism has nothing to do with moral ability. In my case it was activated by the poor coping skills of an 11-year old girl and her very young and inexperienced mother. If it hadn't been that it probably would've been activated by something else but no matter. That 11-year old girl is being given a golden opportunity at 47 to change the pattern.

The most difficult part of this newfound clarity of mine is realizing that there are people in my life for whom my alcoholism is somewhat convenient. Also, realizing that I've gone a long way towards keeping it convenient for them and only I can make the necessary changes to stop that from happening again. We alcoholics make fabulous scapegoats and the longer we fail to solve our drinking dilemma the more vulnerable we become. I, for one, am sick and tired of letting it happen over and over and over again.

Solving my alcoholism is about taking my own power back but I'm no more capable of doing that now than when I was an adolescent. I don't have that kind of power on my own. Luckily, I'm not on my own with it anymore. I have access to another power and right now it's speaking , among others, through Eric Frances over at PlanetWaves:

You have the moxie, the charm, the style, energy and most of all, the personal integrity required to succeed in the way that you want to. In fact, you can forget about everthing on that list except for the last item. Success does not usually happen fast, and we have good reason to question the kind that does. What I am telling you is that you have solid reasons to have faith in yourself. So what if various elements of your romantic (and professional) life make about as much sense as two jigsaw puzzles mixed together. Who cares if there are those nights you feel like you're holed up in a raft on the ocean of your own existence. You actually know who you are. You actually believe in yourself.

He's right. I do. That tastes a lot like freedom to me.

Clarity

Clarity is helping me stay sober today. Clarity about who I am. Clarity about what I need to do. Clarity about the reality of alcoholism; clarity about the reality of recovery; clarity about placing anyone else's needs before the needs of my recovery. Along with clarity comes a whole boatload of hope to go along with it. Because I'm seeing things as they are - not as I wish they were. This is hard-won clarity. I have earned it and I intend to nurture it, water it, feed it and watch it grow.

Clarity about my own character and my own intentions regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. Clarity about that sick feeling I get in my stomach when someone is wanting to keep me in the dark about things. Clarity about how useful I am as an active alcoholic and who I'm useful to, and who I want to be useful to.

Clarity. It's a very good thing.

It's a Health Crisis

It's helping me a lot to view alcoholism as a health crisis. Nothing less. And nothing more. When I went through treatment in 1988 I was provided a good education on the physical consequences of alcohol and drug abuse. I was 27 years old and despite many years of heavy cocaine and alcohol abuse, I was still in good health and my desire to live was strong. I had been attending some 12 step meetings prior to treatment, but I remember finding the program very confusing and as they say, I just didn't "get it". However, after going through treatment I got that alcoholism and drug addiction were killers and that I was quick headed to an early grave if I didn't stop. I became extremely motivated to stay sober in order to live a healthier happier life and I became willing to do whatever it took to ensure my sobriety.

In the six years that I remained sober following treatment, I fully regained my physical health. But there's a catch. My mental, spiritual and emotional health did not follow suit. It wasn't anything you could actually see from the outside; I wasn't batshit crazy or anything, but I ignored many an inner urging regarding the program that had been promoted to me as the cure for my problem. News Flash! Quick way to acting batshit crazy on the outside: ignore inner urgings. To be perfectly honest, it didn't bother me enough at the time to make a big deal of it. I was sober and I knew I was doing all the right things to stay that way.

But it brings up the AA concept of "attraction vs. promotion". What AA means by this is that they will be available if you have want of their help, but they will not promote themselves. It's a great organizational tradition. Here is the long form:

11.) Our relations with the general public should be characterized by personal anonymity. We think A.A. ought to avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as A.A. members ought not be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed. Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion. There is never need to praise ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.

However, my experience was that AA was heavily promoted to me and I think that's not entirely AA's fault - the treatment industry became AA's new best friend and found a way to make a lot of money with a ready-made program. It was easy; a no-brainer. Send everyone to AA; if they don't grasp the program, well, it's probably their fault.

The tradition above seems in stark contrast to the one below, which states:

5.) Each group has but one primary purpose-to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

I just saw a television advertisement for AA not two days ago. I could possibly see this as "attraction vs. promotion" if it weren't for the fact that virtually everyone on the planet knows what and who AA is and how to find them. So I have to wonder why expensive televison adverstising would be considered "attraction." Carrying a message sounds distinctly like promotion and I certainly felt it had been promoted to me at the treatment facility in 1988.

It's the same type of discrepancy that bugs me about the steps as a solution. Even if you don't want to call alcoholism a disease, no one can deny that it constitutes a major health crisis. I think for some the crisis may be primarily mental, for others physical and still for others spiritual. But every aspect of life is involved in the manifestation of the problem. AA focuses fully and entirely on the spiritual aspect. Maybe for those people whose primary manifestation is spiritual, AA works very well and for others the primary manifestation is physical, or mental (depression/anxiety) and the focus on overcoming resentment and anger, identifying character defects and making amends, is not all that helpful to a person who doesn't feel extreme resentment or anger and who is all too aware of her "defects of character". I don't want it to sound like I've never dealt with these emotions. Of course, we all have. But they just weren't my primary, or even secondary, emotions. The negative emotions that plague me are guilt and self-recrimination; much more inner than outer directed emotions. I suppose it could be argued that they are flip sides of the same coin, but it seems an important distinction in my own epxerience.

This all makes perfect sense to me. Which could mean a number of things, from I'm on to something here to I'm completely delusional. I guess we'll all just have to stay tuned.

New Moon in Aries

Once a month the moon goes through her dark phase, also called the New Moon. This occurs when the moon and sun are conjunct on the ecliptic. When they are so joined, there is no light from which the moon can reflect and so she appears dark in the sky. As the two bodies slowly begin to pull away from each other, she once again begins to reflect the sun's light, in a sliver of a crescent at first, gradually, each night building light on her surface until she rides full and round in the night sky. Today the moon is conjunct the sun in the traditional astrological sign of Aries, heralder of spring, new beginnings and awakening life. In the northern hemisphere of course.

This morning there is a skiff of snow on the valley floor, the sky is clear and blue and the Swan Range in the distance across the lake is proud and stunning. It's cold, but the sun is beginning to carry warmth here and the days will continue to lengthen until they last 18 hours. Dawn and evening will stretch on and on like the taffy of the gods, creating more of those in-between times like twilight and dusk and slow morning; more time for the human soul to integrate the lessons of the earth mother, more time to celebrate the life we have here, more time to heed the call.

It's an auspicious time to begin a medicine wheel journey. Because the medicine wheel is a cosomos-viewer created by indigenous peoples in different parts of the world, there are different meanings for the directions, different animal totems, different lessons to be learned, different tools with which to manifest spirit. Which means of course that it's up to the individual to intuitively decide where to begin, what processes to use and how long to spend with each direction.

I've decided that my initial journey around the wheel will begin now, in the spring, in the east. I will journey once around the wheel in the coming year, seasonally and with the rhythms of the moon. The element of the east is air where the power of the mind comes to bear on the creative forces alive in the universe and begins to work in harmony with the elemental muses. I will use my time in the east, which will last until the summer solstice in June, to begin to heal my body from its various abuses by practicing extreme self-care and to prepare for the remainder of the journey.

I will post more about how I'm going about this as I go about it, but for now I've decided to continue my exercise program and hopefully notch it up a bit as well as adding weekly saunas to the routine. My dear friend and employer, Roberta, has a FAR infrared sauna that is available to me almost any time. I've used the sauna, but not in any disciplined way and not with much intent behind it. That's going to change and I intend to sweat. A lot. Sweat is purifying and I want to assist my body with the healing that good old-fashioned sweat can provide. I will rest, as long and as often as I need to. When I can afford extras, I will do them: massage and yoga come immediately to mind.

This seems like a good time to say that I'm up for any and all suggestions about how to implement better self-care. I know nutrition will play a huge part for me.

Another thing I'm going to do is use the new and full moons to write out intentions each month and follow-up with how I'm doing on them. I've done this before, but once again not in a disciplined or meaningful way. My intentions for this cycle are:

1. Stay sober
2. Sweat 5-6 times a week whether through exercise or sauna.
3. Continue with my outside treatment protocol which includes group and individual
therapy, medication management (for depression and anxiety which continue to
show up), relapse prevention, AA attendance and LSR e-mail list participation.

Intense Pressure

This term, intense pressure, is the best description I've come up with thus far to describe the past few months of my life. I have felt an increasing sense of urgency to DECIDE NOW! how I will live the next 20 years of my life. Making decisions at 47 years of age is a world away from making them at 27 or 37.

I'm in a somewhat precarious situation here in Montana - 2000 miles away from family and life-time friends. There is a business in Georgia that I could run if I decided to go back and my inability to find full-time employment here is creating a lot of financial stress. I have been considering moving in with Brent and attending the college in Kalispell, but I don't think I'm ready to live with him, or anyone.

What I'm realizing is that I can't make any of these decisions while I'm still feeling the intense pressure to DECIDE!. What I can do is stay sober one day at a time and do what is in front of me to do today. The time will come when the decisions are to be made and I can trust that when that time arrives, I will be ready.

In the meantime, there are chores to do and days to live, free of the burden of alcohol and fully participating in my own life and the lives of those I love.

Moving Forward

I finally have an appointment with a therapist this Tuesday morning. I'm eager to see her and have started a list of things I want to explore with her. In the meantime, and since it's taken a month to get an appointment, I began taking St. John's Wort for the depression I'm experiencing, along with Valerian for anxiety. These are both proven, safe and effective herbs for dealing with both of these issues and they do seem to be helping.

I've also made some decisions and I'm sure that's helping, too. I took a good look at the things I was feeling depressed about and the ones I can't do anything about - like aging - I prayed over and accepted. But there are a few things I can do something about and one is my job/career situation. I've been working two part-time jobs since I was able to after knee surgery, all the while looking for full-time work and applying for a few things. I realized that taking one of these jobs was as depressing as continuing to live without full-time work so I started looking into other options. There is a community college an hour from here that offers one and two-year programs in everything from graphic arts to medical coding. One or two years is doable plus I'm already used to being poor so what's another year or two below the poverty level? So I've got my application all filled out and am planning to start this summer. I'm thinking graphic arts but haven't fully decided yet. It sounds a lot more fun that medical coding!

As for drinking, I've been abstaining some, moderating some and still over-drinking some. I've done a lot of reading, some of which I shared in the previous post, plus I've read two other books: "The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure" by Chriss Prentiss and "My Way Out" by Roberta Jewell (not her real name). Both of these books recommend an approach that engages the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of addiction. I'm putting together a plan for myself that includes recommendations from these two books plus "The Heart of Addiction" by Lance Dodes, M.D. I'll be writing more about that in the coming week.

Reviving Eclectic Recovery

I've decided to revive Eclectic Recovery, the blog. On November 11th I had my last drink. I can't be absolutely, positively, 100% sure, but this feels like the beginning of a long recovery phase. This blog was about my attempts to become a moderate drinker, which sometimes seemed to be working, but most of the time didn't. Because my relationship with alcohol changed in some ways, I thought I might be onto something, but I wasn't. I would like to say that I simply changed my mind and decided not to drink anymore, but that has never worked very well for this problem, despite my beliefs about positive thinking, good intentions, visioning, etc. What really happened is that I had an experience that opened a window of opportunity for me that I have become not only willing, but eager to walk through. I didn't have a lot to do with it.

I had decided on November 10th that it would be my last day of drinking, but I was still feeling doubtful about my ability to actually stay sober. Then, on November 11th, I had a deeply life-changing experience that I couldn't have orchestrated on my own in my wildest imaginings. If you're interested, you can read about it here: http://www.bigskychurch.wordpress.com./ In the meantime, I'm going to revive Electic Recovery. I hope that in the days and months ahead you will come here and find something that helps you in your own struggle - whether it be with alcohol, food, gambling, sex, or just plain life.