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  • 15 September 2020
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Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Category Archives: alcoholism

Expectations. The Update

07 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by David in alcoholism, recovery

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cooking

I watched a video about a mobile home for sale on a lot somewhere in Alabama or Mississippi or some other el primo mobile home state. For almost an hour I tbought about buying a mobile home. An hour. Almost. It would mean I (we) would have to move out to the country, out there in an area where tornadoes go prowling for innocent trailers. Forget that. Maybe I could write lyrics for country music songs if I lived in one.

I did not swim.

I did take a nap.

I fixed my Waldorf chicken salad for J’s lunch tomorrow.

I did two loads of laundry.

So I feel better. I did stuff that needed to be done that wasn’t particularly grandiose. There is hope.

In an unrelated observation, England’s Ben Stokes is a great batsman.

Today’s Topic: Expectations

06 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by David in alcoholism

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#Expectations, #Self-esteem.

AA at noon had “Expectations” for a topic. My whole life is about unmet expectations I place upon my marriage and, most acutely and painfully, the expectations I set for myself. There are things I say I should do and then don’t do, from praying The Rosary to swimming every day, starting that story I have in my head to doing Weight Watchers again.

Reaffirming the tapes of self-hatred I have in my head and keeping my sense of grandiosity inflated seem to be constants in my life. Self-care is hard for me, even after 25 years of sobriety. Those of us who have alcohol and addiction issues learn quickly about low self-esteem and the steps we take to hide it.

I will go swimming today.

I will take a nap.

I will not eat the cookies I bought for J.

Little affirmations. It is the best I can do most days.

Thank you all who read and like and comment on my blog. It means a lot.

Recipes And Recovery

06 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by David in alcoholism, cooking, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

recovery

Our Church book group meets Saturday. We have lunch afterwards, I thought about turning the chicken cacciatore I made the other day into a casserole. I might need to add more mushrooms a package of thawed frozen spinach, more pasta, cover w cheese and bake in the oven til the cheese is melted.

But I keep wondering If I have enough (over a quart size container). Everybody is bringing something and there are Italians in the mix of participants, so I’m betting somebody else can cook. (Gratuitous ethnic stereotype!) Well, I have now declared there is plenty. So I won’t worry.

Somebody at the AA meeting today celebrated five years of sobriety, This is significant for me because five years ago, 5 December 2014, is the day my brother died, the same day this guy got sober. My brother was not alcoholic, but he died too young (65). Maybe Charlie, my brother, has Neal’s back, or so I like to think.

Life is hard enough without people making trouble for no good reason at all. There is magic in keeping your mouth shut. Be gentle with each other and yourself.

Another Day Of Good Self-Care

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by David in alcoholism, Anti-Marxist Activity, Sexuality

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#Sober Living, recovery

Follow-up to the post (#Me Too?. 16 Nov, 2019)

It is ironic how I still have to justify good self-care after a qusrter century of sober living. But I got a decent amount of sleep, ignored news I can do nothing about (all of the news, really), went to an AA meeting, had lunch with J, and went swimming, 1750 meters (over 1 mile).

The Serenity Prayer strikes home tonight, “accept the things I cannot change,” I remember my friend Mikey’s advice to “abandon all hope of a better past”.

Sharing the emotional pain of this long ago incident helped a lot of people, given my long term sobriety, and my dealing with the hurt after all this time. Recovery is about having feelings again. Good feelings and bad feelings.

Now, I’m sitting down. I’ve watched a couple of trains pass through Ashland. J’s lunch is ready. I fixed her strawberries and pineapple, plus the homemade chicken salad she likes. She has to leave for work at the ungodly time of 4:15 to get the Holiday stuff (wonder which ones?) off the truck and on the shelves. I will try to wake up when she does.

And I am serene.

At A College Homecoming

19 Saturday Oct 2019

Posted by David in #Grief, alcoholism

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#Academia, #Grief

Yesterday was spent on a trip to Williamsburg. We went to a memorial ceremony for J’s brother D, a graduate of The College of William Mary, Class of 1968. He died on 29 March, 2019 of ALS. J needed this as part of her mourning for D. She has had bronchitis most of this past week. Some of this congestion, I suspect, is grief unexpressed. It is a long process, this grieving. This College was one of J and D’s common bonds.

I realized, in walking around this lovely setting at this very old College, that college is an alien world for me. I have the degree. I can “pass” for educated. Yet I kept asking myself, “What am I doing here?” A lot of the alumni seem to be asking the same question, because they need alcohol to tolerate this Homecoming Weekend. I don’t go to my homecomings at The University of Virginia for similar reasons. I had to drink to tolerate the whole undergraduate experience there.

We are staying at a rather nice bed and breakfast. However, the room can either be chilly or overheated. We elected overheated. I said it is nice. It is quiet, with some cattle mooing in a front pasture. We don’t have cattle back home in Richmond.

I tried sleeping earlier. That lasted about two hours. I awoke, assessed my body pain, then dressed. After praying a Rosary, I cut my fingernails. The clippings fell on the red carpet, a red slightly darker than cherry Kool-Aid, for which I now suddenly and oddly long. Nails trimmed, I then picked the clippings out of the carpet. That ingathering of the nail clippings became the most meaningful thing I did all day. I guess it holds meaning because it signifies a task completed. And I did it sober, after prayer, after contemplating the Sufferings of Our Lord.

The Rosary has a tie to academia, through the Dominican Friars, like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Dominic. Not only did they champion these prayers to Our Lady, but they more or less invented the university itself. Ironically, let us contrast today’s modern university, with their multi billion dollar endowments, exorbitant budgets, ever-rising tuitions to the work of mendicant friars. What if the faculty had to seek alms before the very first book was opened? What if the students had to go around begging for their tuition before they matriculated?

It sounds odd, weird even. But maybe we would value learning as something other than an entitlement of class, status, or intelligence. Imagine all of our leaders, humbling themselves, as part of a life experience.

Hearing What I Need To Hear

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by David in alcoholism

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

#Emotional_sobriety #Recovery

The last two AA meetings I have attended have had emotional sobriety as the topic. Have I been emotionally sober is the question I ask myself. With the feedback from Jade and Jodie in this blog, my blog posts dealing with how I have made myself a victim on the sexual relationship front have shown me that victimhood there doesn’t contribute to my emotional sobriety. Victimhood feeds into the concept of low self-esteem, which was a major contributor to my drinking. Low self-esteem does not contribute to emotional sobriety.

Today’s meeting was a chance to see my friend Fred, who recently lost his wife to Huntington’s Disease (what killed Woody Guthrie). It’s a slow death like ALS. We talked, reconnected. All in all, a great day.

Right now it’s raining. J has a cold, so chicken soup is cooking.

Life is good.

Emotional Sobriety H.A.L.T.

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by David in alcoholism, Uncategorized

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#Emotional_sobriety #Recovery

H. Hungry A. Angry L. Lonely. T. Tired

Alcoholics Anonymous is chock full of pithy sayings intended to support persons in recovery from alcoholism. One such saying is HALT, outlined above. I smugly thought that my emotional sobriety was in good shape, until I compared how I felt according to the HALT yardstick.

Hungry. I didn’t let myself get hungry. No I was eating at every chance and weight that I lost was coming back, and I never thought feeding my upset was a sign of emotional dis-ease.

Angry. I thought I was justified in the outright anger around issues I’m powerless over, like politics and the Roman Catholic Church. Add to those the petty resentments that I have toward J about the sexual desert.

Lonely. No sex. Need I say more?

Tired. I would sleep at every chance I get.

Here I was, trudging through life, with one issue after another, never thinking about drinking, but attached to the grievances of life, feeling like I deserved to hold all these resentments. Wrong. They were taking a toll.

In all likelihood, none of these circumstances will suddenly disappear. But you know, I don’t have to let them run my life.

Popeye Therapy

27 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by David in alcoholism, Cartoons

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Tags

#Grief

I woke up in the middle of the night again. I’m used to that.

There is a funeral in eight hours for a guy from the fellowship who killed himself. I should go but I don’t want to go. I just want to stay home. I told my friend H I was ambivalent about going. He understands.

I chaired a meeting last night on the First Step, “we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.” Sobriety gives me the chance to do the next right thing.

Right now I’m watching a Popeye cartoon, For Better Or Worser. Popeye is dealing with the unmanageability in his life by getting a wife, who turns out to be Olive Oyl. As luck would have it, Bluto is also interested in Olive as a potential marital partner. Chaos follows. So the little drama plays out in the whimsical, wacky cartoon world with a musical score in perfect harmony with the relentless craziness. The moral “Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

I guess I feel ambivalent about seeing my former sister-in-law again, who, at one time, was friends with the dead guy.

Feelings of worthlessness are coming up because of my failed marriage with her sister. The last time I saw Sal was at my ex-wife’s funeral, four years ago.

I don’t want to revisit that pain again.

The voice of Popeye was Billy Costello, “Red Pepper Sam” in the early cartoons before Jack Mercer took over doing the voice.

Now comes King Of The Mardi Gras, Mercer’s first turn as Popeye. Bluto was voiced by Gus Wickie, the most famous of the Bluto voices. Olive Oyl was Mae Questel, the one and only voice of Olive. To put a face with a name Mae played Aunt Bethany, in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Now you know the rest of the story

Twenty-five Years

10 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by David in alcoholism, Sobriety, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

#25 yrs, #AA, recovery

On July 9, 1994, I drank a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer after I mowed the lawn. The next day I drove to Havre de Grace, Maryland with my six year old son to visit my then wife and his mother. She had just been admitted to a top tier alcoholism rehabilitation facility. That was the last drink I ever had.

I have had very vivid drinking dreams during this time of recovery, but I didn’t drink. I have worked the 12 Steps of Recovery. More than that, I have had the desire to stay sober above all else.

A lot of selfishness has melted away. A lot of compassion has come to fill that void created. I’m not perfect, not even close. I’m just glad that nightmare has been over for the last twenty five years.

Tragedy, For Real

24 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by David in alcoholism, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#addiction #drug abuse

So I went to an AA meeting this evening. It was a typical meeting. We share our experience, strength, and hope around recovery from alcoholism. This is what we talk about. Nothing unusual. Then I learn at the end that somebody I knew, not well, but I knew had overdosed, on what, I don’t know, nor does it matter.

Addicts and alcoholics dying from substance abuse isn’t news. When we lose somebody, it still hurts. We are the lucky ones, the survivors.

You might say I don’t have a lot of patience for any contrived drama. The manipulators and exploiters abound. Read between the lines. Look for the back story. Get some other form of exercise besides jumping to conclusions. Because the real tragedy often doesn’t make the headlines. It ceased to be news a long time ago.

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