So, Have You Corked Your Bottle Yet?

 When I got sober, I started writing a blog to help myself stay that way. Eventually, I attracted a lot of readers and so, in an effort to reach even more people committed to staying sober, I turned the blog into a book I called Corking the Bottle (https://www.amazon.com/Corking-Bottle-Day-Day-Guide/dp/B0CD9L6P8Z).

Here is an excerpt from my book:

Sober Day 77

 No Supportive Family? Build One Out of Friends

 I haven’t blogged for a while because I have been camping. This past week was our annual family getaway. This year we camped by Port Townsend along Lake Erie in Ohio. Each year, my family and in-laws, who were friends long before we joined them with our marriage, get together to camp someplace. To paraphrase a cliché, you can’t choose your family but you can choose your in-laws. I scored on both counts! I couldn’t ask for better. None of my wife’s family suffers with drinking problems, that I know of.

 So what went wrong with me?

 Worrying about the past, which can’t be altered, gets in the way of living for the moment. This moment only! What went wrong with me doesn’t matter nearly so much as the fact I had nothing to drink today. Tomorrow can worry about tomorrow. This is the day and this is the moment in which I live.

 If you aren’t as lucky as I to have a supportive family, you need to depend on your sponsor, AA friends, workmates, church cominglers, maybe a sober neighbor or two.... Make them your family. But whatever you do, don’t blame your addiction on growing up in a dysfunctional home. I’m sorry for that. But move on.

 Embrace the serenity prayer. Don’t blame Mom or Dad or that funny uncle who messed you up. It’s a new day. How are you going to only live in today so that tomorrow can be even better?

 I don’t mean that as a rhetorical question. How are you going to?

"Identity apart from God is inherently unstable."

 I felt I was an insignificant loser. A lot went wrong in my middle-age life. I couldn't control those crises exploding in my face. Anti-depressants didn't help. Only a depressant, alcohol, seemed to make me forget about the battles I was fighting because I no longer saw any purpose in my life.

After I centered my life around God's will and re-discovered sobriety, I found this in The Reason for God, by Timothy Keller: "Every person must find some way to 'justify their existence' and to stave off the universal fear that they're 'a bum....' In our contemporary individualistic culture, we tend to look at our achievements, our social status, our talents, or our love relationships.... Some get their sense of 'self' from gaining and wielding power, others from human approval, others from self-discipline and control. But everyone is building their identity on something....

"Identity apart from God is inherently unstable."

Read that last sentence again. It's the most succinct statement of the cure for alcoholism I've ever come across.

Maybe the Collective Unconscious Keeps Us Feeling Jung

My career as a journalist, writer, and community relations manager has brought me in contact with thousands of people. Going back to my school years, I've been close to hundreds of them. A few I still see, a few more I communicate with through social media, but for most I've lost contact. I remember some names and I remember some faces, and some have disappeared from my conscious mind. Nevertheless, all are still with me and make me who I am now.

Could our brains be hardwired to the brains of others, and even to all of humanity? I think so. Psychologist Carl Jung thought so. He called it the collective unconscious. He taught that a segment of the deepest unconscious mind is genetically inherited and not shaped by personal experience. The collective unconscious is common to all human beings, responsible for a number of deep-seated beliefs and instincts, such as spirituality, sexual behavior, and life and death instincts. I submit that the collective unconscious mind connects us to those we know and used to know. (See https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-collective-unconscious-2671571)

I believe we find God in our collective unconscious. That's where he abides in all of us, and so knows our thoughts and deeds. But that's a post for another day.

Today, I want to share a passage written by psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. She doesn't mention Jung here, but she seems to embrace the theory of collective unconscious. "Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you have been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally) -- all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate to yourself and others. Sometimes you have conversations with them in your head; sometimes they speak to you in your sleep."

I have lived a lot of years. I hope I carry with me a little piece of all those who mean so much to me. You too?

AA: Best Trends With Benefits

 I like to read books about psychology, self-help, positive thinking, and stuff like that. I'm surprised at how many of them describe the benefits of 12-step programs and peer support such as provided in Alcoholics Anonymous, even if the books aren't about sobriety.

One such book is called The Pursuit of Happiness, by David G. Meyers. I quoted from it yesterday. He says, "People most at risk for illness are those who experience a trauma, continue to think about it, but don't talk about it. As they begin to talk openly about their pain, their bodies relax and they ruminate on it less. Twelve-step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, encourage participants to confess, rather than deny their most painful recollections, and to gain relief and support from others who have walked the same road."

I feel better after AA meetings if I have shared some thought or idea. I got it off my chest and I might have given someone a different perspective. That makes me feel happy.

I Love to Laugh, Ha Ha Ha Ha! (from a song in Mary Poppins)

 My in-laws came from out of town to visit yesterday. That may sound like a good reason to go back to drinking. But no, not with this family. My family and my wife's family were neighbors and good friends long before their daughter and I had our first date.

We all have lots to talk about, like our children and grandchildren, the grandchild on his way this August, recent life events, and memories of decades past. We always share plenty of laughs. It may seem odd to many people, but on this day-after-in-laws visit, I want to share a passage from The Pursuit of Happiness, by David G. Myers (https://davidmyers.org/).

"People who laugh readily and view life with a sense of humor find stressful events less disturbing. 'Hearty' laughter tones the cardiovascular system, exercises the lungs, and releases muscle tension....indeed, he who laughs, lasts."

I laughed while  drank, but that's clearly not the same thing.

There's an Old Man in My Mirror

 Aging is tough, but it sure beats the alternative. And it's nothing to drink over. Bear with me through this post until I get to the point.

I've watched sadly as school friends keep passing away. Last month it was John, one of my besties throughout school. Tom died of a heart attack quite a while ago. Keith went to the University of Arizona on a football scholarship but died in a dune buggy accident. Van ran cross-country with me. He died in his 30s near the finish line of a 10K sponsored by his own uncle, a local restauranteur. I played basement hockey with Jeff, who died on a golf course last year,

In my own family, I lost my dad when he was just 49. I have a sister who survived cancer, another had a stroke, a brother-in-law died of cancer, and another suffered a serious stroke. I am older than all of them.

I work out and eat salad for lunch almost every day. Yet arthritis prevents me from running (I completed 29 marathons), I had a hip replaced, a knee replaced, an intestinal blockage removed, and back surgery to give room to my spinal cord because I couldn't walk as far as the mailbox without collapsing.

Now the point: I don't drink over any of this. Instead, I thank God for getting me through another day. I accept my mortality and the mortality of friends and family as part of God's will. My daily prayer is please, God, may I do your will, whatever that is. "...on earth, as it is in heaven...."

Giving Thanks for My Alcoholism (Huh???)

 Everything happens for a reason.

I believe that. Believing that makes me feel better about terrible things that happen in the world. Some may call that Pollyanna thinking. I guess it is. But it helps me accept God's will better.

In The Reason for God (See video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3juJzFbGpMk), Timothy Keller, pens examples of people who suffer crises in their lives. "Though none of these people are grateful for the tragedies themselves, they would not trade the insight, character, and strength they had gotten from them for anything. With time and perspective, most of us can see good reasons for at least some of the tragedy and pain that occur in life. Why couldn't it be possible that, from God's vantage point, there are good reasons for all of them?"

Maybe the most impactful tragedies in my life came from overconsumption of alcohol. I've listed many of them in my book (https://covenantbooks.com/books/?book=corking-the-bottle) and this blog. As a result of my alcoholism, I have come closer to God, I know dozens of people I never would have met, I fulfilled my lifetime dream of writing a book, and I have come to understand addictions so that I might be able to help others. None of these good things would have occurred if I weren't an alcoholic.

Thank you, God, for my eye-opening tragedy. Everything happens for a reason.

Finding God Climbing the Stairway to Heaven

 I find God in Nature. Much of my childhood involved camping and hiking. In high school and college I got interested in Indians' reverence for the Great Spirit and his natural creation. I brought my kids up to respect the outdoors. In fact, my younger daughter and her husband moved from Louisville to the Colorado Rockies by choice, where they hike and sightsee many weekends.

A Search for What Is Real: Finding Faith, by Brian D. McLaren, expresses beautifully why I seek and find my higher power in nature. "...that running water and singing birds can become God's voice, speaking to me of joy and comfort...."

Which reminds me of my favorite song of all time, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin: "...And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo with laughter."

But I digress. Back to McLaren. "That is why I make it a habit to go into the woods and to walk by the streams.... I find myself saying, 'God, what an amazing artist, engineer, scientist, inventor, manager, and risk taker you are...' One of the essential experiences of mysticism is an awareness of a glory hidden in all creation, in every tree and blade of grass and speck of dust and grain of sand. That experience, I think, is an experience of the creator, coming through the medium of God's creation."

Some sort of an "experience of the creator" is an essential part of healing our addictions. See Steps 2 and 3 if you need some help getting started. And again from Stairway to Heaven: "And if you listen very hard the tune will come to you at last."

Temporary Amnesia: I'll Drink to That

 I wrote yesterday about visiting my 93-year-old mother. Sometimes, I tell her things on the phone and she asks me about them a week later, sharp as can be. Other things she forgets. After her meals in the nursing home, she doesn't remember what she ate by the time she returns to her room. And sometimes she will say the same thing two or three times during the same conversation. She is in the middle stages of dementia.

She reminds me of me. When I drank, I suffered blackouts. Once I ran into a car and didn't remember. Another time, I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and didn't remember. Sometimes I fixed dinner for my wife and me and couldn't remember what I had made. I often had conversations and watched TV and later had no idea what I had been doing the past few hours.

I feel bad for my mother's condition. She can't control her loss of memory. I couldn't control mine either, but now I know how to curtail my forgetfulness: Don't drink!

The Worst Trips I've Ever Been On

This past weekend, I went with my wife and sister to visit Mom and another sister in Grove City, Pennsylvania. The drive home Sunday was slick and quick. But the trip up from Louisville through heavy rain took about two hours longer than usual. It was the worst trip to PA ever.

No. Wait. That's not true. There were worse. When I was drinking, I needed a slug of vodka the night before and sometimes again the morning of the trip so that I felt okay until I returned home to the bottle. Ugh, those trips were terrible. My wife always drives, so there was no risk of DUI. But sometimes I shook so much in the car and at my mom's that I couldn't keep food on my fork or hold a glass to my mouth. One time I kept throwing up, then dry heaving, through the seven-hour ride and then throughout the night in Grove City.

I couldn't wait to get home. A drink would make me feel better again. Of course, that was only temporary. Why did I think I had to drink? Eventually, I learned I needed God, AA, and Antabuse, along with want-to, before I could get sober for good. Well, sober for this day. Tomorrow I start over.