Stepping Out of the Arena (Part Two)

Maybe there is a guide book for parents whose adult children have asked for their help in getting sober. I don’t know. It never occurred to me to look for one any more than I scoped out books on how-to-have-a-baby or how-raise-a-raise-a-toddler or how-to-parent-a-pre-teen-through-the-dissolution-of-their-family.

Such books might have been helpful, or they might have further cluttered up my already faulty information gathering faculties. I’ll never know. I went into childbirth with no knowledge or preconceptions, only a promise I’d made to myself not to fight the process. That's where I learned to focus. I was a quick study. I taught myself how to breathe as though my life depended on it, as though the life of my child depended on it. That is where I realized for the first time just how alone we are: each of us.

Breathe in.
Breathe out. 

Focus on the breath.

Somewhere along the line I should have read a few how-to books. I should have reached for outside help. Instead, by the time my daughter was four I was getting high several times a day, every day. The next eight years of our lives had some serious distortions built in because of that. When I emerged from that nightmare into the clarity of a fully sober life my child was twelve and my marriage was on its last legs.

Of those years my daughter says this: you and Dad never fought. Everybody was always having such a good time but then I’d have to go to bed. I lay up there listening to all the laughter and music. I couldn’t wait to grow up so I could join the party. But by the time I was grown up the party was over and everyone was gone.

A year after I got clean she was already getting high. That ruinous running-away has lasted thirty years for her, not the mere eight I suffered. It cost her plenty.

We had 12 days of total sobriety here outside the arena of intoxication. We believe this is the first time since she was four that we have been sober together. [See prior post: Stepping Out of the Arena (Part One)]

My daughter and I got a second chance at living her growing up years, the years of my parenting and her developing autonomy, and we made a better job of it this time though it was brief.

The first two weeks or so I didn’t take my eyes off her, as you would with a baby or a toddler. The third week it was more like she was a young school-age girl--- under my constant care except for school and authorized play dates.

This last week was more like middle school years going into high-school. And she made a few bad decisions.

As I said, there is no guide book. And if there were, I doubt I would have referred to it.

There is just this center of peace to guide me. And for her, there are just the first 2 steps of 12.

I want my daughter to connect hook, line and sinker with life: its beauty, brevity, certainty of losses, opportunities for compassionate action and creativity, its nature as a playground where all-that-we-are can intersect the all powerful divine. Does that seem like a lot to wish for?



Breathe in (God's)
Breathe out (love.)

That said, I do not want any co-dependency between us. I do not wish to use her in any way, not even for company. Not for a source of meaning for me. Not to live out my vision, no matter how good a vision I may believe it to be.

What we did here has been an island of joy for both of us. She got sober. She experienced peace. It has shown us that the remorse and regret we've both felt for decades can be healed. The fact that we've lost Eden to the snake again doesn't change that. I had told my daughter she could not stay here and drink. I felt clear on that. But why? People slip. They get right back up. You don't punish them. You encourage them, you shine a light on the path for them.



If she was using and I was monitoring, if her drinking, or not drinking, had become an issue of trust between us, then I think our life in my home would have become as chaotic as her life in her home. I think I’d have become her next stumbling block and we would have become each other’s next terrible addiction. You can't stay in Eden and eat apples. It's not a rule to jerk us around, it's a fact we need to know to our bones if we want to stay in a happy place.  Apple ingestion removes every Eden from us.

God's concern and intervention did not appear to become engaged when I was 'smoking pot every day' and 'not wanting to be' simply because I begged and pleaded. Such prayers left me feeling self conscious and alone and no magic resulted that I could see.  There was a lot of flushing of substances and burning of substances and then buying more. I'd white knuckle it until I lost my grip. I don't know why I didn't lose my faith over this, because I was pleading for help the whole time, and no help was coming, but somehow I didn't.

 

What seemed to be the catalyst for active entry of the divine into the situation was to know my helplessness as FACT. When every quark of me was convinced, when I was toking up while praying for mercy in utter helplessness, Something entered to save me.




Now they are legalizing pot. I don't know how I feel about that. It's complicated.

This last few weeks I 'saw' my beautiful, my shining daughter for the first time since she was four. Now I have seen the power and beauty of the soul that is struggling under the weight of this terrible, poisonous oppression of alcoholism. No one can take that vision of what I've seen with my own eyes from me. She is not lost. She is in there. And now she knows it too.



What could be more convincing of the depth of our helplessness than to watch ourselves obliterate our own peace, hope and happiness but be unable to stop our hand from raising the poison to our lips and gulping it down?



That's why the first step in the AA program for recovery is to acknowledge our helplessness. I came to it my own way outside a program but I can tell you that nothing good happened to me until I lived, moved and breathed with the knowledge of my helplessness. That one lesson has never left me.



In this world the crossroad where magic happens can be accessed from anywhere. It can be found in Eden. It can be found in the worst hell hole imaginable. It is that place in our inner space where all that we are intersects the divine. Unilateral surrender seems to be a requirement for miracles. I think God wants no fuzziness around the issue of who's who.



From there we can cry for Mercy and be heard. We do not tell Mercy what it should look like or how it should be delivered. We do not tell Mercy what it needs to do. Mercy does not need our vision for its execution. It needs our honest knowledge of our limitations.



And so the second step is to know that, what we can not do, God can do.

I can not keep my daughter sober. She can not keep herself sober. The essence of this dynamic for receiving help can be found in every spiritural tradition. In mine it looks and sounds like this:

Breathe in: Lord Jesus Christ

Breathe out: Have mercy on me a sinner.

Breathe in: Lord Jesus Christ

Breathe out: Have mercy on us sinners.

Humility isn't groveling. It is a sign that we've grasp the lay of the land.

Oh, I am sad. And I am frightened. And my daughter, wherever she is, is sad and frightened too. I know this. But she knows what to do to find the crossroad, that lonely intersection, where salvation will come. And so do I. There is hope.

If you are reading this, and you feel so inclined, pray for us.

Stepping Out of the Arena (Part One)

It was my first opportunity in 7 days to have a drink. My daughter had asked me to help her dry out and, with her doctor’s supervision, I'd agreed. I'd asked for two weeks vacation time from work. She'd started dragging herself to AA meetings. We'd made a plan to begin in one week. We did and this was day 7 of the  plan.




The trunk of my car had a box of old bottles of vermouth, vanilla extract, liquors in various unpalatable flavors, one open bottle half full of red wine, some gin and some vodka. . . oh yeah, some Listerine and a few designer beers a friend stores at my house for when we have a movie night. I had planned to drop them off somewhere but there hadn’t been time.

On the evening we began I locked the car and started carrying the keys belted to my body. I slept across the exit to her bedroom like an old hound wanting to protect her though I knew in that regard I was helpless as she. At least she’d have to crawl over my body to get out and maybe something about the sight of me there on the blow-up bed across the entrance, head lamp illuminating my book, water, Chapstick, alarm clock, battery-operated candle beside me would remind her of how much she was loved. Or at least give her a laugh. This was definitely an amateur operation.



The first week I attended daily AA meetings with her. She was titrating off alcohol (from her maintenance dosage of 32 oz of vodka a day) with a starting dose of 7 oz the first day. I gave them to her with water every 2.5 hours. After that we reduced the amount by one ounce each day and increased the time between. The seventh day we were in a new world. The first day of sobriety.



We’re moving through our two week island together in a hallowed state. It’s impossible to describe. A scenario that would be ill-advised under almost any circumstance, a mother providing detox services for her adult daughter, a process that could have gone wrong a dozen ways—even way wrong—turned out to be, as my gut was telling me it would be, supported by a mysterious and holy Something.



So sometime after the first week I felt I no longer need, or should, accompany her to meetings. I dropped her off. By then she knew people who were truly happy to see she’d made another meeting and who embraced her before she even made it through the door.



“Did your guard dog let you off the hook?” one of them asked. “Yeah, I think she’s having a kind-of hard time with it,” my girl replies as they walk in together. She has no idea. It was easier to let her get on the school bus for the first day of kindergarten than this. My vision was obscured by my own rain as I drove on to Wal-Mart for supplies we needed: E-cig’s, club soda, AA batteries. And I kept thinking about the little glass I’d stuck in the box of booze just in case I wanted to have a congratulatory toast to us while she was in the meeting.



I know. I know.



But, I rationalized, I could have it. I am not an alcoholic. I have my two glasses of wine or my martini at night before dinner but that’s all. And not every night. It’s a pleasant habit, a quick relaxer after work, a social lubricant when I’m with a friend. I don't drink during dinner. I don't drink after. I enjoy it but I hadn’t missed it at all during the last week. Still, the habit was there. And the question popped into my mind the minute I was alone.



If all this inner angst was happening to me the first minute I was by myself, what would it be like for my daughter?



I thought about it all the way to the store; thought about pouring that little glass of wine and enjoying it, maybe in the parking lot. The image of that scenario didn't do much to make it seem like a good idea. Then I thought about how wine smell would be on my breath. I’d have to get breath freshener. Did I think I’d have to hide it? That's not me. I also had this niggling sense that I would be breaking the bubble of whatever subtle protective energy, whatever synergy, we’d been floating through the whole last week.



I decided to shop first then see how I felt. As I locked the car I popped the trunk for easy access on my return. Crossing the parking lot the two ‘sides’ of the argument—because it had become an argument—were duking it out in my head.



I got a cart, pushed it into the store and stopped, listening to the sounds of combat. That’s the moment I recognized I was in an arena from which no one can ever claim a true win. Standing frozen with my shopping cart, as oblivious of the external world as a street person with delirium, I took tally.



Suppose the side of the angels won a round and I exercised my will power to refrain from drinking that glass of wine. I’d still think about it. The opposition would make certain I did. I’d feel virtuous, which is always trouble for me.



Or if I did drink it, would guilt launch the old self-hate tapes I can always tune into if I make a mistake? Likely so. Either way I would fall from the state of grace my daughter and I had been living in for 7 days. The rich, supported calm in which we'd been moving would be violated.



Still the fight raged on. “I deserve. . . I shouldn’t. . .Don't do it. . .I can if I want.”



No, this argument can not be won. Frozen, people pushing by me on both sides, I saw this struggle for what it was, a tragic form of entertainment. . . a tiny tug of war in a tiny arena in which I’d let myself be trapped. I decided to step out of the arena and not participate. I shopped. I didn’t win. I didn’t lose. I didn’t drink. I shopped in peace and carried my silence within me.



In AA when you reach a point like this you pick up a phone, make your connection and a person more experienced than you will pull you out of that arena. I am dumbstruck by the beauty of this organization. It's an amateur operation too, and as I have found, we are safest, and perhaps our truest, when we remain that way.



On my way back to my car with my purchases I closed the trunk lid.



Maybe all obsession is at least a mild form of addiction—something we prefer doing, no matter how miserable it is, rather than live our lives. All I know is that this time I was able to open an ongoing program in a new window, one with a wider view. And it made a difference. And while I’ve not had these debates over alcohol before I’ve certainly had them over other kinds of issues.



Obsession is an arena, just an area of inner space that we cling to instead of facing the next thing in our life. Even when it’s killing us, that obsession, even when it’s a massacre, we're there because we don’t know how to get out, because we keep thinking we can win, because we lack the imagination to live.



I know that my daughter and I are still moving in this state of grace. Still expanding into the quiet times, still swinging to The Commitments while we clean. Still making good food to eat. Sometimes this week, looking at each other, it seems like the first time we gazed into each other’s eyes all those years ago, before the heart breaks and the hundreds of betrayals. It is the naked look. “There you are. Who are you? You have my heart."