bored...

Just so the two of you who read this (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) know, I'm considering changing the name of this blog. If you've read Donald Miller, you'll have realized Red Like Tango is a parody of Blue Like Jazz. I thought it clever at the time - and still kind of do - but I'm in a different place in life, nowadays, and have decided on a new direction for this blog, namely, a journal of a recovering addict. Not sure how many blogs out there cover the topic (haven't looked), but I figure I'll add my voice to the list. Haven't decided on a name, yet. Suggestions?

wayside

The program I'm in right now is a part of Wayside Cross Ministries in Aurora, Illinois, named Master's Touch. It's a men's residential program which has been around for eighty-two years, I think. It's twenty-four weeks in duration, after which there are options for staying on for an extended amount of time. It's a really great program.

No place is perfect, though. The buildings we live and work in have to be fifty years old or more. There are two dorms, the third and fourth floors. The third floor packs fifty-seven men together, the fourth, thirty-eight. There are few modern amenities - air conditioning, for instance, is available for those who'd like to sleep on the floor in the chapel downstairs - but we have the necessities (three squares a day, a mattress and pillow with the accompanying linen, indoor plumbing) and that's more than most the world can say.

It gets pretty hot on the fourth floor, which is where I sleep. It also gets... malodorous... what with thirty-eight sweating men, some of whom haven't learned the finer points of hygiene. Like showering. (I wish I wasn't serious, but I've witnessed some of them using a sink and a rag for their daily routine. Lord, have mercy.)

The staff isn't perfect, but this does not phase me as it once might have. Why it is that so many come in the doors expecting everyone but themselves to be perfect - especially those in authority over them - baffles me. Or perhaps they are blind and believe they are, indeed, perfect. Not so baffling, when put in those terms, because I've been guilty of the same over and over again. Daily, in fact. I'm always getting angry at someone for doing something wrong or not being who I want them to be, and then God - sometimes gently, sometimes not - shows me the hundred ways I've not hit the mark that day.

Anyway, every once in a while, I kind of snap to, and I observe my surroundings. This happened yesterday. I was thinking about all the less-than-pleasing parts of being at Wayside, and it occurred to me that, despite all of them, I'm sober, and have been for almost five months (woohoo!). Then, it occurred to me that the exorbitantly expensive Hazelden didn't keep me sober. Nor did Calvary Center in Phoenix. Okay, don't hear me saying they're bad places. They aren't. Also, don't hear me saying Wayside is keeping me sober. It isn't. But Hazelden and Calvary lack the foundation I've found here at Wayside, namely, a solid theology. A "god of my understanding" doesn't do it for me. In fact, it was detrimental.

Jesus means everything to my sobriety, and, for that matter, my sanity. If I'm just going to create a god out of a tree or a rock, as a counselor at Hazelden and some in AA told me to do, I'm going to struggle - did struggle - with applying any sort of logic. How did that rock reach into my life and bring me out of my addiction to heroin? How is that tree going to fill the void in my soul? Addicts and alcoholics are really comfortable talking about that void, but they get mad when I tell them an inanimate object probably won't fill it. As my grandpa would say, Cada loco con su tema!

My God makes sense. Indeed, the Christian religion, as founded on the Bible, is the only belief system that makes sense of all this terrible stuff that keeps happening in and around me. I was told the higher-ups in AA added that line "of my own understanding" so they wouldn't offend people, because God knows addicts and alcoholics are in a vulnerable spot. Please. Everyone's in a vulnerable spot. Maybe we need to have our ideas about God and the universe and everything challenged. Maybe the logic we've employed - especially as addicts and alcoholics - isn't the best logic in the world, it having gotten us into rehab at best, or sleeping in some gutter, at worst.

I'm glad I'm at Wayside, with its many failings. Coming up against these (relatively) difficult situations has made me a better person. And that makes me happy.

nicotine dreams

I have great news! I haven't smoked a cigarette since Sunday evening. That's a solid 96 hours.

I feel good about it. When I quit before, at Teen Challenge, it was forced. Now, at Wayside, it isn't. I'd been smoking for ten weeks - that is, from the very second I left TC. Ten sounded like a nice, round number to me. More accurately, I'd been smoking for six years - that is, from the day I turned eighteen. (That's right, I just had a burfday.) Six sounded like a nice, round number to me.

My parents came for my birthday weekend, and the plan was to smoke my last cigarette the day before my birthday - last Friday. Well... that didn't work out. I didn't smoke through my whole pack by Friday night, and I hadn't the strength to simply toss the rest. Yes. I'm ridiculous. So I smoked the rest on Saturday. Sunday, when my parents and I were coming back from our short trip to Wisconsin, I fell further into compulsion and bought another pack at a gas station. I'd recently become a huge fan of Newports, and am even now lamenting how late in the game I discovered them. Anyway, I wasn't doing well.

We got back to the west suburbs around one in the afternoon, just in time for the Argentina vs. Mexico game. Viva Argentina! At halftime, I stepped onto the porch to smoke because I was feeling anxious, and it didn't help. Actually, I felt more anxious. This had been occurring a lot over the last few weeks. Cigarettes used to calm me down, but they weren't doing the trick any more. They weren't really good for anything except for that wonderful Newport taste - and, of course, the poetic aura to which I've become so attached over the years. What vanity!

My parents took me to see a movie after the game, and I had a post-movie cigarette, just like all the other times I've watched movies in the past six years. There it was again: anxiety. And this time, there hadn't been any anxiety preceding the cigarette, so I knew I was in trouble. Or at least my habit was.

I got into the car with Mom and Dad, and told them what was going on, except I wasn't super clear about it. "I think I've become really susceptible to caffeine. Even the smallest amounts make me crazy."
"It could be that," said Dad. "The nicotine probably isn't helping, either." Saw right through me.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Well, nicotine is an upper, don't you know."
"Whaaat?"
"Well, yes!" With feeling now. "The reason most people feel they are calmed is that they're satisfying their addiction, which has made them nervous. Meth to a meth addict is calming. To anyone else, it's crazy-making."
We pulled into the bar-and-grill at which we'd decided to eat. An undertrained young man sat us, sped through his welcome, and darted away. I'd planned on pushing my almost-new pack of cigarettes off on him, but he was too quick for me. My parents and I continued our conversation.
Ahah! There he is again. "Excuse me, sir?" Didn't hear me. "Sir!" He turned. "Do you smoke cigarettes?"
"Cigarettes? No." That's code in the world of pot-smokers for "I smoke pot."
"Well, does anyone you work with in there" - I pointed into the restaurant because we were sitting on the patio - "smoke?"
"You just wanna give me this pack of cigarettes?"
"Yes."
"O..kay?"
Pack of Newport cigarettes - and Bic lighter - gone.
"Why didn't you just trash them?" asked Dad.
"It... didn't feel right."