Sometimes I find it hard to figure out which aspect of my personality is getting me into trouble. Did I tell that lie because I'm an alcoholic? Is that my co-dependence? Or does everyone lie about "loving" kombucha?
It reminds me of a joke that Dave Chappelle told about watching Tiger Woods with his Thai wife and arguing with her about which half of Woods' heritage was swinging the golf club. I look at a situation or conflict I'm facing (likely one that I've created) and try to figure out what my motives were, which of my screwed up mental illnesses caused it and then plug the scenario it into the appropriate program of recovery (Al Anon, AA or Scientology) to find the best solution.
It's not always very easy.
Alcoholism is a complicated illness. When I was deep in it I didn't understand how thoroughly woven into the fabric of my life it was. As far as I knew, it was a disease that only encompassed my inability to stop drinking. Now I see it's fingerprints on all sorts of crimes. Alcoholism is a disease that convinced me to pay bills only under threat of discontinued service, be honest with employers as rarely as possible, throw half-empty bottles of booze in the recycling bin at work so you can steal them when you get outside, and admit to having a drinking problem when it might lessen the punishment. Mostly, it is a disease that operates with a singular motive. To get you drunk and ultimately kill you.
For example, and this may come as a shock, I used to have a little problem with honesty. I would reflexively find creative ways to steal to get drunk. I went through a period of about two years when I didn't have a bank account, but I still had the inactive debit cards which had a valid expiration date on them. I would use these cards to open up a tab at a bar and.... well, you get the idea. I would leave without closing the tab and when the bartender would run the card it would be declined. A few days later when I had the cash to cover my previous tab I would go back to the bar, apologize for "forgetting" to close my tab out, pay them with cash (plus a nice tip) and retrieve the inactive card. At that time I didn't really see anything wrong with what I was doing. The bartenders were getting paid, the house was getting what they were owed... no problem.
Except, well...BIG problem. Like, felony problem. About a year after I got sober, I remembered this little scam. I thought to myself "that sounds quite a bit like fraud."
Often I'm just projecting, but I tend to look at examples of other people making a mess of their lives and assume that they're mixed up with pills or coke or something. Last Sunday I saw a car overturned in the ravine by my house and I naturally assumed it was a DUI accident. It turns out I was wrong. In fairness, who the fuck does that on a Saturday night sober? There's a drink in that story somewhere, I'm sure of it.
But my point is: I tend to see everything through the lens of addiction. I'm totally fine with that. Honestly, I think about alcoholism all day long. Wherever I am, I'm thinking about my disease and what I'm doing that day to keep it at bay. You would think that would be exhausting. Sometimes it is. Sometimes I just want to watch a mindless television show like an average American slob without deciding if the main characters are drinking too much. Alcoholism is often called an "allergy". That sounds agreeable enough, but I doubt that people with a peanut allergy go to baseball games and count how many peanuts the guy sitting next to them has eaten. So yeah, I would like to forget about recovery sometimes.
Mostly I'm thrilled to be so immersed and focused on alcoholism and I'll tell you why: Now I know why I do the things I do. I used to think I was a miserable failure. It turns out I was just a drunk. When I stopped drinking, guess what? Life got better. One of the gifts of sobriety is having an answer to that riddle.
So when I do something stupid like scream at an old man in a parking lot, tell a fib or behave badly I can look for the reasons why I did it and try not to do it again. Then I can crack open a pint of ice cream, look the world in the eye and laugh it off.
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