MemberGuyinGHo

Among School Children

Group II, the youngest boys at camp, consisted of seven children aged 7 to 12, all with disfiguring injuries. In addition two of the boys had pervasive developmental disorders; three had ADHD (though in a 7 year old, impulsivity, inattention and hyperactivity are normal states), three were bed-wetters.

They had come to Shenandoah for a week’s respite from the sweltering pavements, brutality and privation of America’s mid-Atlantic metropolises. They came to socialise with friends and to be with a peer group where their injuries wouldn’t matter.

For the week that I was their counselor, I woke them up, made sure they were fed and cleaned, played games with them, took them swimming, hiking, horseback riding, tucked them in at night, and soothed the cuts, scrapes and inevitable frustrations that are the souvenirs of a busy childhood.

It is a privilege to be with children: they are so eager to learn and often equally eager to please. To appreciate their self-absorption, to help them solve problems, to rub their backs when they’re homesick or to feel your chest expand when they smile with delight or take your hand are experiences to be treasured for a lifetime.

To those who don’t interact with them regularly, seven to ten-year-olds can seem like an entirely unknown species. For one thing they are prodigally curious; eager to learn how things work and to practice their newly acquired skills.

One little boy went from gingerly entering the shallow end of the pool to diving headfirst off the diving board in just a few days. The smallest of the group, other campers began calling him “mighty mite” which made him beam. Other kids used the time to size each other up by matching their physical prowess with the counselors and against one another.

My kids – even the disordered ones – seemed of average or above average intelligence, but many still believed in ghosts, fairies and Santa Claus. Middle childhood is a time of vast cognitive gains and some heavy losses for the imagination.

Kids this age love to tell stories, but they have no idea of a narrative arc. They assume that you and everybody else knows (and are interested in) whatever they are talking about, even though they have never introduced the subject and 4 or 5 of them may be speaking simultaneously.

Upon waking up at 7 AM in the cabin I was often treated to a chorus of little boys each telling me about his previous night’s dreams all at the same time.

Asking children to wait is a hazard because time feels interminable in their foreshortened experience. They dawdle when you ask them to do anything (there are so many interesting distractions) and grow mulish when they are rushed.

After dinner (by the way 7-year-olds inhale their food, indifferent to the niceties of utensils) the whole camp would sing silly songs. Any uninitiated observer listening to their whining and carrying-on during the short interval between dessert and singing would swear that the campers were being subjected to child abuse.

Adult discourse makes assumptions that do not apply to 7-year-olds. If I were to ask you to straighten up the kitchen, you would probably understand that I wanted you to clear and wash a few dishes and perhaps wipe the counters.

With kids you can’t assume anything; every task must be broken down into concrete steps: pick up the shirt, your shoes and the socks; carry them to your bunk; fold them neatly; put them in your luggage; if they are dirty, put them in your laundry bag.

Just because you give these instructions to an entire group within earshot, you can’t assume that the others are listening or think that they need to perform the same tasks. Frequently you will have to give the same instructions 7 times, at least once for each kid.

When they play games, it’s the same deal. An extraordinary amount of 8-year-old-brain-power is devoted to setting and debating rules. But because they lack a well developed capacity for social perspective taking, negotiation is impossible. After a few minutes most child-initiated games devolve into finger pointing and calumny. “That’s not how we play it.” “You’re not fair.” “Mr. Guy, can you tell us how it’s done?”

Heaven help the adult who naively steps into such a conflict. Adult authority is a notoriously unstable element and must be used sparingly. It can’t usually mend the situation, but it can often make things considerably worse. Attempt to broker a reasonable détente and someone is bound to have his feelings hurt; now you’ve squandered your authority as well as your impartiality.

Being with children is an act of continuous translation. Their recently-minted minds experience the same subtle emotions as you and me, but they lack words to express them. Children communicate through their actions; they rely upon us to give voice to the myriad mysteries of their daily lives. We in turn are embarrassed, flattered; like when we are caught chattering away to an infant.

How often we fail them! I can imagine several reasons why the mighty mite would sob uncontrollably on his 3rd day at camp, but I will never know precisely what he was thinking and feeling at that moment. Maybe he doesn’t either.

When one of my boys put his head down and refused to participate in activities for a few hours, I attributed it to exhaustion. Later one of his friends told me he had been rejected by a girl on whom he had a crush.

Yet children are remarkably forgiving of our mistakes. They place their trust in “grown-ups” and when we falter they restore us to our wobbly perches without as much as a sigh. They are models of forgiveness, always giving us the benefit of the doubt. We get high marks for effort even when that effort misses by a mile.

The suffering of children is almost unbearable to watch, but they are more resilient than we realise. Children tend not to ruminate; they seldom identify for long with a given feeling or mood. They have a Zen-like detachment that permits them to dust themselves off and move on.

This is one of the many things that children can teach us. Somehow time makes us forgetful; as adults we become nerve wracked and over-serious.

Because children are our fathers, there is something particularly rewarding about transactions with them. It is like gazing into a pool, seeing who we really are before the scars and ego worked away at us. Every adult lives with a child inside himself. How he treats that child, whether with nurturance and approval, criticism or punishment, determines how far he can grow.

It is good to be reminded of that.

5 comments - First published on: 27/08/2010

Friends and Relations

“Want to go to my niece’s wedding?” Kent asked tentatively, “She really wants me there and I don’t want to go alone.” What could I say? I normally don’t care for weddings with their gaudy excess, bland food and embarrassing rituals, but Kent is my bestie and I owe him my life. A weekend of awkward greetings and polite smiling is the least I can do for him.

All families seem odd to strangers, but Kent’s relatives take eccentric to a whole new level. I already knew about his father, an alcoholic, who worked in show business and was larger than life. His socialite mother claimed descent from the author of “the pledge of allegiance.”

Their marriage was difficult and Kent who was born 16 years after his next older sibling, was alternately coddled and berated for being a young boy. Fortunately his father was not around all that much, traveling for his career.

At 14 Kent’s mother died from cancer and his living situation went from bad to worse. One night Kent woke up to find his father looming over him in a menacing stupor. That night his father threatened to kill his son. It was justified because ever since the boy had been born, “[his] mother had devoted all her attention to [Kent] and their marriage had fallen apart.”

This was not unusual behavior from his father, but when he whipped out a pistol and aimed it at the Kent’s head – that was unprecedented.

Kent’s older siblings, Peter and Paul, didn’t believe the story, since so far as they knew their father didn’t own a gun. But to placate their trembling brother, Peter reluctantly agreed to check on “dad.” At the house he found his father passed out in the living room with a bottle by his side and a pistol in his lap.

From then on it was decided that Kent could no longer live at home. Shuttled between siblings, he was raised with nieces and nephews who thought of him more as a brother than as an uncle.

Paul, an untreated alcoholic, never approved of Kent especially when he came out. His favorite sport was abusing him in front of the children at supper, including Gwendolyn, who was now getting married – to a woman.

This is no small thing in the US so Gwen wanted a big church ceremony in the presence of her entire family. Because brother Paul had died a year ago, Kent was asked to walk his sister-in-law down the aisle. He did not jump at the opportunity.

Once he moved away to college, Kent never looked back, or at least he never looked back sober. After college he settled in Broloburg became a bartender, fell in love with an abusive alcoholic and developed his own addiction.

One night he took a handful of benzos washed them down with a fifth of vodka, left a sentimental note for his partner, and laid in the bathtub waiting to die. When he woke up 22 hours later he discovered that his partner had come home drunk, discarded the note and slipped off to bed in another part of the house without even checking on him.

That was Kent’s 3rd suicide attempt and it finally got him to AA. But it took him another 18 months of trying to do it his way before he got completely sober.

In sobriety Kent moved out on his own, started a business and attended graduate school in counselling. This was the 90s, so like so many gay men, Kent was planning funerals of friends, when he discovered that he too had the disease. Enervated from loss and convinced that he was going to die; he hit an emotional bottom a couple years into sobriety that sensitised him to the specialised needs of the dually diagnosed.

After grad school Kent worked with severely disturbed patients. His father remarried and got sober. They made amends; Kent was with him when he died, though he remained completely estranged from the rest of the family. They barely spoke to one another at his father’s funeral.

Ten years later and just a few months before my own emotional crash, I was introduced to Kent at a Sunday morning AA meeting popular with people who had a lot of time. I liked him from the beginning – but I was spiralling down in those days and unable to engage with anyone no matter how “restored to sanity.”

Last February at an AA roundup we picked-up our friendship. At first I thought about asking Kent to be my sponsor, then, in April, I began dating Ronnie and he shut me out of his life entirely. I heard through friends that he had taken a romantic interest in me; by June he cooled down enough to confirm this was so.

I am not the kind of guy who picks up on signals when someone is interested in me. I readily concede that my romantic relationships have been nothing to write home about. Whether from depression, addiction or garden-variety fear I was usually too self-absorbed to love anyone.

After I met Kent things began to change: maybe I finally surrendered or got honest with myself about those ubiquitous defects of character. At any rate, I commenced a happier, more committed course of recovery founded on things that really mattered: friendship, service, expressing affection, developing compassion and acting responsibly.

Not that my several previous attempts at sobriety since 1998 had been half-hearted: no, they were earnest, but I hadn’t yet learned how to get out of my own way.

People often ask if Kent I are lovers. Sometimes I refer to him (not to his face) as my spiritual husband. We just click with one another and I do love him, but platonically not romantically. At first I castigated myself for being so picky, but then Smitty’s observations made me conscious of the fact that an abiding friendship was every bit as satisfying as the turbulent passions we often associate with romance.

Both are deliberate, challenging and life-changing; but friendship is also gentle, affirming, loyal and unselfish.

On the three hour journey to his niece’s wedding, Kent regaled me with stories of his family. He was nervous and trying to prepare me for the “red-neck wedding.” He needn’t have done that, because I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The wedding was beautiful, his niece was welcoming and the family was warm. Kent was surprised and relieved. They were genuinely happy to see him. He felt bad that alcoholism had erected so many walls. But recovery from alcoholism had softened those barriers and opened new places to grow.

So often newcomers to programme want their sanity restored immediately, by which they mean that they want their relationships to be normalised and satisfying again. I urge them to slow down; to learn about who they are before they start working with others.

I came back to the rooms a quaking deluded mess unable to trust or care about anyone but myself. That may not be true for everyone but people like Smitty and Kent have showed me a manner of living that is meaningful, satisfying and unexpected in so many wonderful ways.

4 comments - First published on: 04/08/2010

Dog Days

A mild spring has exploded into an unexpectedly blistering summer. The pine-scented air, once refreshed by breezes from the west, is now stagnant and noisome. Azure skies grow wan and oppressive. Trees droop; flowers lose their petals. Men and beasts wait upon the purple evening when they can exhale. At twilight flowers seem to sigh and the robin and the mourning dove resume their avian descant.

These are anxious times: with a tanked world economy, natural disasters, war, terror and an environmental catastrophe likely to have global impact. Closer to home, my agency is doing poorly. My roommate is moving out. The dog has allergies. I want to go back to school.

This is not the sort of day for exertion; but my mind is dangerously agitated. The general torpor does little to quell such fears.

In the hazy days of white hot addiction, I lived in this state: always expecting that something would happen to end this hopeless cycle. By that point the drugs had made my life an unhappy see-saw of fear and desire. Gutted with longing, I deceived myself into believing that I would die (elegiacally) with a pipe in my mouth (my mind is nothing if not dramatic).

Today we’d say that I wanted to hit bottom, but I still hoped to meet someone to love me into sobriety.

Though I prayed that SOMETHING might happen to change the monotonous conditions of living, nothing ever did. Each day was exactly like the last: painstakingly rolling myself up some exigent hill trying to get high, tumbling back down the same treacherous path from which I’d come.

Before discovering meth, depression had offered a kind of primal solace. Hoping for anything risked sorrow and frustration; so I convinced myself that all was hopeless. A preternaturally bitter young man, I was a rebel without a clue.

These dog days take me back there. The mutinous sun sends men scuttling for cover. Saturated air makes it uncomfortable to breathe and even thinking becomes enervating. Add to this the worries of our age and you find mere sadness hardening into intractable depression.

Summer brings out the best in many people: they slim down, shape up, relax, vacation, reconnect with family, enjoy patios and gardens and lay up resources for the chilly seasons ahead. But for the depressed, summer is a tantalus. All the fun is observed remotely; like a shuttered child through a smeary windowpane.

My mood has been downshifting for weeks now. I wake up sluggish and go to bed relieved that the day is behind me. In between there are a thousand worries and regrets that I return to over and again. These are the prodromal stages of relapse into depressive illness; for me, a habitual response to stress.

Like a summer cold, the summertime blues are distinctively unpleasant. Depressive symptoms are miserable enough without the added feeling of being out of step with the wider world. While explaining this to my psychiatrist, he noted that I used the phrase “my depression” as if I identified the unpleasant syndrome as a structure of my personality.

I must have felt a little defensive about this because I immediately leapt into a long explanatory digression, describing my childhood abandonment anxiety, social latency and the labile emotions of adolescence. When I finally came up for air, it occurred to me that my Dr. had posed an interesting question.

In addictions treatment, owning the problem is considered a developmental milestone, so why not mental illness? They share the same stigma, are both considered chronic and progressive, there are even 12-step programs for the mentally ill. But medical tradition and social conventions hesitate to label someone with a mental health diagnosis or speak about it in hushed tones.

Maybe in our culture we confuse depressive disorder with the passing feeling of depression. In my experience MDE or MDD are not transient mood states, but (like addiction) constellations of feelings, thoughts and behaviours that are relapse-prone and must be treated accordingly. Once the black dog bites, she won’t let go without a struggle.

While modern interventions for mood disorders like CBT encourage patients to investigate and question the validity of their thoughts, they rarely if ever suggest that patients identify with their disorder. Cognitive Behavioral therapies treat depression as a manageable condition that can be addressed with exercise, cognitive restructuring and self-care. So why not start from the place of saying “I am GuyinGHo and I have depression?”

Would this really do more harm than good? I know that personally so long as I saw my disorder as exogenous – something that originated out in the world; not inside my mind – I felt victimised by it. Somehow taking ownership of depression — like admitting dependence on chemicals – made treatment a personal responsibility and recovery possible.

The down side of this may be a certain emotional hypervigilance; a tendency to dial into thoughts and feelings that should just be allowed to pass. Admittedly, I become wary when a succession of negative thoughts start to roost in my brain. Afraid of becoming depressed again, I may be a bit too attuned to the rhythms of my mood. Perhaps I’d be better off to just distract myself or disengage from them.

The capacity to name things that threaten us makes them at least seem more manageable. I encourage my sponsees to identify what’s bothering them, to recognise that feelings are transient, but that depression like other DSM diagnoses is a reliably-studied sometimes chronic, relapse-prone behavioural illness that must be treated actively, just like addiction.

After all, as many addicts die from suicide than from the sequelae of substance abuse.

Recently a friend of mine asked about something I had mentioned at a meeting on “Active Change.”

“Guy, I have a question for you: you mentioned ways of assisting yourself to be happy in sobriety! One was a gratitude list….What else did you mention?”

Here’s what I wrote back:

Dear B——,

For me happiness is serious business. Without some measure of acceptance/equanimity my recovery comes to a screeching halt. Depression is my oldest and most faithful relationship :-), so if I want to stay sober I have to find ways of staying happy.

For me it fundamentally comes down to change. Obviously I can’t keep doing the things I thought were making me happy while I was in active addiction. Instead, my 4th and 5th steps gave me an opportunity to survey my life and find out what really matters most.

The times I felt happiest (not merely pleasurable or unconscious), were times of intimate relations with friends and people I love. They were times of self confidence and an intuitive feeling of rightness about where I was headed and what I was doing.

Bonding with a dog. Caressing a lover. Appreciating a friend. Being kind to strangers. Lending a hand to a newcomer. Visiting a friend who is ill. Loving someone and showing it. Writing. Learning something new. The kind of conversations that make you want to reach across and spontaneously hug the person you’re with.

Being conscious of the natural world. Asking for and receiving help. Forgiving and being forgiven for mistakes. Doing something nice and unexpected for someone. Feeling grateful to wake up sober in the morning. Traveling and exploring different cultures. Meeting new people. Sharing laughter. Not taking myself too seriously.

Once I discovered these things, I needed to figure out ways to make them more possible in my life:

1. Staying sober was most important because all of them required consciousness.

2. Next was gratitude, making sure I appreciated positive things I am doing and experiencing in my life. Not only feeling grateful, but saying it. Thanking friends for calling. Thanking HP for a beautiful day. Thanking a colleague for lending a hand. Thanking my sponsor for his time and attention.

3. Recognising the unity of all things. Whenever I am uncomfortable in a situation I try to remember that others feel as I do and that my job is not to rid myself of feelings, but to learn from them. Though it doesn’t always feel like it, our feelings connect us with others.

4. Focusing on service. I try to ask myself how I can add something to every situation. Can I listen to someone who needs help? Can I ask someone out who feels lonely? Can I let a person know their share or something they have done affected me? It’s a win-win, in affirming others I affirm myself (see number 3).

5. When I feel tempted to give advice or voice my opinion, I try to remember to ask if the person wants it. That is an important component of humility.

6. Savouring and acknowledging good times and feelings. Look for the positive in everyday experiences. Even things that seem lousy give me an opportunity to learn.

7. Stopping negative self talk and complaining. These are just empty habits left over from depression and addiction. They don’t do anyone any good. Throw away the half-empty glass and see the world differently.

8. Cultivating compassion for others. Instead of constantly taking my emotional temperature, I can focus on how others are feeling and how I can be of help to them. Approach the world with an open heart and clear mind.

9. Showing up for things even when they scare me.

10. Letting go what I can’t change or control.

11. Investing in relationships. Cultivating friends. Keeping in touch with people. Staying close to their lives. Making sure they know that they matter to me.

12. Finding humor in adversity or disappointment. I make lots of mistakes. Laughing helps.

13. Seeking balance between mind, body, society and spirit. I try to learn something every day. I try to work out or do something physical, relax and take care of my body every day. I try to have a meaningful connection with someone. I cultivate silence or gratitude or meditative perseverance every day. It sounds silly but sometimes I bless things – sort of like thanking HP for the gift of living.

14. I try to remember that life is a large canvas and it’s never too late to start again.

15. If all else fails, there’s always prozac. ;-)

Wishing you happy, mindful days,

Guy

Now that I’ve gotten that down; it’s time to take some of my own advice. Here’s a start: “My name is Guy and I am a grateful recovering addict with depression.”

4 comments - First published on: 23/07/2010

Everybody Has Won and All Must Have Prizes

When I began dating there were two things that my parents warned me not to discuss on a first date: religion and politics. Why? Because they were liable to generate controversy and controversy could kill the nascent relationship. I was a roguish and immature young man so I did not heed my parents’ good advice.

In college I sought out controversy, believing that intellectual debate was the best way to arrive at “the truth.” Back then my notion of truth was in line with classical Western ideas; that is to say, that there is only one correct answer to every question and that correct answer would be intuitively obvious to any rational person.

Much has changed since those naive days of intemperate reason. One of those things is that I no longer believe that there is but one true answer to every question. It seems to me there are many truths and more often than not we massage and cherry-pick facts to support our conclusions.

Recently a friend and I were discussing the second step; like many of us as newcomers, he was struggling with the notion of a power-greater-than-himself.

The first few times I saw those 12 steps printed on a window shade and heard them read at the beginning of meetings, it felt like someone was bludgeoning me over the head with God. “HP” wasn’t much better; I knew that the founders were just trying to make the “old guy” more palatable to a modern audience. I wanted to run from the room.

My educated young friend had a similar same dilemma. He considered himself thoughtful and reasonable and continually tripped over the conclusion that there is no real evidence of a Supreme Being. What followed was a conversation differentiating two kinds of useful thought:

I just can’t stomach the idea that there is a God directing what we do here on earth.

I don’t think the Big Book says that. It’s not like the cover of “My Fair Lady;” He’s not pulling the strings. But it seems to me that whether there is a God or not is a red herring. The question is can we find sufficient humility to admit that we don’t have all the answers to the problem of addiction.

Yeah but the steps were written in 1939 — they didn’t know all the things we know today.

Maybe, I’m not so sure, but all you have to do is look around the rooms and you’ll see lots of folks attributing their restoration to sanity to powers greater than themselves.

But it’s not true.

It’s their truth; who are we to say otherwise.

What about the other people who don’t believe in God but are still staying sober in AA? They can’t both be right.

Sure they can. I think you’re confusing two different domains of thought: there is the realm of facts and the realm of truth. Facts are exclusive, based on data and irrelevant to context. Whether you are in Africa or North America, the earth is still a sphere.

Deprive a flame of oxygen and it will extinguish. But facts can’t answer complex existential questions like what is my purpose, how should I act, how can I stay sober? Certainly they can’t without a great deal of coaxing and interpretation.

I think of truth as a different matter. It’s inclusive, specific to context and accepts a variety of evidence including subjective observation. There can be many, competing truths. Like a story, truth has narrative validity even when it is fictional.

We measure this validity by internal consistency and check its value by its result. Today I am sober; whether god or gravity got me here I can not tell, but it doesn’t feel like I got here on my own and something helped me to get a lot saner today than when I was hunting for specks of drugs on the carpet.

It was not my intention to generate controversy with my entry Independency, rather it was to reflect the diversity of reactions to important social phenomena like the treatment of addiction. As thinking people we bring our experience and perspectives to bear on our opinions. Controversies around the efficacy of treatment place us firmly in the realm of truth, not necessarily that of fact. Everyone is entitled to their own truth.

So let’s start where we can all agree:

Does AA work?

Yes for some (perhaps many) individuals

Does it work for everyone?

No

Do other treatments work?

Yes

Do they work for everyone?

No, nothing does

Does AA work as well as or better than other treatments?

The evidence suggests that this is so

Does AA work as well as or better than other treatments for everybody?

This can’t be answered with available data.

This still leaves us with many unanswered questions:

How will I know that AA is working?

How well does it work?

How does it work?

Why does it work for some and not others?

Programme or Fellowship: Which is most essential?

And the most important question of all:

Will it work for me?

These are not questions to be answered with scientific rigour. They are questions of value and any answer is refracted through the lens of our experiences.

And of that ultimate question whether or not it will work for you there can only be one answer: try it. Do a 90 and 90; get a home group; abstain from all non-prescribed mind-altering substances; read the literature; seek a sponsor; work some steps and then decide if the programme is for you.

One other thing, as several of my brothers and sisters have pointed out, success isn’t merely abstinence. Success as described in AA is living a productive, meaningful life without the obsession for drugs, alcohol or other self-destructive behaviours. It is to weather setbacks or disappointments without turning to substances. It is to show up when family, friends or the fellowship needs you.

Successful recovery is to live a life largely free of regrets and anxieties, confident in the knowledge that you have the resources needed to manage any crisis or opportunity life offers.

Anything less is just a Dodo’s verdict!

4 comments - First published on: 14/07/2010