Why are two of the predominant themes of modern music love and loss?

This song has been running through my head.  Lyrics below, vid link below.

Its about a man who knows he is not relationship material and warns against getting involved with him.  Although not exactly relevant to my situation, many of the truths and experiences I am familiar with are woven through.

It is haunting.  I have been on both ends of the lyrics.

Better as a Memory.  By Kenny Chesney.

I move on like a sinners prayer
I let go like a levee breaks
Walk away as if I don’t care
Learn to shoulder my mistakes
I’m built to fade like your favorite song
Gettin’ reckless when there’s no need
Laugh as your stories ramble on
Break my heart, but it won’t bleed
My only friends are pirates
That’s just who I am
But I’m better as a memory than as your man

Never sure when the truth won’t do
I’m pretty good on a lonely night
I move on the way a storm blows through
And never stay, but then again, I might.
I struggle sometimes to find the words
Always sure until I doubt
Walk a line until it blurs
Buildin’ walls too high to climb out
But I’m honest to a fault
That’s just who I am
I’m better as a memory than as your man

I see you leaning, you’re bound to fall
I don’t want to be that mistake
I’m just a dreamer and nothing more
You should know it before it gets too late

Cause goodbyes are like a roulette wheel
You never know where they’re gonna land
First you’re spinning, then you’re standing still
Left holding a losing hand
But one day you’re gonna find someone
And right away you’ll know it’s true
That all of your seekin’s done
It’s just a part of the passing through
Right there in that moment
You’ll finally understand
That I was better as a memory than as your man
Better as a memory than as your man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDYTBEEVlLE

No matter how thorough and vigilant we are in any recovery efforts, only time will reveal what really lies beneath our conscious awareness.

I experienced a shocking reaction to a circumstance in my life this week.  My wife is launching a new phase to her business and I have been very involved.  My income is earned separate of her company.  I have however taken on a lot of responsibilities in marketing and administration on a non-paid basis.  I’m doing what I believe a good spouse would do.  With no expectation of return.  No conscious expectation anyway.

Last night, I found myself reacting in some anger and resentment for what felt like a lack of acknowledgment from my wife for all the work I had been doing.  Funny thing was that she is very acknowledging and grateful and expresses it continually.  So why the disconnect?

Upon reflection, I came to realize that I still had some hurts and resentments deep below the surface of my conscious awareness from my marriage.  I had helped my first wife with her business in a similar way and had helped make it a tremendous success.  And in this case, she was extremely sparing with the gratitude and even more sparing with any verbal acknowledgment for my contribution.

It has been years since my divorce and I had all but forgotten about the pain of this particular disappointment in my first marriage.  Yet here it was triggered years later in a way I never saw coming.  In a way that wasn’t even justified.  And when the anger rose, I couldnt at that moment even see why I was angry and resentful.

How many other things lay beneath?  Surely the steps, dialogue with other alcoholics, counseling, and just life will bring some things up.  But certainly it wont happen on our timeline.  I think it is short-sighted of some 12 step proponents to suggest we will.  It will be a lifetime of discovery and we may from time to time get ambushed from within with feelings we don’t see coming.

Thankfully, we have some place to go with them.  To our comrades in arms, to our program of recovery… whatever that may be, and to God as we understand Him.

Ciao.

Chaz

My favourite Don Draper quote from TV Series, ‘Mad Men’….

  “My life moves in only one direction…  forward”.

Don Draper is a man with a past he is leaving behind.  The character has a past secret life that he would just as soon forget.  He has entered a world he finds more befitting of his tastes, preferences, and capabilities.  A far cry from being an orphaned farm kid from who knows where.

My motives for adopting this motto are different from Don’s.  I have discovered that once reasonably dealt with, the past belongs right where it is… in the past.

There is an important difference between running from one’s past and leaving one’s past behind.  Running tends to be fear or shame motivated.  Leaving tends to be acceptance motivated.

I will never forget the period of my recovery where I began to gain a healthy acceptance of the past.  The regrets, the shame, the costs, the pain, the resentments, the humiliation.  I used to hide from it.  I used to flinch over it.  Until I heard enough fellow journeyers on the pathway of recovery share how they made the same mistakes.  Felt the same regrets.  Hurt others the same way I did.  Wasted time and money.

Then, as my ears and eyes began to open, I came to realize that it wasn’t just us alcoholics and addicts who made huge mistakes and felt pain and regret about the past.   I came to observe and conclude that this is pretty much ‘just life’.  And having done dumb shit is pretty universal.  Not the exclusive domain of alcoholics and addicts.

In fact, I eventually turned a corner and began to see that much of my dumb shit was done after having surrendered myself to mood-altering substances and practiced to perfection self-centred alcohilic thinking habits. 

So if we were to compare regrets, who would have the bigger regret?  The person who did dumb and hurtful stuff while intoxicated?  Or the person who did similar things without impaired judgement of intoxicants?

Don’t get me wrong… dumb is dumb, harm is harm, and pain is pain.  I am not trying to rank anyone’s behaviour.  I am simply saying that my perspective flip-flopped from being one of deep regret and pain, to one of relief and acceptance that I really wasn’t any worse than many “normal” people.

I rarely flinch anymore when I recall the past.  In fact, much of the past, I don’t actively recall anymore.  Why would I if it has been dealt with, amends made, and issues closed?  Time is precious and yields a better return when it is focused on today.  And good todays give the best chance of good tomorrows.

I have stopped wasting my time and energy ruminating over closed issues.  Instead, I invest my time in today.

I’m with Don.  My life moves in only one direction… forward.

Ciao.

Chaz

 Remember the pain and utter disorientation when you found out about the betrayal?  Remember forgetting that it was actually real, feeling content for a moment, then realizing it was indeed real and feeling the pain over again?

Remember repeating this cycle over and over and over?  Remember the high highs and low lows?

Remember falling asleep and waking up thinking that maybe your shattered life was just a bad dream… then realizing it wasn’t?

Remember hearing some inspiring input or teaching and then feeling good for a moment?  Thinking there just may be some hope of hanging onto what you were so afraid to lose?  Then only hours or days later, that hope fades and the despair and pain return?

Remember the anger? The fear? The embarrassment?

I do.  Not often anymore though.  Thank God.

But today, years after life turned around significantly, I saw a brief scene in a movie where a young lady had just found out she had been betrayed by her boyfriend who was now sleeping with a friend of hers.  She was hysterical.  A short while later, when the initial sting subsided, she resolved to live the best and happiest single life… just as her mother did.  But the resolve seemed only veneer-thin.  She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself that she was OK.

It so reminded me of the moments of reprieve when the pain and confusion subsided and the clouds felt like they began to break.  I began to think there might be hope.  Sometimes it would last for days.  Then, the clouds would start to move in again.  The sky slowly darkened and depression, pain, and despair moved in again.  “I knew the good feelings and hope wouldn’t last”, I would tell myself.

Unfortunately, for about 2 years, I was right.  The pain came and went.  I was on the rollercoaster.  For the first year, my separated wife did not even commit to whether or not she was going for divorce.  She kept the other man in the shadows.  We all suspected but had little proof.  It was torture.  Today, I momentarily relived this rollercoaster by seeing this scene in the movie.

Today, it seldom happens and if it does, it never lasts.  Today, when the dark clouds move in, I say, “Ok, fine.  But I know that this too will pass so I will just ride it out”.  Today, I re-direct my thoughts to gratitude for what I do have.  Today, I turn over my pain rather than try to fight it by myself.  Today, I get in the company of people who have travelled the journey before me and are willing to walk beside me when the clouds move in.

Man, was I a mess during those days.  My thinking was all wrong.  It led me to fixation with suicide.  So glad I never took a step farther.  So glad I made it through and can now carry the message of survival and recovery to others.

There was a day when I felt there was no future.  Today, I love the present and am hopeful of the future.

These little reminders help me see how far I have come since those dark days not too many years ago.

Gratefully,

Chaz

Is this a luxury we can afford?

What ultimate value does it provide?  Is it not a shallow, short-term reaction to an extreme of pain or injustice?

Does it equalize?  Does it heal?  Does it close anything out?  Or does it just perpetuate?

I don’t have answers.  There are people I feel have wronged me and I do not care for them.  I have painful memories…. at this stage of my recovery, the best I can do is surrender the hurts and not stew on them.  Let the hurts pass through and fade in the rear view.

If I feel them again by experiencing the memory again… let it pass again.  And again and again and again.  70 x 7 was once suggested.

I do not know where all of this will end up.  I just know that I do not wish to be vengeful.  It just seems to be there.

I believe an inescapable force in the universe is the Law of Attraction.  The law of sowing and reaping.  We reap what we sow. 

We do not attract what we want so much as we attract what we are.  Because what we are affects others.  We give it out whether we know it or not.  Whether we mean to or not.

If I am vengeful, I will attract vengeance.  I don’t want it… therefore I should not be it.

Thank God for the gift of grace.  Thank God, he has bigger plans, visions, and purposes than I do. 

Thanks God for someplace to go with my pain, anger,  and injustice…. other than vengeance.

Ciao.

Chaz

How’d we end up so messed up that we drank and basically went nuts?  I have often wondered.

How many futile thought patterns and attitudes have we learned from literature and entertainment?  How much did we glean from watching movies, television, reading books, and listening to music and end up training ourselves through sheer repetition and familiarity painful and toxic thought habits like:

vengeance?

self-pity?

expectations of love relationships?

These few things alone are enough to drive anyone to drink or drug.  Remember the old Charles Bronson movie series, Death Wish?  Where the main character played by Bronson becomes a vigilante and seeks out and kills those who wronged him?  Or what about the age-old tale of the Count of Monte Cristo?  Or the 1990’s movie series, Die Hard? What about all the old Clint Eastwood cowboy movies where he exacts vengeance and kills the whole town?

Did all of these and many, many more through suggestion, repetition, and familiarity not teach us to be vengeful?  Did these kinds of experiences and conditioning not suggest to us that violence was a viable alternative?  How deeply did these messages get programmed into our subconscious?

Then when we suffered injustices, people were surprised at our level of anger and perhaps our threats or violent retaliations?

What about how we reacted when we got our heart broken… and fell into deep self-pity?  Were we not just living out what so much popular music programmed into us? 

I remember the old Chicago song when I was a kid… “If you leave me now, you’ll take away the biggest part of me”.  And I ended up buying into stuff like this when my wife left and ended up a self-pitying disaster.  Now surely there would have been pain regardless, but somehow my thinking made it into something far more complex and painful than it actually was.

Or what about the fait de compli of all self-pitying, unrealistic expectation love songs of all time?  Michael Bolton’s “How am I supposed to live without you”?  Oh please!  With expectations like this programmed into our psyche… no wonder we went nuts, drank, drugged, and fell for the self-pity gig to the degree we did.  Depression and misery were just waiting for us.  And these are only 2 songs!  Am sure literally thousands more affected us and set us up for failure.

How did we get here?  Well… from what I see…. we programmed a lot of crap into our thinking.  “Entertainment” had a lot to do with it.

Glad to say, am programming much of it out and better stuff in.  Life is amazing today.  I am wiser in my choice of things I let permeate my thinking.

Ciao.

Chaz

I am amazed at how often challenges and pain derive from self-deception.  Beliefs about self, others, and life that turn out to be incorrect.  Believing errors, overstatements, understatements and lies.

It is often said that “truth sets us free”.  Why?  Is it because if we believe untruths that we stay stuck, bound, imprisoned to whatever dysfunction the untruth brings?

Alcoholism is a great example.  The untruth is that drinking will solve our problems.  The more we tend to believe this, the more damage we do and the deeper in we get.  At least for those of us who are prone to alcoholism.

What about other matters such as pride?  Believing we are something we are not… more capable than we actually are… tougher than we actually are… more clever than we actually are.  Do these deceived beliefs not keep us stuck in problems?  Are the opposites also not equalling imprisoning… believing we are less than we actually are?

If we are not dealing with truth, we are not on the pathway to the way out.  We remain in harms way.  We remain in pain.  Others remain in pain.

Today, I am grateful that people and circumstances shook me to begin to wake me from so many of my self-deceptions.  It is a long process to which I do not believe there is a clear end.  But the journey is amazing.  The unfolding and opening up of life are amazing.

I am glad to know what I am and what I am not.  What I am capable of, and what I am not.  Then living in those truths.  Discovering the truths may be painful, but the result is worth it. 

To me, the processes of shedding self-deception and moving toward living in truths are what recovery is about.

Ciao.

Chaz.

Is this the new way for marriage relationships?  To start with one that will in all probability fail? Do we have to get one out of our system before we are ready to have one that lasts?

It blows me away that so many of us in this day and age are on our second marriages. Some third, fourth and beyond.

I never thought I would be at a point where I would ask the question of whether our society and culture have created the environment where we statistically are more likely to have a starter marriage before we get into one that functions more effectively and happily.

Could it be because the barriers to exit a marriage are diminishing and have been over the past 50 years? Where when the going gets tough, many just go?

I never imagined in my wildest dreams the demise of my first marriage.  We had been together since we were teenagers. We had kids together.  People called us the perfect couple. When she packed it in, I took it very hard. Depression, booze and drugs are where I went.

Yet here I am remarried and happier than ever!  It seems so much more real and genuine. More mature. I trust it more than my first marriage. I honestly believe I am a better husband to my wife than I was to my ex.  My wife often states that she got the better deal because my ex got the “Pre-recovery Chaz”, even though I was not active in my alcoholism for much of my first marriage and the drugs had not started until after divorce. 

My wife says gleefully that she gets the “New, improved version”, and humbly, I have to agree.  I look at who I was in my first marriage… moody… anxious… argumentative… arrogant… depressed… fearful.  Not that I am beyond any of these things now, but at the very least, I have an awareness of them.  And I can offer a more aware and recovering person to my wife that my ex never had the pleasure of.

I am almost convinced that it took the pain of divorce and betrayal for me to crash hard enough to wake me up to any meaningful level of self-awareness such that recovery could even be possible.  Prior to being smashed emotionally, relationally, and financially, I always shielded myself in self-reliance…. which was an outworking of fear and selfishness.

So I have not yet come to any conclusions as to “why” all this happened.  I am just glad it did.  Life is so much better today.  So much more real.  So much less anxious.  I have nothing to prove and nothing to hide, but tons to do and I can now finally do it all without a ton of weight on my shoulders.  And best of all, I have an amazing wife to share it with and walk the journey together with.

I regret that I hurt my ex so much that she felt she had to turn to someone else.  I have some responsibility to take in this.  I regret that my kids went through this high-conflict divorce and saw their super-dad become a depressed, raging alcoholic and drug addict.

Yet I find the result to be the most amazing place.  And I don’t know how I could have shaken off the futile thinking patterns and hurtful behaviour patterns without going through a failed first marriage.

I am just so glad and grateful to offer my wife something and someone I could never offer anyone before.  The starter marriage, if we can call it that, served a purpose.  As they have for so many people I know. Is this the direction our marriage culture is going? 

Ciao.

Chaz

Wow, what great imagery.

I read a post recently that referred to a Newsweek article containing the above quote.  It has been bouncing around my head all day.

If this description of addiction were accurate, would it not indicate why there is so much debate on…

• why it happens?
• what causes it?
• what effective treatments are and are not?
• why treatment programs yield such low results?
• why addicts can’t ‘just quit’?
• whether or not addiction is a disease?
• whether it is an emotional problem, chemical problem, biochemical problem, physical problem, societal problem, spiritual problem?
• and a thousand other contentious issues around addiction, alcoholism, and receovery?

While the battle for doctrinal and theoretical supremacy rage on, addiction rates are rising, more people are dying, and more children and families are left devastated.

My point?  This is serious stuff!  This is huge stuff!  Yet somehow, many of us sit around pouring our energy into picking the fly shit out of the pepper on the micro issues of whose idea of recovery is more valid? 

• We get some militant 12 steppers who say their way is the only way and practice AA with cult-like narrow-mindedness.
• We get religious zealots (aka: heretic hunters and modern-day pharisees) arguing that in spite of the fact that many of us have found reprieve from our alcoholism via the 12 steps or other methods, that none of these are gifts of God as they see them and are wrong/evil/of the devil.
• We get anti-AA and anti-God people saying that those who believe addiction has a spiritual component are weirdos and in spite of widespread results, claim that AA is ineffective.
• We get the Mega Pharma industry telling us that we will eventually have a medication that will cure us.
• We get as many theories as there are theorists…. and so many sitting around debating whose ideas are right and why the ideas of others are wrong.

What good does all this do?

I just spent the weekend with my young teenage son.  My son who now has a sober and recovering Dad in his life.  A boy who has a Dad who has come back to being a role model, mentor, and coach to him.

He doesn’t care if I am a 12 stepper, a harm-reductioner, a rational-recoveryer, or if the Reverend Ernest Angely prayed over me and miracle working power of Jesus zapped me straight from heaven! 

Or would it matter if I had shoved the all new Recovery Suppository from Pfizer up my ass and rebalanced my body chemistry to the point where I never wanted or needed another drink or drug?

No, he is just happy to have his Dad back!

I understand that we all come from different background and circumstances.  Our perceptions, experiences and conditionings are all different.  Can we not all see that addiction and alcoholism is so freakin complex, that maybe some of us need one method of treatement while others need something different?

Is it not possible that my ‘dark tangle’ is made up of different components and in different measures than yours?

Can we not see that if we do not have some sobriety through whatever means works for us, that we stand no chance at all of finding a way to stay that way and recover to a better life for us and our families?  If we don’t start by getting sober by whatever means is availabe to us,  that surely we or others will end up dead or disabled before long.

Having just spent one of the most awesome weekends with my son, my heart goes out to those still stuck in active addiction and confused by the debate over theory or doctrine on how to get and stay sober… leaving their families, and kids in particular, to suffer.

My suggestion…. set all of the debates aside, grab ahold of what is readily available to you and appears reasonably safe to get sober/clean, pour yourself wholeheartedly into it for a prolonged period, then take a breath, look around, and re-evaluate if this is the right thing for you long term.  Is it safe?  Is it wise? Is it getting results?  Does it fit with your values and beliefs?  If yes, continue.  If no, move to something else.  There are lots of options.

 At least you stand a chance of recovery by getting clean/sober and hopefully you will minimize the hurt and danger to others.  Especially your kids.

Ciao.

Chaz

Sicker than an alcoholic? Yes, some of our friends and families are.

Ever see Single White Female with Bridget Fonda?  I met the woman this weekend who could have been the role model for the codependent roommate.

A family friend (aka Superfriend) was present as my wife and I visited family who had had just had a baby.  Superfriend in the creepiest way acted at times as if the baby was hers.

I later learned that Superfriend had grown up in a severely dysfunctional alcoholic home.  Her behaviour was quite typical of adult children of alcoholics in that she needed desperately to be needed.  She was care-taking the whole situation so much that she was over-taking.

I further learned that Superfriend has been inordinately clingy to my wife’s family member for many years.  The odd thing is that Superfriend is functioning and successful in other areas of her life.  But in interpersonal relationships, she is a clingy disaster.

A trusted person in my program of recovery once told me, “You may get to a point where you as the alcoholic are no longer the sickest one in the room”. Meaning the codependents in our lives can be just as sick or sicker and as we recover and they don’t, the gap becomes apparent.

This is what I believe I experienced this weekend.  Someone every bit as sick or even sicker than the alcoholics in her life.  She appeared so desperate, she was downright delusional.

In this sense, I feel grateful to be an alcoholic.  At least my core problem was much clearer to identify.

Ciao.

Chaz