upfromdysfunction.com

When I stumbled into recovery in late ’97 it was to a fifteen-week regimen at Jewish Family Service.  With no intention of getting sober or changing my behavior my goal was merely to get people to like me again.

 

Signing a contract I committed to attend three three-hour group sessions per week, three outside meetings, and get a sponsor.   I stumbled through it, and, eighteen weeks later (there had been a slip), I graduated. 

 

As it was, the meetings were easy.  I had no life; I had no other place to go.  My family loved me but didn’t respect me.  Doors had slammed shut in frustration.  My friends?  They were there, but what more could they do, give or take?  I needed help.  Isolating, listening only to my voice…

 

I didn’t want to get a sponsor.  G/d, I didn’t want to open up and receive tough love.  I wanted to remain a victim, (even if I was a victim of myself).

But I got one anyway…because they told me to…and because something made me listen.

 

Twelve plus years later I’ve never been without a mentor.  Never been without someone to run my innermost thoughts through—a guy that “gets” my thinking disease, but will tell me what I don’t want to hear or show me what I don’t want to see—someone with the “ism,” who himself is proving that indeed there are second acts in life.

 

My niece Liz calls it a “social filter.”  If anyone needed one back then, it was me.  And to this day I have friends, a support group, and…a sponsor.

 

My first was Preston.  Sixteen years my junior, he was nine years sober when I arrived.  We’d met years earlier when I borrowed his cell phone at Coffee & Creations, a local coffeehouse.

 

I’d been two years without a drink by ’99 when, frustrated over my delay in working the steps, he cornered me:

 

“Bruce, does your family know you’re still full of shit?”

 

Soon after that, actually, the light bulb went on.  Preston guided me through the difficult process of getting rigorously honest with my past; he pushed me out the comfort zone professional victims enjoy; he was a gift, and although he moved out east, he remains a friend.

 

My next sponsor was Kevin.  A doctor at the Clinic, he looked and sounded like Barney Rubble with a Brooklyn accent on bowling night.  But he took no prisoners.

 

I was struggling then in an ill-fated relationship with Jodi.  Everyone in the program was, one way or another, telling me to end it.  Kevin had a different angle.

 

“You need to take a look at ALL your past relationships,” he suggested.

“Maybe we can find a pattern.  Maybe, if and when this one fails, the next one can be healthy.” 

 

I didn’t want to rehash the past.  Not again.  Why couldn’t he just tell me the relationship should end, give me an exit strategy, and be a friend?  I wanted it to be his decision.  Kevin, however, told me to “Grow up.”

 

Sponsors, you see, can be about friendship, but they must be about growth.

 

So I did it.  We did it.  I inventoried each past interaction, (not that there were that many), Together we reviewed the ups, downs, resentments, beginnings, endings, and reasons.  We talked about companionship levels, intimacy levels, satisfaction levels.  Every once and a while I would cry, and each time Kevin would laugh and tell me I was “…on the verge of a breakthrough…”  (  I didn’t want a breakthrough!  Heck, all I could think of telling him was my father’s expression:  “Monkeys should jump out of your ass.”  But I said nothing).

 

And through the pain came gain.  He helped me see things about myself and my relationships that may help me avoid the avoidable.  I felt good about myself again, and good about the future.

 

Then the mumser moved to Baltimore.

 

My sponsor now is David.  He’s been guiding me for three years or so.

 

I was in a good place when I’d asked him.  There were no ongoing issues…until there were.  Still, he’s helped me keep focus through the family politics of the past years.  More often than not he assures me that I’m seeing things as I should; sometimes he “suggests” I give things a second look.

 

I mention these guys today because David moved west a few months ago.   We’ve tried to meet midway each week, but it’s easier said than done.  And I want the regular contact.  And yes, I need it.

 

There’s a joke in the program that a typical alcoholic will find something that works and then immediately stop doing it.  I don’t want that to be me.

I’m thinking of getting a new sponsor, and have shared the thought with David.  It’s best for me…and we both want what’s best for me.

 

These days I am better at making decisions.

 

And hopefully…breaking through.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Up From Dysfunction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.