Daily Reprieve

I am so tired.  Made it to a meeting.  But I am worn out.

I am an alcoholic.  Sponsee 1 is an alcoholic.  His family is caught in a web of addiction with all the insane codependent enabling.  And last night, I was confronted with the reality that someone I love is not a normal drinker.  Heavy drinker or Alcy?  I don’t know.  They have to make that decision.  But I tend to believe a boundary is being crossed in an attempt to self-medicate and drive away emotional pain.  Last night’s incident is a typical alcoholic fiasco. 

I suggested to my sponsee yesterday that he might look at going to some AlAnon meetings.  I wonder if I should do the same.  Maybe he and I could go together.  Maybe my religious addiction is really an inability to set proper boundaries, and resist manipulation.  Or maybe they are not mutually exclusive concepts.  I am in my head this morning.  I found myself wondering where my loved one hid his stash last night.  I was going to start searching for it, and then I stopped and realized the disease was actively seeking.  Warning signs all over the place.  I called my sponsor immediately, woke him up, and talked about this.  That helped.  Meetings after work for sure.  Pick up my sponsee.  Do some extra work in the BB.  Gotta go.

I have just updated the page “Explore 164” which is some prodding questions as your read those first 164 pages that spill the guts of the program into our foggy brains.  Sorry this is so short, but I need to get out of here so I can meet with Sponsee 1.

It was good to be at the Hut tonight, a gratitude meeting.  I was so full of confidence and feeling connected that it was almost heady.  I was able to be with both my sponsees tonight.  I saw the guy who gave me his nine month chip when my stepson died last year.  It is called the pregnancy chip at the Hut, and it symbolizes new life.  I passed my nine month chip to my first sponsee.  Seems like a good tradition.  I need some sleep.

The hamster gets up, stretches, drinks water and eats a few processes crumbs, and jumps on the wheel to run and amuse his provider, whoever the hell that might be.  He runs, and never actually moves.  He is free to move around, but never really free to leave.  Is this life on life’s terms?

I guess relationships are what keep this from being the ultimate reality.  I have people I love to be around, to experience.  I have gratitude for the intimacy I experience on a daily basis. 

My mind and heart are not on recovery right now.  I have and continue to talk with my Higher Power.  I have talked with a sponsee.  I am at a loss right now.  There are things I must do to assume responsibility for those things I own.  I must follow through.  I will.

Calm today.  A better place.  Why?  What did I do right?  I went to a meeting last night and got some sleep.  I have some plans.  Having a plan feels good.  I hear intuitive thoughts on a pretty regular basis too.  And I don’t have to filter out fear or social control.  Anyway, I am going to get some rest.  One more work day.  Off on Tuesday.

It was a really good speaker meeting tonight.  All I can say is wow, and will I ever have something as potent to share.  I don’t know. 

I had a migraine headache this morning, so I called into work and stayed home.  But I was so hungry, and knew that it would be a mistake to take ibuprofen on an empty stomach.  The pain was making me feel somewhat nauseous.  Everyone was asleep, so I decided to make a run to waffle house and get some breakfast.  I ate and came out to the truck, realized I had locked myself out.  The back window that I had popped a few years ago when I had done this, was now miraculously healed and worked perfectly to keep me out.  I decided that maybe I should do a walk about and wait for a more reasonable time to call my father to come rescue me.  I spent a painful and difficult few hours letting my inner child talk with Jon, the Higher Power that has been so good to me, was there at the hospital during my last (and hopefully final) relapse. 

I actually got a lot of guidance, a move for simplification and shedding of some old ways.  I know, really general terms, but the gory details would probably only serve to make my words more confusing. 

Speaking of clarity and exactness in communication, I should probably come up with some other term besides “religious addiction.”  The addiction is my response to ANY system of behavioral domination and manipulative control.  This addiction satisfies me with a pathological relationship with a role, an icon of what a system needs.  When I am in this role, I lose touch with myself.  Then I am unable to connect with others, or my Higher Power.  If I step out of this role, I feel that I will be punished, and that others will be disappointed to know the real me.  When I am in the role, I receive recognition and attention.  I become hooked to the performance and to the need to appease.  I did this in my family of origin, my religious involvement, my marriage, and my service in the military.

In sobriety, this kind of disconnectedness will kill me.  My role will stay sober, but I will secretly die.  I have to find ways to stay genuine, to remain real and truthful with who I am.

My religious addiction is really kicking up.  It is helpful that I can look back over these symptoms and know that.  I need to find a way to work through this.  I am waking up inside.  Parts of my personality more vulnerable to this addiction are beginning to feel again.  In a very major way.  I know I am sitting on a time bomb here.  I am going to see if I can find someone in my group who might also be suffering from this.

I am personally being affected by religious addiction because of the interference it has with my ability to trust and take full advantage of this program of recovery.  My devotion to the Big Book is beginning to feel like the iconic worship of the scriptures.  Many of the characteristics of the program have a none too subtle religious undercurrents that arouse my defenses.   Sponsorship is so much like discipleship.

Yet I gain from this program.  There is a power here.  I just don’t want to invest life energy, and find that I have been tricked once again.

These are the symptoms that I would say indicate religious addiction:

1.  Fatal judgment against self and others.

2.  Fear in making decisions, continuously second guessing.  Rituals surround the process.

3.  Need to blend with the group. 

4.  Emotions harder to control are labeled negative.  Such as anger, which is usually seen as nonspiritual.

5.  Freedom muscles have atrophied from lack of use, and thus it is difficult to define freedom.

6.  Progressive need to appease God and the group.  This leads to purging, mortification, and self-flagellation.

7.  Chronic sense of impending doom or judgment.

8.  Uncomfortable and resistant to intuitive guidance.  Makes an icon out of source documents.

9.  Always knows the “right” thing to say, and has difficulty in staying in touch with genuine expression.

The following, although spoken as a statement, merely represent my speculations on religious addiction:

Centralized religion has been used over the centuries to control social behavior.  It is easier to control individuals who are beaten down by guilt and shame, and who are indoctrinated to fear inescapable retribution.  How the game is played has changed, but the goal has not, which is social control at the expense of individual fulfillment. 

The human wreckage has been horrific over the ages.  Organized faith established only two doors for all of humanity to pass through.  One required religious enslavement, and the other surrendered to reactionary evil. 

As a religious addict, I want another path.  The heretic has faith, but does not recognize the appropriate set of rules and traditions necessary to qualify.  I am most comfortable being a heretic.

I have added a new page, “Proposed 12 Steps for Heretics Anonymous.”  I am not really sure where to go from here.  The only religious addiction 12 step groups I see out there in cyberspace are controlled by pastors, and doctors, complete with donate buttons.  Red flags for me. 

Is there anyone out there in the same place I am?