Caught in the Web of Obsession and Compulsion
I drank to handle one or more of these defects, because I had no fortitude to confront them on my own. So I drank, and for a little while they would go away and then come roaring back drawing their strength from my weakness. My solution was: Have a few more drinks and anesthetize the defects into submission. The result and side effect was that I anesthetized myself and my cognition went to perdition.
In AA we speak of a Higher Power. And from my Catholic faith, I know there is a Lower Power — Satan. He searches out the weakness in everyone, not just alcoholics, and pounds away at us daily to remove us from our fellowship with God. No matter what my failures, I believe that God sees in my heart who I desire to be and loves me unconditionally — warts and all.
I was caught in a web of self. I was so concentrated on trying not to drink that it actually made sense to me to think that the way to stop drinking was to keep drinking! Alcoholics believe the answer is in the bottle. A woman in AA with over twenty-five years sobriety, once said to me, with concern: “You can’t stop drinking — drinking.” I dismissed this as inane. I really did not want to try and understand the truth in what she said.
I wanted to stop, but the physical and emotional pain was so bad that when I thought of stopping, the only answer was to drink to take away the pain. It was always easier to quit after “just one more.” I was in a vicious circle with nothing in the middle to grab onto. Once I was inside the cocoon of alcoholism there was no world outside. Alcohol allows no entry to anything or anyone. I functioned from day to day and existed with the normal people, but I let no one in and I did not reach out except when it was in my best interest: pacifying, looking responsible, showing up. Trying to do things as best I could.
Unless you are an alcoholic, you cannot understand the obsession and compulsion. The only thing that matters is the next drink. Your day is planned around it. If an alcoholic was writing his plan for the day, the first entries would be times for drinking and all other “responsibilities” would fit in among the anesthetics.
Self-Absorbed and Manipulative: That Was Me
That sounds cruel, doesn’t it? It is. I was devious and manipulative. It was the life I lived so I could live the life I was helpless not to live. My focus was limited to alcohol and everything else that I was responsible for had to fit in among the empties.
I went to AA meetings and I read the literature. I met with counselors and I read the biographies of others who had struggled and finally found peace in sobriety. All of this was wonderful stuff, but until I wanted what the people in AA had — sobriety; until I did not pick up the first drink, I was intellectualizing all this wonderful stuff — but I was not sober. My attention was on me and my pain. I was yet to realize that it was not within my power to heal myself. I would come to believe that asking God to heal me was my only option.
The issue of where your focus lies is the key to healing. In the book Serenity: A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery (1990, Thomas Nelson), Doctors Hemfelt and Fowler make an interesting point:
As we move into any addiction or dependency, we tend to become more self-centered, self-absorbed and self-preoccupied in trying to address the pain driving the addiction. Paradoxically, this self-preoccupation only draws us more deeply into the addiction. We become more self-centered and self-preoccupied as we seek to address the pain, yet self–preoccupation itself creates more pain, loneliness, and isolation. The addiction pulls us more deeply into its pain cycle. In order to surmount the pain cycle, ultimately we must step out of ourselves and look beyond ourselves.
Please note that the word “self” and “ourselves” occurs nine times in that paragraph. When I admitted to my focus on self as the negative quality responsible for my weakness for alcohol, and then accepted that in my weakness I could find strength by abandoning myself to God’s care, that is when my healing began. The healing manifests itself in what I call my “Character Effects.”
My recovery program of almost nine years has been blessed. Through the grace of God, I have been allowed a slow, steady, healing growth, clarity of mind and a relief from mental isolation.
Alcoholism was a small and lonely prison with no room for anyone but me. Relationships were only surface interactions. I would never allow anyone into my intimacy. I wore a mask to appear to be what people wanted to see. (Alcoholics wear masks just like “normal” people.) I was most comfortable around other drinkers. There are an abundance of them — not all alcoholics, but party people.
Escaping the Lonely Prison of the Walking Wounded
Surrounded by others with whom I had little except the bottle in common, I never realized how lonely I was — and busy. Alcoholism is a world of planning. My day revolved around the next drink. Who would I drink with? What would I drink? When, where, how, and why? But on the positive side I never missed one of our children’s activities.
“Wait a minute. You never missed a child’s activity?!”
Let me make something clear. Alcoholics are not old men lying in the gutter or sitting in the doorway stoop of an abandoned building. CEOs are alcoholics, surgeons and celebrities are alcoholics. Somewhere in your neighborhood are men and women and young people you know dwelling in their self-inflicted prison of alcoholism. Like the CEOs you don’t know, they are rarely the ossified relics you usually picture. These are the “maintenance” and/or “functional” alcoholics. They work, they play, they drink. The majority of them are deceitful and sneaks. It’s how they survive. They are in permanent denial of the life they work so hard at living.
Alcoholics want it “now.” They want to walk into their first AA meeting and be cured. They spend twenty/thirty years in alcoholism and can’t understand why it takes so long to get sober. Instead of an an instant cure, they have to undertake a journey of repentance and conversion and learning. There is slow healing — in God’s time. It takes what it takes. The bad news is that only one person out of three attains sobriety — and even some of them have a “slip” but begin recovery again. The good news is that God is with them the whole time. All they have to do is reach out and ask for His help. He listens and He helps those who sincerely want to be helped.
I have been blessed to see my character defects gradually replaced with “Character Effects”: the fruit of the Spirit. After a meeting I can be patient and stand and listen to a suffering alcoholic’s pain. I can love because it’s the greatest gift I can give myself and others. I don’t sulk anymore because I have joy. I am not as anxious as I used to be and I have the peace that I longed for all my life.
I am compassionate and considerate because I care about people. The effect is a gentle spirit.
These are some of the Character Effects of the grace of God, sobriety, my faithfulness to the program and the fellowship of AA. They help me to correct my defects as I look beyond myself and concentrate my efforts on the growth of my spiritual progress. In AA “we claim spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection.” I believe the word “claim” is used because humility is a major part of recovery — it is the antidote to the mask of perfection that “maintenance” and “functional” alcoholics habitually wear. In AA we do not claim spiritual perfection, but we pray and live daily practicing rigorous honesty, believing that God will bless us with His grace as we strive for His spiritual perfection.
If you are an alcoholic, then I hope you understood while you were reading that I have shared with you a little of my experience, strength and hope. But you have to choose. According to its by-laws, Alcoholics Anonymous is a “program of attraction not promotion.” You have to want what we have. You have to make the decision that there is a better way to live. It is true: you can go one day without a drink. All you have to do is one day. Today. Live one day at a time.
We try not to dwell on the past or wonder/worry about the future. We try to live in today. We try to live in the moment. I use the word try because it’s a choice and a struggle and journey. We try every day to be the person God wants us to be. When we do, we move a day closer to the peace and serenity God wants us to have.
© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Jim Connelly and his wife live on the Island of Avalon in southern New Jersey. They have been married 49 years and have six children and twenty grandchildren.
