Music and Recovery

Music has a strong effect on people. When I first got into recovery there were certain types of music and songs I couldn’t listen to without having my disease kick in causing stinking thinking. The thinking would centre on my romanticism of drugs and alcohol which was far from the truth. I would forget what actually brought me to my knees and only think about the fun times I had when I first drank and my perception of alcohol/drugs that was based on movies, TV shows and books I read (e.g. – Prior to drinking I would read and watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on a regular basis).

I’ve learned that music can bring on stinking thinking but it can also affect me in other ways. If I’m feeling down I have certain songs that I can listen to that will lift my spirits right up. Music can also be used in meditation. Some music can make me feel extremely sad as it evokes strong memories within.

There are a lot of great songs that are about addiction and recovery. Here are a few of my favourites:

1.      One Day at A Time by Joe Walsh – Joe Walsh wrote this song when he entered recovery. It keeps things simple as the lyrics show:

Well you know,
I was always the first to arrive at the party, ooh!
And the last to leave the scene of the crime
Well it started with a couple of beers,
And it went I don't know how many years,
Like a runaway train headed toward the end of the line.

Well I finally got around to admit that I might have a problem.
But I thought it was just too damn big of a mountain to climb.
Well I got down on my knees and said 'Hey!' (la la la)
'I just cant go on livin' this way!' (la la la)

Guess I have to learn to live my life one day at a time.

I’m not a big fan of hip hop/rap music but I’ve grown to respect the music of Macklemore who has written some great songs on recovery. My favourite is titled, “Starting Over”. It details his personal struggle with relapse.

One, two, now
Those 3 plus years, I was so proud of
And I threw ''em all away for 2 Styrofoam cups
The irony, everyone will think that he lied to me
Made my sobriety so public, there's no fuckin' privacy
If I don't talk about it then I carry a date
08-10-08, but now it's been changed in every
When they put me in some boxes that say
That I never was, it's the false prophet that never came
And will they think that everything that I written has all been fake
Oh well I'll just take my slip to the grave
Uh, what the fuck are my parents gonna say?
The success story that got his life together and changed
And you know what pain looks like
When you tell your dad you relapsed and look him directly into his face
The seep on your shoulder's the seemingly heavy weight
I haven't seen tears like this on my girl
In a while the trust that I once built's been betrayed
But I'd rather live telling the truth than be judged for my mistakes
Them falsely held up, give em props, loved and praised
I guess I gotta get this on the page

Feeling sick and helpless, lost the compass where self is
I know what I gotta do and I can't help it
One day at a time is what they tell us
Now I gotta find a way to tell them
God help 'em
One day at a time is what they tell us
Now I gotta find a way to tell them

We fell so hard
Now we gotta get back what we lost, lost
I felt you'd go
But you were with me all along along

And every kid that came up to me
And said I was the music they listened to when they first got clean
Now look at me, a couple days sober
I'm fighting demons
Back of that meeting on the east side
Shaking tweakin', hope that they don't see it
Hope that no one is looking
That no one recognizes that failure under that hoodie
Was posted in the back with my hands crossed shooken
If they call on me I'm passing, if they talk to me I'm booking out that door
But before I can make it somebody stops me and says are you Macklemore?
Maybe this isn't the place or time
I just wanted to say that if it wasn't for other side I wouldn't have made it
I just look down at the ground and say thank you
She tells me she has 9 months and that she's so grateful
Tears in her eyes, looking like she's gonna cry fuck!
I barely got 48 hours, treated like I'm some wise monk
I wanna tell her I relapsed but I can't
I just shake her hand and tell her congrats
Get back to my car and I think I'm tripping yea
'Cause God wrote Otherside, that pen was in my hand
I'm just a flawed man, man I fucked up up
Like so many others I just never thought I would
I never thought I would, didn't pick up the book
Doin' it by myself, didn't turn out that good

If I can be an example of getting sober
Then I can be an example of starting over
If I can be an example of getting sober
Then I can be an example of starting ove

A song that spoke a lot to me in early recovery (and still speaks to me) is Hate Me by Blue October. It opens with a phone message by one of the band mate’s mothers asking if he is okay as she hasn’t heard from him. Here’s some of those lyrics.

I'm sober now for three whole months,
It's one accomplishment that you helped me with
The one thing that always tore us apart
Is the one thing I won't touch again
In a sick way I want to thank you
For holding my head up late at night
While I was busy waging wars on myself,
You were trying to stop the fight
You never doubted my warped opinions
On things like suicidal hate
You made me compliment myself
When it was way too hard to take
So I'll drive so fucking far away
That I never cross your mind
And do whatever it takes in your heart
To leave me behind

Hate me today
Hate me tomorrow
Hate me for all the things I didn't do for you

Hate me in ways
Yeah, ways hard to swallow
Hate me so you can finally see what's good for you

These are just a few of my favourite songs having to do recovery but there are a lot more.

Dave the Dude

Standing on One's Own Feet

A newcomer came up to me the other day sharing some advice a speaker, he heard at a 12 Step meeting, told him. The speaker advised the young man to take a year off and live on social services. I cringed upon hearing this. It goes against everything I’ve been taught and shown by other people in long-term recovery from addiction. It also spits in the face of our Seventh Tradition which states, “[we are] self-supporting declining outside contributions”.

Alcoholics Anonymous’ co-founder Bill Wilson penned the Traditions and there was reasoning behind each one. The reason for the Seventh Tradition is simple. Part of an alcohol/addict’s disease is self-centeredness at the extreme. As a result of this malady we take and take and take. From my own experience I would beg, borrow and steal money to feed my addiction not caring who I took advantage of. I was a burden to my family and to society as a whole. As part of our living amends and to show that we have recovered from this spiritual malady we pay for our own way. This means that as a group we collect money from members only to pay for rent, coffee, etc. This means that as a recovered alcoholic/addict I pay for my own in life. In order to do this I get a job, pay my bills, my rent, buy my own food and so on.

I understand that some people, fresh in recovery, need help getting back on their feet financially. I needed that help myself and was fortunate enough to have a loving father to help me. But as soon as I could I got a job and started paying rent to my dad (whom I lived with) as well as paying for other things I needed (including smoking until I quit eight years into recovery). I didn’t’ wait until I got the job I deserved. I took the job I was offered and started there. My Higher Power gives me want I need not what I want. Social Services is there as a helping hand until one gets back on one’s feet. It’s not meant to be a permanent solution. My permanent solution is trusting God, cleaning house and helping others. I’m not much of a help if I continue to suck on the public teat not taking responsibility for myself. I had to take responsibility for my treating my disease of addiction and part of that treatment is standing on my own two feet.

The reason I mentioned smoking is that, in my opinion, someone with a year or more of recovery who continues to bum smokes is clearly not living in recovery. But I digress…

Telling someone to take it easy and go on Social Services for a year is as dangerous as telling someone to stay on Step One for a year. When I’m in Step One I’m still sick. It’s not until I begin the other 11 Steps that I begin to get better. If am able but do not work for a year I’m not only continuing to be burden to society but I’m ensuring that I have a load of time on my hands. In early recovery a lot of time equals a lot of danger. As a member of Alcoholics Anonymous I am accountable to my Higher Power and AA as a whole to practice my principles in all my affairs. All of my affairs includes taking care of myself and in so doing I begin to get back the dignity I lost due to my behaviours when I was active in my addiction.                                                                    

Dave the Dude

Big Book Walking

I was at a one year medallion the other day for my best friend Jon. He was at my very first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and had three years at the time. I spoke to him at my second meeting asking him where the "meeting after the meeting" was being held and he told me what that actually meant. Since that first piece of info Jon would pass on to me his experience, strength and hope and to this day I have passed it on to others. He passed on to me what those who came before him passed on to him and I feel it has made me a better member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jon's first year medallion was his third one and, Higher Power willing, will be his last. He no longer lives in the area where I sobered up having moved to a different city. As I heard people talk about Jon and his journey I remembered reading about how Bill Wilson (co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous) had written a letter to someone who was having a hard time staying sober, telling that person that every person has a different journey some harder than others. One attendee at the medallion called Jon a Big Book Walking. Which got me to thinking that without the Big Book and Alcoholics Anonymous I would be a dead man walking. For that is what I felt like walking into that first meeting where I met Jon (and many others who are good friends of mine to this day). Alcohol and drugs had eaten away at my very soul and by the time I entered the rooms I was just existing rather than living.

My journey began at that meeting and I would soon get myself a home group, a sponsor and begin working the steps and doing service work. I began service work before I even got to Step 12 by helping set up chairs, sharing how I was staying sober to people with less time than me, etc. Within six months I completed the Steps and had become right with my Higher Power, myself and my fellow humans. I know today that I have a lot of relapses in me but I'm pretty sure I don't have another recovery in me so I must ensure I work on my spirituality every day for that daily reprieve.

Some AAers say we may be the only Big Book someone reads. I say better a Big Book walking than a dead man walking.
Dave the Dude

Getting Right With The Big Three

Alcoholism is a peculiar disease. It’s the only disease that tells you don’t have it and that’s why it’s so, “cunning, baffling and powerful” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939). The reason it’s so powerful is that it acts as an artificial filler of that hole in an Alcoholic’s soul. I drank for 19 years and for 15 of those years alcohol did for me what I could not do for myself.

Alcohol gave me a new freedom and a new happiness. Alcohol allowed me to not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Alcohol allowed me to comprehend the word serenity. Alcohol allowed me to know peace. No matter how far down the scale we I had gone, alcohol allowed me to see how my experience could benefit others. With alcohol those feelings of uselessness and self-pity disappeared. I lost interest in selfish things and gained interest in my fellows. Self-seeking slipped away. With alcohol my whole attitude and outlook on life changed. Fear of people and economic insecurity left me.  With alcohol I intuitively knew how to handle situations which used to baffle me.

That’s why it was so hard to give up alcohol. It was my solution to life’s problems. A false solution which eventually turned against me but the only solution I had. Once I started drinking I felt right with myself and the world. Then it started to cause problems and I was told to give it up. Once I gave it up there was a vacuum and nature abhors a vacuum. At my first treatment centre I was told to replace alcohol with a hobby. I decided to buy a model train, set it up and design a whole town. Once I completed setting it up I got drunk and watched the train go around and around and around. You see, a hobby could not replace the role that alcohol had played in my life. It could not fill that hole in my soul nor give me that ease and comfort I had sought my whole life.

It wasn’t until I suffered enough emotional and spiritual pain that I was able to give up the idea that alcohol was my solution and be willing to find a different one. I found that solution through the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I recently heard a speaker say that the steps don’t work whether you need them or want them – they only work if you do them. The saying is - it works if you work it not it works if you want/need it. I had to devote as much energy into working those 12 Steps as I put into my addiction. My addiction became my whole life and for recovery to work it had to become my whole life.

Steps One through Three made me right with my Higher Power. Steps Four through Seven made me right with myself and Steps Eight and Nine made me right with my fellows. The rest of the steps I use to maintain my recovery and for personal growth. Without growth I remain stagnant and that leads to stinking thinking. All of these Steps are crucial. The action begins in Step Four. In my experience, I see a lot of people who don’t want to do the crucial house-keeping Steps. The same speaker I previously mentioned used a great metaphor that makes the reasoning for the house-keeping Steps crystal clear. If I ask a little kid to clean his room he probably would do a half-ass job. However, if I tell the same kid that if he throws out all of his old stuff I’ll get him new stuff he’ll probably have the job done in no time flat. When doing Steps Four through Nine I had to get rid of my old stuff that was weighing me down. In exchange I started receiving a lot better stuff:

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity. We will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. The feelings of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939).

Today I have a true solution that won’t turn on me if I continue to work at it. I must work at it in all aspects of my life. It’s easy to work the principles of the Steps for an hour at a meeting amongst fellow alcoholics but it’s much more of a challenge to work them once I leave that meeting. But work them I must or I risk faltering and returning to the life I once led. A life where I couldn’t live without drinking nor live while drinking. That type of life I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy

Dave the Dude

Is it the end of the Human Race?

I was on my daily commute to work today, Eastbound on Highway 401. As is common, especially during summer, there was construction going on. At one juncture the lanes were reduced to just one and the majority of drivers, myself included, got over to the open lane in an orderly fashion. However, there’s always the asshole, self-centred, motorists who think they are above everyone who rush to the very end of the closed lane and try to squeeze into the open lane at the last second. It’s these putzes who cause traffic jams galore. So as this was happening I began my usual diatribe (to myself and my Higher Power) about the end of human race when all of the sudden the transport truck in front of me began to weave in between the closing lane and the lane that was open. My diatribe stopped mid-sentence as I tried to figure out what the hell he was trying to do. I thought he’d gone insane. Suddenly, I realized he was blocking the ignorant drivers who were trying to rush to the end of the closed lane. Eventually he got his truck fully into the closing lane and I was able to move forward with a huge smile on my face. I guess there is hope for humanity yet.

Dave the Dude

Immediate Gratification is Part of My Disease

They say that you should go with your first instinct when taking a multiple-choice test. Well, life isn’t multiple-choice and you need to give it some thought. I used to act on my first thought and would constantly get into trouble. Today I wait for that second thought to come and act on that instead. I am a person in need of immediate gratification. When I was actively drinking I drank for the effect. I drank as much as I could as fast as I could to get that buzz as soon as possible. I have the same need for immediate gratification when it comes to my feelings. I feel angry and my first instinct is to blow up and starting yelling. I tried this in sobriety for my first few years and never got the desired outcome I was looking for. Yet I tried it over and over again. I did the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. That is what I did when I drank. I woke up every day and said today I’m only going to drink a few and that was never the case. Yet I continued to try.

I began self-medicating regularly through alcohol and drugs at the age of 16. As a result I was unable to learn from my mistakes and grow emotionally. Sobering up at the age of 35 I handled everything the way that 16-year-old would. This did not cause too many problems in my first year of recovery as I things were going smoothly and I was on the “pink cloud” of sobriety. However, in my second year of recovery I entered into a relationship. That relationship brought a whole new set of emotions and issues with it. My 16-year-old self had a hell of a hard time dealing with it. My girlfriend didn’t start drinking alcoholically until her early 30s so she was acting as a 30-year-old when we argued (most of the time). She could not understand my immature handling of our disagreements and other challenges our relationship brought.

It took a few years for me to change and I had to work a lot to change my behaviours and my thinking when it came to reacting in a healthy manner to my emotions. Again I wanted immediate gratification in my recovery but it doesn’t work that way. I get one day of sobriety in one day, not a year. The alcoholic/addict in me wants immediate gratification – translation: immediate recovery. But it doesn’t work that way. I learned that I had to be (and continue to be) ever vigilant when working on changing my behaviours and gaining some serenity in my life. I can lose that serenity easily. My serenity and sobriety comes to me through a, “daily reprieve based on my spiritual maintenance” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939).

Dave the Dude

Happy 80th Birthday Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholics Anonymous has been called the greatest spiritual movement of the 20^th Century. Today it turned 80-years-old. On June 10, 1935 a stock speculator and long-time suffering alcoholic named Bill Wilson found himself in Akron, Ohio. Bill had been struggling with alcoholism for years. The term alcoholism wasn’t even used back then as this addiction was not thought of as a disease. Instead people who could not stop drinking were thought to be of an immoral nature with a lack of will power. It wasn’t until Bill found himself in Towns Hospital under the care of Dr. William Silkworth that he first heard his malady described as a disease. Silkworth had been treating alcoholics for decades and came to the conclusion that certain people had a physical reaction, call it an allergy, when they took a drink. Once a drink was taken that individual could not stop drinking under their own will power. He would drink until he passed out, was hand-cuffed, ran out of money, etc. That would start Bill’s journey in seeking out a way to put this, “hopeless condition of mind and body” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939) into remission.

Bill having been unable to remain sober through self-knowledge alone would run into an old friend of his named Ebby Thatcher. Ebby had been a long-time drinking partner of Bill’s but had found a way to remain sober. One night Ebby showed up to Bill’s house and upon declining a drink began to tell Bill how he had found God through an organization called The Oxford Group. Bill was skeptical of the whole “God” thing until Ebby told Bill to find a God (Higher Power if you will) of his own understanding. During Bill’s last stint at Towns Hospital he had a spiritual awakening that allowed him to have the obsession of alcohol removed from him. Bill learned that he would have to maintain a type of “spiritual maintenance” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939), by helping others suffering from the same malady, to keep his sobriety. Bill began to try to help those he deemed doomed to a life of alcoholism by preaching to them about his spiritual awakening. Although he didn’t get anyone sober he found he remained sober. Bill would later come to realize that preaching to people wasn’t the way to share. He found that if he told about his experience with alcohol and how it almost killed him that sufferers of the disease would listen. This was the catalyst of the story telling feature of AA. Telling other alcoholics our experience, strength and hope would become integral to remaining sober. Through our experience we would gain strength and through our strength we would gain hope.

So there is Bill in 1935 in Akron, Ohio. Having gained back the trust of a few businessmen he was down there doing a deal. The deal fell apart and Bill found himself craving a drink. He realized he had to talk to another drunk. After a series of phone calls asking for a drunk to talk to he was directed to the home of Dr. Bob Smith.

Dr. Bob was a notorious drunk in the area and a member of the Oxford Group. He had tried everything to get sober and only agreed to talk to Bill to placate his wife. He told his wife Anne that he would give Bill 20 minutes at most. When Bill was introduced to Dr. Bob he noticed Bob shaking badly and suggested Bob have a drink. This came as quite the surprise to Bob. Bill proceeded not to preach to Dr. Bob but too relate to him his story. A meeting that was to last 20 minutes stretched on into the night. Bill would remain in Akron, staying at Dr. Bob and Anne Smith’s house, for months. Bill and Dr. Bob began to work on a strategy to help the still suffering alcoholic. Bob would have one relapse taking his last drink on June 10 thus setting the official date of the forming of Alcoholics Anonymous.

This movement did not have a name until the book Alcoholics Anonymous was published in 1939. Today this book is commonly referred to as the Big Book. The Big Book was a basic text outlining how the first 100 members of Alcoholics Anonymous became sober. The Fellowship of AA would take six steps from the Oxford Group and turn them into 12. Dr. Bob simplified these steps into three lines:

Trust God

Clean House

Help Others

Today Alcoholics Anonymous has a membership numbering in the millions. The story is much more detailed and whole books have been written about it.

I am grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous for saving my life. I came into the rooms of AA in a state of, “pitiful, incomprehensible, demoralization” (Alcoholics Anonymous, 1939) not wanting to live while drinking but not being able to live without it. I left my first AA meeting with a spark of hope that there was a better life to be had. By following in the footsteps of Bill and Bob, and those who came after, I have found that life, but for the grace of God.

Dave the Dude