detoxblog@wonderwinds

That's the class I missed

Well, the first days are the hardest days,
don't you worry anymore
When life looks like Easy Street
there is danger at your door
Think this through with me
Let me know your mind
Wo-oah, what I want to know
is are you kind?

I just signed up with http://www.sobercircle.com/ and did a little time in a chat room there. Kinda neat I guess. Chat, forums, blogs. Resources and events but I didn't go deep on it so I don't know much about them. I was looking for online meetings. Chat is better unless the rooms fill up with people not respecting what they might be walking into ya know? Cool site. Bookmarked AND allowed javascript

Found a couple of others too but haven't played yet. Found an IRC chat room. I know next to nothing about IRC except it's totally retro and bound to be full of geeks

So yeah if you're not into God-stuff now would be a good time to leave...

So I do this IOP thing. Intensive Out-patient Program - basically learning stuff about the addictive side of ourselves and how to deal with it. This past week was ... interesting. I think there might be 10 of us there now and Monday 2 of us told of using again. Briefly yah? Didn't sound like "falling off the wagon" but once you drag one foot in the mud you ain't too far from fallin' on your face in it, or at least we ain't far from that. We addicts I mean. Wednesday one of came in totally lit up. You can tell ya know? Mannerisms totally out of character AND anything explainable without being lit up. And hey when I smell liquor strong like that I kinda know what's gone down...

And holy shit did I want what that person had! Like raunchy porn in a way. "You know it's wrong but you want it anyway" kinda thing. What we do in IOP is 2 hours of class/lecture stuff then an hour of "small group" where they close the door and we talk about what's up lately. Anyway that person left before small group and in small group we sorta talked about the incident and I didn't want to say anything because really I was glad that person was gone because that one or me was leaving and jesus fucking christ on a cross IOP should be a safe haven type of thing so if you can't stay clean stay out!!!

Instant edge. The kind of edge that makes me pace and run my fingers across my head and think 'i could use a drink'.

But the staff draws you in to dialog if you're quiet cuz that's their job, so the counselor guy asks me how I'm doing on the whole "God as I understand him and spirituality thing" so I answered not so good and that I was glad that person was gone because it sucked to think about sitting next to that person. Whatever yah? So I said I was finally gonna put my phone list to good use. Call the hell out of my fellow alcoholics in my home group here ya know? Lean on 'em till I got the smell - the sweet enticing inviting loving smell - of alcohol out of my head.

Then I gotta have a meeting with the chaplain person who - of course - asks about the God and spirituality stuff. So I answered as honestly as I could and basically this has been an issue for me with the whole 12-step thing. To my mind spirituality and God and religion were all bits of "The Church" and I bagged the church a long time ago. Intellectually I can understand how God and Spirituality and religion are not the same and stuff like that, but we are who we are because we've lived the lives we've led, and in my mind it's all a bunch of crap.

So I go home thinking "phone list phone list phone list" and God damn it I couldn't find my fucking phone list.

Wanna know what God is to me? The reflection of self in the world around you. Wanna know what spirituality is to me? Seeing the reflection of self and reflecting on it. Heavy shit yah? Whatever: it works for me. (No - not a projection of self okay? The clothes don't make the man even though they project what the man wants the world to think.)

So anyway I'm like "where is my god damned phone list and why is this house always such a fucking mess and what the fuck i can't find shit when i need it" when I realized something kinda heavy. God didn't hide or damn my phone list, and my house is a mess because my life is a mess. We project ourselves the most in our own homes yah? Your tastes, styles, art, whatever: it's a big projection of self that we invite others to see from time to time. So my phone list is lost because EVERYTHING is lost in here. It's a mess because I'm a mess. So I saw that. I saw the reflection of self in the world - my own projected world - around me and found it both lacking and undesirable.

I also found the ... strength? integrity? will? to do something about it. All the anger at the loss of the phone list became energy I could use to, literally and metaphysically, put my house in order. So I did. When it was time for the Wednesday meeting I was totally jazzed and again didn't find the right place but didn't get bummed because why should I? I went home and took care of some more shit.

Friday was another interesting "day in the life" but this bitch is pushing a thousand words so that's enough. Maybe tomorrow I'll ramble on about Friday, and maybe not.