“You Don’t Feel Much Like Ridin’… w pix

…you just wish the trip was through,” (“Turn the Page” Seger, B).

I have seven mile-and-a-quarter courses laid out around town. I ride 10 miles most ridable days. I ride hard on at least two, sometimes three, of those courses most days. I have a mountain bike, but the only “mountain” I ride is the inertia I have to overcome to get started some days. My bike isn’t a light-weight titanium-framed unit. It feels more like cast iron some days.

Seger’s line kept rolling through my brain. I didn’t want to ride at all. I had to lie to myself and promise to just lollygag along the bike trail by the river, digging the scenery, but that steep little 30’ hill leading up to that particular “hard-ride” course doesn’t lend itself to slacking off. As always, I hit the top with pumping legs, glance down at my odometer to spike the

time and, by then, I’m going for the gusto, forgetting my promise to “just dog it” today.

In the back of my mind, I know what is going to happen. I’ve broken that promise to myself a thousand times, but I don’t question it when I make it, just like I never questioned my vow to “have two beers and go home.” I don’t question that vow today either. No need to. I know Slick’s two-beer promise is bogus, before it finishes forming in what’s left of my brain.

Some lies can be useful, though. If I told myself, “quit sniveling and get on that bike and jam,” I’d be more likely to “get on that chair and jam out on internet click-bait.” But, if I set the bar low, I can force myself to start. And that “start” is the key to a lot of things. “I’ll just put the clean dishes away” (and wind up doing the dirty ones). “I’ll just fill in the address on that paperwork” (and wind up completing the form).

A lie I don’t tell myself is, “I’ll do it later.”

When I’m back home from my ride, I never forget the most important part.  The truth that will make it easier to ride again next time: “I’m sure glad I did that!” I have done that for years after any task reluctantly undertaken. I told myself that nightly for twenty years, as I walked down the hall, headed home from work, after staying until after 10 PM to finish progress notes, knowing that I would be glad I didn’t have to face them in the morning, with my phone ringing and someone knocking on my office door.

Another trick to increase my motivation is that I always ride into the wind on the way out. Coming home with the wind at my back leaves a residual glow from the ride that makes throwing my leg over the bike that much easier next time.

And I damn sure told myself “I’m glad I did that” after I finished supper in early recovery, having wiped out my daily urge to have a beer, and again the next morning, when I woke up without the hangover that was the curse of my life for decades.

The Twin Demons of Sloth and Gluttony are always lurking, waiting to abet Slick’s plan to get me back into the magnetic chair, mindless comfort close at hand. At the age of 73 one doesn’t dare let that downward spiral set in.

Later for you, Slick and your “take-the-easy way” lies.

BTW, the times on my cheap (heavy) mountain bike today through the hard rides, on fairly flat pea-gravel, were 6:08 against and 5:14 with, a ten mph East wind. How are you doing? 

An Angrrrry Walk in the Park

I was a couple of weeks into treatment, coming out of the brain-fog and starting to see the outlines of my life take shape. It looked a lot better when it was “Obscured by Clouds” (Floyd, P). I was still groping for a way that I could somehow have my life and drink it too, but I was also starting to see that it was going to be a “yes or no” proposition  (Meatloaf “Paradise by the Dashboard Light). As a client neatly encapsulated the notion of admitting the problem, “Some can and some can’t.” Expanded a mite, that means, “Some can use without problems and some can’t use without problems.” Slick was watching with dismay as he felt his control slipping away, when he was presented with a perfect opportunity to "rescue” me from this “treatment cult.”

One afternoon in group, I was confronted, felt embarrassed, and became very angry.

I left for my usual post-session walk around the one-mile perimeter of the campus, seething with rage. As I stomped along, egged on by Slick, I was thinking, “They can’t talk to me like that! I’m out of here! I’ll get Curly to come pick me up and we’ll be blasted by the time I get home!” After I ran that tape for a few blocks, the exercise drained off some adrenalin and infused some endorphins, our natural, feel-good chemicals that morphine is based on. A brief interlude of rational thoughts intruded, allowing the “90-Second Rule” (A Stroke of Insight Bolte Taylor, J) to kick in and metabolize the rest of the painful, brain-fogging anger chemistry.

These chemicals will run through their circuit in 90 seconds, be broken down and flushed out. Unless, in our mind’s trip through the left brain for analysis, it hears a good story supporting the need to run the circuit again. And again and again, ad nauseam. One can feed that feedback loop or starve it. It depends on how much misery I want to put myself through.

A new tape began to play: “If you are so smart and you don’t need to be here, why did you decide you needed treatment in the first place? You’ve been saying that you aren’t ready to make it on your own, out in the wild. Can you afford to bail on treatment because your feelings were hurt? When you were using, you wanted to quit. How can using be the solution to anything?”

I continued striding along, with this tape playing for a couple of minutes, until Slick managed to wrest control of my brain and get it back into that dangerous groove, “They can’t talk to me like that! I don’t have to put up with this! I’ll just call Curly…”

I fell into a rhythm. Fifty feet of “they can’t talk to me like that…,” fifty feet of “if you’re so smart…” Around and around the campus I went, raging, questioning, raging, questioning…Slowly, like carelessly painted dotted lines on the highway, the “they can’t talk to me…” eruptions diminished, the “if you’re so smart…” lines lengthened.

By supper time, my legs were losing strength and so were the “can’t talk to me like that…” messages. I don’t mean to say that I never had to work through another emotional storm or never had another urge to use, but that was the beginning of my realization that anger was now my biggest active enemy and the end of my willingness to set aside my new life during an angry outburst.

What started with an embarrassment turned out to be one of the most useful experiences I had while in treatment.* It had taken me years of misery to enter the month of negotiations that led me to treatment and here I was ready to forget all the valid reasons I had to make that commitment and I was about to abandon it, just because my feelings were hurt.

More generally, it was brought home to me that I don’t have to stick with my initial reaction. I could be wrong! For someone with vast stores of trivial knowledge that few could challenge me on, that was difficult to wrap my mind around. Even today, thirty years later, my being in error isn’t the first possibility that occurs to me.

One might think that a 42-year-old person possessing even a smidgen of intelligence would have figured that out, but that would be confusing intelligence and knowledge with wisdom. More on that in another post.

For now, enough to say that it is a commonly held belief that maturing slows to a crawl once we begin to seek refuge from uncomfortable feelings in behaviors known to turn into addictions. Substituting massive amounts of externally provided feel-good chemicals for the painful process of facing reality is not a recipe for personal growth.

*Don’t get me wrong. As a counselor I never bought into the confrontational approach, but luckily I had reached a point in my ultra-early recovery where I was able to work through this particular incident.

I Am Right Where I Am Supposed to Be

I got to thinking about this saying when a person spoke of their own experience with it. They started by saying how hard it was to believe they were “supposed to be,” in such seemingly hopeless circumstances. In spite of that, their life is in a good place today and they now realize that they had to start from the place they were “supposed to be,” at that dark moment in their life.

That can be a hard notion to buy into when you are at the “bottom” that led you to call it the “bottom” and start your journey back out of the hole. Perhaps you are some combination of broke, jobless, homeless, physically and emotionally drained, but compared to the life you have led up to that point, this is a good place to be. At least you are on the way up.

My mentor liked to say, “You start where you stand, but you don’t have to stay there.”

At first, it probably feels like someone has handed you a teaspoon to fill in the hole Slick drove you to digging so hard and fast you couldn’t see where you were headed. Don’t worry about that. Fill that spoon with useful actions, instead of more poison, and the spoon will grow into a shovel, a wheelbarrow and finally a bulldozer piloted by a new and sober you. One that fills in holes instead of creating them.

Glance in the rearview mirror, so you don’t forget where you came from. Remember why you don’t want to go back to that place, but don’t stare at it. Raise your eyes to the distant horizon and the vision of a better life to come. Keep believing that you will get to that better place, but keep your focus on doing the next right thing. Then look for the next right thing to do after that.

About halfway through my own treatment, the 24 Hour reading included “Yesterday is Gone. Forget It. Tomorrow Never Comes. Don’t Worry. Today Is Here. Get Busy.” To remind myself to “Get Busy,” doing the next right thing, I printed that out in large block letters and posted it on the wall where I would be sure to see it first thing in the morning.

Then I got busy working a program that addressed my issues. More on that later.

Slick finally ran his bulldozer into the ditch. Don’t help his BFF’s, anger and depression, pull his dumb ass out!

Leave that liar there! Get Busy! 

How to Get that Warm Tingly Feeling Without the Comedown

I was talking with one of my mentors about the rewards of seeing people’s lives improve. He said, “When you see someone ‘get it,’ it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.” He was not one to be easily affected by experiences. In order to feel the rush that I feel driving on slippery streets, he needed to shoot coyotes (legally, for predator control) while flying an airplane solo, running the controls with his knees, but seeing someone find the key to a happy life “elevated” his mood.

I could have made a lot more money taking abuse from some visionary in the tech field, but I don’t think large paychecks would have ever given me that “tingly feeling” described in this post by Eric Barker. His posts are long, with many links to his expert sources, but he has a lot of followers.  

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/153b797a14c36f90

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