The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, May 16th 2017 (Statistics and the Certificate of Success)


I've managed to get Lindsay's old phone working (I say ''old'' but it's newer than either of my two phones by many a year) and spent some time on Sunday afternoon (when I should have been walking) putting music across from my laptop onto this phone. Now my walks don't have to be so lonely. This will hopefully motivate me to get out there again and put one foot in front of the other.

I have my Endomondo account open and stored on the right of my screen while this OpenOffice word processing document takes up the left of my screen. If I bring up the statistics and then spread it out a little I can see how I've been doing. Filter it onto ''Month'' and I can clearly see. My membership on this website, Endomondo, goes like this:

August 2014: 26.2 miles. I walked a marathon distance for some reason back in 2014 when I wasn't drinking but was a couple of months sober and was about to go through my final relapse. This tested my body to the max and I remember it being really tough. I can walk marathon distances pretty easily these days.

For the next workout of any kind I have to skip all the way until just after I quit smoking ninety eight days ago. Then I can see how many miles I've been walking in preparation for this monster walk in less than a month's time.

February: 88.5 miles.

March: 142 miles.

April: 111 miles.

May: 23.66 miles.

There's something really odd about these stats. For one – I seem to be reducing the number of miles each month this walk gets closer. Obviously I am going to have to wake the fuck up and get on it from now on. Last night after college I walked to the Slimming World class in a bid to stay at my target weight (which I managed to – yippeeeee!!!!) and so added just over eight miles onto the May total (meaning that it was hilariously low prior to yesterday) and I'd imagine I'll have to do the same again this evening. On Wednesday Lindsay and I are going to the next coastal town to visit one of our AA pals and so we have made a plan. We'll leave the house together and while Lindsay is at her appointment with her psychiatric nurse I will be marching along the coast to meet her at Rhona's. On Thursday I'll have only small walks from the college to Dr. Bacon to the next meeting about improving our town. On Friday I'll walk from the Charity Shop Cafe to Lindsay's. Then I'll have the big fuckers over the weekend.

It's another goal. A mini-goal. A goal within a goal. Breaking a bigger goal into smaller, more digestible sections. Try to get the mile tally for May above that of the other months. I have a hundred and twenty miles to walk in the next two weeks if I want to do that so another challenge has started. I like challenges. Well – this isn't really a challenge, is it!? It's more just a little challege, a mini challenge. The actual fifty mile walk – now that's a fucking challenge!!

As I take my Slimming World book from the facilitator I revel in the success. I no longer have to pay to attend. My Slimming World journey has been short and sweet but a success nonetheless. Here's the statistics for my time in those rooms:

I quit smoking on the 07th February (that was the day of my last cigarette, I always get confused over this. So the first day as a non-smoker, my ''Day One'' started on the 08th) and then got into Slimming World on the 20th in a bid to keep that weight off. The weight I was promised I would gain as a result of giving up the smokes.

20/02 - 12 (stone) 3 (pounds)

27/02 – 12; 4

06/03 – 12; 1

15/03 – 12; 2

22/03 – 12

03/04 – 11; 13.5

12/04 – 11; 12.5

17/04 – 11; 13

01/05 – 11; 7.5

15/05 – 11; 4.5

This is kinda fucked up. I seem to have lost weight more quickly in May than at any other time. So I lose weight better when I'm not going on any of these long walks? Interesting. I can't explain. I also wasn't attending Slimming World very often during my times of best weight loss. When I am attending once a fortnight I seem to do better than when I go every week. These are very strange statistics coming out here but they must mean something.

I think all they really mean is that it took me a while to lose the bad habits. Only recently have I really been sticking to the plan and paying close attention to what I'm eating and, more importantly, how much of it. I think also that it was much easier to lose those last three pounds as I knew that I could reach target. The motivation levels were higher. I had really tried the week before and managed to knock five pounds off in the two weeks (a good achievement at my weight – not having to lose much) but could only get to within a half pound of it. This made the last push that much easier I think.

So now I have my Certificate of Success and it's pretty much a free lifetime membership – providing I can do as they ask and remain within my target weight guidelines. I look around the room and say my silent goodbyes. I wonder what's next. I'll pop in every second or third week just to keep in contact.

There are one or two who have gained weight again this week. Who just don't seem to be able to lose despite promising the rest of us that they follow the plan to the letter. I guess there's the same amount of denial in these rooms as there is in others I could mention. People perhaps attending for reasons other than to directly lose weight and learn to eat better. It's not my concern.

I've done my little bit and I'm chuffed.

Holding onto it will be something I'll have to keep an eye on.

But I might throw in a Snickers bar with my lunch today.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Had better go catch his bus to college.

1094

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, May 17th 2017 (Thinking In Steps)


I'm slowly building up my mile tally this month. I couldn't believe how low my month of May was at the halfway point. The worst month in my training plan since starting all this walking carry on back in February when I quit smoking. I walked from the college in the next town to Lindsay's on Monday and again yesterday and so I've managed to add a few to my total. We are now sitting at thirty two miles for the month. It's eighty miles behind last month but I'm confident I'll catch up on this.

In a short while Lindsay and I will be leaving to go to our friend Rhona's. We visit her every now and then after meeting her in AA. Lindsay has her appointment with her psychiatric nurse at half past one and then she's getting the bus through to Rhona's town. I'll be leaving with Lindsay but heading in the opposite direction – walking to Rhona's and planning to get there around the same time as Lindsay. I've drawn the route into Endomondo and it'll be another nine miles added onto this. I'll be walking tomorrow but it'll be another fairly short one (I count short walks anything from three miles to around fourteen; mid range walks from fourteen to maybe around the marathon distance of twenty six and a bit miles; and long walks as anything over this, although I do feel that there should be a fourth category for walks over thirty two miles long as this is when my body really begins to struggle. There is only one walk coming up in the build up to the actual fifty mile event itself and this will be the day after Lindsay's pal's wedding a week on Saturday, the same day of the AA convention, probably the next time I have any involvement with the fellowship) as there's so much going on.

On Friday Lindsay is coming to the Charity Shop Cafe to check out where it is that I work and we're gonna have a little lunch there before heading to Restoration for the first time in over a month. She'll then be taking the bus home while I'm walking the nine miles through. On Saturday I am going to get the miles in and plan a route that will really test me. I think that the official training plan for the walking preparation says that I am to walk twenty two miles this Saturday and eighteen on Sunday. I think that I'll be trying to walk the combined forty miles but perhaps not in the way that they have it outlined. Sunday is the final day of the football league season in Scotland and England and so I am keen to be involved in that (the length of my involvement is nothing more that sitting watching Final Score on BBC, but I can live with that) so I'll be doing a longer walk on the Saturday.

It's not just wanting to watch the football on Sunday that makes me want to push it on Saturday though. It's the doubt that is setting in. I've been on two thirty plus mile walks this year (the only two thirty plus mile walks of my life, come to think of it) and both times I have starting thinking ahead to the walk itself. The last time I walked thirty miles was just a few weekends ago and by the end of it I was really struggling. So badly was I struggling that I couldn't possibly see how I could manage another twenty miles. The thought is daunting. If you don't know what I mean then try it. Head out with me on Saturday and we'll go for a thirty mile or so walk. Feel that burn in the legs, the burn on the mind as well. Contemplate as we are limping along and starting to feel the cramps setting in just how the fuck we are going to walk another twenty miles on top of this while in this state. It's perhaps the very type of thing that the whole ''a day at a time'' thing was created for. After this weekend I'll probably need a couple of days where I do little but stretch.

This coming Monday there is something to look forward to. The lecturers are asking us to book in some studio time and get practice in. We're running out of weeks until the course ends and so we should make the best of the time we have left. We've (the usual four of us that seem to be spending our time together over the last few months) have booked out three hours on Monday morning and we have each selected a song we wish to cover. I'll be playing all of the guitar on the day and Shaun will be playing bass. I think Ross will be playing keys and some drums, the other drums will be programmed or sampled. The only catch was that we each have to sing our own choice of song. This has added a little humour into the mix.

I have selected Green Day's ''Holiday;'' Shaun selected Josh Turner's ''Your Man.'' Ross picked a John Legend song I've never heard of and have forgotten the name of, and Paige went for ''XO'' by Eden. This gives me some music to learn over the weekend which could add to my stress but I have chosen to see as a way of getting away from other stresses. I haven't picked up the guitar much at all this year – haven't really picked it up much in the ten years since I left the Academy of Music and Sound if I'm totally honest – and it's a constant regret of mine. It's weird how I regret something like this. I am annoyed with myself for not having the passion and joy in doing something that I feel I should have. Maybe it is something I can reclaim but it might also be something I could perhaps do with accepting as gone or never there in the first place.

Well, I've reached my one thousand words for the day so anything else would just be rambling. I'll have quotes from that book ''I Got Tired Of Pretending'' to post tomorrow but I've written them out already. This is to free up some time for copying out the session with Dr. Bacon the following day which will likely take up posts for Friday and Saturday. All this writing. I have a couple of things need written for the college as well and a reflective report in a week or so on our current project. Not to mention our online journal portfolio.

Thankfully it's a warm and sunny day and so the walk to Rhona's town I am very much looking forward to.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Spends lots of time writing.

Too much?

1164

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, May 18th 2017 (Bob Earll Says)


Sandra from ACA will no doubt be expecting the return of her book ''I Got Tired Of Pretending'' when I see her again on Saturday afternoon. Today I have a busy one in store. I'll be heading to college in a few minutes to attend my radio broadcasting class before heading to the Credit Union to withdraw some cash for the weekend before it closes at one o'clock. I'll then grab some lunch before heading for my next session with clinical psychologist Dr. Bacon at half past three. After that there is more action with my community as we get together for another meeting to discuss what might be best for the people who live where I do. Hopefully the turnout will be a bit better than it has been the last couple of meetings. That's all stuff I'll reflect on in the coming days (as well as writing out the psychology session which usually takes a while but helps me to digest it all better) but for now I wanted to write out some of the interesting things I got from the book Sandra loaned me. Just a few things that took my interest and gave me something to think about. Hope that you (if anyone even still reads in here) enjoy.

''I have always felt that people who are newly graduated from an assertiveness training course should be made to wear a banner across their chest announcing the accomplishment, so that the poor waiters, waitresses, store clerks, gas station attendants, mates, and friends who catch the initial volley of gunfire will know why. People who have never been assertive in their lives don't know at the core of their being that it is okay to stand up for themselves. An assertiveness training course doesn't change that, it only convinces them on an intellectual level. Not believing that they have a right to stand up for themselves on an emotional level, they approach their initial test runs from a defensive posture. They attack rather than assert.
I am now equally convinced that there should be a handbook and banner for the people just getting in touch with or just learning to express their feelings. Little children living in a functional home who are in the process of getting in touch with their feelings do so in a supportive environment. Those of us who have to start this process all over again aren't as lucky.
Once I started getting in touch with my feelings and needs it seemed like everywhere I went was a mine field. Almost every encounter exploded in my face.
When I started to get in touch with some of my anger, I became aware of the suppressed and repressed anger of others. I would go to meetings and organisations I belonged to, and I could feel the suppressed and repressed anger buzzing around the room like a neon sign about to explode. I wanted to run away. I wanted to scream. I sat there like a good boy.''

''Using Carol's definition (of intimacy: ''Me being me and letting you see me.'') I can safely say that intimacy was a rare commodity in my relationships.
I didn't know me so it was impossible to let anyone ''see me.'' If anyone did ''see me,'' it was because they had the ability to look past the problem, beyond the mask. If I showed myself to anybody it was by mistake, and I deeply regretted it immediately afterwards.''

''At the time I quit smoking I was in the middle of a separation from my then wife. I had lost control and desperately wanted it back. She was sleeping with someone else. I wanted her back, control back, and him out of the picture. On top of that I was getting a little difficult to be around. The tiniest things would make me angry. I am convinced that one of tar and nicotine's primary functions, besides killing us, is stuffing anger.
One day Harold quits smoking. A couple of days later he comes home from work, still not smoking. Entering the living room, he looks at the green sofa against the wall and then to his wife Martha. He looks back at the sofa and then Martha. Finally he says to Martha, ''I hate that puke-green sofa!''
Martha, shocked, says, ''Harold, that sofa has been there for twenty years!''
Harold says, ''I know, and I've hated it for twenty years!''
Martha says, ''I think you ought to have a cigarette.''
A smoker who uses cigarettes as one of the methods to stuff out his or her feelings is surrounded by friends and family accustomed to that behaviour. When the smoker quits and their feelings start coming up, everybody gets uncomfortable. People perceive this change in the smoker as a threat and don't hesitate to encourage the smoker to go have a cigarette.''

''After the age of thirty you don't want the pounds to come off fast. The elasticity in the skin started to go and, if you lose weight too fast, you wind up looking like you're standing in a sack.
The first twenty pounds melted away. I started to feel good about not eating red meat, not drinking coffee, not smoking, and not eating sugar. But other rumblings were starting to go on inside me. I was crying more. I was aware of my anger. I was aware that sometimes people said or did things that hurt me. I was afraid. I wasn't sure God was going to help me. In fact, I started to interpret the emergency feelings as a separation from God.''

''A couple of months later a friend came to me and suggested that I start running. He felt that it would help me stay off the cigarettes, lose the rest of the weight, and feel even better. I ran out of breath after such a short distance that I was embarrassed to run where anyone else could see me. Doing well wasn't enough – I had to look good.
Out came the running shoes, shorts, and T-shirts. This time I had a friend and a couple of others to run with, so even though I felt silly, their presence made it somewhat okay. I would just suck my stomach in and run as hard as I could when there were strangers around. Running my ass off to impress people I didn't know and would probably never see again was a waste of good energy.''

''There was a lot of stress in going to the gym. First, lot of the women and girls were lifting more weight than I could. And I still had the old jailhouse, iron pile, mentality of ''he who lifts the most is the best human being.'' It was embarrassing as hell to come up to a machine some tiny damsel had just finished and not be able to move the weight until I had lightened it. One more than one occasion, when I would see a gorilla coming down the line of machines behind me, I would increase the weight by a hundred pounds when I was finished. Anything to look good. Just being there exercising to improve the quality of my life wasn't good enough. Second, I didn't like my body. It wasn't perfect. I was ashamed. I thought that in order to be okay I had to look like Mr. America. I did not have the ability to give myself praise for having the courage to risk the unknown process of taking care of myself. Third, I expected myself to know everything about exercise. I thought I was defective if I had to have the instructor explain it to me. And if I didn't understand after the first demonstration, I knew I was a failure. Adult children often suffer from a learning impairment.''

''We must learn that we are not weak and flawed because we need rest and a certain amount of sleep. We must learn to find a good dentist and a good preventative medicine doctor.
When I first moved to New Mexico I called three people I knew and asked them for a dentist. None of them would recommend the dentist they were currently seeing. Their dentist was good enough for them but not for a friend.
Learn to always get second and, if necessary, third options. If you can't do these things alone, and many of us can't, find a supportive friend who will go with you and help.
Don't be surprised if any sudden interest in your health is perceived by the people in your life as a threat.''

''There are two kinds of forgiveness: false forgiveness, which takes place in the mind, and true forgiveness, which takes place in the heart.
False forgiveness is achieved by gathering information and coming to a logical conclusion or by simply making an intellectual decision to forgive. The decision can be forced upon you by yourself by or others.
False forgiveness is a socially acceptable method of stuffing your feelings.
False forgiveness is the method of forgiveness practiced by religion, many self-help groups, and by most people in twelve-step recovery.
The need for false forgiveness is a result of fear, the fear generated in each of us when confronted with having to experience the pain and feelings attached to having to look at the truth of what happened to us when we were children.
I hurry to falsely forgive you because I believe that as soon as I forgive you, you will stop hurting me.
False forgiveness is like putting a bandage on an open wound. Underneath on the emotional level, the wounds are still bleeding unattended and are being further infected by the lies contained in the bandage.
True forgiveness is a smile, a sigh, a tear, and an understanding that takes place in the heart.
True forgiveness is an acknowledgement of your pain that comes from me allowing myself to experience my pain, past and present.
True forgiveness is an act of great love, the love I have bestowed upon myself by my willingness to go to the caverns of my soul for the truth, a truth that can't be found in the mind.
True forgiveness is a gift from God that was with me when I arrived on this planet. This gift was lost in the bombing, sirens, air raid shelters, and subsequent rubble of my early childhood.
True forgiveness comes when I get rid of a belief system that says forgiving you makes you right and me wrong.
True forgiveness is not just an absence of anger.
True forgiveness is possible when I no longer believe that the moment of I forgive you, I will cease to exist.
Perhaps forgiveness is moment to moment, like life.''

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Off to start his Thursday.

1811

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, May 19th 2017 (Busy Little Day)


So today was another busy little day and one in which there were more good thoughts and behavioural patterns than bad ones, which isn't all that common an occurrence if I'm being brutally honest. The session with Dr. Bacon has not been copied out yet and sits on Lindsay's digital voice recorder in my bag awaiting a spell where I have some time I can devote to it. This might not happen until next week though. My next session is in a fortnight and then I think there's going to be a longer break while he goes on annual leave again. The session was different. We looked into why I didn't do my homework in looking out for my Schema Modes and their patterns in my life and we looked at goal-setting, short and long term, and why goals are not the ideal way to go about living life successfully. We looked at much more sophisticated ways of looking at living without goal setting. It was interesting and I'll type it out over the course of the next few days.

I've been giving much thought to a couple of things that Lindsay said to me recently. One was about her stress over the build-up to her final exams over the last couple of weeks and how she coped with that. Our incident a couple of weekends ago in which I wrote about how I felt we were struggling she now refers to as her ''freak out'' and I think she's viewing it as an overreaction on her part, something to do with the accumulated stress as she approached the exam. I've never liked the idea of exams. Too much hinges on them. Stress calls by teenagers to agencies like Samaritans has risen again this year. I'd imagine that suicide related to exams at school has also risen but is too sticky a point to look at – it would mean that the system would be put under enormous pressure to change and we don't know how to, are incredibly resistant to it – and so we continue to keep our heads buried firmly in the sand.

Lindsay was with her psychiatric nurse during the week and they talked about the stresses over the exams and how she struggled, had her ''freak out'' with me; and also how she sometimes feels about coping and her ways of managing this. She never thinks about drinking, she confirms this to both her psychiatric nurse and to me when we talk about it afterwards, but she does sometimes get the thoughts of taking a dozen or so of her emotional regulation medication as a way of punching out, stuffing her feelings. She admits herself that while she acknowledges that alcohol is not in the equation there is still this longing at times of extreme stress where running away is an attractive option. Lindsay's own Detached Protector in action?

Another thing she said was in relation to my family. I asked her if she felt that, having known me for all this time now, my family was distant. I guess I asked knowing what she would say but I just wanted someone who knew me to say it. This way I could stop pretending that I have a mother and brother whom I am close to. I could then begin to look at my family and my life, not through rose-tinted glasses, but through the brutally realistic Jasper Conran spectacles I wear on my nose every day. Now there is no denying that the distance between members of my family is vast.

Lindsay met me at the Charity Shop Cafe and then we headed to Restoration. I hadn't been in over a month and didn't really expect anyone to notice but I was pleasantly surprised. It would seem as though I am one of the crew and people notice when I'm not there. Was I not here because I had my guitar group to run with Marshall? People had started to think along these lines I think and I'd actually forgotten all about that group we were supposed to be setting up. I think that ship has sailed though. That's over a year now that I've been meeting with DAPL's Susan about it for meetings and phone calls and all the rest and this time we even had a date set out for it starting and everything, only nothing happened. My own confidence and willingness to avoid people, places and things which I think are wasting my time should be avoided. Susan, Marshall, and anyone associated with that guitar group – they are all on that list.

It's no one's duty to chip in and pay me something towards my Walk The Walk fifty mile double marathon. To offer a little sponsorship support to breast cancer by signing their names onto my little form. No one has been able to yet as I never carry my form with me – I have still only one payment and that was from Ferrari John, a guy I've met only once in my life. It does look like, however, that there will be one or two people at least from within the confines of the Restoration church hall that will be contributing a little towards the cause. The sponsorship form will have to start travelling with me wherever I go. I should be taking it to the college, to AA, to the charity shop. I should be hassling my ''family'' as well. If I don't get the hundred pounds in then I have to pay it myself before I can enter. I think I'll try the Wednesday afternoon meeting of AA next week and take my form with me. This is likely the meeting where I can expect one or two people to offer a pound or two. It'll be interesting to see....

Lindsay and I bumped into an AA old timer at the town centre this afternoon as well. I am always struck by how different people are when they are outside of the rooms. They act so normally. Then they go into a meeting and they seem to transform completely and become a cock-head, spouting bullshit like no one else can. This guy is nowhere near my favourite people in AA. I think he's selfish and uses the fellowship as a way of filling up empty time he has since his wife died. He uses it as somewhere to go on a Saturday night, Wednesday night, every fucking night – and what he says while in these rooms is rambling and often nothing to do with drinking or helping the new guy. It's lame, and wholly selfish. Then I see him out of the rooms and he seems like a decent and regular guy. The three of us head to the shops to price walking shoes. He needs a new pair for hiking and I do for this coming walk. I'll have to break a new pair in over the next three weeks. This pair I am currently using are weakening all the time. I don't end up getting anything and time is ticking.

The forty miles I've walked this week has brought my mile total a little higher than it was at the start of the week when it was really poor for the month of May. It's getting better at ling last.

Still have no idea how I'm going to walk fifty miles though.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Fifty miles??? No idea......

1261

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, May 20th 2017 (Another Abandoned Cave)


I had planned on a mammoth thirty mile walk today but it hasn't happened. Rainfall outside combined with a later than desired rise from bed and still muscles in the legs to force me into submission. I'm not going to be walking today. I'm really running out of free days when I can get these really long walks in. You need to set aside around seven hours for them and so it takes up the vast majority of the day. There also can be little else done afterwards until the legs, shoulders and back start to feel normal again. I think that the way I'll cope with this is to walk a little tomorrow and then nothing at all (other than the usual shorter walks I don't count as training – all the little one mile and two mile walks down town or to the college and so on) until Wednesday which is my day off college. If I go to the AA meeting then it starts at two and so if I am up early enough I can get in one of the longer walks. Then my time is taken up until the weekend when I'll have Sunday free. After that the training plan sees us lowering the distance walked as we try to allow our bodies time to recover in time for the main event. I can get two big walks in between now and the point of slowing down, three at an absolute push. This coming Wednesday, and next Sunday are pencilled in as essential. I have to get my arse in gear. Sounds like I'm being hard on myself. Good - this is the exact time for that! Get your arse into gear, Stevie!!!

With five weeks to go until the college is over and done with I feel like I have a little safety net. After these five weeks comes a period of uncertainty. The huge walk will be history. I won't have to worry about training plans and sore legs. I'll have other stressed though. One of them will be work. As I was walking to Rhona's during the week I noticed a window cleaning company busy at work. It got me thinking that this might be an easy way to get some money together over summer. This is obviously second choice to getting a hold of Barry the Bullet and trying to go back out to work for the customer base we had built up. With my own work I could decide my own hours and would be paid around double that of any employer. The hassle is in getting back out there. Why has Barry been so hard to reach this time? What's going on? Lindsay says that we'll add him as a friend on her Facebook profile this evening and see if we can reach him that way. Just in case he's lost his phone and hasn't been getting my calls and messages.

There is also the option of trying something totally different. Why go back into window cleaning? That's something surely related to my old life and so might be taking a step backwards. Maybe I'd be best pushing myself a little and trying something totally different and out of my comfort zone – like I did when I started volunteering for the Anna and Elsa at the charity shop last summer. Would this be affected by a decision to seek employment elsewhere? Would I be able to continue to volunteer? Would there be a need to? Would I have moved on? I'll be trying like a bear to reach Barry through Facebook this evening and looking for other ways of contacting him. Failing that I can always go and knock on the doors of some customers and go looking for him that way. Track him down. Failing that I'll maybe be best looking for something else for the coming summer.

And then what happens after that? Am I to go back to college to try for a sound production diploma? Is that really what I'm looking at doing? Is that really what I want to do? This coming Monday there are four of us students going into a studio to get some practice in and so I have been expected to practice guitar parts for four songs we are gonna be trying to record. I've been struggling with this. I've been struggling to get into the guitar for a long time actually. Remember that audition I had with that band last May, just over a year ago now, actually, yikes?! That was the last time I put any effort into my instrument. I think that may have actually been the last time I spent any time with it at all. I am thinking that if I cannot get into the swing of things soon then perhaps I would be best putting my gear up for sale. I don't think I'm overreacting here. I just don't think I have a passion for playing guitar anymore.

So do I really want to take anything further in terms of the audio industry? It's difficult to decide. I guess I don't have to decide now but it would be a little more relaxing to have some kind of plan set out in front of me. As things stand it feels as though I've had a year long holiday, a year's reprieve, from my old life but am setting up and getting ready to return to it in five weeks. It's not exactly a thought that fills me with hope and optimism for the future.

A couple of months ago one of my neighbours complained to the council that I was not living at my address. I'd spent a lot of time over the Christmas period at Lindsay's flat. My council housing officer called me and we arranged a meeting in the cave. He had been told that it had been abandoned. Yesterday I look at my phone and notice this text message:

''Hi Stephen, ive had reports again that you've not been staying there. Is everything okay? The neighbours have reported your windows wide open, they are concerned for you incase somebody breaks in while your not there''

I should do well not to think about the poor grammar of someone in a position of power and authority over me. The windows are open but they are not wide open as has been stated. The reason no one will break in is because the front of the cave looks onto a main road with a bus shelter directly opposite. Too many people look onto the street and the neighbours are clearly nosy bastards. I don't think that I'm going to be able to fool this situation for much longer. I'm going to have to let the surrounding houses think I'm in. The only way I know to do this is to continue to open and close the windows every time I am in – alternate them frequently – and, on days when I am in, create noise. The way I'll do this is by hooking the speakers up to the computer on a Friday morning when I leave for my voluntary shift and leave a playlist running at volume the whole four hours I'm away. Not volume that will attract a police presence – but volume enough that the neighbours realise that they could have much worse people staying next door to them than I. It'll be Opeth for breakfast for my local residents every Friday morning. When I am there during midweek evenings I will be doing the same – visiting Gillon and English Sara while Opeth screams the house down back in the cave. Keep alternating the windows between open and closed.

Right then – the weekend is underway and Lindsay will be awake soon. The bulk of the final round up of matches in the football season doesn't happen until tomorrow. I'll find plenty to do though.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Left the windows open.

1346

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, May 21st 2017 (Moss and the Stone)


Lindsay's brother is coming to give us a lift to a town a few miles away at half past eleven, around two hours from now. The four of us (Lindsay, her brother, his one year old son, and our twisted narrator) will be going for lunch before heading shopping for something for me to wear for this wedding next week. I'm trying to go easy on the cash situation so it'll be a pair of trousers and a shirt. I have shoes but I'll have to buy a pair of trainers for the big walk and I need to do this soon as they'll need broken in for a good few miles before the event – an event which will still be underway exactly three weeks from now despite it starting at midnight. I'll be well into the second marathon by this time, assuming all goes well. The training for it seems to be taking another dip this weekend. The leg muscles are still a little tight and the weather is still a little on the wet side. Wouldn't stop a real walker but I'm just a causal one.

At the ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholic and Dysfunctional Families) meeting yesterday I was hearing about some people who are taking up walking very seriously though. In fact – they make what I'm doing seem quite pathetic. There are three members of AA who are trying to raise money for the Scottish Recovery Walk by walking five hundred miles throughout the month of July. That works out at around sixteen miles per day, every single day of the thirty one. I know the three people she's talking about and I just can't believe that they would be physically capable of this task. Then I begin to think about some of the factors involved. Neither of the three of them have to work and so they have all day, every day, really, to complete this. Because of this they can perhaps watch their pace. One of the reasons I think that my muscles tighten so often (besides lack of adequate stretching before and afterwards) is because of the time limit associated with the walk itself meaning that I have to keep up a continual speed of walking the entire time. I'm trying to get my average up to around four and a half miles an hour but it's proving very difficult to keep up. Maybe these guys are walking more slowly and this makes it more achievable? I may contact one of them to find out some information. I doubt I'd have time (or the physical ability) to complete it but the college will be over with by then so I may have some extra time. This would be taking the double marathon to the next level.

The ACA meeting itself was a disaster though. I don't know how to listen to my criticism and judgement best. Judgement doesn't just come for no reason I don't think. As the members are each taking their turns to speak there are one or two my brain starts to oppose. Dr. Bacon would likely say that this is my Critical Parent Mode in action and that I should not listen. I should stuff this voice out and listen to what is being said. If this is so, and my judgement (and let's not pretend, dear reader, whoever you may be, that you do not judge others yourself. That was one of the many problems I had with the WQD forum – it was filled with people who assured me they did not judge others at all and tried to convince me that they were all but perfect ) is indeed my Critical Parent Mode talking to me, then I think that it does actually serve a purpose to me thus contradicting what Dr. Bacon was talking with me about on Thursday.

We talked about my confusion regarding two of my Schema Modes: The Critical Parent and the Healthy Adult. One of my problems is not knowing which is which sometimes and confusing one as being the other. Judgement of people in ACA is something that only my Critical Parent would do and so I'll write this down on my homework sheet. But I would say that it could only be my Healthy Adult that would recognise this. That makes sense to me but I could be confusing them again. Sandra (woman who started up ACA in this part of Scotland – the Kingdom of Fife) goes first and she starts talking about how some guy has approached her on the bus on the way through and asked her on a date. They were going to be heading out for drinks later that evening.

This sets me off. Either my Critical Parent Mode begins to tell me that this is her third man since I started attending these meetings just six or seven weeks ago and that I have no idea why she would mention this to us besides perhaps the fact that she is desperate for us to think of her as attractive and desirable – this woman was perhaps attractive once but she is now starting to look very haggard and unwell, fatigued from long spells of suffering and worry, as she approaches her sixtieth birthday – and she is obviously fighting off terrible feelings of perhaps facing the rest of her life alone. Next week she'll have fallen out with him and she'll talk about how he's co-dependent or himself an Adult Child and so on and so forth. This is not at all going along with what is discussed in the self help book she loaned me the other week. This is feeding the judgement of my Critical Parent.

Like so many in AA – why bring this stuff to a meeting? The meetings are grounds for sharing our experience, strength and hope – not sharing our dysfunctional behaviours and thinking patterns, not for seeking attention or validation. Then I pause. I had a good sponsor. It is only through him that I know all of the stuff I just mentioned. In many ways sponsorship is like parenting but pertains only to the life in the rooms. I know the behaviour and how I should conduct myself in meetings. I'm not saying that I always do – but I know how to. Maybe others who had much weaker sponsors learned things another way. Maybe their own Bully and Attack Modes were encouraged whereas mine was trained to be suppressed. This is more judgement you might notice but is it all my Critical Parent? Could it not instead be my Healthy Adult warning me that there is nothing else to be learned in these rooms? That AA and ACA and all of the rest of them have had their use? That the future for me lies outside of the false recovery that these places encourage?

The time has perhaps come at long last where I don't bother with any of the groups at hand. This is quite possibly the warning that my Healthy Adult Mode is giving out to me. The healthy people leave when the time is right – this is why the rooms are so full of sick people. Look at my sponsor. Used to do three meetings a week but now that he has a baby he is only at one. He's other things to do now. This will all be going down in my homework sheet for Dr. Bacon and our next session a week on Thursday.

Lindsay says that her family is as distant as mine. Yesterday she called her brother to ask if he'd be willing to pick us up from the wedding on Saturday. The next thing he was talking about was that his partner was working and he was going to be bored with the baby all day. Lindsay seemed to read between the lines here and suggested we all go for lunch today. She says that her brother was hinting but to actually ask to spend time with her would be a sign of weakness for him or completely out of his emotional comfort zone. He fucks around instead.

I think about my own brother and his family. Mum said when we met a couple of weeks ago that she only hears from him when they are looking for a babysitter. It's getting to be like that with me too. It hurts. But my brother is much like Lindsay's. He's not in touch with his feelings at all. He's useless at displaying any emotion whatsoever and he's incredibly poor at sticking up for himself and asking for what he wants. He's effectively got the emotional range of a piece of moss or the stone it clings to.

Lindsay and I are supposed to be working through things the likes of which our brothers may never get the chance to. We're trying to become healthy adults while our brothers just assume that they already are, if they even ever give it a moment's thought. It's up to us then to be the bigger guys and to make the first move.

Lindsay's done her part and it worked out fine.

My turn next.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Has a brother who's like moss and a stone.

1563

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Monday, May 22nd 2017 (Three Years On The Cue)




That's how long it would have been had it (the Cue – nickname for the forum I originally joined when I was just starting out with this recovery thing) still been going and survived into another year. It was nice to have everything consolidated into the one journal on one website but I feel a little more secure now that I write on multiple platforms. I feel as though it's less likely that my little online world is going to come crashing down one day just because we lose one website. It's also healthy to move on. What was fast becoming stale has been revamped, rejuvenated.

I'm not revamped or rejuvenated though. At least not all that much. As I think back to what I was writing one year, two years, three years ago, I am left with this horrible feeling that I am not all that close to being on the mend. In some ways I actually feel as if there has been no significant improvement at all. I am still so very negative, take myself far too seriously, and still have fears regarding almost anything and everything that may or may not exist on this earth. Whatever I or you or anyone else can think of there is likely some deep, psychiatric, psychological, or philosophical reasons for me to in some way fear it. I liked what Dr. Bacon said during our last session about him believing that it is part of human nature to always feel threatened. He was saying it largely to appease some of my own views I was expressing at the time but it definitely concerns me how quick I am to jump on anything that makes human beings out to be pathetic and weak. These comments confirm my bias'.

Surely, though, there must have been some improvements in my life during the three years I've been rambling on these forums!? There have been, of course there have been. The list might not be endless but it's certainly quite long, I should think. Where I'm not all that positive that there have been a great many positive changes is with regards to my thinking habits and patterns. These I still struggle with on a minute-by-minute basis sometimes. In some ways I think that there are signs I am doing even worse with my thinking than I was doing before. I don't write with as much humour in my posts, for instance. I often just seem to come right out and say it, whatever it is, and it's never usually all that pleasant.

Maybe I'm doomed to always be this way. Or maybe I am changing but it is happening so slowly that I don't notice it, happening so slowly that it might actually be many more years before I begin to see the positive changes I say that I so desperately want. Or do I perhaps still cling onto dysfunctional behaviours that have served me so well in the past. When I say ''well'' I mean in terms of helping me avoid moving on and perhaps confronting one or two things. I used to get accused of this quite a lot. Clinging onto my dysfunctional thinking so that I wouldn't have to change. The idea that I perhaps did want to change – just not enough to actually want to do something about my life. That I wanted both everything to change and nothing to change. Much of it was probably very accurate come to think of it.

Dr. Bacon says that psychology is all about the beliefs that no one does anything without there not being a reason for it. That people do not get stuck in patterns that do not work for them for no reason. There's always a pay off, even though it may be very short term. I'd like to think that I am getting a little better at thinking more long term. I think it'd be quite unfair to criticise me too much for not being able to think much beyond the immediate future in recent times. When I first started posting there was very little chance of me thinking beyond the very short term. I hardly ever thought beyond the drink that day. There wasn't much else worth thinking about. When I sobered up I started to think more long term but people kept telling me to keep it in the day, to take life a day at a time. It was designed to slow me down a little, to stop me from thinking that the moods I was having back then were going to last forever. It worked for a while.

Over the last year I have started to think a little more about the long term than I am used to. About what things might be like beyond today, or even tomorrow. Lindsay seems to have her heart set on going on holiday, taking a trip abroad, when she graduates and finishes her placement hours. This is set to happen on September 26th and so we are looking to be leaving on the 27th or the day after. This will require planning and thinking ahead. We'll have to do a bit of saving. It'll require that I think beyond tomorrow. I'm cool with that now though. The college is proof that I can think more long-term than the next day. Five weeks from now and it'll all be over.

When I really think back to what it has been like over the last three years I've been writing online I can remember some particularly nasty spells which I can't possibly deny were much worse than anything I can see me having to face this year. What about the sleeping problems I had in the very early days? From the time I first joined and tried to get sober in 2014 my nights were plagued with sleeplessness. There were several times when I was up for consecutive days and nights without a moment's rest. I remember it not being the most fun. This sleeping pattern seemed to continue until last year when I started to fall asleep quite quickly and to stay asleep once I was there. I also don't have such problems in waking as I perhaps used to.

There's also the fact that I don't ever feel like throwing everything away by taking my own life. That's the major change in the last three years.

Really I'm just huffing and puffing. To say that things are no better than three years ago would be silly. I should simply say instead that while I am not always exactly where I'd like to be I should be grateful that things are generally on a steady incline.

When I compare each year briefly I can honestly and safely say that 2015 was better than 2014; last year better than 2015; and this year, so far, better than last.

Here's to another three years.....


'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'


'
'
'
Stevie

Three years writing online......

1180

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Tuesday, May 23rd 2017 (The Only One To Pass)



Sometimes they make fun of me at the college by the number of words I write. We have online blogs to write every day we have classes and the others in my class tend to write nowhere near the amount I do. My blog (which actually counts as our student portfolio for the Scottish Qualifications Authority so is pretty important really) is enormous and there's no chance in hell that a lecturer will read it all. I'm confident that any random date selected will be home to a post that will demonstrate what they are looking for us to know in terms of technical and theoretical knowledge and skills. We also must complete a series of paperwork assignments for each of our projects and this includes a reflective report. Again, mine are always much longer than the others. I'm the only sound production student I know who might be described as being a writer. They aren't nasty about my writing lengths, it's more of an ongoing joke. This morning we are given an assessment – what will be the final one of the year – and we get on with it. We're discussing copyright laws and styles regarding remixing. My answers are vast (I think this is what they are looking for – full answers) and the joke is on me afterwards. In the afternoon the joke is on them as we are handed our results (I'm assuming they were marked over lunch) and I am the only one in the class to pass. The only way to ensure that you include everything they are looking for is to write down everything you know on the subject. I'll be polishing one of my projects while the others are resitting a two hour assessment. I'd rather keep my writing as it is.

I was standing at the vending machine awaiting my latte (I know – just because I'm at my Slimming World target does not mean I should be slacking off but a latte every now and then won't kill me – just add the syns with all the milk) and I notice a text on my phone (obviously – where else am I going to notice a text??!!?? It is from Sandra, the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. She always messages me to ask how I found the meeting at the weekend and this week I explained that I found it very hard going. That I might take a back seat from all meetings from now on, pop in once every couple of months or so. She asked me why and I explained that I felt as though I was doing okay for a while and then I started going to ACA and went back to AA and now all of a sudden I feel as though I am struggling a bit again. So today she has sent me this:

Sandra – ''Until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed, you can bandage bleeding, with food, alcohol, drugs, work, cigarettes, sex, but eventually it will stain and ooze through your life. Finding strength to open the wounds, pull up the core of the pain. That is holding you in your past. Make peace with yourself and this will rub off on others. Keep safe.X''

I couldn't quite get my head around it before the vending machine told me that my latte was awaiting collection in the cup below. Still can't work it out now. Is it not the craziest thing ever? What is she trying to say exactly? Is it a case of I am not sure if being in meetings serves me all that well and so all of a sudden I must have a billion open wounds? That I'm somehow sick because I just don't feel that meetings help me out much at this moment in time? Is that what's going on? Or is she trying to tell me something? Does she see me as nothing more than a walking, sometimes talking, open and bleeding wound? Of all the things she mentioned in her text as ways to bandage bleeding wounds (food, alcohol, drugs, work, cigarettes, sex) I don't actually take part in any of them. I suppose I eat food but only as much as I need to keep hunger away. I don't believe in eating for the sake of eating. I can't help thinking that anyone who would send me a message like that must be at least a few peanuts short of a Snickers.

Darren from college is quitting weed tomorrow. His live-in partner quit two weeks ago and now he has to too. Two weeks. I want to tell him that two weeks is nothing in the quitting world but there's no point. If he asks then I'll mention what I think, but why would he? He is very specific about this plan of his. I hope he does it but can't see it being the cruise he seems to think it will be. I remember how sure I was when I told myself that I'd had my last drink and puffed my last doobie, only to pick one or both up again shortly afterwards. Yet I was so damn sure at the time! Darren is damn sure at this moment but he might be about to discover just how strong the pull of his crutch is. His partner may find out the same very soon. Let's hope he does manage it though.

I bumped into mum at lunchtime. She had just been to Youngest Niece's sports day. I had no idea it was even on. It amazes me how distant my family is becoming. Over the course of 2017 I have noticed a tremendous gap growing between my brother and I. The gap with mum has been increasing for years. Now there is one with my brother, and that means my nieces too. I guess it's just something that comes with getting older. People are going to start getting a little more distant.

A customer text this afternoon as well and asked if my window cleaning company would be calling around anytime soon. I replied that we'd hope to get there by the end of next week. This buys me a little time but I've no idea why I would come out with that. I don't even know where Barry the Bullet is. For all I know he has another job and has lost his phone. That would be enough for him to not know or care that I was trying to reach him and have been messaging him daily for a couple of weeks now. I'm tried, using Lindsay's social media, to contact him this way but he hasn't been active yet. I am thinking about maybe calling on this customer who has text when I am in my town tomorrow. I could try. She might be able to tell me exactly when Barry was last round. If I could try to work out roughly where about on the run he is then I might be able to track him down. In five weeks I am going to have finished with college and will be hoping to get as many hours as I can get. I have to find Barry.

Tomorrow I'm walking thirty miles. I'll be leaving in the morning when Lindsay leaves for her first shift of her last placement. This is the big one – twelve weeks full time. Then she's an extra month to catch up before she starts her job after we come back from Spain or wherever we end up going. It all sounds like a good little plan. Not the thirty miles though – it sounds like hell. That and Sunday and then that'll be the long walks done until the event itself two weeks later.

Lots happening.

'
'
'

'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Off for a bath.....

1332

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Wednesday, May 24th 2017 (Thinking Miles in the Morning)



Lindsay started her first shift of her final placement this morning. She started at seven but I was out the door with her. I have an appointment with the doctor at half past two and thirty miles to walk before I get there. I allowed eight hours for the walk so I had to get out there at the crack of dawn. All this walking sucks. Alas, I was to turn around at the bus stop as soon as Lindsay had boarded and return to the comfort and laziness of her sitting room. That was all just a couple of hours ago. Now I am more awake and in tune with what needs to be done.

I'm going to have to make a trip to my town this afternoon for a doctor's appointment. Even though I stopped taking my Setraline antidepressant medication I still collect it every couple of months so that there is a paper trail that says I still use it. I have found that this worked to my benefit last year, just having something that says I take medication, and so I am reluctant to become rid of it altogether just yet. So collect the antidepressants this afternoon I shall. I wouldn't mind getting to my town a little earlier as I could do with popping into the college to make final preparations for submitting my remix project. As far as I can tell there were five things still to complete in order for me to gain my NC in sound production. There was the remixing project which I have all but completed. There was the assessment we got yesterday morning which I managed to pass. That's almost two of the five ticked off.

The other three things are just getting started though. There's the radio broadcast we do on Thursday mornings. I'm a little behind on that but there are still plenty weeks left to catch up but for tomorrow I have my script to be completed. I could be getting on with that as a way to cope with the guilt of not going on the massive walk I had scheduled although I will be walking to the next town and back a little later on. Besides the radio broadcast there is one other MIDI unit to be done (which we didn't have to do until the SQA decided that they were going to be paying the college a visit and checking out their creative industries section) which is underway but still has a couple of hours to be spent on it before it really starts to sound like a finished product. Then there's the eighth and final project which will be a digital DJ unit – a live performance played out using one of the software programs we use to create music in class.

So one of the five things has already been done and one of them is all but done. That only leaves three things to do and I have done what I set out to do. I've managed to gain my qualification. Exactly what the fuck I might do with it totally remains to be seen but at least I'm doing things I set out to do – providing you don't count the thirty mile walk I should by now be on. There are still four full weeks after this week to get these things ticked off. I can smell the finish line. Just keep pushing. I've also put my name down as a volunteer to help set up a stage where an orchestra will be playing some time in the near future. A full orchestra will be getting recorded and so this will be an enormous task in setting up. It'll be good for me to get some more hands-on experience.

Besides college stuff I can't think of much else I could be doing to take the sting out of my laziness (although it will be around fifteen – twenty miles walking to my doctors and back so I should go easy on myself) so I'll do a little housework so that the place is all clean for Lindsay coming back this evening. I'll get the dinner on for her coming back too. Twelve hours in a hospital ward is not to be sniffed at. I don't know if I'd be able to do it, and if I did, whether I'd be able to do it all again the next day, and the next. She's on today, tomorrow and Friday, and the off for the weekend (we have her friend's wedding on Saturday). We're not sure on her shifts after that but it'll be three per week with a fourth shift one week in every month for the next three months or so. For as long as I was away from the AA rooms there – she'll have this placement. It seems like a long time.

I saw a wave through a car window as I was heading back here after college yesterday and noticed it was an AA punter. I'm starting to become much more comfortable with not being there, with the knowledge that it's okay for me not to be there, that I don't actually have to go to meetings all the time. I don't resent the fellowship either for using its scaremongering tactics to keep me there and so creating within me a dependent attitude and belief system although it does still frustrate me that they do this to everyone who comes through the doors, but I understand the self-preservation that is the underlying reason that they do this. Just like that I'm taking some time away from ''recovery'' again and not even thinking about it. I'm looking forward to not having to sit through an ACA meeting this weekend either, especially after that text message sent to me by Sandra yesterday. They really are a crazy bunch of people. It takes a certain amount of wellness to have started within one before they can start to spot just exactly the types of people that attend these meetings frequently. Maybe there is resentment still there as I seem to start to feel awkward even talking about these fellowships.

So – there's college stuff to be getting on with since I've decided against a thirty mile walk (but will be walking to the next town later on, and back again) and this can be done both on this very laptop (radio script) and the college computers (remixing project) and it would be a really successful day were I to manage to finish off both of these. I also have to get in something for Lindsay's dinner this evening and she's left her vape with me on the off-chance I might be passing the store to get the coil fixed. She's not ready to stop smoking yet but she's ready for vaping so I guess it's a step in the right direction, even if it feels a little to me like replacing a bottle of cider with a bottle of wine. As long as it's more socially acceptable then we can convince ourselves somehow that we're doing the right thing.

We rarely ever do the right thing though, do we!?

Just look at the news coverage of the bombing in Manchester this week, and the way that everyone is talking about it.

There's this whole idea that we're in some movie or something and that ''they'' are the bad guys and that ''we'' are the good. We just point the finger in scorn and then go back to what we always have done and in so doing help maintain the systems that cause this kind of thing to happen. Nothing ever changes. Until it does then I think we should expect bombings like this to increase in frequency and devastation as the years tick by. In my country and yours.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Trying to make up for not walking his thirty miles.

1340

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thursday, May 25th 2017 (The Other Side of London)


Yesterday I ended up going out on a walk after all and managed to get eighteen miles in. That takes my total miles walked since quitting smoking to four hundred and twenty one, or, from my front door in Fife, Scotland, all the way down through England and out the other end of London with not much to go until I reach the tunnel and then I'm off into Europe. Hypothetically at least. Afterwards I weighed myself and was just under eleven stone – half a stone under my Slimming World target weight and in the red – but much of this will return as the evening turns to night.

I stop twice on route to get some more water in and I read the papers while I'm waiting in the queue. Quite predictably the headlines are all related to Manchester and the recent terrorist attacks. Every journalist getting a little hard-on, actually excited by the news of all this death so that they might get a story and make a little cash. It's disturbing. It's also very disturbing how the nature of the attacks are never discussed openly. Why does this happen? What are the reasons? Americans seem to think that (and us Brits are catching on – foolishly) it is just because we are the good guys and the ''terrorists'' are the bad guys – like we're all in some movie or some shit. Talk about childish and burying your head in the sand. Why do these things really happen? Why, when we ourselves commit acts of extremism and terrorism against other countries, do we say that it is in defence? That we are doing so passively? Does every country tell its citizens this fairytale? And are they, like us, stupid enough to just suck it up, devour every spoonful that we can get coaxed into our rumour-obssessed little mouths?

I wonder what's really going on. Terrorists often say that they use violence as a last resort. I can see their point. Using violence against human beings seems to be the only way to shut them up for two fucking seconds get them to listen. I get why people might call these attacks ''senseless'' as the newspapers certainly have, but I don't think there will be no sense to them at all. People aren't motivated by things like senselessness. There will be as much sense to it as when we attack and bomb other countries. We are as much terrorists as anyone, America is the worst though. At least it was quick in Manchester. Britain and America are well known for their torture when they commit their acts of terrorism – acts which result in far greater death tolls than we've seen this week. It is reported that this bombing was a revenge for air strikes in Syria and so what do we expect!?

We've said our piece and done our grieving. Let's move on to a solution now, and I don't mean tightening security all over the country. What were they trying to communicate? If we do what we always do and pull together for a short time but just revert back to being selfish pricks to each other by next week and cruising around with that sense of entitlement we are almost born with these days then we are just sentencing the victims of the next attack to their deaths. That's exactly what we'll do though. Just go back to our hate and rage. Read the newspapers every day which feed our fears and hatred, continue to buy products from companies that promote these kinds of events by producing worldwide inequality and poverty (not to mention the cruelty to animals and children and the environment that we contribute to every single day all in the name of saving a buck or two – a million mini-terrorist attacks each and every day committed by each and every one of us) and nothing changes. Then we are shocked when it happens again!?!? I don't get it. How can someone who shops at Walmart even say that they care about attacks like this? It's the ultimate in hypocrisy. Human beings are fucking morons!!

My brother had his finals yesterday. I have no idea how he got on. We're not exactly close these days for some reason. I'm guessing that it's something to do with me. He's been studying for his diploma in horticulture and so that will be that. He'll be onto his degree next. Gillon will be in the same position. Off to university next year. Lindsay started her placement and it seemed to go well. She's there for twelve weeks and then she'll be almost done. I'm left behind wondering exactly what it is that I might do with the rest of my life. There hasn't been much hope for me for a long time. I think that my carers had some hope for me back when I was a wee boy but it never happened. One by one I failed every stage in Erickson's lifespan development theory.

Things can go anywhere I want them to really. I'll never have a ''normal'' life in the way that some people do who don't have my disadvantages growing up and into their middle-age. Lots of people hit the ground running at school and things work out. For many of us it is different. I'm going to be competing with people half my age for much of the time. I already am at college as my peers all tend to be much younger. I don't have much working experience doing anything other than cleaning windows. I'm shaping up to be a very late developer. There's no real catching up for me. It'll always be a life of damage limitation.

Sometimes I get sick of being involved in all of this recovery stuff that promises to change the way I am and think. It doesn't take too long being involved in these things before you begin to realise just how totally messed up these people in recovery are and if it hasn't worked for most of them then how is it going to work for me? I suppose I have on tremendous advantage over many of my recovery peers in that I don't feel the need to go completely over the top in order to have people think of me as being nice, and caring, and loveable, and...... I can happily admit that I am doing this charity double marathon for my own selfish goals and desires. The fact that it involves sponsorship money and contributes towards breast cancer (which killed my father's mother) is all fair and well but it's not why I'm doing it.

For me to even be able to admit that must surely show some degree of wellness in me. To say that is to demonstrate the kind of honesty that you can't buy and that most humans can't comprehend. But that's the truth – I'm walking these miles for my own reasons and not for the charity, just like everything else I do.

It disgusts me to my core to see how this disease of needing to be liked and agreed with and respected has filtered to something like these recent attacks down south. People using the deaths of their fellows as a way to validate their own feelings of worth and self-importance. But that's what humans have done historically.

Solidarity may be our strength, but we only demonstrate that when we're either killing others or being killed by them. That's human nature in a nutshell.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Learning from the worst.

1284

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Friday, May 26th 2017 (Convention's Eve)



I can run my fingers through my Dragon Tree, cusp its leaves in my hand, and easily feel how strong it is. They say that when we sober up we are so useless at caring for anything that we should try to keep a house plant alive for one full year. In 2015 I tried and bought two plants, both of which died over a particularly bad winter for me personally. Last year I figured I try again and bought the same two plants. Over the most recent winter only one of them died – the Leopard Lily – but this other one is still going strong. A few days from now it will be eleven months old having been purchased on June 30th. With the temperatures as they currently are there is little doubt in my mind that in five weeks time I'll be buying it a birthday card.

The weather has been brilliant over the last few days. This morning the sun is at it again. Tomorrow one of Lindsay's university pals ties the knot (with an ex-convict who battered an older man with a baseball bat so that he needed twelve hours of surgery to reconstruct his face back in 2010 – and who she's known and been going out with for less time that Lindsay and I have been) and I can't see the sunniness and loveliness changing for the worse between now and then. It should be a wonderful day for a wedding. It'll be my first since my only brother's back in September when everything seemed a little easier and more straightforward, but probably wasn't. I've heard that we're supposed to be getting a bit of stormy weather tonight and tomorrow morning, which wouldn't surprise me, but it should clear up and turn nice and warm again in time for the ring exchange.

Lindsay didn't manage to get through a full week at her placement without fainting and being sent home. I do worry about this. It happened during the last placement, twice, but then didn't happen at all in all the weeks since. Perhaps it's the temperature inside the hospital. Maybe it's a stress related thing. Whatever it is we could do with it fucking off as quickly as it arrives as soon as placements start.

Yesterday saw the fourth and last meeting with the visitors from Glasgow who arrived here hoping to gather our local council and residents of my local area and discuss what might be best to do to improve our lives. Some of the ideas are just never going to get started although there is a singing group starting up soon and it will be held in the library. The fact that the council are going to let it be opened for use is a good sign. I don't know how close it is to being reopened – or if that will ever happen – but I'm told that this group from Glasgow, if they've done anything, it's to raise awareness of how missed the library is. The Charity Shop Cafe is also mentioned a lot at the meetings and the importance of keeping it. I don't see how these people can't see that some of the decisions they are making put our beloved charity shop at risk.

Today I fucked up big style by not going to the Charity Shop Cafe for my volunteering shift. I can't really give any real reasons as to why I didn't get up in the morning and just go and do it like I do every other week. I was asked yesterday at the meeting what I considered myself to be: a volunteer, or a voluntary worker. The man asking me I sensed had some opinion on what the difference might be and so I gave it a little thought before I answered. I figured he might mean that I am a volunteer because I am doing it off my own back, I'm not being asked to do it from the job centre or government as part of a deal for me to qualify for benefits. This is not what he meant. I guess what he's saying is mostly true: I am a voluntary worker because I have duties laid out for me each and every week (except this week apparently) and am working – it's just that I accept not being paid for it. What's to stop them from paying us? I have my own reasons for opting to work there and they are pretty vast. Apparently this philosophy has come from Scotland's best crime fiction writer Val McDermid (not that terrible author we are know for in Fife – Ian Rankin).

I work there (and let's face it – I only do three hours a week, fuck all really) because I feel it's part of my Step Nine amends. Most of my worst drinking was done towards the end when I stayed in this part of the town. I should be giving back if I can, so I work there. No one who visits the charity shop was at the wrong end of any of my violent drinking nightmares – it's more a case of me personifying the area. I'm making my amends with this part of the town. I also feel that the charity shop was good to me while I was sobering up. It was a place I could go and think about things in the earliest days. More than this I also am starting to build up a reference in project manager Elsa (although today will most definitely be a black mark against my name) which might make up for my lack of experience in the workplace at future job interviews. These are all good reasons enough for me to forsake the thoughts of payment for my brief and meagre services.

In terms of real work I am getting close to the end of my college course and will be looking for work. It makes sense that I try to get back to my old job and I now have four weeks to try to get a hold of Barry the Bullet or I may have to go looking elsewhere. This would not be a bad thing I guess but the advantages lie in getting a hold of Barry and getting back out to doing what I used to do. They include being able to pick my hours and much higher wages. The efforts to locate him will have to be such that it is my priority from next week. There's four teaching weeks left at college before we break off on June 23rd. We're not in on a Friday though so it'll actually be the 22nd. Less than a month. It'll come around quickly.

Moving onwards.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'
Stevie

Decided against helping set up the AA Fife Convention tonight.

1154

[empyr3al]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

I have a plant that has lived for a year and a half despite me slipping once or twice for a bit. Its pretty healthy but not grown like I expected. Though I should check its soil ph, etc and fertilize. I lost one plant (A bamboo plant) but it was more tricky. So in plant therapy choosing a plant that can survive for a bit is good. Kind of like relationships. How much pain can you cause. Yes it is a measure of whether you are staying on track. I find its a huge self assesment tool and helps you regain confidence.

Amends are a big deal I appreciate what you have said and wish you the best. I have been thinking of volunteering as well. I think worker means more that you are working on yourself but I have not read those books so I don't know the context. Possibly it means responsibility?

I'm sorry you lost your mojo today and didn't follow through on a promise. Don't let it hurt you too badly.

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Saturday, May 27th 2017 (Thinking Conventionally)



Feel a little guilty posting my rantings and ravings given what's just happened on the site (My Way Out), but here goes.

Lindsay's still in bed and I'm up early. We have to be at her pal's house for two this afternoon for this wedding and the weather so far is holding up nicely. A storm is supposed to be on its way though. I'm up a little earlier as I've decided to make my way to the AA convention after all. I don't know why really. I've just been drawn to it for some reason. I'll only be able to attend the first part and then I'll have to make my way back here to get myself ready for this wedding. There's plenty time to get everything done.

I went to my first convention back in May of 2015 when I was only three months sober. It was an eye-opener for many reasons. For a start I was new to the fellowship and was still at the stage of lapping up every bit of it I could get close to. Secondly – I was amazed by the sheer number of people I had got to know in this short period of time. Literally dozens, if not a hundred. These were all people I'd never set eyes on just one hundred days earlier. I was making friends left, right, and centre. I was there with my AA sweetheart Jenna, and good pal in the fellowship in my first year Bain. I was one of the newcomers. The hopes for the future.

At this first AA Fife Convention I had arranged to meet with Stu who would become my AA sponsor. At this large gathering of former drunks we had our first little chat on sponsorship. Stu asked me outright: have I ever actually sat down and thought about it? I am never to drink again! I went back to the cave and gave it a little pondering. I concluded that this is actually quite difficult to deal with as a though. So much for treating it a day at a time, eh? I met with him the Wednesday after that and I began working on the AA Twelve Step program. I have fond memories of this first convention.

I wasn't at last year's convention. Things had changed significantly in the twelve months and my resentment with AA was growing. Rather my resentments with some members within the fellowship. I was still working my way through these Steps and had been to Fife Intergroup a few times by this time. As a result of this I received emails from the Fife Convention Committee. I still do actually. I began to see how childish some members of the committee could be. I was supposed to be heading down to the venue the night before to help set up and then to be helping out on the day at the reception.

Just days before last year's convention kicked off I received emails from the guy who runs the convention, the main guy, the head of the Convention Committee, as did everyone else who was on the mailing list. The emails were rather rude and very accusatory. I asked Stu if it was he some of the issues on the emails were referring to. Turns out that it was. Stu had done something that had caused one of our female members to go back out and drink. I was confused. Then it turned out that this woman had not had a drink at all. I sent a message to the head of the committee asking for an explanation and, if possible, an apology for the very unprofessional use of cursing in his emails. What I got in return was something that I thought I'd left behind when I stopped drinking. I was still new to the rooms at one year and three months sober and was still looking for guidance on how to behave and conduct myself. I thought long and hard and decided that I wasn't going to support something like this, someone like this. He'd offended and lied about my sponsor; lied about someone in the fellowship drinking (which in itself gets everyone all animated in typical AA fashion and could potentially be dangerous) and now he was being a general prick in response to my questions about it all. I told him to remove my name from the list of volunteers on the day.

They apparently always kick off the day with the count down. This was true the only time I was there. They start at day one. If this is someone's first day sober then they are to stand in front of everyone and they are given a Big Book. If no one is on day one then they move up the days until someone stands. Then we go up and up, through the weeks, months and years until everyone has stood. I think that it was Main Man who stood up last in 2015 and it was around thirty five years. I was three months alongside Jenna and Bain but this morning I'll be standing up when two years is called out. Cool!!

After I've been to the convention I'll be heading to the wedding with Lindsay. I had only actually been to one wedding in my life before I sobered up and by the end of today I'll have been to two since. I didn't exactly hang out with the sort of people who were likely to ever get married, still don't, and so one was my brother and the other is my girlfriend's friend. Lindsay and I aren't getting on wedding-good but we are getting on well. There are times when, as a relationship, it lives up to its stance and reputation as being difficult. People like to say that relationships are tricky. There are other times though when it is so easy that it's difficult to remember that it's supposed to be hard.

The storm will come, the forecast is rarely wrong on that website, but not before the convention, or at least my participation in it, is over. Whether the wedding will avoid it is another thing altogether. I'll be back in around four hours and will be changing into my new trousers and shirt.

But first I have to go spend the morning with a couple hundred sober drunks.

'
'
'
'
'
'
'

'
'
Stevie

Heading to a convention.

1084

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Thanks, empyr3al.

You're right - I won't let losing my mojo for a day stop me and turn into more than what it needs to be. Glad you managed to successfully raise a plant for a year and a half. That's pretty good going by my book.

:happy2:

[Lunarer]

Re: The Sobriety Experiment: Chapter Two

Sunday, May 28th 2017 (A Convention, Wedding and a Walk)



Right then – lots to get through.

I guess that walking these enormous treks I've been going on as part of this Walk The Walk breast cancer charity walk has been good for me in many ways. It was initially something I started doing as part of my quitting smoking plan and also to help ensure that I did not gain any weight in the early weeks of the quit. Then it turned into training for this challenge. And what a challenge it is shaping up to be. Today the walk was thirty miles and I struggled to the extent where I seriously wonder how the hell I'm gonna manage the full fifty that makes up this challenge. All of this happens on June 10th – less than two weeks now.

Lindsay says that it'll be different on the night. That there will be loads of us doing it and so I won't be walking alone. That time will pass more quickly as a result. Yesterday I noticed something else I'll have at the event itself I am lacking now as two people come out from a house in front of me and start marching, arms swinging in a most regimented manner. I'll have pacers! The only other people strolling along the streets while I am out on these mammoth excursions are more like zombies than actual human beings – heads facing down towards their phones and scuffing their feet along. Those with me on this walk will be punishing themselves in the same way I am and so will be walking with a purpose. I have to admit though – walking thirty two miles today has allowed me to see that this is an enormous distance we are to be walking on the tenth and I'm not absolutely positive I will manage to do it.

Yesterday morning I popped down to the Alcoholics Anonymous convention and before I knew it it had started and I had my seat propped up next to Captain G, Mike, and Leader. I haven't seen many from AA in a few months now and it was pretty good catching up with one or two of them before things got underway. It was pretty quiet though. There were maybe ninety of us there. Lots of empty seats. My only other convention was two years ago and it was busier than this. It's perhaps a sign of the times. I mention this to one of my peers to see what she thinks. There's a kind of ''It's all about the fun and taking part – we don't need a lot of alcoholics here!'' attitude and this seems to be shared by most. I guess that they don't keep as up to date with Intergroup records as I do and know how much this convention is struggling to keep itself afloat and that it's even been mentioned at Intergroup the possibility that it may soon have to close. This thing shouldn't be taken for granted – it's dying, and the attendance this morning kinda shows that.

Jenna is there so I catch up with her. She was something of a sweetheart of mine when I entered the fellowship and we were sober buddies for a few months. I hadn't actually had any real and meaningful conversation with her in over a year and I have to say that she seems different now. She seems more unstable. Like she could burst into tears and go running for alcohol any second if I said the wrong thing. I wonder if this is what my sponsor used to warn me about back when I first came in and we talked about what was and might be happening between Jenna and I. Two years ago at this time she was three months sober; this year she's two months. I wonder what I was thinking back then. I can see now how I was acting in a foolhardy way.

The speakers get underway. Three of them. First up is an attractive foreign woman who instantly tells us about her father dying suddenly when she was five. This is obviously something I can instantly relate to. Then she spoils it all and mentions that she always thought that this had something to do with her turning out to be an alcoholic but that since she came into AA she now knows that it doesn't – that the reason she drank like she did was because she was born an alkie. Instantly any hope that I had for this event drops, I lose my optimism. This is the problem with the fellowship – the indoctrination! The cult mentality. The spreading of dangerous messages such as this one. I am distraught but others seem to be loving this – she's an alcoholic because she was born as one. This seems to be a good enough explanation for them. I wonder if it's, as they say in ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families), a case of that they tell themselves that their only problem is drinking and that they became a drinker.....just because.....so that they only have to do that – to stop drinking, and don't have to try to look at the real reasons they were hiding behind booze all these years. Stopping drinking is the easy part.

The second speaker gets underway. This is a little more promising. She starts talking about how she always gravitated towards men when she was younger and drinking. They had something about them that the women didn't. They drank faster, harder, and more in an evening. They got ready to go out, headed out, drank, brawled, then called it a night. I've had similar experiences in that I struggle to mix with other men and find the company of women the easier option. Since sobering up I have worked at this – none more so than at college where all of my peers bar one are other males. The trouble is that this sharer then doesn't mention anything more about it. She mentions nothing of how she tried to sort this problem of hers out. Also – for someone who has brawled as she claims to have – she says nothing of any injuries sustained during these times. No one ever really does. My injuries are quite easy to see. My collarbone tends to stick out from where it was broken in a brawl. The scar on my forehead has healed well but is still noticeable. It's my hand that's the most obvious though – and most of those cracks and breaks are from fight I won! It's not as if winning a fight saves you from injury. Why don't people in AA have any marks on them? As the collection starts going around I speak with Captain G.

Captain G – ''I haven't been going to many meetings either. After I quit from the Sailor's Rest meeting I haven't bothered with a home group.''

Stevie – ''I'm the same. I haven't had a home group since I left the meeting two towns away in the opposite direction nearly a year ago.''

We discuss the sharers and how the problem always seems to be lack of recovery talk. People just talk about the past for half an hour. It's boring once you've heard it. Then they mention what their lives are like now for a couple of minutes at the end.

The third and final sharer begins. I have more hope for him. At the end I turn to Captain G.

Stevie – ''That was a bit better.''

Captain G – ''You think so? I was about falling asleep.''

I guess so. I think the reason it sucked so much this morning was the fact that the sharers were all still very sick in that they seemed totally aware of what their main issues are but demonstrated that they have no desire to actually work on them. The first one is willing to overlook the issues created by her father's death when she was a child and just treat her problems as though they were caused by drinking and drinking only because she was just born an alcoholic. There's no other explanation she seems capable of trying to grasp. The second one just about had a drink ten months ago because her father died from this ''illness'' showing that she is nowhere near strong enough to be up there sharing for us. She looks and sounds like she could pick up and drink at any moment actually. The third sharer doesn't seem to want to sort out what are clearly huge co-dependency issues he has and would rather just hope that everything works out.

This is supposed to leave us inspired? Makes me feel good about my own efforts to get better though – even if they have, for the most part, been in vain thus far. I take the good things from the convention which were.........shit, I can't think of any!! It was nice to meet up with people I haven't seen for a while though. The truth is that I was full of hope going in there but was glad when twelve o'clock came that I had a wedding to be getting ready for.

I've ran out of time to write about the wedding so I'll mention that tomorrow.

'
'
'
'

'
'
'
Stevie

Not all that inspired.

1577