Screw Guilt

Obviously my trip down Highway 164 took a detour not too long ago. I tried and failed to get back on the road a few times, but I believe I have found the entrance ramp and have safely merged back into the flow of recovery. I pray this is true. I don’t want to die. Despite my recent actions, I truly do not.

But the question remains how and why did I leave the road in the first place? I had found the route and traveled along it for over 15 months before skidding into the ditch. What went wrong? I need to know this so that I can take measures not to repeat the mistake. This is how to make progress without beating myself up for having a wreck, learn from it.

And while I would dearly love to keep this information to myself, I know I am not terminally unique. If I am going to have any hope of seeing the promise come true that I will see how my past experiences can benefit others, I have to be willing to be honest about it.

I have heard it said and firmly believe that our secrets will kill us. In my experience people most often say this when trying to point out the importance of not hiding things or leaving things out when working the fourth and fifth steps [ 4) Made a fearless and thorough moral inventory of ourselves. 5) Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another person the exact nature of our wrongs. ], but while it was a secret that nearly killed me, it was not anything that I left out of my very thorough first fourth step.

In December, after his sister died shortly before Christmas and his family acted with pure malice toward him while planning the funeral, my partner, Andrew, invited me to New Orleans with him for New Year’s Eve. Andrew had three and a half years of sobriety but not for one minute did I truly feel he was safe in New Orleans or spiritually fit for the trip. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t ask to do something else, or to ring in the new year with just us. I let him make his own choice, and it was his choice to make.

I can not control other people, places or things. To try is insanity. To hold myself responsible for someone else’s choices is insane. That’s why I need a power greater than myself to restore me to sanity, because I’m insane. I blamed myself for Andrew’s relapse. Blamed is the wrong tense. Rigorous honesty? I blame myself.

I took responsibility for something I had no responsibility over, blamed myself for what someone else did, and took as my own the resulting guilt and shame when 17 days after he went back out he died. But that’s a speed bump, not an exit off the highway.

Once again, our secrets will kill us. I told no one what I was feeling and thinking, not even my spiritual advisor. I kept it inside and let it eat at me like a cancer. Soon I slipped back into self-loathing and self-centeredness. It has been written that selfishness and self-centeredness are the root of my problem. I returned to my roots. But I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t bring it up at a single meeting. I didn’t tell any of the people I tell “everything.” I pushed it down and tried to will it away. Didn’t work.

As it ate at me, my daily period of reflection where I continue to take personal inventory and when wrong promptly admit it became twisted. Why? First, because I didn’t admit that I felt wrong, promptly or otherwise, and secondly, because as I sank into self my review became less and less a time of reflection to learn from mistakes and acknowledge triumphs and more a time to focus on the negative. My gratitude withered away like grass during drought. Prayer? Less and less. As I stopped praying I lost more and more of the conscious contact with my Higher Power. My spiritual fitness wasn’t very fit at all.

We have a daily reprieve from alcoholism and addiction contingent upon the continued maintenance of our spiritual condition. There will come a time in every addict’s life when one has no defense against using or drinking, not the fear of consequences, not love of family and friends, not a 100 meetings or support groups….nothing except our relationship with our God can protect us at that moment. And when not tapped in to our Higher Power, we are left in the dark, defenseless and vulnerable and destined to fail if that moment arrives.

This is the state I allowed myself to fall into when I isolated, stopped praying, and refused to admit to others and myself what was going on in my heart and in my mind. And once again I felt a God-shaped hole form in my life. I let the shame from the belief and feeling that I had caused the death of the man I loved to keep me from running to the one thing that could fill that hole…God. I grew more and more miserable, afraid, and angry. Eventually that moment came, when the idea of picking up the chains of my previous bondage felt like a good idea, Insanity had returned. I went back out, like a dog returning to his vomit as one book puts it. And then I let the shame of my relapse and the fear of having to admit I’d helped this damn disease kill Andrew keep me from truly returning. I didn’t want to do an inventory, because I didn’t want to have to look at my guilt and shame. Without working the steps I knew to take, I could not regain traction on the highway of recovery. I couldn’t string together more than a week or two of sobriety without slipping and sliding back off the road.

Today is day four. I have no proof yet that I have found traction. Yet I believe I do. Why? Because this time I threw the secrets out of the trunk. I faced my fear and admitted my shame. And I am still alive. It didn’t kill me to speak (or in this case, write) these things. And now I will attempt to cling to two truths. One, while Andrew bears the responsibility for his choices, not I. I do have a part in what happened. But there is no condemnation in that. Not if I learn from it. I know that my God forgives. Two, while it is very true that I feel responsibility and guilt for Andrew’s relapse and death, not everything I think and not everything I feel is necessarily true.

So that is what happened, and why this time I believe I will succeed in regaining my recovery. I guess only time will tell.