Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park
Originally uploaded by Buck Forester
Hungry.
Angry.
Lonely.
Tired.
For the 2nd meeting night in a row, we have read from the Living Sober book. In tonight's meeting, we read the passage on "Fending off Loneliness". It is in this passage that a reference is made about the dangers of being: too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. Hence, the acronym: HALT.
I've heard people make mention of these things in meetings and yet did not truly make a real connection to them and being sober until tonight ! And these are the kinds of things that can "sneak up" on you and, if not given proper attention and pause, could easily lead one toward a drink.
Hungry. I have known myself to literally not feed myself enough food. Some of this has had to do with worthiness. But the "being hungry" that I believe is related to living sober has much more to do with how we nourish or don't nourish ourselves. If I am hungry for anything, I associate this with greed. Or wanting to fill a void. To get full on something as a distraction or not being able to bear "no-thing-ness". There is urgency in this kind of hunger. To be hungry is to be craving and wanting more and not being satisfied; conversely, it may also be "starving" because I have deprived or separated myself from those things, people, situations that provide nutrients, substance. It is to not know what it means to experience true FULLness, which is not about hunger at all. It comes from a place of savoring what is right here in my life, "taking in" another or an experience with all of my senses.
Angry. So many of us alcoholics either suppressed anger with a drink or blew up at everyone and everything because we "drank at" them. I did a bit of both. I suppressed a great deal of anger, much of which was built-up resentments toward my parents and the circumstances of my growing up. Anger for me felt like it was an unwielding, dangerous sword that could cut and tear up anything in its path, therefore it was to be kept under lock and key. And yet, under the influence of alcohol and losing total inhibitions, my anger would rear its ugly head and come out sideways or inappropriately, often when I was in a blackout. I would then hear about myself from others the next day and would have terrible shame and remorse about my actions. In my alcoholism, I did not have a healthy nor balanced relationship with anger. I was either trying to control it or it controlled me. And, after I put down the bottle, I was even more terrified of my own anger. I was a virtual pressure cooker much of the time, particularly with my former partner and especially during the time of her substance abuse. The heart of my anger, however, was frustration with myself and my own cowardice about giving myself away and allowing myself to remain in unhealthy situations, repeating the historical pattern of passivity and co-dependency that I detested in my mother's relationship to my father. My need for control and to keep up certain appearances coupled with a very distorted idea about the expression of anger being something that represented "out-of-controlness" found me so tightly wound inside, like a rubber band ready to snap at every little thing that didn't go my way. Not to mention the incessant arguments that would take place in my head, ruminating over things that I didn't assert myself to say or wallowing in my own victimhood. What an incredibly uncomfortable and unsober place to live.
Lonely. I shared in tonight's meeting, given that our focus was on loneliness, that I have spent such a huge portion of my life hiding my loneliness behind a disguise of feigned happy-go-luckiness. The life-of-the-party I believed I was when I drank; it didn't take too much detective work to see through the transparent veil that was my feeble attempt to cover up the depressed and deeply lonely person that I was. And when I was no longer drinking and not working a recovery program, I pretended all the time so that I didn't have to know how lonely I really was. "I'm fantastic!" was a favorite decoy. During a great majority of my time living with a partner, I was so so lonely. And the truth is this: my showing up in a large way in social circles, pretending that all was dandy in life, and moving farther and farther away from my partner by busying and working, were all the ways that I didn't want you to know how lonely I was. I was so fearful of intimacy. Of being vulnerable. Of the emptiness that was swallowing me whole. It was the lie I told myself and others through my unsober actions day in and day out. What I also shared in the meeting is this: living alone, while working a recovery program and doing deep personal healing work, finds me feeling more connected and full and in relationship to my life and with others than when I lived with someone and was in a so-called partnership. We had a store-front relationship; behind the scenes, it was anything but. We occupied shared living space yet did not connect to one another in that space. I am so grateful to not experience the depth of that kind of loneliness.
Tired. There's physical exhaustion and then there's the even more taxing, mental/emotional exhaustion. When I drank, I was always tired. My body was worn out from the physical toll the alcohol was taking on it. And I kept on abusing my body, night after night. The mental exhaustion of addiction is a kind of tired that I never want to feel again; constant obsessive thoughts and worrying and planning about when and where the next drink will be. This state of tiredness morphed into other things when I stopped drinking. Not working a program found me anxious and fearful about countless things. I suffered from insomnia for years. This is the result of not having serenity or peace. Trying to be self-sufficient, care-taking, and then not asking for help or utilizing a sponsor or a fellowship makes you really, really tired. Downright depleted and zapped of your lifeforce. Being tired for all the right reasons today is the best kind of tired ... like having been in service or working on something that I feel passionate about -- like right now. It's late and I'm tired and I love being in the stillness of night, writing.
And with that, I shall close so that I may nourish myself with good rest.
I bid you a sober goodnight.
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