F_ _ k this not drinking. Even though I am not drinking, I still woke up at 3:30 am and could not go back to sleep. I still have a headache every morning. Maybe that is a result of the bit of sugar I had last night. I could quit sugar too. Why not give up eating and drinking all together? When is enough, enough?
I do not feel closer to others. I actually feel as if I have created a self-imposed prison. I did not have dinner with a friend last night because I knew I would want to drink if I did. Well f_ _ K that. I wanted to drink anyway, and I missed spending time with someone I love very much. Why am I doing t his? Do I really believe I am an alcoholic? People in AA would say, yes, you are an alcoholic because you think about drinking. You question your drinking. I dare say there are others out there who sometimes drink to excess, who think about what cocktail they will have in the evening, and who plan a party with the idea of what special alcoholic concoction they will serve. Are all of them alcoholics?
Saying that every person who ever thinks about alcohol or makes plans around alcohol is like saying that only Christians who believe in Jesus will go to heaven. When my daughter was in Catholic high school, she dared to question this doctrine. She was in a required religion class. The nun was explaining that all those who did not believe in Jesus Christ were condemned to eternal damnation. I do not know exactly how she worded her disagreement, but she made it clear she could not believe in a God who would turn his back on the majority of the world’s population because they did not take Christ into their hearts.
In the same vein, I do not believe that all people who questions their alcohol consumption are alcoholics. One of the basic precepts of yoga is svadyaya, self-study. It requires going so far into yourself that you do not come out until you find peace with that which is deep within. In the book, 365 TAO, on page 344,Deng-Ming-Dao says,
“Don’t be inhibited. If you hold back from achieving your hearts desires, you will become bitter and frustrated. If you hold back from expressing yourself, your creativity will stagnate. If your hold back from taking action, you will become impotent with timidity. Don’t stop anything. Let your uniqueness flow freely.
In the beginning, one must adhere to structure — artificial though it may be )) until one attains the proper understanding to behave with uninhibited spontaneity. Thus one must spend a certain amount of time studying structure until there is no need for structure. By that time, one will have thoroughly absorbed the secret of moderation and one will be able to act with correctness and spontaneity.
How ironic is it that the above was today’s reading? There really are no coincidences in this world. Everything we need is here in this moment. I have spent the last 30 years of my life, in self-study. I am always learning more and more about myself, about this thing we call being human and about the world I live in. Krishnamurti, the great teacher and philosopher cautioned, (this is paraphrased) “Beware of breaking out of one prison only to create another.” He also said,
“Don’t be afraid to be discontent, but give it nourishment until the spark becomes a flame and your are everlastingly discontented with everything so that you really begin to think, to discover. You see, without this flame of discontent your will never have the initiative which is the beginning of creativeness. To find out what is true you must be in revolt against the established order. So one must have this total discontent –but with joy.”
I must say I am not experiencing much joy these days. I have the “discontent ” part down. Where is the joy?
My self-study continues to come back, again and again, to my mother. The bitch is dead, but she haunts me. I see her drinking, daily, sometimes throughout the entire day. Then I see myself as her. I am not her. I have not spent an entire day drinking since my college days and even then, I never woke up and drank a beer first thing in the morning. My mother used to make those weird hangover concoctions with beer and tabasco and a raw egg. Ugh! Even when I am with friends who have cocktails at lunch, I rarely drink because I know it will affect the rest of my day. I will feel sluggish and groggy, and I probably end up in bed. I do not want to spend my precious time recovering from a glass of champagne.
The practice of not drinking is bringing up so many questions. I am grateful for this time. As a yoga teacher and practitioner, I believe freedom, moksha, real freedom, is the product of a self-understanding. I am not you and you are not me. “This is not your life, it is life itself and we are all in it together”… I continue to offer my struggles to the highest good of all. I do not believe for a minute that I am the only one who asks myself the question,” How much is too much? How often is too often? What is enough? Do I have a problem with alcohol, food, television, shopping, reading, and so on?
My dear friend Cyndi Lee just spent 7 days in a silent retreat at Upaya, a zen center in Sante Fe. When I spoke with her last night, she talked about how challenging it was to be still and to have rigidly defined structure. She said, “There was nothing to look forward to. Every day was the same. We sat in meditation, we ate, we cleaned our rooms, we rested, we sat again, we ate, we meditated, and we slept. ” She said there were times when she dropped in to the routine and was comforted by it. I admire her courage.
But I also know that we are “householders.” We live in the world. I practice yoga and meditation on a daily basis so that I can be a part of the world in which I live. I am grateful for teachers like Cyndi and Rod Stryker and others, including myself, who spend time in reflection, apart from outside stimuli, but I know for myself, and I would hazard to say for Cyndi too, that we do it so that we can be a part of the greater good, so that we can serve others,not permanently separate from them.
My favorite grandmother, Momo, told me on her death-bed, “Petty, always have something to look forward to. Just a little something. And remember, everything in moderation.”
What would life be like without our friends and families, without the daily events we plan, the things we do that engage us? My grand baby, Amelia, comes to our house every Monday. I love our time together. I anticipate the day with wonder and excitement. She brings so much joy into our lives. I enjoy having friends over for dinner, or at least I did, until I quite drinking. We are hosting a neighborhood party this Friday. We planned it over a month ago, before I decided to give up alcohol. I love all the people who plan to attend, but now I am dreading the event. I will be separate, just as I was at the luncheon on Sunday. I will have fun, I always do because I know how to pretend, In fact, I pretend so well that I am now not sure when i am really enjoying myself. When is it an act and when is it real?
My whole life, I have felt separate, different from others. Yoga teaches that this kind of thinking is an illusion. There is no separation. We are all one. In AA, they say that this feeling of being separate is what drives alcoholics to drink. I do not believe that is entirely true. Acknowledging separateness is accepting the human condition.
For a long time I worked with the sankalpa, ” I am happy to be sober because I feel so much closer to my friends and family.” Oh but if that were the case!
Looking back, I remember clearly that to stay sober for the 10 years that I did, I gave my entire life over to AA. I gave up all my old friends, I spend hours in meetings and with other recovering alcoholics. Yes, I did not drink. Yes, I was sober, but my life was incredibly small, limited. Depression set in. The doctor put me on prozac. Was it because I was unhappily married? Was I disatissfied with myself and my life? Will I ever be satisfied?
Tantra teaches that life is ever expanding, that there are no limitations. Paul Tillich taught that the answer to every question reveals a deeper, more profound question. We start with small inquiries and keep moving higher and higher into the realm of the vast unknown, but we continue because we know there is more. This is because, according to Tillich, a lifelong pursuit of philosophy reveals that the central question of every philosophical inquiry always comes back to the question of being, or what it means to be, to exist, to be a finite human being.
I do not want to give up all my friends to live a sober life. I must find my own way. I do believe there is a middle path. When I went to treatment for bulimia, the counselors there told me I would always have an eating disorder. I do not. When I quit smoking years ago, people told me I would never be able to touch another cigarette. “If you do, you will start smoking again.” I did, now and then, take a drag off of a cigarette, but I never returned to daily smoking.
I will find the middle path for alcohol. I will.
The journey continues. Day 10. Still sober.
P.S. I wrote my therapist last night. This is the man who saved my life two years ago.. Here is what I said, “Do you have any openings this week for an appointment? Feeling strangely psychotic. Not suicidal. Watching myself thoughts go from one extreme to the other. Have not ingested any alcohol for 9 days. Been going to AA meetings which I hate, blogging about the whole thing. I really need to get clear about my relationship to alcohol.” I am seeing him at 1:00 pm on Wednesday.
Writing into the Light 