May 23, 2009

• Clean Time

  Happy Birthday, Greyfox.

  Six years ago today, I made a panic-run down the Valley to Wasilla, pulled my Old Fart out of a puddle of piss and spilled booze, and (at his request) helped him get to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.  That’s a long story, as most of mine are.  Soon afterward, we both started going to Narcotics Anonymous and for a while we were attending meetings of both those 12-step organizations several times a week, and Double Trouble in Recovery (the one for people with dual diagnoses:  addiction and mental illness) on Sundays.

  For several years, each of us held various service positions in AA and/or NA.  Additionally, I was a volunteer at a rehab center in Wasilla, driving a vanload of their residents to NA meetings.  Neither Greyfox nor I was addicted to any of the programs.  When he would share at meetings, he often referred to one or both of us as 12-step heretics.  We outspokenly do not believe in personal powerlessness, and to us there is no mysterious “X-factor” that makes one person an alcoholic while other people can drink in moderation with impunity.  We know that the key to addiction is as simple as ABC:  it is all brain chemistry.

  We hung on there for a while, a few years, as I said, hoping to help a few addicts free themselves of their addictions to drugs and the programs.  We watched a bunch of True Believers go out, back in, and out again through those revolving doors.  Twelve-step programs claim they have a 15-25% success rate.  I’m not sure it’s that high.  Neither of us has been to any meetings for months.  In my case, it has been years.  I just now got a big smile on my face, at the thought that, sure as anything, there are people in those programs who assume that since we’re not suiting up and showing up there we are using again.  Ha!  The joke’s on them.

  Six years ago, Greyfox stopped using alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and various other recreational drugs, mostly downers (’cause the man never met a CNS depressant he didn’t like).  He quit all at once, something few in the field of addiction recommend, or even think possible.  He says it was easy.  He tells people that, “not using is simply doing nothing and it is easier to do nothing than to do something.”  His withdrawal was made painless and effortless by the regimen of orthomolecular supplements I put together for him.

  About half a year before he got clean from his various drugs, I had kicked a lifelong sugar addiction using orthomolecular supplements — not the exact same mix of supplements, but the same principles of balanced brain chemistry.  When I had done “hard” drugs my drug of choice was methamphetamine.  When I quit, in the early 1970s, I followed the advice of some professional former junkies, and used sweets and coffee to allay the drug cravings.  Then, in the fall of 2002, I used orthomolecular supplements to get off sugar and caffeine.

  At the time that Greyfox got clean, in spring of 2003, I was growing and smoking weed.  With no more economic need to grow it, I stopped, and in the eyes of NA, that makes today my “birthday,” too.  I had never been addicted to weed.  I am one of the people for whom weed is a stimulant.  Greyfox is one for whom it is a relaxant, and they are the ones more likely to become addicted to it.  Those differences had always made for some interesting complications in our using together, resulting in each of us using more, in company with the other, than we’d have used alone.  But I suppose that’s a whole ‘nother story.  Maybe I should just get on with this story and get to my point.

  I was “clean” by my definition:  free of addictive drug use, before I started going to 12-step meetings.  Greyfox and I both remained “clean” by NA’s definition throughout the time we attended their meetings, and continued after we stopped going.  Ironically, within a few years of attending those meetings where coffee is brewed and consumed by gallons and anniversaries of clean time are celebrated with birthday cakes, I yielded to the temptation and went back on caffeine and sugar after years of abstinence.  Greyfox had never tried to abstain from caffeine or sugar.

  Recently, he has become concerned about weight gain and has cut down on his sugar consumption.  My own sugar addiction is an on-again-off-again thing.  I go for days or weeks eating sensibly, then binge on candy or pastry.  Both of us moderate our coffee consumption most of the time.  His caffeine use spikes on weekends when he works trade shows, and mine spikes when I spend time with him in Wasilla.  At home, I drink a pot of half-decaf every morning, and sometimes a pot or two of decaf when that is gone.  One constant for us both is the knowledge that using is a choice, that we have the power to do, or not do.  After lifetimes of playing around with our brain chemistry, we still do, even though we don’t always feel good about it after we do.  Of course it feels good when we do… that’s the point isn’t it?  The dopamine, the sugar rush… that’s why we do it.

  Hmmm… did I have a point here?  Did I make it?  “Clean” or “sober,” like so many other words, means different things to different people.  My dope-fiend friends in NA would say I’m clean because I’m not using alcohol or other substances they consider to be “drugs.”  I know better, because I was fumbling around here bleary-eyed this morning until I downed those first two cups of half-decaf and they had time to hit my blood stream.  There’s a box of brownie mix and bag of marshmallows in my pantry, and I intend to use them.  I ration myself to one bag of Hot Tamales Fire candy a day.  By my definition, I’m using — it’s not healthy, but I know it could be worse.  I could be running meth in my veins, but I’m not and I’m not going to be.

  Anyway, Greyfox, Happy Birthday.  We had twelve and a half years of hell together while you were drinking and using, and we have had a heavenly six years since you quit.  I have enjoyed watching you grow into a decent human being.  I love you more than I can ever fully express.  You’re aces in my book, Darlin’.

  [If you skipped over that link to the story of my first ever AA meeting at the top of this entry, here it is again.]
  

  • 12:41 pm
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