Category Archives: Addiction/Recovery

Mondays Are Hell – Demons Murder Change

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Why is it that when we want to make the most dramatic changes in our lives something happens to tempt us to turn tail and flee back into our shells?

It’s eerie, and I think it’s why people have assumed there was an evil Prince of Darkness, in capital letters, trying to destroy us with a host of demons and hexes.

For example, I had an overweight friend in college, and he knew that his quality of life and longevity were at risk and so he decided to start exercising and watching what he ate. Not dieting, but just being aware of what he was eating.

Three days into his big change, he fell and broke most of the bones in his feet which stopped the exercise and he was so distraught about the injury he fell off his food plan and the change was destroyed. Demons. Demons caught up with him and killed his change.

I know so many addicts and alcoholics who when they tried to stop drinking or using, a month into their sobriety, they lost their job, or their spouse left them, or all hell broke loose in their lives.

Demons. What other answer is there?

It certainly makes sense. But maybe it’s not demons. Maybe in times of personal crisis, when things are at a breaking point, the change comes too late and what was already dangling, snaps off.

For example, my overweight buddy was messing around climbing on some rocks, slipped because he lost his grip and hurt himself. If he had been in better shape, would he have slipped? If he hadn’t already been so heavy, would he have fallen and would the damage have been as great?

Change is necessary, but dangerous. It’s like Tennyson’s “Lady of Shallot.” Leaving her castle, she dies. To live is to die.

So blaming the demons is fine, but even when adversity hits during a time of change, you still have to soldier on. Change in spite of the demons. My friend could have continued to exercise by lifting weights or doing other things that didn’t put weight on his injured foot.

The lesson is this—always keep hope in your heart. Demons hate hope. Like I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Well, not you, but the quote from Shakespeare was cool.

Love that Shakespeare. There was a guy who knew a thing or two about demons.

Tuesday 12 Steps – Step One Continued: Hitting Bottom

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Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless over our art and our creative lives had become unmanageable.

The first step in a 12-step program has ZERO solution in it. The first step is about being so shattered, so broken, so sick and tired of being sick and tired, that I will do anything to change. Anything at all.

It’s like the story of the pacifist who was also a prince. As a prince, he was required to carry a sword as a sign of his station, but he was also a pacifist and believed strongly in non-violence.

So torn, so filled with conflict, he went to a church elder and told the elder about his situation. How do I carry a sword and be a pacifist at the same time?

The elder said, “Carry the sword until it is too heavy to carry.”

The first step is about realizing that the goddamn sword is so heavy it’s breaking our goddamn backs.

And of course, as everyone knows, the first step is about the bottom. The depths of despair. Hopelessness.

My bottom came six years ago when I attended my very first writers’ workshop, in Big Sur, California. It started out heroic. I was Achilles, sword, shield, even a printer because my wife and I just knew that the agent would want me to print out a copy right then and there. Still, even though I was armed for success, I was terrified. I was shaking. My eyes were bunny rabbit-wide open.

I sat down in front of the agent, and she knew I was about to implode, because she asked me, “Are you all right?” She moved a little toward the door.

I said, “Yeah, sure, go on.” Inside, I was approaching the guillotine.

And then she hit me with every inch of a beating stick. Because I was an amateur. Because what I had was rough. Because I thought I could write in isolation, without help, without guidance, and if I couldn’t do it on my own, I didn’t want to succeed.

At one point, she leaned back, winced, pointed to my pages and said, “Where are you going with all this?”

I tried to fumble around to explain the characters, the stories, the things I so loved about my book. But of course, it was too late. I was reduced to ashes. It broke me. My worst fears had come true.

I had hit bottom. I couldn’t walk this writers’ journey alone.

I used to say that first rejection was when my writing dreams were destroyed. That’s not really what happened. What happened was my fantasies were destroyed. The fantasies of an overnight success, where I went from obscurity to fame and fortune because of my innate genius.

That fantasy died with that agent. The dream continues. Because the dream is that I can write and enjoy it. I can move people and give my voice to the world of literature and art because I have a unique voice. That is the dream. And when I’m writing, working, creating, marketing, overcoming fears, I am living that dream. Will I ever be a bestselling, jet-owning, fun-loving author loved by billions? I don’t know. That’s the fantasy, and some people get to live that. For me, the dream has to be what I do every day, right now.

 

 

In the words of that Canadian power-trio rock band, and I don’t mean Triumph, “Some are born to rule the world to live their fantasies. But most of us just dream about the things we’d like to be…”

That’s Neil Peart from Rush. And those words are true.

Hitting bottom can be dramatic, like what happened to me, like what happened to Sid Vicious, and to other hardcore addicts and alcoholics, but not necessarily so.

A little piece of 12-step program; you hit bottom when you stop digging, turn around and start climbing out of the hole you’ve dug.

A bottom is a turning point, where you realize you have a problem and seek help. And it might be getting locked up for not writing and sitting in San Quentin with tattooed murderers.

“Whatcha’ in for?”
“I killed and ate my family. What’re you in for?”
“I couldn’t write. Snapped. Burned all my manuscripts.”
“Damn. Book burner. Hardcore.”

Or it might be a Tuesday, and you are in bed, and you realize, “Another day I didn’t write. Why can’t I find the time? What is wrong with me?”

The only important thing about a bottom is that you change. That’s the critical part.

Twelve Step Tuesday – Step 1 – Nasty Muses – Powerless and Unmanageable

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Step 1 – Admitted we were powerless over our art and our lives had become unmanageable.

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The Twelve Step process is interesting because it doesn’t start with us being heroic and strong and invincible.
It doesn’t start, as Stuart Smalley would say, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”  Nope. It starts like a good story.  In a place of darkness and despair.

 

The first step is all about being reduced to ashes, being broken, defeated, wrecked, enslaved, sorry as one shoe battered on the side of the highway alone.

Maggie Stiefvater

​My Step 1 goes back to the very roots of wanting to be a writer and not being able to write.  Trust me, I wanted to write novels.  I mean, Maggie Stiefvater had 30 novels in various stages of revision by the time she graduated from high school.

I wanted to be like Maggie Stiefvater.  Doesn’t everyone?  But then, I was powerless and my life was unmanageable.  I couldn’t write even when I wanted to.

And I had the usual excuses.  I was afraid.  I was busy.  It seemed too hard.  I was full of self-doubt.  T.V. was easier.  Reading other people’s books was easier.  And really, that’s how we begin.  Writers start out as readers. Well, broken readers who can’t leave well enough alone.  Or at least, that’s my story.

When teens ask me how to be a writer and what they should do, I say: Write as much as you can.  Read as much as you can.  And sleep.  Teens need sleep.  Their brains are developing.

But for me, I was powerless over if I wrote or not and my writing life was unmanageable.  ​For example, when I was just out of college and working, I promised myself I would write on Mondays and Wednesdays from 7pm to 9pm.   I was busy, you see.  Yeah, that was before family, house, and children.  I wasn’t busy.  I was preoccupied with a whole lotta’ nothing.  As my friend says, I can waste an entire lifetime in ten-minute increments.

And yes, every so often, I’d get a Saturday and I’d skip watching the video tapes of The X-Files I’d recorded, and I would write, and it would be great, and I would think.  Man, that’s cool.  I should do that more often.  How about Mondays and Wednesdays for two hours at night?  But then the siren call of the TV and I would crash onto the couch and be stuck there.  An eater of the lotus was I.  The television lotus.

Now, I could blame my lack of self-discipline, or I could blame Star Trek, or Fear Factor, or John Hughes movies for taking up all my time.  I could blame my parents for not encouraging me like Christopher Paolini’s parents did. Yeah, the guy was homeschooled and had parental support.  I was educated by Jesuits.  Okay, we’re even there.

But my point is, I was powerless and my writing was unmanageable because of who I was and my inability to accept that I needed help and that I couldn’t do it myself.

Here was my idea of a writer: a writer is born fully grown from the head of his/her father. They stride out into the world with one sandal flapping the dust (very Jason of the Argonauts) and they sit down and write a novel.  The novel is gorgeous.  And yes, it might be a Herculean effort, but in the end, it is wonderful.  They then box up that novel (I grew up before email, and we had paper and typewriters and hippies and 80’s music and boys walked around with their hair in their eyes and girls wore lacy gloves like Madonna) and send that box o’ novel out to the publishing world where it is published to acclaim.

 

That was a writer.  They didn’t have critique groups.  They didn’t attend conferences. They worked alone in crappy, lice-infested apartments and drank hooch and smoked camel-cigarettes and were bad-asses.  Even the women writers.  And that’s true.  Ain’t nothin’ as bad-ass as a lady writer.

I thought I had to learn how to write, get published, and then do all that alone.  And it scared me silly.

It drove me not to write because I was alone and even though my wife supported me (hurray), I was still alone.

Some people can do this alone.  I can’t.  My hat’s off to those bad-ass writers who can churn out pages for years all by themselves.  They are warriors.

I am not.  I’m a scared little boy most days.

Next week, my bottom!