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Higher PowerThe Mojo
Chapter Three At
a meeting, a short time later, a young fellow that I knew approached me and
asked to speak privately with me. I really envied this handsome, young chap. He
had a new girlfriend every month; unlike me, who had three problem children and
a dissatisfied wife, he was, on the surface, carefree and had few
responsibilities. While we were chatting he looked me straight in the eye and
said, "I really envy your stability." I
was shocked! I had been feeling so alone and trapped by all my newly created
responsibilities. If the truth were known, I had been riding on the shoulders of
others in the program, whom had taken issue with the many and various aspects of
their disease and were working to achieve their own recovery in an active way.
Okay,
so I couldn't be totally carefree. Let's start with an hour a week strictly for
me. I'll book it in my time planner. That's when the real growth began. As the
hour drew nearer, I had to find a way for myself to enjoy this new freedom. Something
struck me, perhaps; as usual, I had been looking for the solution to all my
problems in the wrong places! Maybe, just maybe, I had been working my program
and was not on a "dry drunk" as I had suspected! Could it be that I
was in the throes of another active addiction! Perhaps,
my misguided loyalty to AA, the wonderful program and friends that meant so much
to me, had actually contributed to reinforce the normal blame and denial cycles
of my current active addictions. I
began by getting some outside help for my sugar, gambling, and sex based
addictions. I also got some professional help for an extreme nicotine and
caffeine habit. Being
abstinent from these behaviors, I was now able to purge the many years of stored
up and stuffed, redundant feelings! My
daily Step 10 inventory began to include a list of the various feelings I was
experiencing for the day and that ever present, overwhelmed, dry drunk feeling
left. I found it extremely important to overcome my natural urge to edit this
list into a more socially acceptable form, especially where it concerned less
than acceptable feelings about those I presumably should be caring about. I also
let go of all the misplaced feelings and responsibilities, which I carried, but
were not truly mine in the first place but belonged to other people. I then
culled out feelings that were old or somehow redundant as they took up a lot of
unnecessary space. In some cases, if grieving was necessary, no matter how
inappropriate the loss, I mourned for these events. By
doing so, I slowly began to take responsibility for my life rather than reacting
to the ever-churning mixture of unidentified and unidentifiable addictions and
feelings. No longer did my compulsions have either the chemical fuel or the
emotional state of confusion necessary to propel them. Since
releasing all those redundant, useless and damaged feelings, I find that I get a
brand new, fresh supply of unused feelings each and every day and I no longer
need to cling to the old used up ones. That means I can take more real risks,
like amateur performing and public speaking. This, in turn, allows me to be a
functioning part of my community, both recovery and otherwise, no matter what I
kind of car I drive. Today, at long last, I can literally breathe freer! Creatively,
I took some guitar and vocal lessons. This was extremely hard for me, since my
father had been a guitar picker, and I did not wish to be, in any way, like him.
Yet, I had to find a way to let some of the music out of me in a less damaging
way than I had been doing. With
the comfort and encouragement of program friends, I have cried for my losses,
laughed for my successes, shook for my excitements and wrote songs and poems
about the rest. I
discovered a love of music and poetry and an undiscovered knack for writing. I
began to write of my recovery experiences and soon began to get this creativity
published locally and worldwide by various sources. I also began to write songs
first to help me grieve various events in my life. One
of the most interesting things about songwriting is a phenomenon called the
"accidental'. An accidental is when someone during the songwriting process
makes a mistake and strikes the wrong note or chord, or perhaps, sings the wrong
melody or lyric and accidentally adds positively to the end result. Accidentals
only occur when there is action being taken in some form. They are the "mojo"
or magic that musicians often refer to. One
day, I was painfully practicing rudimentary chords on my guitar, I happened to
open my easy play-book of folk songs. As I stumbled through some of the more
familiar ones I came upon a grouping of familiar gospel songs. I knew some of
the melodies, so I started to play and sing along. I began to feel a connection.
I had accidentally stumbled over the missing link in my recovery. It was the
mojo! In taking action to somehow improve myself, accidentally I found the
password to contact with my Higher Power that had been denied all these years. I
had tried, but somehow no amount of prayer could bring me back that childhood
faith lost somewhere between the unanswered prayers for my dear grandmother and
all those exorcisms. Being alcoholic doesn't necessarily mean being stupid. Of
course there was a force that kept the planet in orbit and the flowers blooming,
but as for a personal connection to that Mother Nature/Heavenly Father, it was
always simply unavailable to me! Suddenly,
I had a new understanding of the old phrase 'God helps those that help
themselves'. An anonymous friend of mine sometimes says; "Psychotics build
castles in the sky and neurotics live in them". After all those
unproductive, scared and lonely, insane years of living in fantasyland, all it
took was a tiny, little bit of action aimed at overcoming one of my more minor
difficulties to obtain such outstanding results. I certainly hadn't expected to
find God on that ordinary day! But, accidentally, I had! Tears came and I was
convinced beyond a doubt. It was the "Mojo" and it was working! We
have a saying at meetings in our part of the country; 'Don't leave until the
miracle happens.' I am going to change that slightly for the purpose of this
story, to: "Don't leave until all the miracles happen!" In
trying to resolve my weight problem, I was advised to try a dietary change that
eliminated my excessive cravings for food by avoiding refined sugars and
starches. To my complete surprise, my asthma, already reduced by getting rid of
a bushel of stuffed feelings, became a mere, minor inconvenience. Instead of the
life threatening condition that once baffled both medical and spiritual
professionals, it was reduced practically to nil by a dietary change that no one
ever even associated with it. As a child I often had dreams of me running, much
the same as I've heard others dream of flying. Today, I often run three or four
miles with relative ease. Also,
a sex therapist once suggested that I make two phone calls a week to my fellow
program members just to keep in contact with someone. I forced myself, at first,
and it ended my hungry loneliness. Today, I make a couple of calls a day, as a
matter of routine, and feel lost if I don't. I had always thought my sex hunger
to be a result of my lack of prayer skills and contact with God. All the while
it was simply ordinary friends that I lacked. I can do this! It
is easy! Every
day that I'm involved with the twelve step program the mojo works. I can go to a
meeting with the agenda of a problem that I'm working on, and before the meeting
is over, if I have an open mind, my problem will not only have lessened but I
will have learned that I'm not alone and benefited greatly in maintaining a
realistic focus by being with people in recovery! Since
my demons have now departed and taken that hundred extra pounds along with them,
I have a song in my heart that was there all along, just waiting to be voiced.
I'm confident that as long as I remain active in Alcoholics Anonymous my life
music will continue to get more melodic and beautiful one day at a time. The
fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's Twelve Steps and Traditions and living
life 'One day at a time' is truly the sword that cut right through the twisted
and intertwined Gordian Knot of my life and provides me with both security and
solutions today. Clean
and sober it's a whole new world! One that is sure to continue to prove both
purposeful and enjoyable. Don't
Leave Till The Miracle Happens!
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"One Sponsee I have, had a big Change in her life after this T-H-O-R-O-U-G-H inventory!" *** True addiction recovery lies in the ability to deal with root issues, not simply medicate the symptoms of them." DB
"There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path!" *** You do not have to carry yesterday's hurt and damaged feelings into today. A fresh supply of new feelings is yours for the taking!
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