Month: January 2006

My lunch with my sponsee went pretty well. I stressed how I was not going to enable his smoking anymore. He took it all in, agreed, and we had a decent time. We then went to the coffeeshop up the street and he bought me a chai. He had a large coffee with lots of milk and sugar. Of course it didn’t really cross my mind that he wasn’t allowed to have coffee because of his meds. So I have enabled him yet again.

Tonight at the meeting I spoke to his ‘host’ and she told me about his coffee drinking, his smoking, and his lying. She is very worried about him, because without the mental health program that he is currently involved with he would go to a state-run group home with constant monitoring. There he would not have caffeine, nicotine, or sugar, all chemicals that he consumes as if they were (and they are!) drugs. It is safe to say that he will always be under the watchful eye of the state in one form or another. He cannot live without it.

I am worried for myself now. It’s as if I have suddenly acquired much more than a drunk trying to stay sober. I am dealing with a drunk trying to get sober who is also schizophrenic and is on a thrice-daily cocktail of massive amounts of anti-psychotics to keep him stable. He lies and sneaks to get his coffee, sneaks around to get cigarettes, and is not trusted to stay by himself, alone, in the house where he lives. His host is worried that something may happen to him and she will get the blame. What about me? I’m the one driving him around to meetings! Am I now supposed to be his babysitter and medical orderly as well? I feel this situation spiraling out-of-control. I do not want to be involved with this anymore.

This goes against everything I have been taught in AA so far, but does it? I know that I must carry the message, not the drunk. I know that I cannot “cure” anyone. I also know that I am not even a mental health amateur, let alone an expert. I can see myself becoming so involved with this situation that it takes on legal proportions and I become stuck in the middle. I can see it ruining my life and effecting the lives of my family members.

I need some real advice and I need it now. I’ll be speaking with my sponsor tomorrow, and, I hope, with my therapist on Monday. I will also be picking the brains of other drunks and asking their advice. This sounds fucked-up, but I’m really glad he doesn’t know where I live…

Johnnyboy

I went to my usual Step meeting last night and received the answers I need to my problems at hand. I also spent most of the day with my sponsor, which was great, considering he assigned me some new spiritual tasks to further my growth.

Of course, I don’t want to do anything he told me to do. That would be a positive change for me. The first was to get more exercise. He wants me to try some cardio-aerobic activity every day. Walking for 35-45 minutes is fine, he says. I don’t need to go to the gym or anything. The problem is that I’m lazy and the weather sucks. Neither of these are ‘reasons’ to not get out there and move my ass around for a few minutes each day.

The second task is to not only take the spiritual baby-steps of AA, but to reach out to the spiritual community in the real world. He reminded me that he was not telling me to join a cult, but rather to investigate other avenues of spiritual growth. Both of these tasks will help me in beginning to make amends to myself over the past and break out of much of my isolation and loneliness (did I say that? Am I really lonely…?).

So I’ll start the reaching-out with either the Quakers or the Unitarians. I couldn’t find the Quakers listed in the yellow pages under ‘Churches’, so I’ll ask around. There is also a pretty big Buddhist community around where I live, so I also have that option. All of this will help me to forgive myself, which, in turn, will help me to get over the people-pleasing need/fear of worrying about what other people are thinking/saying about me. I hope.

The exercise I’ll start this afternoon, rain or shine, after I come home from lunch with my sponsee. This brings me to my next subject: Lying.

My sponsee (let’s call him Bob) has many mental health issues on top of his alcoholism. He has a long history of psychiatric incarceration, homelessness, and dysfunction. To say that he may be scared living in the real world is to be light about the subject. As his sponsor I treat what he says to me with strict confidence. His host-family, on the other hand is something else. This household is very sober, and accustomed to having people like him live with them. They currently have 2 other boarders under their roof. Everyone is on medication of some sort. The stories I hear from Bob are not the same as the updates I receive from his host. His is a tale of misunderstanding, bitchiness, and cruelty. Theirs is a story of his stealing his meds, lack of hygiene, and lying, especially about his smoking. He is supposed to quit smoking as part of his out-patient program with the state. I caught him a few days ago talking about “sneaking a cigarette so ‘she’ wouldn’t know”. I put the kabosh on that kind of stealth activity, seeing it as just another way to lie, cheat, and steal, his way through life. It now turns out that he is also wearing ‘the patch’. I had asked him a few weeks ago if he was, and he said “no”, so I didn’t think about it. Now I learn that he is, and still smoking. I even gave him a cigarette the other night! His host ‘mother’ also found a pack of smokes in his jacket last week. Yet he continues to lie.

So he lies to me. This is fear, I know it. Because I’ve been there.

We are having lunch together in a couple of hours where I will address this lying of his. If we are to maintain an honest program he must know that he doesn’t need to lie to me. The truth will not have him thrown out of my car, sponsorship, etc…

I wonder if he knows that he is lying, or even cares? Maybe the fiction in his mind is the truth that he sees and lives. He is a tough soul, and has been through a lot. This character defect is probably one of the strongest weapons he had out there on the street. It will be difficult and sticky to de-fuse.

So I’m off to the showers, and then out to lunch. I’ll update this saga tomorrow.

Johnnyboy