This is not what I thought it would feel like to be 35, I told Linsey. She asked what I meant: Did I think I’d be the Composer in Residence for some college orchestra? More successful, career-wise? A better dad?

Not really more of anything, actually. The only way I knew to say it was, I thought I would be less lost.

The weeks after a relapse, even a quickly aborted one, are inevitably brutal. I’ve screwed up my brain chemistry: things that should feel good feel bland, things that should feel bad feel excruciatingly painful. Food for thought next time I get a…

I lost my way.

I used last night. I don’t know why. I’m still coming down so I’m not thinking very clearly.

During the darkest hours of the night, I thought about how my brain works. I knew that if I waited for morning, I would try to hide my mistake, and would find myself caught up in the machinery of addiction. I would think that I could stop it all through prayer and willpower and work, sidestepping disclosure. I’ve been there with embarrassing frequency, in that cycle of swearing off, planning, acting out, then starting over again and again.

So I woke…

Saturday night, when it happened, the shame was crippling, and I couldn’t breathe or think. Everything was a muted wash of gray.

Until the waves of rage and nausea, and the fantasies – beating holes in the wall with a microphone stand, slicing my wrists open, shrieking obscenities into the night. Then the addict, slamming me with euphoric recall. Escape this body, plunge into ecstasy, get what you deserve, Eli. I’m a strong swimmer – I’ve trained in these waters for years – so why the fuck was I drowning again? I was fighting for breath, but my cognitive and recovery tools…

On my porch there are two potted trees (not just one!), waiting to be planted. But don’t tell anybody.

Our Palm Sunday musical featured Tree #1, which represented the branches placed at the feet of Christ a week before Easter. But really I just wanted to grab people’s attention with a giant tree in the middle of the sanctuary.

Tree #2 was a sneaky replacement prop for Good Friday. We bought this tree larger, and trimmed it to match the first tree’s shape. Then we cut off every single leaf. It stood stark and bare for our Friday evening service, a symbol of…

Day 105

Early in my crazy-person career, I visited my college’s medical center because I was so depressed I wanted to kill myself. This was a problem.

I was grabbing life by the throat. I got out of bed most days at sunrise and jogged. Then came the black vinyl planner, filled with lists. Lists of things to do and people to call, lists of goals and mission statements, lists of errands, lists of lists. I had been ad-libbing for too long, and was determined to eradicate every piece of procrastination from my life. If it could be organized and prioritized I…

I remember sitting at the bar with a male friend on both sides of me concerned (neither would protect me in the end). Somehow I knew there wasn’t enough alcohol to dull my senses to what was awaiting me when I went home. I’m quite sure at one point or another, logic had spoken up and whispered I didn’t have to go through with it; I could walk away and start over. My one true friend echoed from the contents of the bottle in front of me eschewing I wouldn’t feel a thing if I had imbibed enough to dull…

Andrew Sullivan picks up on a debate about shame’s influence on behavior:

Adam Serwer responds to Dreher’s post on stigmatizing having children out of wedlock:

Conservatives regularly overestimate the beneficial effects of shame. Shame provokes response in the form of impulse, not long term planning. A person who
is ashamed isn’t going to think, “I’d better get a degree” or “I’d better get married,” they’re going to think in the short term about what they can do to rectify their sense of self-worth.

How do you see people–men in particular–act when they’re ashamed?  You rarely see them do something like get married or get a fantastic job;…

I feel like I’m in a strange place in my recovery lately. I haven’t had any urges to drink. Not in a very long while. I’ve been told that’s when I ought to watch out. I’ve been told constant vigilance should be my mantra. I’ve heard my disease is out to get me and one of its best tricks is that it pretends it doesn’t exist.

I’ve been pressing at the edges of boundaries that I used to stay far away from, encouraged by my growth in the last three years of sobriety. I am not without fear or discomfort,…

A meeting topic this week focused on guilt. It seems to be something that rises up for various reasons and can drag us down if we let it. Guilt is defined as having remorse for having done something wrong. What is important is to decide to forgive ourselves by letting go of what others have done to us. Forgiveness is where healing occurs.

I know that it’s easy to slip into the feelings of guilt. But guilt is like almost all feelings, best just felt and let go. The danger for me comes when guilt turns into shame, the feeling that…

I hear a lot about alcoholic marriages in meetings. Heck, I’ve lived in one for a long time. The amount of pain that comes out in sharings involving alcoholic relationships can sometimes take me right back to all those times when I had so much pain.

Take the meeting yesterday. One of the sharings was from someone in an alcoholic marriage. A couple of young children are the innocent ones. One of the adults is a high roller in business, winer and diner of clients, mostly drunk every day. The other adult accompanies the spouse to the wining and dining. A…