Just finished the Augusten Burroughs book, “Dry”.

He’s the guy who wrote “Running with Scizzors.”

Who woulda guessed that a guy that grew up in that situation would, as an adult, find himself with a chemical dependency problem?

It’s a very good memoir.

It just about drove me out of my mind.

Lots of ickky feelings stirred up from my own getting sober days.  Lots of ickky feelings from the last days of my drinking.

The one thing recovery people hate the most is ickky feelings.  Makes us want to go back to the death path of dependency.  We don’t deal well with ickky feelings, which is what got us into trouble in the first place.  We just want them to stop and stop now and whatever it takes to stop feeling the ickky feeling, we’re willing to do.  Even if it kills us.

And, it does kill us.  It kills people every single day.

So, we make the choice all over again.  Do we want to live sober or die drunk?

Sometimes, this is not as easy a choice as you may think if you aren’t inside the disease.

This is a strange February for me.

This is the first Valentines Day in 20 someodd years that I haven’t handed out penny dreadful cards to strangers.  First Feb. 14 in many years that I haven’t run around and dropped off a nice card with almost every woman I know.  First VD I haven’t had someone I was either “with” or Jones-ing about.

I wasn’t up to it this year.

No enthusiasm for the project.

I lost my faith in romantic love.  Can’t worship in that church right now.  Can’t take communion and don’t want to.

Pure dumb luck has brought me to a place where I’m financially secure for the moment and I’m also not in any romantic relationship drama.

And, I’m scared.  Scared shitless.

I’m as anxious as I can be.  I’m a cat on a hot tin roof.

I don’t really know why.  It’s just where I am.  I don’t have any faith in the future.  My imagined catastrophic doom awaits. 

I’ve tried writing affirmations and a gratitude list.  I’ve called another alcoholic.  I’ve gone to meetings.  I take my meds.

It seems the best I can do right now is to fake it until I can make it.  I’m trying to act my way into a new way of thinking by dressing in a suit and tie and coming to work and being around friends and pursuing enjoyable and satisfying goals.

Right under that surface, I’m a scared little boy (sorry, Flibbertigibbet!, that’s just who I am.  I’d like to be your stand up guy, but I’m not.).  The problem is that I’m not a little boy.  When a little boy lashes out against his fears, it’s harmless.  I’m a supersmart grown up lawyer and when I lash out, it’s not right, it’s not pretty and it’s not harmless.  I hate that.

I hate me.  I hate having to be me.  I’m like a lot of drunks who think that one day they will be sitting in a bar drinking and some supernatural power — usually the next drink — will lift me up to a place of exhaltation where I will not be bothered by the day to day problems of being a human being.  All my problems will go away.  I will be in control of the universe and the world and its people will bend to my personal whim and will.  I will be a president or a general or a great scientist or whatever.  I have accepted many Nobel Peace Prizes in my fantasies.  I’ve been applauded by huge numbers of people, adoring crowds.  And the reality of my life, by comparison, seems so tawdry and boring.  It just isn’t fair.  It isn’t right.  Don’t you all know who I AM?

Yeah, John, I know who you are.  You’re a recovering drunk barely functional after a dozen years of sobriety.  And lucky to be even that.

I so wish I could go someplace and hide.

I have a passport.  I’ve put some cash in a hidey hole.  I could run away.

I have razor blades and topical anaesthetic and hot water.

There are those people who know me who think I’m an arrogant ass because of my manner.

If they only knew.

Today, I will live sober.

Today, I will not try to cure my addiction geographically.

Today, I will live like the person I want to be be and not the person I feel like.

Today, I will not believe everything I think.

Today, I will not listen to my fears.

Today, I will try to be led by my hopes.

Today, I will try.