It is my official AA anniversary, folks! Today marks my 30th year without alcohol. (gasp) I can hardly believe it myself. At left: an image from one of the late-60s AA comic books, titled "It happened to Alice." I am no longer a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, for a variety of reasons. (I touched on some of my issues with AA here and here.) But I still credit the organization with saving my life. Nothing else would have worked for me. The very aspects of AA that are so harshly criticized now, such as the pseudo-cultish environment, are the very things I most needed. My ongoing druggie-party-atmosphere had always provided me with 'friends'--and consequently, when I cleaned up, I needed "new playmates and playgrounds" to take their place... or I was going to run into big trouble. Immediately. The social environment of AA was crucial.
I remember once having the vivid sensation of having jumped from a window on a very, very high floor... and inexplicably, soft, loving hands, dozens of hands, caught me and brought me safely to earth. Often, when I think of AA, I have this sensation, this vision, that I will never forget, of all the hands reaching out to catch me.
Sometimes it makes me cry, because I did not deserve it. Not at all.
It was amazing that this should happen to me, that these loving, kind hands should catch me after all I had done. This is what Christians call Grace. I deserved to crash through the concrete, and yet... I was spared.
It is impossible to come through such an experience unchanged and unscathed. My spiritual curiosity began then, generously mixed with survivor's guilt: Why have I been spared, when other good people were not? As I would hear (ever more often, it seemed) of famous and nonfamous addicts dying (page down here, for my musings about John Belushi, the first famous addict to die after I became sober), I would experience almost dizzying gratitude (and accompanying relief) that I had stopped when I did.
The gratitude has never abated. Perhaps that is key.
~*~
Recently in Feminist Blogdonia, there was a huge uproar over a controversial, confessional post, written by a popular male feminist, about violence against women he had committed while still using. This didn't surprise me, but it surprised, shocked, and horrified many others. And from their shock, I learned an important lesson: I had intended to write a longer piece for my 30-Year anniversary. I wanted to tell a harrowing story, since it underscores my gratitude; it makes it very clear that I was in crisis, and how far I have come.
And yes, I have a few I could tell.
I now know that such stories, stories of pain and addiction, stories of insanity, stories of possible death, near death and death itself, need to be kept secret and/or only shared with people we know well and deeply trust. Online is not the place, as Hugo discovered. And that's too bad, isn't it? But I am glad Hugo went their first. As a result, I certainly won't.
And so, I shall leave it to your imagination ... with the help of a few movies.
Warning: these video clips tell the truth.
And a very happy anniversary to me! :)
~*~
In this clip from Trainspotting, Ewan MacGregor is in drug withdrawal, hallucinating and haunted by various dead friends, including the baby that died in his apartment (because they were too high to feed her).
Here we learn the important lesson that guilt can become actual monsters that follow you around.
At the end of Clean and Sober--Michael Keaton realizes what the film audience already knows:
From Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, here is Samuel L Jackson as "Gator", with the late Ossie Davis and the incomparable Ruby Dee:
And we end with two trailers from Requiem for a Dream, the best and most honest movie ever made about addiction: