Honesty.
I went to an AA meeting last night and that was the topic. I sat for an hour and listened while people shared some incredibly insightful perspectives about honesty in relation to alcoholism and recovery. I was not called on to share but of course it got me to thinking...
I was raised in a true Southern family, and the unspoken rule was that if bad things happenned to you, you just pretend they didn't. And of course you would never EVER tell anyone, least of all anyone outside the family. It's straight out of a Tennessee Williams play. And it's still happening there today, which is one of the reasons I live 5,000 miles from the family.
Anyway, I've made considerable effort to be more honest with myself and with others than that. But looking back over the last few years of my drinking, the thing that really strikes me is just how compartmentalized my life had become due to lack of honesty. At work, I was professional, dedicated Mike -- always on top of things, always helpful, always ready to go the extra mile. With my drinking friends, I was a happy-go-lucky, party person who really knew how to "have a good time." (Apparently having a good time involved falling down, blacking out and having hangovers.) With my non-drinking friends who knew I was struggling with alcohol, I was really trying hard, I was sober whenever they saw me, and I never talked about what was really going on with my drinking. At home, in the evenings, I was a mess. With my online "friends" I was a complete fool. The point is, I felt like many different people with no connection between these personalities.... I moved between these worlds, and each world knew nothing about the others. I felt like a liar and a cheat because I was not able to talk about the rest of my life in any given situation.
What I'm finding now that I've faced up to my problem is that my life is becoming more integrated. I've dropped the behavior that kept me so splintered, and the healing is starting to take place. In some cases, this has involved opening up to folks and telling them about my drinking and what I'm doing about it. In other cases, it has meant letting go of certain activities or people. (I don't have those "online friends" anymore.... but they were never friends in the first place. My true online friends are here at MWO.) I've told my drinking friends that I've stopped drinking; I've been honest with my non-drinking friends about what's going on; I'm still the same at work except that I'm not going in with hangovers any more. I'm just not hiding huge parts of my life in any given situation any more -- there's no need to. And that feels really good.
Honesty is about a lot of things. There's cash-register honesty of course. There's whether or not you'd tell a lie. But the kind of honesty that did me the most harm during drinking was the kind I just described: not living an honest life, not letting people see the real me. Perhaps I didn't know who the real me was at the time. But that's changing now.
And of course there's another biggie in there. None of this would have happened if I hadn't finally been honest with myself about the fact that I'm an alcoholic. I knew this for years but I finally, completely accepted it and all its implications. Until then I was fooling myself by thinking that "somehow, someday I might be able to drink like a normal person." It wasn't until I let go of that fantasy that I was truly being honest with myself.
~ Mike
I went to an AA meeting last night and that was the topic. I sat for an hour and listened while people shared some incredibly insightful perspectives about honesty in relation to alcoholism and recovery. I was not called on to share but of course it got me to thinking...
I was raised in a true Southern family, and the unspoken rule was that if bad things happenned to you, you just pretend they didn't. And of course you would never EVER tell anyone, least of all anyone outside the family. It's straight out of a Tennessee Williams play. And it's still happening there today, which is one of the reasons I live 5,000 miles from the family.
Anyway, I've made considerable effort to be more honest with myself and with others than that. But looking back over the last few years of my drinking, the thing that really strikes me is just how compartmentalized my life had become due to lack of honesty. At work, I was professional, dedicated Mike -- always on top of things, always helpful, always ready to go the extra mile. With my drinking friends, I was a happy-go-lucky, party person who really knew how to "have a good time." (Apparently having a good time involved falling down, blacking out and having hangovers.) With my non-drinking friends who knew I was struggling with alcohol, I was really trying hard, I was sober whenever they saw me, and I never talked about what was really going on with my drinking. At home, in the evenings, I was a mess. With my online "friends" I was a complete fool. The point is, I felt like many different people with no connection between these personalities.... I moved between these worlds, and each world knew nothing about the others. I felt like a liar and a cheat because I was not able to talk about the rest of my life in any given situation.
What I'm finding now that I've faced up to my problem is that my life is becoming more integrated. I've dropped the behavior that kept me so splintered, and the healing is starting to take place. In some cases, this has involved opening up to folks and telling them about my drinking and what I'm doing about it. In other cases, it has meant letting go of certain activities or people. (I don't have those "online friends" anymore.... but they were never friends in the first place. My true online friends are here at MWO.) I've told my drinking friends that I've stopped drinking; I've been honest with my non-drinking friends about what's going on; I'm still the same at work except that I'm not going in with hangovers any more. I'm just not hiding huge parts of my life in any given situation any more -- there's no need to. And that feels really good.
Honesty is about a lot of things. There's cash-register honesty of course. There's whether or not you'd tell a lie. But the kind of honesty that did me the most harm during drinking was the kind I just described: not living an honest life, not letting people see the real me. Perhaps I didn't know who the real me was at the time. But that's changing now.
And of course there's another biggie in there. None of this would have happened if I hadn't finally been honest with myself about the fact that I'm an alcoholic. I knew this for years but I finally, completely accepted it and all its implications. Until then I was fooling myself by thinking that "somehow, someday I might be able to drink like a normal person." It wasn't until I let go of that fantasy that I was truly being honest with myself.
~ Mike
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