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I recently wrote on this very newsletter that I don’t pay much attention to The Doctor’s Opinion any more because I don’t really need to. By that, I meant that the opinions expressed in that crucial piece of 12-step recovery literature made complete sense to me. So I had tremendous respect for what was written there and also its impact on the world. But I accept it without any sort of debate or further thought. It’s a little like somebody trying to tell me that it is important to breath and drink water every day—I know. No arguments here.
Soooooooo… I obviously deserved a kick to the groin to remind me again to never forget The Doctor’s Opinion. Never forget that alcohol is an allergy that I am highly allergic to. Never forget that I am an alcoholic and will never have a different reaction to alcohol other than that I can’t stop drinking and it makes my life unmanageable.
I got that kick to the crotch this weekend. My wife and oldest daughter went away, and I woke up Saturday with significant foot pain. As avid readers of this newsletter know, I had the ends of both feet amputated 20 years ago and deal with chronic pain. So waking up with foot pain is pretty normal for me.
But this one was a little more persistent, and chronic pain can really start to grind you to a pulp. My pain is often nonstop, for hours on end and sometimes days and weeks straight. I never forget that my feet hurt during those stretches, so every walk, every meal, every waking moment includes pain rearing its ugly head.
So my foot was bothering me as I made dinner and then cleaned up the kitchen. I opened up one of the cabinets to put some dishes away and boom, there sat a bottle of painkillers. My daughter had had her wisdom teeth out a few weeks ago, and apparently she was given some painkillers. My wife hadn’t exactly been Penn & Teller in making them disappear.
I’m to the point in sobriety where I can walk past somebody smoking weed, or hang out a bar, or go to a pharmacy, without using drugs or alcohol. I don’t hang out at any of those places because, as the old sober saying goes, if you hang out a barber shop for long enough, you will end up with a haircut.
So I didn’t want to take the painkillers. But boy, I kept remembering they were in there. I never opened the cabinet door again, and told my wife to take care of them the next day when she got home. But they popped into my head probably 10 times in those 24 hours, and I was disturbed by that.
But then I remembered what a good friend of mine always says: “Alcoholics think and drink alcoholically. If you have fantasies of drinking again, congratulations, it’s confirmed, you’re definitely an alcoholic.”
So I accepted my thoughts and stopped being disappointed by them—it’s just part of my factory settings. I asked my wife to stash the pills somewhere or throw them away, and I left it at that. I found that helped my brain a little bit, to just know they’re not available to me. And I couldn’t help but smile a bit at me being too dismissive of The Doctor’s Opinion—turns out, I still need the ol’ doc!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
One night, a man goes to a party and has too much to drink. His friends plead with him to let them take him home. But he refuses, explaining that he lives only a mile away.
Five blocks from the party, the police pull him over and ask him to get out of the car to walk the line. Just as he’s about to give it a try, the police receive a call on their radio about a robbery taking place down the street. “Stay put,” one of the officers tells him. “We’ll be right back,” and off they run up the street toward the robbery.
Well, the guy waits and waits, but since the police don’t show up, he decides to drive home. When he gets there, he tells his wife he’s going to bed. “Tell anyone who might come looking for me,” he instructs her,” that I’ve been in bed with the flu all day.”
A few hours later, the police knock on the door and ask to see Mr. X. “I’m sorry,” says the wife. “He went to bed with the flu and has been there all day.” Without blinking, the police produce the guy’s driver’s license and ask to see his car. So she shows them the way to the garage, opens the door and… there’s the police car, lights still flashing.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2000, Manning P. from Richmond, Virginia)
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