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I heard someone once call her character defects “Gremlins,” and she said that the Gremlins were already there before she started drinking, then they multiplied and got bigger and scarier once they got wet.
In case you’re not familiar, that was basically the plot of the famous movie franchise, “Gremlins.” If Gizmo got wet, he’d multiply into other Gremlins, which were all more mischievous than him.
I don’t know if the analogy completely works. But in my head, it makes total sense. I have heard people say before that they were cruising along in life and then drinking became a problem. I guess that’s possible. But it’s not my experience. Drinking and drugging were a reaction to some bad behaviors and attitudes—let’s call them Gremlins for the sake of this exercise—that existed before I ever picked up a vodka bottle. Alcohol and drugs often made those issues worse, and that included multiplying my Gremlins into either bigger or new Gremlins.
I’ll give you one small example. I think I always had the urge to exaggerate or fib from time to time, even as a little kid. I couldn’t just catch a fish or win a wrestling match; it had to be dramatic and incredible. I’d win a wrestling match 5-0 and then tell somebody it was 10-0. I needed you to be impressed by the largest possible amount.
But that small Gremlin morphed into flat-out lying in my drinking and drugging days. I had to lie to keep the whole charade going, and the lying eventually turned into scams. I’d return items to stores for money, lie about credit card charges, inappropriate use of my corporate credit card, just about anything.
What’s especially tricky once you get sober is that for me, at first, I was still the same guy, just without the drugs and alcohol. So all those behavior Gremlins were still a part of me, so I still hadn’t grown enough as a person to, say, feel bad about using my corporate credit card for personal use sometimes.
So that is a long and winding way to come back to the Gremlin example. Which is to say that part one of sobriety was to stop drinking, which meant halting the addition of new Gremlins in my life. But part two was eliminating the Gremlins that already existed. If you remember the movies, the Gremlins were obviously eventually eliminated. But in sobriety, it takes a little longer than a couple of movie run times, and sometimes the Gremlins don’t disappear, they just get a little smaller.
But I’d say overall I am pretty happy about my Gremlin supply right now!
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:
As the speaker droned on past the thirty-minute mark and showed no sign of winding up, the room steadily began to empty.
With only one listener left, the bore finally snapped out of it and told the loner, "I'm very grateful that there's at least one soul open and willing enough to listen to my message."
"Listen?!" snapped the other. "I'm the next speaker."
(Credit: Grapevine, by W.A. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, February 2008)
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The Gremlins still can't be watered