my fifth step

[honeydumplin]

My name is Kevin, and I'm an alcoholic.
This may not be everything, but it'll be most of it.
Some of it isn't pretty, then again whose is?

"We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past.
Once we have taken this step, witholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye.
We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. we begin to feel the nearness of our Creator.
We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience.
The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the Broad Highway,
walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe."
p. 75 Alcoholics Anonymous

Step four for me, was like a series of charts and graphs, exposing behavioral patterns,
and offering some balance to an otherwise unbalanced awareness.
It makes me conscious of my liabilities, and paradoxically, a few assets.
If four is a map for my transgressions, then five is the eye-opener;
the liberating confessional. That rocket that propels one into the fourth dimension.
After several pages of columns and descriptions, five provides a pathway through
the restrictions built up over the years and carried out by all of those resentments,
fears, and sexual suppressions, which were revealed in four.

Acceptance is another plausible reason to do a fifth step. For once in my life,
it actually felt like I was a part of the human race. It is truly a leap of faith.
After doing a fifth step, it makes all the more sense, that some of the most
sickest alcoholics in the world can really be happy, joyous, and free.

Before I was old enough to walk, there were two television commercials
that would send me pushing, walker included, down the hallway of a single-
wide trailer, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the TV. One was for double-
mint chewing gum, and the other one was the one for Valleydale. It was the
one that had the dancing pigs.

Anyway, that walker would get hung up on something in the hallway, and
my face would immediately turn beet red, because I wasn't able to get my
way and see those two commercials. But when my path was unobstructed,
I would sit in front of the screen with this huge grin and watch in bliss.

Now I'm talking about a child, but this pattern of behavior continued on and on
into my drinking and drugging. I've come to the conclusion that I was just
as high, if not higher, before I took the first drink or the first hit of crack, than
I ever was after the last drink or the last hit. By then, it was just so,
I dunno, five minutes ago.

Five minutes of anxiety. Five minutes of a pink cloud. Still five more minutes
of being completely terrorfied, then wanting to do it again. The anticipation.
The euphoria. The fear and pure hell that followed the next hours, and
ran on into the next morning. The absolution of total resolve, to withdraw
from certain situations, swearing up and down to never, ever do them again,
only to find myself actually doing the same thing that very next night.

Wow, what a vicious cycle.

Changes in the weather, in locations where I lived, and even
different acquaintances while working different jobs, didn't prove to be
the magic I'd made them out to be. Blame had been placed on everything
from my upbringing to the situations that I felt were out to get me, to
the economic conditions that were here at the time.

Against the advice of others who knew far more about the process,
I filed papers for a personal bankruptcy owing my creditors less than
twenty thousand dollars. I was looking for the easy way out, and the
quick fix. Slowly digging my way out and actually paying the banks
and other creditors was out of the question. So I scraped up enough
money to file and proceeded to ruin my credit for the next ten years.

It was like that. A pattern of decision made, second thoughts,
usually attached to a person that I felt hadn't done his or her
part to provide the vital information that was needed to supposedly
help me make those decisions, as I played the victim, followed
up a refusal to take necessary responsibility for the predicaments
in which I so often landed.

The ambivalance was also loaded with excuses and alibis that would start out
firm, but gradually develop into layer upon layer of nothing more than this
litany of ifs, ands, and buts that would turn into such a huge pile of b.s.,
it didn't even make sense to me anymore. It had become so easily repeated
though, it was like pressing the play button and hearing myself say the same
thing over and over.

"If so-and-so had just been smart enough to tell me about the this-and-that
before I did such-and-such, maybe, just maybe the thingamajig wouldn't have
got completely screwed up in the whatcha-ma-call-it."

"And the crazy, good for nothing bank. Had they credited my account like they
were supposed to before that stupid two o'clock cut off, then my atm card would
have worked, and I wouldn't have bounced those two two dollar checks for those
last two beers I drank at two am."

"But it was raining. The road was slick. I didn't damage her car that much.
But her witness got my plate number—she was a drunk looking through the
window of a bar. But I had to leave the scene. I had no choice but hide the car.
My wife started the fight.”

What I usually heard were words like those of my defense, “don't look at me son,
look at the judge."