Note: Welcome to my new blog. I don't know how long it will last. I'm aiming to publish once a week, and everything I have scheduled for the next few weeks is about recovery, because that's my priority right now. But blogs can cover a lot of ground, IIRC. It's been awhile. There's a further note about the blog below.
It seems fitting, also, to connect coffee and recovery.
Step One of the twelve steps, as adapted for all programs: “Admitted we were powerless, that our lives had become unmanageable.” [Alcoholics Anonymous specifies "powerless over alcohol."]
I didn’t have a hard time admitting I was powerless. Long before I got sober, I knew my life was out of control. I binged and promised to reform and binged again. My relationships were haphazard; I would alternatively ghost people or become obsessive and co-dependent. Deadlines flew by, and money disappeared.
My big problem was thinking there was some magic, something I could do to exert power, to get to the point where I could manage the chaos of existence. I knew my drinking was out of control but maybe I could control all the other things.
Like any good American, I believed that an organized closet would fix me. I would visit the Arlington, Virginia Container Store and stand still in the valleys between towering displays of shelving, kitchen accessories, and laundry baskets. My cart empty; my mind filled with indecision, shame, and envy. I imagined other shoppers went home to pantries resembling the store windows. I tossed hundreds of dollars of plastic boxes, food decanters, and planner accessories into my cart and fled to the nearest chain restaurant for a glass of wine. Sometimes I opened the boxes when I got home, sometimes they waited for the next hypomanic episode when I would stay up all night, rolling socks and throwing out wire hangers until the sun came up.
I bought to-do list apps and listened to the audiobook of “Getting Things Done” several times. I had filing folders and dozens of paper calendars and journals started and abandoned and started again. I looked through some of these recently and saw a note from 2002 with a few resolutions: “Write more. Drink less.” Drinking was getting in my way, sure, but mainly, I thought I needed to work harder. Get organized. Be disciplined.
But I could not to-do my way out of my sense of helplessness. I could not manage my drinking or anything else.
My second suicide attempt got me in the doors of a treatment center. We talked about the Twelve Steps a lot. In that community, Step One read differently to me.
I had been thinking of it as a personal resignation. I had been thinking of it as an admission of my defeat. I thought it was about Ana’s inability to deal with the world. I had been convinced of my inadequacy in the face of real life since I was a child.
Something about sitting around with dozens of other people who also needed help led me to a different notion: What if Step One wasn’t about me but rather an observation on human nature? I considered the possibility that the message of Step One wasn’t, “You’re a fuck-up and can’t manage what everyone else can manage,” but rather, “No one can manage anything.”
Put another way: What if everyone – or, you know, a lot of people – in the Container Store felt as scared and helpless as I did?
My way of dealing with that fear and panic over managing my life was to sneak beers out of the fridge early in the morning and take pills at night; other people might just buy more sock drawer dividers or calendars. (Sometimes I did all these things.)
I wanted my life to be organized and but nothing stays organized forever. That lack of perfection felt like failure but it’s a gift. It meant I was alive. If I wanted to stay sober I’d just have to be okay with laundry going unfolded occasionally. Then folding it. And then sometimes things pile on a chair. Then I will put them away.
A closet that stays perfect belongs to a dead person.
Step One promises a way to understand the world beyond the binary of “I can control this” and “I can’t control this,” beyond “I’m a mess” and “I’m a success.” Step One suggests to me that those categories are an illusion. There is no managing all things; there is just doing the thing in front of me.
Further note:
If this was mailed to you, it's because you offered me support in the past. If you choose to support me on an ongoing basis, you will get access to member-only posts and there are some higher tiers with other benefits. (Including submitting questions about sobriety or, you know, whatever!)
If you came here via a link, you can give a one-time donation and receive these posts via email as well.
I am refusing to start a newsletter for now. Substack sucks. The other options require a level of organization and administration I can't commit to at the moment. But I know how to blog! So I'm blogging, here. At some point, enough monthly supporters might make it worth the energy and time to transition to Ghost or Buttondown or some other option I don't know about yet.
But, man, I hate newsletters. Perhaps I will write a post about the newsletter bubble and how terrible it is for the journalism industry. However, my recovery program advises against cultivating resentment and anger. It also counsels "restrain of pen and tongue," which could substantially limit me as a blogger. We shall see.