From www.aa.org/pages/en-US/daily-reflection
"Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong.
The agonies and the void that I often felt inside occur less and less frequently in my life today. I have learned to cope with solitude. It is only when I am alone and calm that I am able to communicate with God, for he cannot reach me when I am in turmoil. It is good to maintain contact with god at all times, but it is absolutely essential that, when everything seems to go wrong, I maintain that contact through prayer and meditation."
I can remember the days of drinking with friends at a party, a club, a bar, or anywhere, and no matter who i was with I felt alone. I felt alone in dating and in marriage. I felt alone when I played team sports. This was the great lie of alcoholism: I am different and apart from my fellow man.
That lie fueled both ego and depression. How idiotic is it to say "You couldn't possibly understand what I'm feeling"? That is narcissism and depression all rolled into one. An arrogant man unable to truly enjoy the moments as they happen. Unable to feel the spiritual connection between us all.
I remember my first days in AA rooms vividly. It was like I was watching TV. Even though I knew these were all real people with real stories, I just felt detached as I watched the hour play out in front of me. I could hear the pain in their voices, but feel totally unmoved. Ii could hear the joy and hope in their voices and be equally unmoved. The veil of detachment kept me from true empathy and connection. The experience felt no more real to me than reading a magazine article or watching a show on TV.
As I started to accept that I'm the same as those around me, that I'm no more or less special than anyone else, I began to feel a genuine connection to the people around me. The more I worked to uproot my ego and cast it in a fire, the more my heartfelt desire for connection flourished. I would listen to people for the first time and absorb their words. The inner dialogue was finally gone. As shitty as this sounds, it is 100% true: for the first time in my life what another person had to say was more important to me than my own rambling thoughts.
Now that I've grown to love the connections that happen when you let others share their stories and try to feel it as they felt it, I've come to see just how similar we all are. And that commonality is yet another antidote to ego. We are the same. We are brothers and sisters with the same father - the same God. We are all struggling in one way or another to overcome something internal.
I've always enjoyed my solitude outdoors, but now I'm finally getting closer to enjoying solitude at home. That is the last hurdle on my journey to being content and peaceful. Maybe I'll always struggle to feel content doing nothing at home alone. Maybe I'll always steal away to a trail or lake instead of watching TV on a Wednesday night. I'm not sure. I'll let God point me in the right direction and just keep walking forward.
"Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong.
The agonies and the void that I often felt inside occur less and less frequently in my life today. I have learned to cope with solitude. It is only when I am alone and calm that I am able to communicate with God, for he cannot reach me when I am in turmoil. It is good to maintain contact with god at all times, but it is absolutely essential that, when everything seems to go wrong, I maintain that contact through prayer and meditation."
I can remember the days of drinking with friends at a party, a club, a bar, or anywhere, and no matter who i was with I felt alone. I felt alone in dating and in marriage. I felt alone when I played team sports. This was the great lie of alcoholism: I am different and apart from my fellow man.
That lie fueled both ego and depression. How idiotic is it to say "You couldn't possibly understand what I'm feeling"? That is narcissism and depression all rolled into one. An arrogant man unable to truly enjoy the moments as they happen. Unable to feel the spiritual connection between us all.
I remember my first days in AA rooms vividly. It was like I was watching TV. Even though I knew these were all real people with real stories, I just felt detached as I watched the hour play out in front of me. I could hear the pain in their voices, but feel totally unmoved. Ii could hear the joy and hope in their voices and be equally unmoved. The veil of detachment kept me from true empathy and connection. The experience felt no more real to me than reading a magazine article or watching a show on TV.
As I started to accept that I'm the same as those around me, that I'm no more or less special than anyone else, I began to feel a genuine connection to the people around me. The more I worked to uproot my ego and cast it in a fire, the more my heartfelt desire for connection flourished. I would listen to people for the first time and absorb their words. The inner dialogue was finally gone. As shitty as this sounds, it is 100% true: for the first time in my life what another person had to say was more important to me than my own rambling thoughts.
Now that I've grown to love the connections that happen when you let others share their stories and try to feel it as they felt it, I've come to see just how similar we all are. And that commonality is yet another antidote to ego. We are the same. We are brothers and sisters with the same father - the same God. We are all struggling in one way or another to overcome something internal.
I've always enjoyed my solitude outdoors, but now I'm finally getting closer to enjoying solitude at home. That is the last hurdle on my journey to being content and peaceful. Maybe I'll always struggle to feel content doing nothing at home alone. Maybe I'll always steal away to a trail or lake instead of watching TV on a Wednesday night. I'm not sure. I'll let God point me in the right direction and just keep walking forward.
I really like what you shared about being in a room filled with people and still feeling alone. I too feLt that same sense of loneliness. When I entered the rooms of AA I was told, "you never have to be alone again." If you recall, I made the same statement to you when you asked me to be your sponsor. I personally found a lot of solace in that statement; nevermind that it was made by people whom I didn't even know!
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing for me, my pride had to be so completely leveled that I would accept help from recoverEd alcoholics. I did not seek help previously because I viewed my self as superior to others, though I would not say so out loud. When my first sponsor told me he had no education beyond a high school diploma I thought, "what the heck is this guy going to teach me that I don't already know myself." How very wrong I was! And I'm grateful that I had the humility beaten into me to ask him to be my sponsor.
Now, I say that to say that in sobriety it can be easy for me to return to a state of loneliness. Recall the big book refers to the fellowship as "something we surely will not want to miss out on." In my sobriety it is easy for my ego to creep in and say, "you've been sober 3.5 years, don't let the newcomers know you're having a hard day in sobriety." Or, "I know what I'm doing right now is probably not right, but I don't really need to tell my sponsor. He will just tell me to pray anyways." Now, here we can observe the subliminal workings of my alcoholic ego run riot. In my desire to exude this aura of AA confidence, I deNY others the chance to work with me and to share in my difficulties. When I do this, I am in essence isolatING once again as I did when I was drinking. "Let me drink by myself so nobody knows how much I'm really drinking" is what I thought while drinking, and I isolated. Compare that to my thoughts in sobriety, "let me not tell anyone how I am Really doing, so nobody really knows how miserable I am." See how even in sobriety I can allow that feeling of loneliness to creep in
I heard a speaker say, "do you think that a person with 10 years sober who goes out and relapses knew 1 week before that he or she was going to drink? NO because their ego told them they were maintaining." Even if we think we are doing well we must keep our guard up and work the program. That is how we keep from relapsing and from feeling lonely.