Around three months ago I was approached by a friend, he wanted to have dinner. I asked if Indian was okay and he said it was. We met at my favorite Indian restaurant on a Wednesday night and had delicious food. I just thought he wanted to have dinner.
He then started to tell me about the mess he had gotten into – he was using heavy drugs, couldn’t stop and was doing some rather dangerous ones and dealing with some sketchy characters.
I’m pretty open about being clean and sober, talk about it, post about it and celebrate it. So he knew I was someone who might be able to help. I was mostly a drunk when I was using – lots of alcohol and a few drugs when they were available.
He talked about his drugs of choice and what it was like for him. He was concerned with how he was presenting himself and if others had noticed him acting strangely. I was honest with him – yes some people had questioned his behavior and demeanor. He didn’t like that he was obviously showing signs of the drug use. Then he pulled up his sleeves to show me track marks and told me how bad it really was getting.
I have a friend or two in N.A. and I got him hooked up with them and a good meeting and he promised to go. He did reach out to the members and attended a meeting, where he rambled on and on for a few minutes but wasn’t very coherent, I’m told. He wouldn’t go back to the meeting, see he had a history of attending N.A. before and had had this demon to fight in the past, but it had reemerged and was winning this time.
My friend kept on telling me he “knew what to do” just needed help doing it, but he wouldn’t use the only tools I knew to use – meetings, program and fellowship. He continued his downward spiral and again asked me for help.
I talked to him about the Employee Assistants Program (EAP) at work and how we could get some help. That they may be able to find him a facility to detox and get better with help. He was on board and we worked with the bosses, EAP and got him lined up with a treatment center. He was hesitantly on board with treatment, he’d done it before though and had some old ideas that were keeping him from being fully committed I think.
He did a couple weeks in the treatment center and left early. He couldn’t be around those types of people and couldn’t relate to their problems, he was different. One of the things they talk about in A.A. is how thinking your case is different is a way to get yourself killed.
My friend took some common steps that we see in addiction – he did a geographic, thinking if he moved away from the problem it would help. He thought keeping busy with work would help. But he had the dark web and access to anything with the click of a few buttons.
He called me Friday night for some help with a work problem. I paused my game and tried to help him. He told me he was “in Costa Rica for a tattoo”. That’s the last I heard from him.
Today we were told at work that he had died. There were no details released yet but I have a few theories. There were many tears shed.
I left A.A. a few years ago. I haven’t regretted that until today when I was ruing over the steps I had taken to help my friend and if I had done enough. Even wondering if I was just so out of touch with recovery now that I couldn’t reach my friend with a message he would hear.
My friends assure me there wasn’t anything more I could do, that I did the right things and led the way for a solution, a way out.
I am sad and mad about my friend. He was so young and so crazy full of life. I never knew what bullshit would come out of his mouth but I would usually laugh. We had opposing political views but could converse about issues without losing our shit. He had this deep desire to love other people. He loved his toys and his friends.
I’m sorry that he found himself on a dark journey, I know it was hard for him to get out of.
There is hope for the hopeless. Reach out to me, reach out to family or friends or the EAP. You can reach out to A.A. or N.A. or a million other A’s too.
Today I celebrate 30 years of continuous sobriety!
It’s just another day; I plan to go to work, have dinner at my favorite Indian restaurant and be in bed by 10. It is a drastic change from when I was using daily.
Life was different then. I usually woke up a little drunk from the night before and I’d head off to work (if it was a good day). I smoked at least a pack a day back then too, so I was smelly. I wasn’t big on brushing my teeth so my breath was likely lethal. Hygiene was not my friend.
All through the day my head would replay events and resentments and I would focus and be angered by something that occurred that had no basis on reality most of the time. I would imagine futures and pasts of horrible consequence. I would hang with my friends and talk about the upcoming nights events that always included alcohol and if I was extremely lucky – some LSD. I had my share of nicknames, but in the end most people knew me as Mr. Trip or simply Trip.
It always started with the first drink and usually ended up with me passed out somewhere. My friends would try to rouse me if I passed out in bars, but if I didn’t wake they’d just leave me there on the floor. I didn’t have a license so I’d walk home or to a friends.
Employment came and went I did land a job and keep it a year once, but more often then not absenteeism or being late or drunk resulted in me getting booted.
I wasn’t a violent drunk; just stupid, sappy and messy. Looking back I was probably the one they laughed at, not with. Never one to fight, mess with girls or drive (I didn’t receive a license until I got sober).
I owned nothing except a few boxes of comic books and was renting to own a dryer – long story. I lived with friends where I could with no responsibilities and only a desire to get drunk.
Final Bender
As I recall my last day/night drinking was in Ettrick WI. I had sung a song or two at a wedding for friends and was dolled out in a white tuxedo. It was the night after the wedding at the reception and I was broke, unfortunately there wasn’t free beer, so I stole what I could and begged and borrowed enough to get sloshed.
I had been suicidal and planning on ending it all soon. I was miserable and tired of everything. I didn’t have any hope at all. I shared my suicide plan with a friend who had shared his suicide plan with me a few days previously – however he wasn’t in that state any longer. Soon I was on the phone to the cops asking for help. Friends surrounded me and got me to go with the cops as I had changed my mind after I called for help.
The local guys took me in to the psychiatric ward in LaCrosse WI. I was the best dressed guy there. It was at the hospital and they had left me alone for a few minutes and I got to thinking – what the hell was I doing, I didn’t want to be here, so I started putting on my shoes and then a police officer came in and said “you’re not going anywhere”.
I spent 4 days and nights in there the room was padded but I didn’t get a straight jacket. They fed me meds and told me they were just vitamins, which I believed for some reason. I didn’t want anything that would get me better, I still just wanted to be done with everything.
On day 4 I had my day in court, where I was ordered to not more than 111 days in a drug and alcohol facility. That didn’t scare me, I’d been in one of those before. A country cop transported me from the hospital/psych ward in LaCrosse all the way to Eau Claire WI and a treatment center named Fahrman Center.
One of the counselors, Shelly, did my intake and showed me to my room. I was still hopeless and didn’t have any cares in the world. I’d get out of there soon and be on my way to find a drink.
I did the 21 days inpatient treatment there. Group sessions, chores, homework and some excursions. I was just playing the game, answering questions like I did in the last treatment center. My counselor was Brien and I liked him. He and I had an instant rapport but I still didn’t want to get better. If I thought of a way out I had planned to kill myself as soon as I was free.
HOPE
On Saturday’s they would invite members of the local recovery communities to come and share with us. It was similar to an AA meeting and the speakers would drone on and on about themselves and we were supposed to get something from that. Well one Saturday a kid named Terry came and told his story and for the first time I could relate to someone and felt a kinship.
That night I prayed to the “god” of my understanding “If you can make me as happy as that kid seems, I’ll do anything”.
I asked Terry to be my sponsor and he gave me direction almost immediately – 1 shake every persons hand and introduce myself, even if I knew them, before and after a meeting. 2 Northside Group (an AA meeting) would now be my home group. I may have rolled my eyes at both suggestions.
So I set about doing what I was told to do I attended the Northside Group and the Pacific Group and would shake everyone’s hand before and after the meeting no matter what.
The Pacific Group of Eau Claire WI is an offshoot of a meeting from, where else, California. The founder of the Eau Claire group was sponsored by the founder of the LA group. Very different type of meeting than I was used to and I planned to stick around long enough to tell them they were doing it wrong. Instead of moaning and bitch sessions you would get uplifting stories from speakers and participants that left you wanting more… lots of oohs and ahhs and hand clapping at almost everything.. and they had cake.
There were two pretty girls who also attended both groups, one named Krista (though I only knew her as “cake lady” for a little while) and one named Suzanne. We became friends and often they would give me rides to meetings and other things.
My sponsor Terry got drunk. I wasn’t privy to the details, I just was destroyed. I asked another member of the Northside Group to be my sponsor – Joe. Joe had double digit sobriety, a job and was married… we had nothing in common lol. Joe’s wife Carol also in the program, sponsored both Krista and Suzanne.
Joe took me through the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and we worked the steps. I did my homework and I wrote my list. I was still in the halfway house portion of the treatment center and they were very concerned with me doing my 4th Step with my sponsor instead of some clergy member. The treatment center’s version of the 4th step left a lot to be desired and didn’t help me. Whereas sharing my list with Joe and talking about my resentments, fears and sex conduct really opened my eyes and showed me what kind of a human being I was – not a very good one.
Our sponsors invited us over to go through the book as a group, there were about 6 of us sponsees when we started but by the end there were about 4. We went through page by page, word by word examining it and coming to terms with what Bill W meant in 1935 compared to what we mean now.
I learned valuable lessons in Alcoholics Anonymous – how to suit up and show up, how to introduce myself, how to volunteer – even if I didn’t want to – just raise your hand. The one thing AA didn’t sell me on was the idea of “God” but I followed the sayings and words and prayed to a god I didn’t believe in. But it stuck in my craw.
Meetings were a regular part of my world. I would go to 2 – 3 meetings a week. Roundups (conferences) and workshops. AA was my life.
I was though, the angry young man, and everyone knew it. I had resentments that I couldn’t work past that were current and damaging. One night at a meeting I was particularly mad and Krista turned to me and said “no one said you have to stay here” and it resonated with me. So I walked away from my home groups and went solo.
Still mad, but reading the book every day. Talking to a fellow AA member every day and still hanging with Krista and Suzanne, but I wasn’t happy. I would go back to meetings here and there but not shake hands… I was a little pissy.
At year 4 or so of sobriety I moved to Washington DC and soon came to miss my structured, recovery based meetings. Themeetings I found in DC were whine sessions more than anything else (see this story My Experience with DC AA) . I wasn’t a fan. Took me about 10 years to find like minded people there and we made our own groups.
After 15 or so years in DC when my job came to an end, I moved to Phoenix. I found recovery based meetings there and a new sponsor Flo. Flo and I went back through the book and I was regular at my home group. (See this story: My Sponsor Won’t Shake My Hand)
Walking Away
Not believing the core part of Alcoholics Anonymous – the need for a power greater than you – was a real dilemma. It seemed all my fellow members believed where I couldn’t and I found I couldn’t talk from my chair or the podium and claim that I believed in something any longer.
At 22 years of sobriety I made a decision to walk away from AA (see this story: Walking Away from AA). I told my sponsor and he had said he could feel me slipping away so it wasn’t a surprise, he still loves me and we talk once in a while.
What I found after I left that I was no longer stressed about getting to the meeting on time. No longer concerned if the room was set up just right. No stress on shaking everyone’s hand – which neither DC nor Phoenix was into. No dissecting other peoples shares for what was important and what was just fluff. Not that you’re supposed to criticize every inch of a meeting or compare members to others, but I would. I was free when I left, free.
Eight Years Later
So what’s happened in eight years?
Nothing really has happened, life is good, I’m happy overall and living life to the best. I don’t have cravings for alcohol – I do have dreams where I’m a closet smoker though, which is so odd. I don’t hold resentments, don’t say daily prayers to things I don’t believe in and don’t attend meetings.
I have a great job that I love to go to, where I get to help people every day. I live with my best friend, Suzanne, who still does go to meetings and enjoys them. Life goes on for me and I think I’m less angry, less worried and have overall less anxiety.
AA is a great program that taught me a lotabout life and living (See this post: Worker Among Workers). I wouldn’t be the man I am today without their help in the beginning and the many men and women who came before me. I practice several parts of the program daily and it matters to me.
Today, I’m almost a militant atheist. I try to bring truth to the world and those around me and probably get blocked on Facebook as a result, but I think it’s important. My life is deity free, and I’m willing to risk an eternity in hell to prove it.
Several of the key philosophies of AA that I still follow – help other people, have no opinion on outside issues, anger and resentment are the mind killers, be self-supporting, watch out for defects of character and more. There are good parts in the 12 step recovery programs.
Today, I’m 30 years sober. Something I never thought would be possible. I remember when I was new thinking people that said they had 15 or 17 years of sobriety had to be lying, why would someone choose to live that life? How could they go so long without a drink, it baffled me.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous promises that as far as alcohol goes sobriety will make you immune to the temptation, that you’ll recoil as if to a flame. That’s come true for me – I don’t recoil, but I don’t mind if it’s around me, except the smell of wine… can’t handle that for some reason, and I wasn’t a wine drinker.
Sobriety isn’t for everyone and not everyone needs it, but if you have a problem with alcohol or drugs or both, the 12 step programs can give you a solid foundation to build on that will lead to permanent sobriety. If you want/need help – go to www.aa.org or www.na.org and take a look. It can be a scary place to start and very uncomfortable – especially with those NA folks, they hug. True story: the reason I chose AA over NA was because the NA folks hugged me, ewww. They do rather insist upon the “power greater than you” thing and no matter what they say, it’s “God” they’re referring to.
There are secular alternatives to the 12 Step Programs – S.M.A.R.T. Recovery is one and there are others, use Google, it’s your friend. I looked into SMART but it’s not for me, I’m not a meetings guy I think.
Sobriety changed me from a drunken loser with no prospects into an old man with a life beyond what I ever imagined. In the beginning it seemed very hard, but the more days you string together and practice the principles, the easier it gets. I don’t think of a drink today or drinking, don’t play resentments in my head all day, plan my days around getting stoned or drunk – I just live life. That’s all I can ask for.
It’s been a little over five months since I published my story “Walking Away from AA” where I talked about my decision to leave Alcoholics Anonymous after almost 22 years. I stated then that I didn’t have a desire to drink, but I had a desire to be more honest and truthful with all aspects of my life.
Being sober – living a life without drugs or alcohol – is for me. It’s a cheaper life, more enjoyable and less messy… things I need and want. Belief in a “higher power” or “faking it until I make it” aren’t for me, I can’t live that lie anymore. I gave it a fair shot – lying for AA, lol.
I don’t like people. (I frequently say “hate” which might be a strong word)
I’ve said that a million times before and it’s still true. One of my bosses says that too – I tell him he doesn’t because he’s so nice to everyone, but he insists that he does. Probably why I like him so much. I guess you could say I’m something of an introvert – I would rather spend time alone than in a group setting. My “fun” time is at home with a good book, writing or watching some TV. I find it very difficult to have “fun” in a group of people… can’t do it. (more…)
A hit of acid can change the world. Everything is brighter, crisper and more defined – you notice variances of color that your eyes would just pass over before. The whole world is a new place that you want to explore and experience. Anything that is normally dull and boring is suddenly the most relevant thing in existence – and the previously wonderful are indescribable. A trip made everything better than alright and nothing could ever stop how that felt (time apparently does 😉 ). That doesn’t include the non-stop smiling or the ability to not feel alcohol’s effects until the trip has ended. I really enjoyed LSD when I could get it and wasn’t committed to a life of sobriety (one day at a time).
On the flip side, the dark side, in sobriety and real life – depression is the opposite. (more…)
During high school, well probably even as far back as elementary school – I had no desire to learn anything they wanted to teach me. It was boring. Time would have been better spent reading a comic book, watching tv or day dreaming about anything. I wasn’t engaged and didn’t see the purpose of learning. I loved reading stories though, loved my comics and the books I managed to get my hands on and thought deep down that someday I would be a writer.
When I graduated high school with the bare minimum requirements everyone said “You have to go to college”. As a poor foster child there were many grants and available loans for me to choose from. I managed to get into the local college and signed up for astronomy, philosophy and some kind of statistics class as I think it was a mandatory class and I wanted to get it out-of-the-way. I didn’t want to be there at all and barely went to class on sober days, rarely on days when booze was available. Needless to say, I didn’t do well in 1989 in college and soon I was academic probation – so I left, not worth my time.
Factory jobs for a few years and writing stories on an old Apple computer in my free time when I was stoned or drunk (made for some interesting plot holes). This was, I thought, what life was all about – a factory job, beer and not a care in the world. I was aiming pretty low at the time, but I would have been content at some level to just do that for the rest of my life – but alcoholism got in the way. (more…)
“There is, however, a vast amount of fun about it all. I suppose some would be shocked at our seeming worldliness and levity. But just underneath there is deadly earnestness. Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish.” Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill’s Story, Page 16
“So we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness. Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past. But why shouldn’t we laugh? We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.” Alcoholics Anonymous, The Family Afterward, page 132
People in Alcoholics Anonymous and many of the other 12 step programs, millions if not billions of people, have escaped certain death. We reached a point in our lives the way we were living it where there was no hope – many lost friends, family, spouses and careers as a result of addiction.
There was a vision in my head of what an AA meeting must look like –
old men, white t-shirts and overalls on – the smell of cigarettes and bad coffee waft through the room and man after man shares about his tragedy and how horrible life is…
That was the vision, and in truth I’ve been to a few meetings like that, you can switch out old men for young men or black women or what have you – there are meetings that resemble my old vision all over the country if not the world. Fortunately for me, and people like you, there are many more meetings that aren’t like that at all.
I had been in the background at meetings my mother attended when i was a child – they seemed pretty somber to me and I didn’t see many people happy, smiling or laughing – maybe the rose-colored glasses were covered in dirt, which is likely. So I entered my first meetings as an alcoholic myself expecting much the same. Instead I found a Pacific Group.
The Eau Claire Pacific Group in Eau Claire WI was a different kind of meeting for me. There was applause, laughter, oohing and aahing. I saw genuine smiles and people who talked about getting better. That first night I decided to stick around, because obviously these people didn’t know what AA was all about (I was a little over 1 month sober and thought I had it all figured out already).
I don’t stick around at meetings that aren’t fun with people talking about the joy of living now that we’ve escaped certain doom. I “don’t want what they have” as we say… I want more, I expect more. The Big Book even promises more – there are promises all over the book that I seek during my journey. One of my favorites that has come true again and again in my life is:
“At once we begin to outgrow fear.” Alcoholics Anonymous, How It Works, page 68
and most other people like the promises after Step 9 (I think they are over read personally)
“…We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us…” Alcoholics Anonymous, Into Action, Pages 83 and 84
So we want to shout it from the rooftops, we have found a solution – we found a way to resurrect the dead… a speaker I like says it “I’m looking at a room full of dead people sitting upright” or something like that. We were the dregs of society that no one really wanted around anymore, but here we are – recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body… “miracles” they say.
We are loud though… I guess. My home group meets at a church and we are probably 50 strong each week. We have fellowship before and after the meeting and we catch up with friends we might not have seen for a week or more. We laugh, we hug and give one another a hard time. During the meeting when we celebrate birthdays (1 or more years of continuous sobriety) we sing loudly and horribly off-key – on purpose. This is a big deal – someone who at one point couldn’t go a single day without a drink of alcohol has found a solution (most people call that solution God) and is now a contributing member of society… that’s a BFD. We have a “Rule 62” which tells us not to take ourselves too seriously – so we try to enjoy life.
But the church says we’re being too loud during the music lessons. Now as a functioning, contributing member of society – whom, according to the big book, ceased fighting anything or anyone… I’m supposed to just leave this be. But it’s hard… I would think a church would be happy that a group of men have found the spirit, the joy of living that the church talks about (or at least I figure that’s what they talk about) and would be happy to hear us laugh love and live in their basement each Wednesday night… it should be the great news that is spoken of on Sundays “Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday nights and Saturday mornings the hopeless have found hope – here in our house of worship” I’d sell the shit out of that and encourage members of my congregation to attend and find the power greater than themselves that will lead them back to the church…
But I’m not the guy in charge there or anywhere, no matter how many times I think I am – The Director job has been taken by someone else and my job is just to help others. I have to stop and think about what would happen to the alcoholics that needed a meeting if we were asked to leave? What if all the groups were asked to leave the church as a result of my meeting being loud (and happy, joyous and free).
Each AA group is autonomous except in matters affecting other groups of AA as a whole. (Tradition 4) So there you have it… I have to be responsible again and try to get my fellow members to be a little more quiet before and after the meeting. Because we have a home here and we still have many other alcoholics to show the way out – it’s the only thing we have to do to stay sober – help another alcoholic, and to do that we have to have a place to share our message. This will be hard, but we’ll find a way to make it work.
(I thought this was just going to be a rant about asking us to be quiet, but once I started writing I saw my own defects and those of my group and that we needed to change… it’s interesting to see different results come out then I expect)
When I was fairly new in recovery I was very involved in two of the groups where I regularly attended meetings. One of those meetings was very Step and Tradition focused and the other was very… entertainment doesn’t seem like the right word.. but they were about the message and the fun in recovery – as it was a speaker meeting you never knew what kind of message you might hear coming from the individual, almost always good though. Both groups encouraged participation at all levels of the group – commitments (making coffee, setting up chairs, greeting), service positions (GSR, Secretary, Delegate, Treasurer), fellowship… well one group was only really into the fellowship when we met every week… lol. Both of those groups encouraged people to be involved in the meetings they went to – the idea is that if you participate you’ll have more vested into your own recovery. Participating means I might get to know other people in my group who are participating and make them a part of my life. It’s a nice little system, I’m sure other organizations do the same things.
They shared with me the idea and importance of the spirit of rotation, encouraged me to read up on the history to see how these things came into being and why they’re so important. They led the way into service – inviting me to see how it all works behind the scenes. I was exposed to the Traditions and Concepts very early on by people who utilized them in the service structure and in everyday life. I consider myself lucky – most people consider me a geek in these regards, that’s ok. They shared what was so freely shared with them, in love and for my own good.
I was thinking today of my friends (especially Suzanne, it’s her birthday) in the world and how incredibly varied they all are. Not all of my friends are in 12 step programs but I think being in a 12 step program has made it easier for me to become friends with a wide array of people. Going to a meeting you will likely run into a gamut of characters – bikers, politicians, house wives, students and divas to name a few. We all manage to get along as we have a common solution, a common peril that unites us. We stand together or we fall alone – it’s been proven to be true – this 80-year-old program changed more than just the lives of Alcoholics, it’s changed the world. (the book made the Library of Congress’s top 100 books that changed America LINK)
12 step programs not only make members better… they somehow transform those around them into people members can tolerate. 🙂 I kid, I kid… If you work the 12 steps the result is intended to be “an entire psychic change”, some say a “spiritual awakening”. That entire psychic change is a pretty marvelous thing in my experience – it made me a different person, some argue that drugs and alcohol hid the real person, but I’m not sure. What it did do was fill my life with some really wonderful people who I don’t just tolerate… i need them, they fill holes in my brain and turn calamity to calm.
“WE are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful.” Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, Chapter 2, There is a Solution, p 17
I’m not a fan of the part of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that talks about Acceptance – mostly because people refer to it so much but don’t look further into the program of recovery found a few hundred pages before it. I agree with the principle of acceptance being the answer to all my problems… here’s the part that I’m talking about:
“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life —unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.” Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Page 417
This has been true in my life – if I just change my outlook on things and accept them as they are – I seem to have a better day. I used this recently with an attitude I had about work, I was pretty frustrated – it took an earth person (a person not found in the rooms of AA) reminding me that it was my attitude that was hurting me to get me to change my attitude. I still have the frustration, but my attitude makes it bearable and I am then more tolerable to people around me. That’s the key-just accepting things and moving with them.
Kind of like when you’re sanding wood or cutting meat – you want to go with the grain – you’ll get less resistance and a better end product.
My boss, nice guy, sent me an article to read from GQ on Stephen Colbert – he said he’d know I’d read it if he saw a blog post on it… so here I am, lol. It was a really great story, the writer manages to paint the picture of Colbert in my mind that seems familiar and yet different. I think this Colbert will be a joy to get to know.
A terrible thing happened when he was very young, his father and two brothers died. Many people who have that type of tragedy happen seem bitter or sad – but he just seems to be full of joy. People ask how he can have this much laughter and joy in his life with that big thing hanging over him – he credits his mother who was broken by the incident, but not bitter – she managed to love her son throughout the grieving process and teach him joy.
He is actively involved in all parts of everything that’s going on and he wants to be. He talks about intention – “the end product is jokes, but you could easily say the end product is intention. Having intentionality at all times… the process of process is process.” I liked that quite a bit.
He also shares a lesson about “learning to love the bomb” it’s here:
“I went, ‘I don’t know what this is, but I have to do it,’ ” he said. “I have to get up onstage and perform extemporaneously with other people.” He was part of the same Second City class that included Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello and Chris Farley. “Our first night professionally onstage,” he said, the longtime Second City director Jeff Michalski told them that the most important lesson he could pass on to them was this: “You have to learn to love the bomb.”
“It took me a long time to really understand what that meant,” Colbert said. “It wasn’t ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time.’ It wasn’t ‘Laugh it off.’ No, it means what it says. You gotta learn to love when you’re failing.… The embracing of that, the discomfort of failing in front of an audience, leads you to penetrate through the fear that blinds you. Fear is the mind killer.” (You’re welcome, Dune nerds.)” GQ The Late Great Stephen Colbert – Joel Lovell, August 17, 2015
It wasn’t that long ago I was struggling to figure out if I was any good at a new job – seemed every day I was being shown one more thing I couldn’t do right. It was so frustrating that I was almost brought to tears a few times. I was close to quitting and had even talked to my sponsor about finding something different. One day I just gave up, my supervisor came over to point out my failings one more time and I just laughed (which pissed her off a little bit), I was finished and i knew I wasn’t going to be able to ever get this down and they’d likely let me go. From that moment – from the laughter forward – I figured it out. The stress vanished, the fear dissipated and I just did the best I could (which is actually pretty good most days).
People often say to me – you’ve survived so much it’s amazing. I think it’s not much – not much in comparison to Colbert, or others who have lost or been hurt. We all have our own journeys to make and will leave with scars that help define who we are. I don’t go through life trying to avoid the brambles – I just keep my destination in mind and keep moving trying to do the right thing. The right thing usually means not treading over those I pass along the way, but stopping to offer them a hand.
Acceptance is the key, laughter and love will help you through it and accepting doesn’t mean giving up.
