Belief against belief

I am angry today. I know exactly why I am feeling this way. I have just finished reading a book called ‘A Million Little Pieces’. Books do not usually make me angry, but this one did. It became famous (or infamous) a few years ago when it emerged that bits of it were untrue and never happened, although it is supposed to be a memoir. I am not angry because some of it may or may not be fabricated. I am angry because it deals with something very close to my heart, recovery from addiction, and it deals with the subject in a way that I thoroughly and wholeheartedly disagree with.

 The book is a detailed and lengthy account of the author’s time spent in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Minnesota. The centre practices and adheres to AA’s twelve steps as a program of recovery, and from the very beginning the author is dismissive of the steps, like every newcomer is when they first arrive. He sees the word ‘God’ and he immediately decides that he is not going to have anything to do with AA or the steps. The book is very long, and I expected by the end of it to find that the author’s relationship with AA had changed, that he finally decided to open his mind and try the steps, because that’s the only way anyone ever recovers from serious addiction. All the evidence points towards that conclusion, but by the end of the book the author has still not tried AA. He leaves the treatment centre and claims to spend the rest of his life sober without any outside help. To the very end he is dismissive of Alcoholics Anonymous and all that it stands for. He vehemently refuses to accept that anything other than himself can keep him sober. To him, the twelve steps are a joke, a waste of time. He says it’s basically ‘replacing one addiction with another’. God, if I had a pound for every time I heard someone throw that accusation at AA!

 I was furious by the time I had finished the book. My hands were shaking and I wanted to cry. The story doesn’t just dismiss AA – it rubbishes and it spits at it. AA is a cult, according to the author, and people go to meetings so they can ‘whine and moan and complain about how hard their lives are’. This is a blatant misrepresentation of Alcoholics Anonymous. Had he ever bothered to try a meeting, he would have found happy, grateful recovering alcoholics laughing and joking, chatting and acting as if they were perfectly normal. People who whine and moan in AA don’t last very long. I suspect he wouldn’t either.

 AA has no opinion on outside issues, and so it never defends itself. Well I’m going to defend it now, because it fucks me off that people can be so narrow-minded about it. By the end of his treatment, the author had basically done everything that AA would suggest to him anyway. He had, most importantly, stayed away from the first drink; he had made friends and opened up to people; he had confessed his past misdeeds to a priest and he had come to trust that everything would be OK if he stayed sober. This is exactly what AA would have any alcoholic do. But because we talk about God and handing our lives over, some people choose to immediately shut down to any possibility of trying it. It turns out in the end that the author was molested by a priest in the past, so it’s understandable why he has harboured great feelings of resentment towards the church. But AA is NOT the church. It is a group of people trying to get better. What the fuck is wrong with that?

 If you actually look at the steps and examine what they really mean, God is only a small part of them. God is a symbol, a word that we use to represent a much bigger picture. The God that I pray to every morning is not the God that was taught to me at school. My God doesn’t look, sound or smell anything like an old bearded man. My God is basically the Universe; my higher power is everything that isn’t me. When I pray to the Universe I ask that it will take care of me and keep me sober, like it has done every day so far. To people like the author of that book, I suppose that makes me sound like a lunatic. Maybe I am addicted to God and AA meetings. Well, so fucking what? At least it keeps me out of bars where I would otherwise get wasted and slowly kill myself every night.

 The worst part of the book comes at the end. The moment he gets out of rehab, the author goes straight to a bar where he ‘tests’ himself by buying a pint of whisky. Yes, a pint. He holds it in his hands, he stares at it, he sniffs it for a few moments and then he throws it away, thus proving to himself that he has beaten his addiction. In my view, he’s not beating the addiction, he is simply punishing himself, and if he is to continue punishing himself in such a way he will have to do the same thing every single day for the rest of his life. That seems to be the way he wants it. Well, that’s fine for him. Fine if you don’t like the steps and AA and you want to ‘test’ yourself by sticking your nose in a pint of whisky for half an hour every day. But don’t write a fucking book about it and sell it to millions of people!! The trouble is that people who have never found the program will probably read that and thinks it’s OK for them to do that. They might think: yes, I can go into bars and I can stick my nose into a pint of whisky because I’ve beaten my addiction, I am better and cleverer than everyone who goes to those stupid AA meetings.

 This is a dangerous idea for serious addicts to get hold of. If I had read the book a couple of years ago, I’m sure I would have loved it. I’d probably have done what that author did and gone into a bar and bought a fucking pint of whisky just because I would have had nothing else to do. It irks me that people will happily do that, but they won’t just read the Big Book and explore the idea that there might be another way to get better. Good for that man if he really did get sober, but his chances from the start were a million to one at best. Unfortunately we live in a society where odds such as ‘a million to one’ don’t scare people any more. People will think that because he did it, they can easily do it too. I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. Out of a million addicts who resist AA, only one will successfully stay sober. All the 999,999 others will drink and take drugs and die. There’s no way around it. Surely that should be enough to convince someone to give AA a go? What bloody harm can it do?

 People don’t like being wrong, that’s the problem. People see that they have to admit their powerlessness over alcohol and it makes them feel very uncomfortable. What they ignore is the fact that this admission of powerlessness is the ultimate release from the addiction. As soon as I accepted my powerlessness and the sheer unmanageability of my life, the urge to drink left me completely. I didn’t have to go into bars and stick my nose in pints of whisky. I opened my mind and I gave AA a go, because nothing else seemed possible. The author also doesn’t like the idea of calling alcoholism a ‘disease’. He’d rather call it a weakness, a flaw. Well, that’s a really nice message to promote to all the alcoholics and drug addicts out there. You inject crack into your arms every day and slowly kill yourself not because you have an illness, but because you’re weak and pathetic and you need to pull yourself together. Have a nice life!

 The author accuses people in AA of being self-righteous because they refuse to accept that their way isn’t the only way. Surely he’s the one being self-righteous? Surely he is so determined to believe in himself that he has become arrogant to the point where he dismisses the real experience of millions of people around the world who have actually been saved from death by AA? It really makes my skin crawl – it’s not just the book, it’s the whole fucking world. We live in a society where the idea of powerlessness and disease still repulses people, where to say that you believe in God makes you look weird, where it’s OK to suffer and die as long as you don’t speak out about it.

 I’ve probably begun to sound like a stark raving maniac, so I will stop in a minute. I just wanted to say something about my experience with this book, because it has been important to me. If anything positive has come out of it, I guess it’s that it has strengthened my belief in the steps. I have the author to thank for that. What about the alcoholics and drug addicts who haven’t found AA yet, who pick up this book thinking it might help them? Maybe it will, but in most cases it won’t. No one can be certain which bits of it are true and which aren’t, anyway. What is true is that the twelve steps work, if you are willing to work at them. Try them, it won’t hurt.

Tonight

Tonight was lovely! I made the tea at the step meeting in Holborn as always, which didn’t fill me with resentment like it used to. I was willing to put the work in; I’ve managed the commitment for nearly ten months and just that fact alone makes me want to continue with it. Tonight started with a lovely surprise when Dan walked into the room. Dan is one of those people who came into AA at the same time as me last year. I hadn’t seen him since January, when he moved to Germany for a work commitment. Back then I thought I’d never see him again. I didn’t say goodbye to him in January because I was resentful at the time. He was in that little clique that I have been so jealous of all year; I chose to punish him by ignoring him the last time I saw him, hoping to send him off to Germany in some kind of torment.

 He seemed happy to see me again this evening, and I was very happy to see him again. I was grateful for the chance to restore our friendship, because when we were friends it was really good. We share a lot of similarities; in fact I was always very fond of him. I’d probably marry him if it was at all possible! Anyway, we sat with each other during the meeting and went for coffee afterwards to talk. Some of the other regulars came with us – it was just like old times, as I hadn’t been for coffee with those people in months. Colin was there, and we talked a lot too. My year-long resentment towards him melted away, just as it always does when I make the effort to talk to these people. Part of me was nervous about talking to them again, having resented them all year. I was sure that they must dislike me, after all this frostiness on my part. It turned out that they were happy to sit and chat with me all night. Both Dan and Colin were very encouraging about my recovery, telling me I’m an inspiration just like they did this time last year. I almost wept.

 Yesterday was another nice day. I went into Soho with Neal and his gorgeous friend Salim, thinking we’d only be there for the duration of lunch, but we ended up staying out until late in the evening, because we were having so much fun and didn’t want to leave. Both Neal and Salim were drinking, but that didn’t bother me at all. We went on a sort of gay pub crawl, something I haven’t done for years. We went to all the places I used to love, and it was good fun seeing them again – I did have a lot of fun at times in the past, and yesterday was possibly better because I wasn’t drinking. We danced to catchy pop music, chatted and laughed together, comparing guys that we fancied. Late on I caught someone’s eye in one of the bars; he was extremely sexy, and I could easily have approached him, but I chose not to. There will be time for that. We ended up at a karaoke night, and I couldn’t resist getting up on stage. I love karaoke dearly - there is a singer in me that hasn’t had much of a chance to come out in public this year. I sang Nik Kershaw’s ‘Wouldn’t It Be Good’, one of my all time favourites but possibly a mistake last night because it’s very difficult to sing. Well, it seemed to go down well anyway. I ignored the fear and did something I had been dying to do for months. Singing will never be a career for me, but it’s something I like doing, and I hope I get to do more of it in future.

Changes

I can’t remember what I was looking for, but the other day when I was nosing around the flat I found some very old photographs that I had never been aware of. There were dozens from my childhood and teenage years. I’d completely forgotten what I used to look like, and the photos came as a shock. I thought there were no photos left from my childhood, but it turns out my mum kept some. I used to think I was an ugly child - skinny and spotty and just plain odd, but the photos show that I looked fairly normal. In some of them you can clearly tell I will turn out gay – but that’s another story! In most of the photos I actually look quite happy, as if I’m having a good time.

 I thought my entire childhood was a miserable ordeal! There are pictures of my baptism, my first ever trip to Brighton, my Holy Communion, my first day at secondary school, family holidays to Devon, and even an old ID card from college which I was sure I’d lost. In many of those pictures, I was a happy, normal child; you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong. In reality, a lot of my childhood was unhappy, but not all of it. It was really in my teenage years that the problems started.

 At the age of fourteen I was really underweight and spotty, and my hair was greasy and long. There’s one awful picture from that time which I would be embarrassed to show people. In it you could tell I was a miserable adolescent. Most of all, I felt very sorry for myself in that picture. What happened to make me look that way? Of course, that was the worst time of my life, I’ve always known it, because I became depressed and excessively anxious for the first time. Looking back, I’m relieved not to be that person any more, but I think in my head I’m still running away from bits of that time. I still dream about school every night, being forced to go back and complete the lessons I didn’t complete. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.

 Apart from one or two pictures where I was a very unhealthy-looking teenager, all of the pictures are really nice, and I’ve put them up on facebook because I’m not ashamed of my past any more. For years I’ve tried to hide from it, but I’ve come to realise that it’s unfair to deny that I ever had a childhood. There were happy times, so it seems, and I was loved by the people around me. My mother and aunt Emily appear in lots of the photos; it’s clear that they’ve both been there my entire life, and I have a greater fondness for both of them than I ever did. Seeing the changes in myself and my mother over the years was incredible; I was a toddler once, and she was a young woman! Even she looked happy in the photos, which says to me that I was always the centre of her life. With me there, she is always happy.

 This has happened at a funny time, because I am just about to embark on steps 8 and 9. I wrote my list of amends to be made this morning, and I will be going through it with my sponsor in the week. It’s not a long list, but I believe it’s thorough. All the people I can remember hurting are on it, including myself. My mother is owed the most amends, and I look forward to making them to her. Just thinking about all this, I want to cry; whether out of sadness or happiness, I don’t know. My life is really changing beyond recognition, but still the past terrifies me. A lot of the amends will be very difficult to make. I haven’t hurt an awful lot of people in my life, but the people I have hurt have been hurt badly. It all comes back to my character defects, of course. The belief that I would be abandoned and rejected every day led me to push a lot of people away.

 While all this is going on, I’m getting on with my novel, which is going extremely well. It’s become more autobiographical than I expected it to, and I love it. I can’t wait to finish it and get it out there.

 Last night I enjoyed the gay meeting in Soho which I previously had quite a significant resentment against. I saw a lot of friends there and afterwards some of us went for dinner, which was lovely. I used to dislike that meeting because it can be more like a social gathering than an AA meeting sometimes, but last night I felt part of the group and I was able to relax in it. Maybe I’ll start going regularly again.

Blocking

It’s been a very mixed day. I was feeling OK enough to do some writing this morning, but after just one paragraph I lost my creative energy and slipped back into depression, which was very annoying. Having my creative desire threatened in such a way causes me a great deal of anger, which I am still feeling tonight. I know it’s my illness that’s blocking the creative urge, and if I wasn’t so angry about it I’d probably be able to write more easily. As it is I feel like smashing a hole through a wall right now, because the paragraph I wrote earlier seems awful compared to the stuff I’ve written recently.

 This evening I forced myself to go to my old home group in Hyde Park one last time. I had to show my face and tell the group that I wanted to give up my literature commitment – I owed them that. Luckily it was snapped up by a newcomer instantly. So I probably won’t be going there again for a long time. I felt all the usual resentments tonight. I used to look forward to that meeting every week, but it’s not good for me any more. It does nothing for me these days. I don’t like the way it’s run, and I don’t like the people who go there. I know it will change in time, and this time next year I’ll probably go back and wonder why I ever disliked it. For now, it’s a relief to know I have just two service commitments in AA instead of the three that I’ve had all year. Three is a lot for an alcoholic like me.

Low point (part 2)

I have just had a conversation with Steve. And he’s not sure he wants to meet up again, because he doesn’t think we’re sexually compatible. Which is fair enough – I still have issues around sex, and most guys don’t want to wait around for guys like me to get comfortable with it. Why should they? So here I am, alone again, unsure whether I will ever be able to enjoy a normal, healthy relationship with another man. The same thing has happened to me over and over again during the past seven years. I meet someone, I like them, and they like me but I can’t perform in bed so it all goes to shit and fizzles out before anything real has had a chance to develop. Right now I’m in pain, even though I thought I had worked through these issues. In fact I was sure I’d worked through them – I was positive up til a day ago that I didn’t need a man to complete me and that I had finally learnt how to be objective and unemotional about sex. I was wrong. Myco-dependency has come up again big time, and I’m getting the old urge to isolate, to hide in my room and avoid the world. I’m supposed to go to my old home group tomorrow and do the literature again, but I don’t want to; I feel like giving up on the program and on everything else because it all seems so pointless right now. I’m struggling to see the good in life, the progress I’m supposed to have made. It all feels like a fucking waste of time.

Low point

I had a lovely Saturday night. I spent it with Steve, the guy I had met the previous weekend for a date. I went to his place on Saturday night, and things happened…if you know what I mean. It was great, especially when I met his flatmates and didn’t feel socially anxious in the group situation. They drank vodka while I drank tea; it was fine. I still got the nerves in bed, but thanks to the mind-opening I’ve experienced recently regarding sex and relationships, it wasn’t nearly as bad on Saturday night as it usually would be. I didn’t expect to get a long term relationship out of it, and I didn’t expect to be ’saved’. I was able to enjoy my body with someone who I actually found very attractive.

 Yesterday when I came home, that seemed to change. I got off at my local underground station and walked back in the rain, and I was strangely reminded of the time when I lost my virginity in 2001. Back then I came home the next morning in the rain feeling guilty and cheap, like I’d gone too far in my efforts to be grown up. Yesterday it was the same feeling, and I couldn’t shake it. By the evening I was distraught, crying into my pillow because I felt so bad. I wished I could go back to the night before, when it had been so nice with Steve and I’d had such a great time. Here I was, alone in my own room, not knowing whether I would even see him again. I refrained from contacting him, because I know that chasing men up doesn’t work. If he wants to meet me again he’ll let me know.

 So I was suffering from the old co-dependent feelings last night which I thought I had done so much good work on. All of a sudden I wanted that relationship, that happily ever after which I’d never experienced before. It was a definite attack of depression because I didn’t feel like doing anything else except lie in bed – I couldn’t watch TV, I couldn’t read a book, I couldn’t write my novel, I couldn’t even phone anyone. I knew I would have felt differently if I’d gone to a meeting yesterday. Those feelings rarely trouble me when I’m around other alcoholics, even if I don’t particularly like the company I’m in. I chose not to go to a meeting yesterday because I thought I was tired; I’d already done 4 meetings last week and since I finished my 90 in 90 I was sure I didn’t need daily meetings any more.

 I feel slightly better today, though the fact that I’ve just been through such a bad attack is disturbing. I haven’t got my confidence back in the usual things yet: I’ve only managed to write two pages of my novel today, and I’m not really in the mood to read or listen to music yet. The lethargy is still there. I will be going to my regular step meeting later on to make the tea; hopefully that will help. I might even go for coffee with the group afterwards. I need some socialising, even though I don’t really feel like it.

 Still, I can take heart in the fact that my novel’s still going well; I’m still healthy and sober; I’m still doing OK with money and I still have friends around me when I need them.

Storyteller

I wasn’t expecting to finish steps 6 and 7 on the day I turned fifteen months sober, but that’s what happened last night. I went to my sponsor’s flat with the writing I’d done for step 6, the two sides of A5 on which I’d listed all my apparent character defects and the ways in which I can change these negative behaviours. When I read these out to my sponsor he was pleased with my insight, but suggested a few things I could add to the ‘positive behaviours’ side, such as ‘look people in the eye’ and ‘ask to be included in more social occasions’. So the list I’ve ended up with are things I’ve been pretty much aware of all year, but now that the step is completed I feel weird. I was able to add the step 7 prayer to my morning prayers for the first time this morning, and it seems like an apt addition to the step 3 prayer which I’ve said every morning for the past year. I think it feels so odd because I can finally feel the movement in my program againl. I’d stagnated on step 5 all year, and I guess I never expected to go any further. Now that I’ve done step 7, I feel very positive about life. Ever since I finished step 5 a few weeks ago I’ve felt better about life, really; the anxiety is certainly much less than it used to be. I can look the world in the eye, like it says you will in the Big Book. There are certain important character defects that I know will be difficult to get rid of, namely my tendency to isolate when I feel abandoned or rejected. This sense of abandonment is something I’ve never been able to let go of. My sponsor reminded me that the steps are a life long journey: you never complete them, but you do them constantly, every day if you can. As long as you’re making progress you’re fine; you don’t have to be perfect. We listened to a CD that he had bought from a convention in LA a few years ago, where a woman spoke vociferously about her experience of these two steps. She reiterated very lucidly that they are transitional steps, overlooked by the Big Book somewhat perhaps because they are the hardest to grasp. There’s nothing you can specifically do to complete them: you have to live them. Well, I hope I’m living them now.

 When I came home last night I managed to complete another chapter of my semi-autobiographical novel at surprising speed. I’ve been trying to write a semi-autobiographical novel for years; it’s lived through many incarnations and there’ve been many different characters, most of whom I’ve forgotten about. The main character stays the same, though: it’s always me, in some context or another. The chapter that I completed is I think possibly the best thing I’ve ever written. I felt so proud of it that I decided I would print an excerpt here. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a successful writer, but it’s the one thing I think about every day when I wake up and when I go to bed. If someone identifies with my story, I suppose it will have been a success.

Simon was having a worse time at work than ever. He knew pretty much what he was doing now, but he still wasn’t getting on with his supervisor, and he felt his skin prickle every time he saw her. Every moment he feared the next sharp putdown or heated argument. No one else seemed to have these difficulties with Geraldine Hawes, it was always just him. The others appeared to get on with her fine. They had reached some kind of agreement where she left them alone if they lived up to her high standards. Simon found these standards impossible to reach for some reason, and it depressed him. By now he was having regular panic attacks in work, having to run to the toilet at least once a day for five minutes to catch his breath and regain composure. Every time he returned from the toilet Geraldine was there, waiting to pounce. “I thought I told you to finish this?” was her regular greeting for him. There was always something else to do, nothing was ever quite done as far as she was concerned.

 It was, unfortunately, only a matter of time before Simon’s frayed nerves would trip him up and lead to one hell of a confrontation. He was sick and tired of never getting anything right. He fantasized about getting Geraldine by the hair and smashing her head into his desk on an increasingly regular basis. One morning he was thinking about this very scenario when he absent-mindedly clicked ‘send’ on an e-mail that wasn’t supposed to be sent. It was informal and full of mistakes when it needed to be formal and perfect, and it was addressed to entirely the wrong set of people. In any other circumstances, it would have resulted in a quick word in the supervisor’s office, a slapped wrist and a “never do that again”. As it was, Geraldine was on his back within seconds, pissed off and ready for a fight.

 ”Who do you think you are, sending this shit out to my associates?!” she yelled, throwing a print-out of the e-mail at his desk, just missing his head by an inch.

 ”What?” Simon exclaimed, flabberghasted. It was the scene he had been dreading for months.

“I said, who do you think you are? This shit isn’t fit for primary school English. Did you ever learn to read and write, Franks?” she was standing above him with her hands on her dainty little hips. There was fire in her eyes; she looked like a witch about to cast a very bad spell on him.

“Of course I did.” He replied, trying to be as unaffected as possible as he turned back to the computer to get on with his work. He had put up with too much abuse in his life to let this woman bring him down now. Somehow, he knew the only way to beat her was to ignore her.

“I haven’t finished yet! Look at me!” she shrieked. The entire office turned to look at them. Slowly, Simon swivelled in his chair back towards her. Think before you speak! he told himself urgently. Don’t show yourself up in front of all these people! He desperately wanted to throw himself on the floor and burst into hysterical tears. But he had already learnt that making himself a victim didn’t work in these parts.

“I’ve just about had enough of you, Franks. Every single day something else happens. And it always comes back to you! You just can’t do anything without someone holding your hand, can you?!”

Simon bit his tongue furiously and begged the tears in his eyes not to fall down his flushed cheeks. He was burning up with anger; he had never hated anyone so much in his life. How dare she do this to me! How dare she attack me like this, why doesn’t she look after me and love me like I need her to?!

 ”Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself? Or are you going to sit there like a fucking idiot?”

“I’m not an idiot…”

“Oh, aren’t you? Well you could have fooled me!” she chuckled cruelly. No one else was laughing. They were all staring at her in horror, like she had gone mad. Simon took little comfort in the fact that they were probably all too scared to stand up for him. He knew he’d have to stand up for himself, for the first time in his life, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have the words to beat her, because she would always have something to come back at him with.

“This is workplace harassment, you have no right…”

“Oh don’t try and play the harassment card with me, you stupid little girl. I’m a woman and I’m twice your age, how could I possibly harass you?!”

“Leave him alone, Geraldine.” Someone who Simon couldn’t see spoke from the shadows. Their voice was firm and directive. Geraldine was clearly stunned that anyone had dared to stop her.

“Who the hell was that?” she hollered at the crowd gathered behind her. After a long and tense moment, James stepped forward with wrath in his eyes. “Are you telling me what to do?”

“I’m telling you to leave Simon alone. He’s done nothing wrong and you have no right to use your authority in this office to bully him.”

“How dare you!!” Geraldine squealed, quite upset by the implication. “I’ve never…I wouldn’t bully anyone! I am simply doing my job, trying to improve the quality of my staff’s work!”

“No, I have to disagree with you there. You are using what little power you have to bully a vulnerable member of staff because you know no one will stop you. Well, I’m not going to let you get away with it any more, Geraldine.” James had kept his voice low but firm. His stance was admirable; Simon thought he would never be able to thank him enough.

“Right. My office. Now!” Geraldine ordered him, turning on her heel for her office where she no doubt planned to give James the bollocking of his life. But James wasn’t following her. He remained solidly where he stood, determined to have this out right here in front of everyone. “I said, my office – now!”

“Whatever you have to say, you can say it here.”

“Are you disobeying me, Molloy?”

“Call it whatever you want. I see no reason why this discussion has to take place in private. I believe this is a matter of importance for the entire staff.”

“You’ll come to my office now, Molloy, or I will refer you for a disciplinary.”

“You can do that. But I’d like to know what the area manager would have to say, if I told him you were behaving aggressively towards vulnerable members of staff based on their sexual orientation.”

 An audible gasp went through the crowd. Simon’s eyes widened in horror. James had just outed him in front of everyone! This was surely the end of the world as he knew it. He might as well pack up and leave his job now.

“I – I don’t know what you’re insinuating…”

“I’m insinuating that you have systematically abused your position to pick on a gay member of staff because you are a homophobic bigot.”

 Geraldine had no reply for that. For several minutes, the entire office remained frozen in silence, like time had stopped inside that room. Then someone, somewhere began clapping. And then someone else joined in. Only a couple of people applauded James for his actions that day, but it was enough. Geraldine had nothing more to say. She ran back to her office in thinly disguised tears, desperate to appear victimised at the hands of her gay male staff. From that point on, Simon had very little to do with her. He spoke to her only when it was absolutely necessary and he couldn’t possibly get what he needed from somebody else, which luckily turned out to be an increasingly rare occurrence. A few weeks later, Geraldine transferred herself to another branch of the same company, never to be seen again. Her vague threats to have James disciplined were never followed through. Perhaps because she was scared of him, perhaps because she knew he had a point. Simon remained offended at James’ public outing of him for a few days, until he realised how much he had his gay colleague to thank for. Work was nowhere near as hellish after Geraldine’s departure. He didn’t have to go in every day dreading confrontation. He was suddenly free of a whole lot of fear and resentment.

People-itis

The good news is that I’m fifteen months sober tomorrow, and I’m still feeling good about life. My writing’s still going brilliantly and today I was able to stay at home and spend the whole day focusing on the novel. Years ago a whole day indoors would have thoroughly depressed me. I don’t recommend staying in all day if you’re a depressive kind of person, but I had a good reason to do so today, and I have fifteen months of recovery behind me. I felt rather like a teenager again, at home to see my mum come home from work and cook dinner, something I haven’t seen for a long time. I guess having just completed 90 AA meetings in 90 days, I haven’t spent a lot of time at home recently, and this must be the first Tuesday evening I’ve stayed in for over fifteen months. In my recovery I’ve gone to the Tuesday night newcomer group every week, and I’ve been in charge of the literature there since January. This week I decided to have another week off, because I’m kind of bored with the meeting and I want to see if I can live without it. I’ll be back next week, don’t worry. This kind of leads me onto the bad news, though – I think I’m beginning to get bored of the gay meetings in general.

 I was at the gay step meeting last night where I make the tea, and a week’s break hadn’t changed my feelings towards it. I was bored with all the sharing and I was bored with the people. I’ve seen and heard them all before. I know I must sound quite harsh right now. All AA meetings are the same, to a big extent, but I can’t help feeling boxed in when I go to gay AA meetings now. It doesn’t help that the room in which the Monday night group is held is tiny. Last night they had the air conditioning on full blast, for some reason, and a bunch of newcomers behind me were chattering and giggling thoughout the meeting, which really annoyed me. Yes, I could have done something about these things. I am completely unjustified in holding a resentment now, twenty-four hours later. What worries me is that I’m getting the same resentments every week. The newcomers who annoyed me last night were Joe and Billy, the two little queens right in the middle of the AA ‘clique’ which I have been so resentful of all year. I hardly speak to Joe and Billy any more, which is sad because I used to consider them friends. Months ago I enjoyed a nice night with them when we all went to play cards at Gavin’s flat in the East End. That was a memorable night; things like that don’t happen any more. Not to me, anyway. I guess I’m just not in the clique any more. I always feared it would happen, which is why I never like being in ‘cliques’ with people to begin with. There’s always the danger of one being cast out.

 I know how it happened and I’m moving past it now. I seem generally happier when I don’t have to see those people. The local meetings that I’ve recently discovered seem to be much more up my street. Meetings where I don’t know many people. Perhaps I will always be happier as an anonymous alcoholic. Making friends and getting close to people is a tricky business. I spent a year getting close to Colin, Dean, Andy, Joe and others, thinking it would be forever. Now I hardly ever see them. They don’t seem particularly upset with my recent absence from the gay fellowship. I’d be surprised if they’d noticed.

 I seem to be becoming part of a new family, with my sponsor and his friends. Some of us went out for dinner on Saturday night, after the meeting in Notting Hill. It was lovely. I was broke and thought I’d have to endure everyone else eating tasty burgers while I sipped on a cheap diet coke. Luckily my kind sponsor bought me a meal and I could enjoy the occasion with everyone else. I really felt part of a family that night. Unfortunately, one of the people there is someone who I have mixed feelings towards. Clive used to be my sponsor’s partner, and they still spend a lot of time together; Clive is also Colin’s sponsor, and so he is technically part of that little clique which I have spent so much time loathing. Because he’s with my sponsor nearly all the time, I’ve had to see an awful lot of him recently, and he’s begun to irritate me in lots of small ways. I used to really like him; he was responsible for completely changing my attitude towards sex during a three hour long, in-depth conversation in his van. For that I will always be grateful. Whenever I see him now, though, I just don’t want to be around him. He gives me the creeps a bit. He’s been in AA for nearly twenty years, and he seems to think he’s the most sober person in the world. He regular boasts that he will never have another drink in his life; he’s always spouting advice like a fountain of wisdom, like he knows everything about the human psyche because he did a twelve-week psychotherapy course twenty years ago. I don’t dislike him, but I don’t like him either. I think we’re better apart, but that probably won’t happen because he is my sponsor’s bosom buddy. I guess I’ll have to learn to put up with him.

 All this leads me to wonder whether I’m allergic to certain types of people. All the people in AA that I resent at the moment are confident, extrovert, secure individuals. If I delve into the resentment I’m sure I could find jealousy in there somewhere. But I’ve known about my jealousy for a long time, and it hasn’t stopped me from developing these resentments. Am I allowed to just dislike certain people? If I could find ways of avoiding them, then it would probably help. I find resentment always goes away after you haven’t seen someone for a while. Well, avoiding people in AA is rarely possible, which is why I’m growing so tired of the gay meetings. Everyone knows everyone else’s business; it’s like the gay scene without alcohol. I used to love the idea of that close knit community, but the problem with anything close knit is that you have to face people who you might not like. I know who I am, I know what kind of qualities I like in people, and the fact is that I will never like everyone I meet in AA. Nor should I have to like everyone. This doesn’t bother me too much at the moment because I know of many other meetings that I can go to. As I said a while ago, new meetings don’t scare me any more, which is brilliant progress for me. When I started in AA last year I couldn’t go into any meetings without a friend holding my hand!

The time of my life

I’m having a great weekend. I have just been on a fabulous date. Having opened up my mind to the possibility of meeting people without instantly getting into clingy, co-dependent relationships, I feel freer to enjoy myself. The guy I met today was gorgeous, intelligent and easy to talk to, and we shared a great kiss at the end of the evening. Every now and then I feel the old co-dependent feelings coming up, worried that he won’t text or call any more because he’s suddenly lost interest. It’s like this with everyone I meet, it’s just the way I am, but I find it easier to detach from those feelings after a while now.

 Ever since I finished step 5 with my sponsor, everything’s been generally better for me. I’m finally starting to believe that I might have a good life ahead of me. I feel less anxious and more confident in my own skin than I ever did before. It’s been a great few months for me, really. I’ve had a drag night out; I’ve been on holiday twice, once on my own, and had a fabulous time. I’ve met lots of people, shared loads in meetings, faced new challenges and now I am finally doing things that I’ve always wanted to do. I can’t complain about my life today, though of course there are imperfections. There always are, and I can deal with them. I feel this has all come from doing the steps. Last year I wouldn’t have had the courage to do a lot of the things that I’m doing now. The best thing is being able to walk down the street with my head held high. I like being myself, for the first time. I don’t get nervous in nearly as many situations today as I always did before. This is happy, joyous serenity. THe anxiety will come back, I know it will because my moods change like the weather. But everything’s OK, and it probably always will be, no matter what happens to me. How great is that?

Sugar, sugar

Yesterday I felt fantastic. I don’t know if this is because I had eaten too many sugary snacks, or because I’d taken two Prozac pills instead of one by accident, or because the weather was perfect again, or because I had just about achieved my target of 90 AA meetings in 90 days. It was perhaps a combination of all four things, along with many others. Whatever the reason, I was on top of the world yesterday. I was buzzing, vitalised and alive. I went to two meetings in the evening feeling almost drunk with excitement.

 The first was a local newcomers meeting that I’ve recently discovered. Last week I was too scared to share there but this week I opened my mouth and attracted the kind of admiration that I like to think old timers get. The second was the gay meeting down in Earl’s Court that I don’t go to so much any more because of the journey. I went last night to make up my 90 in 90, and I’m glad I went, though it was much more of a sombre affair than the first. By the end of the night I was so worn out I almost felt ill – perhaps I had had too much excitement for one day.

 I can’t be sure if I took one too many anti-depressants yesterday, because I can’t remember taking one in the morning as I usually do, so when it came to the afternoon I took one realising I ought to just in case I had forgotten earlier. I ended up feeling next to no anxiety yesterday, which is highly unusual for me. It felt like I hadn’t been anxious or depressed for a long time, though the truth is that I probably experienced a great deal of anxiety just the other day in some situation or other.

 Because I can’t be sure whether my lack of anxiety yesterday was due to too much Prozac or not, I’m starting to think that I want to come off the anti-depressants. It would be really nice to experience that kind of serenity without any form of chemical in my body. A few months ago I was all for spending the rest of my life on Prozac if it would make me better, but now I think I’d like to try and learn how to be happy by myself. I know how to do it, it’s just putting it into practice.

 There’s also a chance that I was experiencing a great sugar rush yesterday. Since getting sober I have allowed myself to indulge in as much sugar as I want, with the knowledge that most cravings for alcohol are just cravings for sugar to back me up. I have recently started to worry, however, that I’m eating far too much sugar, and yesterday morning I came across an article about the dangers of sugar addiction. I’ve known for a while that a diet saturated in sugar is unhealthy, but I didn’t know just how bad it was.

 Apparently people who eat excessive amounts of sugary foods have weakened immune systems, suffering from coughs and colds etc. more than those who don’t. I certainly get colds a lot – I’ve got one right now – and I wouldn’t say I’ve felt as healthy as I should in recent months. I’m not overweight just yet, but you don’t need to be overweight to be unhealthy; every day I seem to experience unnatural highs and lows, which I can now put down to sugar rushes and crashes.

 When I felt slightly ill last night, it was most likely the result of a sugar craving – just the thought of having a Big Mac or a Mars Bar made me feel better. In the mornings I’m always bad and need at least one cup of squash to wake me up. If I haven’t eaten something sugary for a few hours, my stomach will start to hurt and I’ll feel that desperate emptiness that can only be quenched by sugar. I’m on a dangerous road here, and I need to stop it.

 I’ve tried several times in the past to change to a healthier diet, and it’s always difficult sticking to one because I don’t know how to cook good meals. I can cook frozen food, but that’s just as unhealthy as anything, and the truth is that a lot of ‘healthy’ foods don’t taste as delicious as those in the junk variety.

 This is an addiction, I can see so clearly how it resembles my alcoholism. I can’t have just one jaffa cake from the pack, I have to have them all. I can’t just have one doughnut, I have to have at least three. This is how I know that I need to start taking food as seriously as I take alcohol. I’m not sure if I need to go to Overeaters Anonymous just yet, but I’ll certainly keep it in mind. What all of this makes clear is that I’m an addict with more than one drug of choice. Hard drugs were never a problem for me, but sugar certainly is, as are money, alcohol and co-dependency. Who knows what else is there to discover?

 I don’t want to die of heart disease when I’m 50; I want a long, prosperous and healthy life. And the only way to do that is to eat well – I already exercise plenty. I don’t know if I’ll succeed in getting well with this one; all I can do is take it one day at a time.