stress

So I’m coming up on 25 years in my career in IT, and I am in a situation that I have to confront again. A while ago my job was potentially going to be affected by a reduction in spending from the “source”. This meant that we were heading into a long period of austerity and that there were likely to be a bunch of staff reductions. I’m a union employee so I have a certain amount of protections thankfully, but it is still stressful. This was one of the hardest periods of life that I can remember, I was not sleep and could barely focus on regular day to day tasks for months on end. Every day was a constant struggle to get rest and to avoid listening to all the rumours and unrest around the office. At this point in life i still had almost no real stress coping skills and trivial problems would always send me into a spiral. It was like I was ALWAYS restless, irritable and discontent and had this constant feeling of impending doom. So when real problems did occur I was utterly useless. This all reached a breaking point where I got home from work and had a beer, then another and another and then a whisky…and boom, finally some ease would settle on my mind and I would relax. That was my downfall; that was the start of a journey down the alcoholism highway. That one night sticks out in my memory as the first time I can really recall using the booze as a solution to my problems. Gradually I became a daily drinker trying to cover the anxiety and stress of daily life. I’m sure you can see where that got me. I spent a number of years as a daily drinker escaping from my feelings and eventually collapsed and entered recovery.

Well, here I am again. There have been new announcements of some budget reductions and positions are being eliminated. My stress this time however, much more manageable. I sat down with my sponsor on the weekend and we spoke about it. I shared my fears and concerns, both real and imagined, and we went through them. This in itself is a miracle and such a massive change from how I used to handle things. I mean it’s been over 8 years of work in my recovery and I still feel new. But at least this time I don’t have to suffer through it alone and I am fully aware of why I feel the way I do.

thanks so much my creator

out of the blue

So I was contacted today by a lad that I knew from my home group. He’s a military guy that I have not seen in a long time, I was correct in assuming that he had been posted to another military base. He reached out to me on social media today, which was great as I was curious where he had been. G (which what refer to him as) came into the program when he was a young lad and he managed to stick around for upwards of 10 years when he was here. He informed me that he was posted up north due to some family issues; that he is doing OK…but just OK. He asked me how my grasp of the steps is at the moment as he was looking for someone to sponsor him temporarily. I’m happy to help him out, but this is a guy that has, to my knowledge, much longer sobriety than I do. Unless he’s had a relapse that I’m not aware of and I sure hope that is not the case. I never want to see anyone go back to that hell that was active addiction.

I feel like I’m going to have to double up on contact with my own sponsor which will be challenging while he is in Florida. I’m very bad myself at keeping in touch with him. I’m the type of guy that reaches out when I am struggling and for the most part I’m great. I have the odd shitty day here and there, but I almost always know what the cause of it is.

sick

UGH! I’ve been sick for a couple of days now; the thing I hate most about being sick is that it reminds me of the hang overs and towards the end of my drinking…the DTs. Going through the DTs was absolute hell and I hate this feeling. I’m not shaking or hearing or seeing things or anything, but it does feel like I’m sluggish and have body ache. I am so glad to be sober and I’m choosing to use the illness as a remember when. The book talks about how few of us can recall the pain and suffering of our last bender with sufficient force to keep us sober. Well, being sick is a close reminder…

sad girl

I don’t know how to process this situation and I am seeing. There is this young girl (A) that has been coming to our little group for a bit, I met her at another meeting in the area. She is only 18 years old and is coming to AA after going through a 2 month treatment program. The center that she went to did not go through 12 step recovery with them but encouraged them to go to meetings after they left the place. Which is interesting because they describe their site as doing “evidence based recovery” and not 12 step recovery. I find this interesting because while they don’t “use’ the AA methodology they certainly use many of the same concepts. They talk an awful lot about triggers and getting to the root of the reasons why a person was trying to escape from themselves. But whatever, not my program, I know what works for me and that has been AA so far.

So here we are with A coming to our little meeting for a month or so and she seemed to be doing OK. She was in regular attendance, she came out for coffee and she went to the local roundup with us. All signs pointed to the fact that she was enjoying the early recovery life, until she started to open up a little bit. She stopped coming for a few days and then reached out and informed me that she has been drinking every day. When I encouraged her to come back she started to unload a lot of information to me that included how she has a lot of suicidal thoughts and ideation. She apparently has tried to end her life a few times, this makes me so sad. I understand the “call of the void” thing and I go through that many times myself. But this was different; she was telling me that just genuinely feels like she is not built to exist in this world. That she cannot see a future that she will ever be happy with. I am not equiped to help someone with that sort of mental anguish. I am wrestling with the old character defects that have me wanting to try to save this girl. But I have to realize that I am not responsible for her and her well being. I’ve said many a prayer for her and I wish her well but that is about the extent of what I can offer her. I am always willing to listen and guide and point people to others in the program taht I know can help, but this one is outside my control.

Be well my friends, and A…I hope you’re doing OK. I truly wish for you to find some peace in this life, with us.

B