For me one of the key signs of alcoholism in me has been a tendency to blow things out of proportion, making mountains out of molehills. I have tended to do this all my life, before during and after my drinking days. One thing I liked about alcohol was that it often had the ability to shrink problems, although they were still there and reinflated the next day.
When I got to AA, I found that sitting in meetings and getting my mind off myself for a while was one way to get problems back into proportion, and that worked better than alcohol as I was usually able to face and deal with them the next day. I often felt that I needed to get to a meeting just to face my scary job as a high school teacher the next day, singing the Serenity Prayer(tune of Ode to Joy) as I walked through a park to work the next morning. Still, even with meetings and that prayer, I seemed to blow just about everything out of proportion back then. The boss said I should wipe my coffee cup better because it was leaving a ring on the rack above the sink in the staff lounge and I felt my days were numbered in that job. I could feel that my day was ruined because somebody looked at me funny in the morning. At work, I thought the kids were out to get me, and, given how erratic and irritable I was, that may well have been true. One of my favorite bits of graffiti is something I read on a toilet wall one day. Someone wrote: "Everyone things I'm paranoid, but I'm not." Below that, in a different handwriting was: "I don't, but I'm watching you just in case." In retirement and having been sober nearly 33 years, I can see that there really are no mountains in my life. Seeing mountains in it tends to be evidence that my attitudes are not quite what they should be, and I need to try to change them instead of looking for a Sherpa. While it might be insight into the obvious, something I'm pretty good at, I can now see that I don't blow things out of proportion because they are more serious, but because they are a bit unusual. When something happens that could upset me if my attitudes are off, I usually think about how I dealt, or didn't deal with, similar "problems" in the past, remember that they were no big thing, and just use it as an opportuity to be a bit more sane, responsible and mature this time. If the situation hasn't happened before, I may flounder a bit before I get my attitudes in line. It is clear that things that happen seldom get me in trouble, but reacting poorly to them may. I recently wrote that I sometimes wondered why I don't seem to run into many seeming coincidences in life now as I did early in recovery. I realised at a meeting last night that I no longer see things as coincidences, just God nudging me a bit, and am quite happy he does that. I can see that God does for me what I cannot, or will not, do for myself, even if I don't appreciate that Help at the time, seeing it as a bump, or pothole, on the road of life. I recall once reading about a place in Africa where they could tell who they drunk drivers were because they were the only ones who drove in a straight line. I can now see them as speed bumps and guides. I once thought that one of our wall slogans should be, "Shit happens!" But someone in my email group said that it isn't shit that happens, it is life, and it only seems like shit if my attitudes are not what they should be my sanity is off so that I am not adjusting to reality very well. Most of the time I do and love living in it now. |