One of the hilarious things that happened in several of the 30-40 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I attended with a friend two summers ago, was listening to people giving what are called “qualifications” where folks describe their abject condition when they hit bottom and provide a paean to the program for transforming their attitude and giving them their life back. The funny part? The consistent un-selfconscious diagnosis is talk therapy & psychopharmicology don't work. Not surprisingly the life-story tellers come around to the blase mention they kinda sorta forgot to mention their heavy drinking to their therapist or even their psychopharmacologist.
The big issue is that psychotherapists have an agenda. They do not believe is it controversial. It is a consensus amalgamation of how you'd act and what you'd say, and the decision you'd make if you were psychologically healthy. If you didn't personalize anger, you wouldn't put your fist through your bedroom's plasterboard. If you didn't think your pain was a sign of weakness and helplessness, you'd unashamedly cry, if you realized who you really were, you'd be able to orchestrate and conduct your way around even your deepest fears. If you felt lovable you could cuddle with your spouse without a slow but steady feeling of claustrophobia increasingly insisting it was time to turn over and fall asleep. Comfortable with your numerous inadequacies, you'd become more patient, content, and tolerant with the foibles and normal human failures of others.
Somehow you'll be better. But compared to what? Everybody else.
There is a societal norm which informs the consensus of
“psychological health” – and when you think about it, where
else could such a definitional consensus come from? It has to be from
how ordinary, functioning, stable, reasonably successful people think
and behave. If you can be “adjusted” to think and behave that
way, then you'll end up functioning, stable, reasonably successful
and in a table, successful, functional relationship.
The concept of “who you really are”
which was already vague, and perhaps abstruse, has faded as the 70s
became the 90s and now to a mechanistic model of getting neurotics
who have intense and (mostly) irrational anxieties to behave
themselves and get on with maximizing steady and typical
psychological health. Freud called this the “reality principle”
since each person must come to terms with how things are and
negotiate their path through then gallant of things they should give
no mind to understanding as unfair or changeable.
“Forget who you want me to be,” is
how I open my therapy sessions. She answers “what would you do if
you were free?” She means all the negative messages arising about
my identity from childhood and adult experiences that I haven't been
able to debunk, de-program, delimit, or de-bug. The internalized
critical parent, the imposture syndrome, the 11 year old sissy who
knows there really is something different and wrong with him, the man
who has never let go of the constant surveillance and automatic
tactical avoidance of anyone who reminds him of the bullies
who could slam him up against his hall locker, spit on him, and
pretend to punch his face just to take joy in the flinch of fear.
Over the years I slowly give up on the
idea that she will or can understand. There isn't time, she can't
follow me around and observe how I act in 'real life' so I become
satisfied with telling the story – I'll sometimes interrupt if she
poses a question – “You don't have to understand, you just have
to listen.” This seems means, but it's true – I pour things out
without regard to whether there is a way to integrate them in some
surprising analytically ingenious synthesis – some eureka moment
that will alter the struggle with my feelings and my actions. All
that really matters is that we've worked as a team to peel away
judgment and assumption, she suspends her agenda of “health” and
I plug away to say how I feel even when I'm sure I oughtn't feel as I
do.
Does the arduous non-judgmental stance, if worked on by both participants, do any good? Well, I'm not happily married, my work life isn't exactly churning like a hydroelectric turbine, and I'm boiling with resentments, fears, and unfulfilled hopes. I don't meditate, volunteer, don't teach Pilates, or have an easy carry roll up yoga mat.
Besides an assortment of developments too subtle and haphazard to mention, I can say that the non-judgmental stance, produced one interesting effect. For a decade I worried that I was drinking too heavily. It affected my judgment, work habits, and produced the occasional scary blackout. The non-judgmental stance dismisses these drawbacks as piffle. When you're drinking Johnny Walker Red, the level of interesting conversation available with fascinating people can easily outweigh any moralistic ideas about “clean” and “sober” which are temperance words from Prohibition. We discussed, here and there, how alcohol can undue inhibition and allow observation and insight. If you're not a mean drunk, as I wasn't, it can help you meet new people. And what's so wrong with feeling more handsome, charming, and funnier than I really am? In short, we discussed my drinking as if it were a learning experience that contained a way to deepen and enliven experience. We discussed all the reasons to quit: and on close examination they were all moralistic – tied to an agenda of improvement along a narrow line of what counts as being a better person in our society.
In short there were interesting reasons to keep drinking heavily and only conformist moralistic ones arguing for quitting. Happening to think the idea of being “clean” is a disgusting Christian moralism, and sobriety is at best a 19th century concept – how in the world did I stop drinking almost eight years ago.
One of the issues that arose as a constant theme was the ambivalence and sometimes disgust when I found I wanted something. Just mere wanting could make me feel ill. Negative tapes would roll: you aren't smart enough, good enough, hard-working enough, you'll never measure up to actually merit getting it. These tapes are not easy to switch off, and it may be impossible to erase them. To hate that you want things – friends, love, a good job, time for inventive projects – is a real life impingement. It can be paralyzing. Over the years the act of wanting stayed problematic, but the certainty of un-entitlement waned. It occurred to me I could quit drinking – if I wanted to. I rejected any time commitment, any sense that the decision was or had to be a permanent one, that in fact it was the “right” decision. I made no promises to myself or others. I rejected the idea I'd be a better person if I stopped drinking – 'cleaner' in any sense, 'sober' in any sense.
What would you do if you were free? I can go back to drinking anytime I like – the moment I feel like it. Eight years later I still don't want to drink, but it is not an accomplishment of discipline or will, it's an accomplishment of being free to want what you want
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