K Chasu: Almost a burning effigy
I love sleeping pills. Yet I can’t seem to do them with any degree of grace. Last night, for instance, I nearly set the entire house on fire.
Once in while I take these incredible little blue pills called Dormicum. I get them from my dealer-doctor in 15mg form. I am a chronic insomniac and generally get by on about four hours a night. But if my head is busy it gets to the point where I am doing two hours and that just isn’t viable. I am then a more cantankerous cow than usual and everybody hates me. I can see them plotting murder…
The dose is one tablet at night. When I started taking them dealer-doctor told me to make sure everything was locked up and I was in bed before taking it. He was right. Anyway, in typical alcoholic style, last night I took two. This is on the premise that I am special and need more. I do this with every medicine. I am working on stopping that. I know it is deeply bad thinking.
So there I was reading Roald Dahl’s Uncle Oswald, artist snoring so I sneaked a cigarette in bed. I woke up this morning, with scorch marks in the egyptian cotton sheets, a cigarette butt ground into my shoulder and an irritated artist. Not terribly dignified or graceful…
Blogbuddies – I could have died. I could have gone up in a small inferno in the middle of the night…
And it doesn’t end there. Earlier in the evening I took a long soak in the girls bathroom. They have the best bath. It is HUGE. Built like they used to in the 30s. We have to use candles because the room is still being worked on and the light fittings have been removed. I put the candles on top of the loo (was concerned about setting hair on fire if they were next to the bath) just under the little built in wooden medicine cabinet (also from the 30s). I elected not to blow them out cos they looked so pretty.
Little wooden medicine cabinet is now scorched. Paint blistering off.
So, is the problem KC and fire or KC and sleeping pills?
An agnostic alcoholic catholic….
I get quite a bit of flak for this Catholic thing. So I thought I would have a stab at explaining why it is not at conflict with me based on the way Alcoholics Anonymous works, and has been working for me for more than four years. AA is not allied with any religion, sect or denomination. It is based on spiritual principles. It always intrigues me that people can be so judgmental over a Church and teachings I get blah bah, sin in the week and confess on Sunday blah blah- hypocrites blah blah- People are the problem not the church. Which is why all churches are designed around forgiveness. Forgiveness has been integral to my recovery from alcoholism. I take nothing from the church that I cannot reconcile to what I have learned and experienced in AA. By the way, there are people who come to AA and after a while get judgmental about how there are people who are not perfect- We are a bunch of ex-drunks, how perfect can we be expected to be? So how is it that the Catholic Church could teach stuff in line with something that saves a bunch of drunks?
The twelve steps of AA are designed with one purpose in mind: they lead you to a spiritual awakening. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s a tried and tested formula. These are not easy steps. When you are a fucked up drunk, this process is quite damn hard.
Here are the twelve steps within my own context:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable. (so this was my life. Unmanageable. Emotionally anyway)
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. ( it took no great wisdom to accept that I could not get sober on my own, or even control my drinking. So, to start with my higher power was the fellowship of AA itself)
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (my understanding of God was limited at this time. God and higher power are easily substituted, so I just did what the group told me. AA works for all people, whether agnostic, atheist, hindu, jewish, muslim we do not proscribe any particular God.)
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. (I did this. It’s very similar to preparing for confession. It’s a list of resentments, which are then examined and the root cause found. For me the root cause was fear of some sort)
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. (tada confession in a nutshell. I didn’t do the first step five with a priest. I did it with another AA member. Those things left me as a result of confessing them. As in GONE. Another person had kept on liking me despite my shit. The burden of this stuff was gone. I laugh when people get all twitchy about the priest being able to see them. I don’t care. The freedom experienced when you do confess your defects/sins whatever is so freeing I could tell anyone and experience the same thing)
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. (this stuff hurt me. I needed to ‘go forth and sin no more’. By the time I reached this step first time round, I had some vague and nebulous understanding of God as an imaginary friend. I don’t see this as being problematic. The Catholic teaching of sin is just another way for me to see the defects. However, if I use the word sin in an AA meeting I will be in trouble. We use the word ‘defects’)
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. (easy huh? When you can see the stuff that hurts you, why not ask God to take it away? I find that if I don’t ask God, I get worse, not better. Will power fails me.)
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. (this is difficult. I needed help. I had a lot of ex-lovers listed but my sponsor told me that my behavior towards them was done with their full knowledge we were consenting adults.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. (this is a daily practice. A look over my day- what did I do that was not pleasant. Where was my selfishness or defects of character running rampant? Thank God for cellphones. I make a lot of last minute apologies via sms. It’s not so bad anymore, but I need to do the step every single day)
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. (this means different things for different people. I know some folk who don’t pray, they only meditate. Me, I am a prayer. I like praying. My meditation takes the form of reading spiritual books like AA’s daily reflections or something.)
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (this is service. Vital in life.)
The key word in step 11 is SOUGHT. I am an agnostic. But if I am not seeking then I am being an idle bugger. Then I am waiting for God to step in and say ‘hello Miss Chasu, God here.’ What are the chances? I have to seek. I see no other purpose really.
One New Catholic: Me.
Bar a few swearwords and impure thoughts, I am currently sinless. There is not much chance of this state remaining. But having been covered in holy oil and almost drowned by my priest last night, I am feeling pretty squeaky clean. Spiritually.
It was great, actually, lots of candles lit and burning of palm leaves- then we all filed into the lemon squeezer for the real ceremony. It was long, and I wanted a cigarette. My friends and family came along. About 14 of us were due for confirmation and only three for baptism. I still smell of incense.
Baptism was easy- lots of saying ‘I Do’ to the creed and then a promise that I believe in the Church and that everything it teaches, professes and proclaims to be given from God. Which I do. I may have core faith issues around Jesus and the Bible but boy, I love that Catholic church.
The priests all looked so pretty in their sparkly celebration outfits. I swear he wet me more than anyone else. They don’t do full body submersion with adults. Too much like a wet T-shirt contest. Not entirely fitting for the Holy Roman Church.
Confirmation was a bit more trying. I had to kneel down around the altar on marble, my knees hurt like blazes. But, weirdly, once the priest was talking, I lost focus on the physical discomfort.
I got to light a candle off the Easter candle. My candle had the words Courage and Right-Judgment on it. I could do with more of that, so it seemed appropriate.
So, there I am kneeling down and the priest is confirming all of us- my candle in my hands. I nearly set his robes on fire. Well, I would have if he hadn’t forcefully made me move the candle.
Anyway, humour aside, here I am. A largely sin-free catholic girl. Woman. Whatever. And it feels pretty good.
I have never ever in my life wanted to belong to anything. I never have belonged to anything, other than AA and my scuba club. I am a firm subscriber to Groucho Marx’s view on any club that would have him as a member. So, this is a first and it’s very interesting.
Are you an alcoholic?
Alcoholism is a disease of self-diagnosis, unless your liver explodes and a doctor ends up having stern words with you. So, part of this self-diagnosis is the 20 questions of Alcoholics Anonymous. When I was about 19, my mother presented me with these questions. I was deeply offended and outraged. Nevertheless, if I was absolutely honest, I answered yes to about four of them. By the end of my drinking it was about 14 yes responses. The tricky part of this is that if you answer three questions in the affirmative, there is a high chance you are one.
Here is the link: http://www.soberplace.com/20questions/
Again, it is about self-diagnosis.
Tip – only alcoholics have black outs. These are not the same as passing out. A black out is a patch of time that is simply gone. You know you were around because you wake up in your own bed (hopefully) and the car is in the driveway. Or your friends call you and say something like “fuck – do you know you puked on that woman’s dog?” and you have zero recollection. I had black outs pretty much from the beginning of my drinking. The memories never come back. Thank God! There are some things I just don’t want to know.
Anyway, have a look if you think you have a problem. Even if you don’t think you might have a booze problem, it can be enlightening.
