Sunday, January 25, 2009

Life on Mars...

I mistakenly read the other day that they had found microbes on Mars -- a source for the methane in the atmosphere.  It was just an overzealous reporter muddling the words in the report.  I was elated for a moment there, though.  Life on an alien world would challenge many conventions and beliefs held here on earth.  The holy grail of evolution.  Would they have DNA and RNA?  Would they be carbon based or silicon?  It opened up so many questions.

I went to my first AA meeting in weeks last night.  My sponsor had grown very insistent.  The floor was opened up for people to generally just share about what ails them.  It came my turn to talk.  We went around the room as it was a shy group.

"I am struggling with my use of prescription drugs and whether it is harming my sobriety," I blurted out at my turn. "I have become dependent on certain pills to make it through the day."

Nobody said anything about it in the meeting except to, "keep coming back and it works if you work it."

My sponsor talked to me afterwards about when he was first getting sober they didn't have such pills and had persevere on through.

"But I have a mental illness!" I interjected.

"You've used that before to explain your drinking as if your mental illness would be worse without the beer," he told me.

He was right and he knows me well.  I am still not ready to give up the Klonopin, but have gladly given up the Benedryl.  I am at a crossroads.  It feels good to actually have a choice, though.  I never had a choice when drinking I like to lament.  It was beer or misery, or so I thought.   I have a choice to stay sober today and i am.  

3 comments:

Kathy said...

Wow! What a milestone for you, Andrew. Your sponsor seems wise. Keep on going to those meetings.

CJM-R said...

Sounds like an A-HA moment for you, Andrew. Glad you went to the meeting. Your sponsor knows you and cares about you, how great is that?

Keep up the hard work.

(M)ary said...

i read a book from the library called The Feathered Onion which talks about what is life and when did it begin. one of the things i learned is that we have a narrow definition of life. in the book the author talks about the chemistry of life and he says if we looked for the building blocks of life then we might find "life" on mars.