First Class

For my flights on Monday and Tuesday, I got upgraded to First Class on all four flights. Tonight, I called Delta and asked to be moved back to Economy. I also asked them to change my profile so I wouldn’t receive any more free upgrades in the future (I fly enough I receive a free upgrade almost every time). First Class is nice, but alcohol is free and most people drink on the plane. I once drank an entire bottle of wine on the plane before an International flight. It’s true you can still buy booze in coach, but the booziness of First Class is just not a good place for me. I’ve done something similar with Hilton. I travel enough, my Hilton profile included an option for a complimentary bottle of wine. Now (after some effort) my Hilton profile says to take everything out of the mini-bar before I arrive. Neither of these are huge sacrifices, but they’re just some of the odd steps you take as a recovering alcoholic.

Ghosts

I see ghosts everywhere. They’re always lurking in shadows and around corners waiting to surprise and horrify me. For me, those ghosts are from all the bad things I did drinking. My ghosts aren’t in scary old houses, they’re all around me. My ghosts are in the Yaris, the car I drive drunk for hours. They’re at South Cove Park where I had my last relapse, in my bedroom where I got drunk many times, the Thornton’s where I stopped when I was driving drunk with Kurt in the car, my blue shirt I wore the night I blacked out in Chicago, and so much more. I hate these ghosts but they have a purpose. That purpose is to remind me of how awful it was when I was drinking, just to make sure I never forget.

Thinking about things backwards.....

I have to give credit to Kris for this thought, but I'm happy to steal it! In regard to me and the eternal bugaboo of potential relapses, people tend to think of everything backwards. I find everyone is worried if I have stress, get depressed, have a bad day, get angry, stub my toe, or don't like my lunch that I might relapse. In fact, I never drank because something bad happened to me. I know that was the reason I gave at the time (e.g. I was sad about going to the dog house, I had to do the taxes, I was depressed, etc...), but I've grown to understand myself much better. I didn't drink because something bad happened to me. I drank because I was emotionally and mentally compromised and ill equipped to cope with the bad things that happened to me. Consider this---- much worse things have happened to people than I ever experienced, yet some of those people didn't drink. The reasons I did were medical, mental and emotional, but one of the big factors was that I was so messed up inside I couldn't deal with even minor bits of adversity. In short, please don't worry about me so much if some small thing goes wrong- that was never the cause of the problem. It is much more important to focus on my big picture mental and physical health and well-being.

The Road to Hell

Lion Rock has us share our homework assignments with the rest of our group. Last night, a guy named Ben read his life story. He’s had a lot of trouble, but the thing that hit me the hardest was that he used alcohol and nitrous oxide to the point that he couldn’t walk on his own or speak. The Doctors told his family that he may never speak normally again. Thank God he’s OK now, but his experience is a hard reminder of how horrible drug and alcohol addiction can be.

Cognitive Distortions

My Phase 2 Lion Rock homework is actually one big assignment. I'll post my progress on the assignment, a key idea is Cognitive Distortions. This is the description from Lion Rock: Our head can be a dangerous place, we often have patterns of self defeating thought that lead us to bad feelings and subsequently bad decisions. Remember, thoughts lead to feeling, feelings lead to urges and urges lead to actions. If we can learn to identify when a thought is distorted, we can correct it or redirect it in such a way that the bad feelings and actions are minimized. If we can teach ourselves to recognize a thought as a cognitive distortion we are more likely to be able to change our thoughts, moods, and behaviors. Here is a list of the 10 most common Cognitive Distortions. Take a look and see if any of them are getting in your way. Try and give personal examples of when you have experienced each one. All-or-nothing thinking: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. Overgeneralization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. Mental filter: You pick our a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors an entire beaker of water. Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they "don't count" for some reason. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. Jumping to conclusions: You make a negative interpretations even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don't bother to check it out. The Fortune Teller error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an established fact. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny. Emotional reasoning: You assume your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are. "I felt it, therefore it must be true" Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with should and shouldn'ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser". When someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attached a negative label to him. Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored or emotionally loaded. Personlization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.

Obituary

My final assignment in Phase 1 for the Lion Rock Program is to write two obituaries, one for me if I didn't quit drinking and another one for me in recovery. The assignment was a little weird, because obituaries about people who die badly don't really say much, they're very succinct and kind of creepy in their brevity. So.... I wrote the obituary as well as an accompanying newspaper article, then my "good" obituary, which is a little boring (because obituaries for people that led good lives do tend to be pretty boring. Obituary 1 Daniel Grossman, age 53, passed away in the early morning hours of August 26, 2019. Daniel struggled with alcoholism and his family hopes that he has now found peace. Surviving are his parents (Gary and Marilynn Grossman), his wife (Kristine), 3 daughters (Kaitlin Biem, Courtney Jones, and Kelsey Grossman) and a son (Kurt). No memorial service will be held. Preferred memorials in the form of cash donations are requested for the Smith Family College Fund. Lexington Journal and Courier London, Kentucky- At approximately 7 AM this morning a red 2016 Toyota Yaris driven by Daniel Grossman, age 53, Independence, Kentucky, crossed the center line of I-75 just south of London, Kentucky. After crossing the median, Mr. Grossman’s Yaris struck a 2011 Ford Focus driven by Mr. Robert Smith, 37, London. Mr. Smith died immediately at the scene. Mr. Grossman was airlifted to Lexington General Hospital but succumbed to his injuries. According to toxicology tests conducted at the hospital, Mr. Grossman’s Blood Alcohol Content was three times the legal limit. Obituary 2 Daniel Grossman, age (something old) died in his sleep (some date in the future). Daniel was a loving family man, who coached many youth sports teams and volunteered at several local charities. Surviving Daniel are his wife (Kristine), three daughters (Kaitlin Biem, Courtney Jones, and Kelsey Whatever) and one son (Kurt), 9 Grandchildren and 3 Great-grandchildren. Memorial Services will be held (sometime soon), with preferred memorials to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Step 6

Having finally completed Step 5, I need to start on the next sequence of AA Steps. The ones I have completed are: 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable, 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, 3. Made a decision to turn our will an our lives over to the care of God, 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and 5. Admitted to God, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. The next sequence for me begins with #6: 6. We entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, 7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings, 8. Made a list of all persons we have harmed, 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. I feel pretty good about Step 6 already, but I've learned to spend a few days praying on it first. I'm very happy to have Steps 1-5 behind me. Completing those Steps was one of the most difficult things I've had to do.