The best drunks I ever knew

I’m a strange creature.  The people who impress me most are those who appear least impressive, but have been touched by the dust of eternity, people who most would assume as not worth listening to, but whom possibly God MOST esteems.

Those who have most impressed me in this life—those who’ve had some kind of ‘x’ factor—are those who quietly contain a wisdom that’s hidden until, like dainty flakes of gold, they’re seen shimmering as the flickering of light into a deep shaft reveals them.

These people can be summed up as drunks, or former drunks, but drunks all the same, because, while they transcended where they’d come from, they never forgot where they’d come from.

There’s something glorious about a person who’s been to the depths but has then emerged, able somehow to grasp a life beyond it.

It’s like Mick.  He was a big lad, with a big voice, but only when he used it.  He preferred to listen, having coached men in the ‘steps’ for a decade and more.  We sat at a park bench one chilly June night in 2004 and he was a life saver—a drunk and a life saver.

Or, like Charlie.  This man singlehandedly showed me how to deal with my anxious mind.  “How important is it, Steve?” he was frequently heard to say.  I’d come to an AA meeting all strung up with my upsetting concerns and he would sort me out in minutes.  A drunk without drink for seven years I think at that time—a man who had taken the AA program seriously.

Mark was different to Mick and Charlie.  He was abrasive, but not for selfish reasons.  You had to earn your way in.  Tall and angular, once I invested time with Mark, I found him to be one of the best drunks you could find—sober for 15 years.

Many of the best drunks I’ve known have dealt with trauma and grief that many ‘normal’ people cannot imagine, unless those ‘normal’ people are counted among the number of drunks who are still finding life impossible to manage.

Drinking problems, like drug problems, and every other problem that’s a problem, are genuinely problematic when life’s become unmanageable.

Thankfully, the best drunks I’ve known came to a place where they had to put down the drink and admit their lives had become unmanageable, and that they needed a ‘higher power’ to recover.

There’s nothing wrong with the drink if you don’t have a problem.  But as soon as a problem develops, watch out for that time when life begins to become unmanageable.  Then you might qualify to become of the best drunks ever—one who overcomes.

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

A good mate died today

Trouble is I’d only seen him about four times in the last ten years.  But in the 1980s and 1990s we spent a lot of time together, both as mates with another dear friend, and as fathers with times with our families.

And there he is, gone.

No matter how I play it, I can’t understand that he’s gone.

In the 1980s, we built cars, nice cars, back in the day, loved to drive them, and we loved to have a drink.  There was always so much laughter, and sometimes at our own expense.  We did some crazy stuff, as young people are inclined to do.  It gives me a sense of pride and joy now to think of the humour I provided my dear friend in goofing off—often very unintentionally.  “You’re a laugh a minute, Wicky” he’d say... we did a lot of things together, even golf!

In the 1990s, BBQs were the theme.  Family get-togethers, fun, food (seafood—he was a fisherman), music, even the odd drink.  We still had laughs and reminisced about what we got up to in the 1980s—including that infamous never-ending 4-kilometre drive at Millstream!  You had to be there.

Then my life fell apart.  I didn’t see it coming, and when my world turned upside down, much of what was my old life disappeared to make way for what would simply keep me alive—spirituality.  (It’s so sad now to recognise that there were many years in the past nearly 20 where we didn’t hang out.)

Skip forward to 2019, June 29.  The three of us catch up for a pub lunch.  I was sure it was 2020, but no, as I check the diary, what feels like it was last year was actually two years ago.  He looked the picture of health... no sign of the cancer that took him.

I still don’t know how to feel, not least for his family.  I can’t imagine their grief, even though my life, like yours probably too, has been touched by grief.

Grief is a most intangible thing.  When does it start in these circumstances and when does it end?  Loss by its definition is beyond resolution.  And even though he’s a friend from long ago, it’s not my loss anything like it’s his family’s.  My heart yearns that they’d be comforted.  

My friend will be sorely missed in the rest of my life. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Strength that flows out of sadness, bringing peace to anger and calm to fear

“It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.” 
— Fred Rogers

I see Fred Rogers as a paragon for peacemaking because he always strived to help people to respond to their emotions in ways that would neither hurt themselves or others, and peacemaking is exactly that — not attacking others or escaping from ourselves.

But there is a poignant truth upheld in the quote at top.

There is a reason why anger is such a big problem in our world and in our lives.  We resist feeling.  We avoid going to the very place peace would come in.  We’re fearful it would swamp us, or that we’d be called a sissy or that we’d feel that way.

Maybe we don’t have the faith that we could do it.  Perhaps we don’t want to feel weak.  Little do we realise that that’s where the strength is.

Never ever do we outgrow the need for nurture.  Even as a 230lb man, well into his 50s, I need nurture at times every month, and probably weekly.  Sometimes there are entire seasons when I’m down on confidence for some reason unknown to me, or where I’m staving off irritability or anger and don’t know why.

Yet, sadness and fear are inevitably at the core of it.  Grief from change, from loss, from things I find hard to accept.  Just existing is hard, let alone all the curve balls that come at us.

Going into my fear and into my sadness I’ve learned are not hard; they just involve awareness, then action.  To be vulnerable brings relief.  To reach out is a pressure relieving valve.  To pour our prayers and tears to God is healing, if not in the moment, tears of an evening are joy in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

So you can see that there is faith in tears, because as we weep in a figurative evening, it’s only a matter of time before the metaphorical morning arrives.

If there’s one life skill we all need, it’s this: to capitulate when our soul screams out for nurture; to know when to fold; to act in the moment of weakness by honouring it, which brings forth the fruit of the truth, that “when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

It’s right to hate sin, but what is sin?

“Sin is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.”
—Shūsaku Endō, Silence

A lot’s changed for me in the past 12 months.  This time last year I had no desire to go back into my previous career, health and safety.  The fact that I’d applied for several roles was a leap of faith.  I didn’t want to ‘give up’ on the dream of full time pastoral ministry—a journey I’d grieved once it vanished in 2016.

Nowadays my work life is incredibly full and fulfilling, working in fire and emergency services, serving as I would as a pastor, though they see a health and safety professional.

I’m no longer working in the Christian environment, apart from my one-day-a-week role as associate pastor at my local church, which in all fairness is easily two-days-per-week.

No longer working in a Christian environment means I’ve pulled back on writing about God, because, let’s face it, I’ve got a lot of new friends who I’m focused hard on.  I want to find middle ground, so I’m focused on writing mental health.

But then I read this quote that Chuck DeGroat tweeted.  Instantly I thought nobody likes this idea of someone walking brutally over another, and completely ignoring the effect of that trauma.

When anyone imagines this scenario, immediately we think, “crime.”

It’s criminal to walk brutally over someone, but there might be recourse to forgiveness if only there’s acknowledgement, apology, making it right.

What makes the idea of someone walking brutally over someone else especially criminal is when they’re oblivious and don’t care.

We all owe a duty to our neighbour.  To treat them much the way we’d have them treat us.  Anything less than this is sin.  Might not be a great word for a non-Christian, but that’s what it is—a failure to do one’s duty of reasonable regard toward another, which means all others.

Fail our duty of care and we deserve the consequences.  Nobody has a problem with that concept.  It’s not the wrong that’s done that’s the game changer—it’s the idea that “I can sin [i.e., violate someone] and get away with it.”  This is not to be simply ‘forgiven’.  The law is designed to moderate society based on what is an ethical principle—that has always seemed to exist over the breadth of secular life.   Why? Because trauma hurts and it destroys lives.

Whether you’re Christian or not, one thing we agree on is it’s not good to violate people.

The real wounds to people are often not the initial hurt, but the compounding of hurt when the person won’t own up or be held to account.  This is the real wrong.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

You can’t shame away your pain

Guilt and shame have their momentary purpose when we’re in the wrong, but besides that, these are troublesome emotions that paradoxically ought never be judged but ordinarily are—hence the problem.

Our relationship with guilt and shame is usually very problematic.  In knowing how inappropriate they are, we shun them, but in inappropriate ways—shaming ourselves for signs of our guilt and shame, when instead, compassion ought to be extended.

This is a tricky exercise, especially when we’re not in touch with our self-talk.

Shame and guilt, the inner critic, judgmental thinking, projection, dissociation, addiction—all these and more are signs of the presence of pain that’s being masked.

You can’t shame away your pain.  This means we cannot deal with our pain by shaming ourselves, just as nobody will ever be a help to you if they’re shaming you.

The way we deal with pain is via touching it with compassion—being observational and curious with yourself with no hint of consternation.

We all carry the baggage of past pain in our experience.  We carry it with us.

Whenever we experience guilt or shame, we hide our pain.  It’s just good to know.  Put another way, you do nothing to heal your pain by shaming yourself.  Others also are no help to you if they shame you.

You can’t shame away your pain.  Only compassion deals with the kind of pain shame promotes.

If you want to heal the pain you carry, which you can see underlies your shame and guilt, and you don’t want to do counselling, catch yourself judging yourself and others.

Judging it a sure-fire clue to shame, and where shame flourishes, pain is denied.

When it comes to yourself and other people, judging less reveals more healing in the heart, i.e., less pain.

Catch yourself judging yourself or others, and without judging yourself because you’re judging, simply notice it with a smile.  It’s learning.  And when we notice the presence of guilt or shame or projection or dissociation etc, before you start to judge yourself, extend to yourself the hand of simply being without thought as much as possible, and as much as possible simple observation—without casting aspersions.

Try this out and see if you experience more peace and more freedom as a result.

You can’t shame away your pain, so try and identify when you do it—not if, because we’re all doing it.  Only compassion deals with the kind of pain shame promotes.

Photo by Ales Maze on Unsplash

Facing the Truths of Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Universal realities are in the field of the living, and loss is the bane of us all.  At least that’s how it feels. When you’ve plummeted into the realm of trauma, and you face a reality seven hundred times the worst stench of hell, you’re forgiven for hating the very notion of life.

But what if I said that at the end is the beginning—that heaven’s opportunity resides in the first step that is deconstruction.  “Deconstruction of what?” I hear you say.

Deconstruction of the SELF.  When I lost just about everything in September 2003, everything barring limited time with my precious daughters, I faced a time where I lost just about every hope, and I had little control over every facet of my own life.  Since then, there have been other times like it, but nothing quite as stark as that period.

Any of us and all of us, when we face that time of catastrophe, enter a time of deconstruction of the self that feels cavernously worse than we could’ve previously conceived.  We’re tempted to think, “Well, if this is the end, I might as well end it all,” and many of us have contemplated such an end.

When you’re in the place of a hell that feels disconcertingly like it will never end, you’ve got the opportunity of facing and responding.  I’d argue that in debilitating and soul scourging depression and fierce lashes of anxiety that affront us in grief and loss, we cannot help but face the dark night of the soul that has visited us.

And yet, every single one of us has been tempted to dissociate—to look away from our pain.  To ‘drug’ it away.  It makes sense to cite Dr Gabor Maté here:

“Your depression was a major success... addiction is a solution.”
— Dr. Gabor Maté

As you read these words, did your mind think, “What?!”  Just what is the Hungarian/Canadian physician saying?

Depression is that place where the defences are down, and it is therefore a gateway to the pain we perhaps have never before seen—that trauma we’ve never acknowledged or recognised was ALREADY part of us.   In such a place, addiction is a solution.  It provides short-term comfort and the ability to turn away from the cutting edges of anguish.

But we know that addiction only exacerbates the pain, longer term.

Facing the truth of DECONSTRUCTION means going inward into the rawness of the pain knowing that if you’re already broken by FACING, you won’t break any more, and you’ll process and head ultimately into the opposite outward reality—facing the truth of RECONSTRUCTION.

Reconstruction is the reality of coming closer to the authentic person you’ve always wanted to be—the REAL you.  But you can’t get there unless you’re prepared to go back, have the inauthenticity taken off (the purpose of deconstruction), to be reconstructed in what you’ve learned.

That’s the purpose in suffering.  And if you’re suffering and you can’t change your reality, you’ll take what you can get—especially if it’s the hope of becoming something you’ve always wanted to be.

Deconstruction is a great learning curve.  It feels worse than death—a living hell—but every form of hell in deconstruction suits the purpose of moving through and beyond it.

Somehow—from the vantage point in deconstruction—you’ve got nothing more to lose and all else is gain.  You face a revenant experience.  Out of death comes life.

THIS is what deconstruction is, using biblical JOB as prooftext: it’s suffering that has nothing to say, that sits and faces the awful reality, in faith that simply FACING will prove the way through it.  Of course, having empathetic friends and mentors makes it easier; something Job didn’t have.  Sackcloth and ashes, a rich Old Testament tradition in lament.

In deconstruction, you don’t have the answer.  Yet, in being still in that reality is the ability to process. Acceptance can only be reached when we try it on in deconstruction.  In FACING this awful reality, in resisting the temptation to turn away and dissociate, we see what’s truly INSIDE us, and that’s the CAPACITY to bear such a burden!

Seeing yourself demonstrate courage in bearing the pain through facing means something infinitely deeper when you know the Presence and Spirit of God is with you—the God of the universe testifying to your courage.

In the very moment—and it can be a SINGLE moment of realisation—you face your pain courageously, sitting still in it, weeping authentic tears, you realise you can do it—be truly real in such a raw state of deconstruction—where there is nothing left to separate you from your authentic self.

Deconstruction is the pathway to authenticity.  It only comes when strength is gone.  Yet, there is accessed a strength we never thought we had access to—in this, the seeming end of all things.

Facing the truth of your deconstruction then tends to be a season of life.  Nobody is ever released from their pain immediately.  Life doesn’t work in instantaneous change.  To learn anything about deconstruction, you must be immersed in it for a relatively long time.  But early on there’s confidence that you know what to do.  So you just keep doing it—showing up, day after day, suffering, lamenting, in faith for something better, courageously.

Most encouragingly, reconstruction begins to occur somewhere in the deconstruction phase, almost as much as a reward for simply having the courage to go into deconstruction.

Facing the truth of deconstruction proves courage.  Courage enough to go into the hell of the nothingness of self is the golden key that unlocks one’s authenticity.

Authenticity is the gold of reconstruction.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash