okay, I'll share some of my story and my thoughts.....take the parts that help you and throw the rest out, ok buddy? like it says in the Big Book, "the way of the spirit is broad" (which you know is completely the opposite of the "narrow gate" idea we were hit with in the borg) and I have found that to be true. Reality is, though i think there are some very bad spiritual avenues (jw-ism springs to mind and others), there are many that are equally good and helpful, but you and only you can figure out what works for you.
To make a very long story relatively short....grew up christian in the deep south...which means you end up being half baptist whether you want to or not....lol....but my parents were not churchgoers....dad never went, mom just once in a while....methodist church....lutheran sometimes because it was closer.....but I learned to pray and always wanted to be close to God, do the right thing, all that....I enjoyed church/sunday school/vacation bible school, but it was all a now and then thing.....not much formal encouragement from mom and dad.....they had their own problems.
Okay then from 14 to 21 or so was a watchtower slave. Nuff said on that, i've posted that story under "another new guy from tx."
Left the borg, gradually came to let go all their doctrines.....for 10 years was basically agnostic at best.....no regular prayer or bible reading.....now and then would hit a rough patch in life for whatever and would pray then to God for help.....but very shy about getting involved in anything "religious" again.....went thru too much pain in the borg.....besides, it might be - horrors - false doctrine!! lol
Okay, so at great cost and poverty and pain and sacrifice i finally finished the education I should have been getting when I was deluded by the watchtower craziness.....got a real job....eventually started wishing I did have some kind of spiritual home again.....and omitting a long story here, started praying and reading christian stuff from time to time.....eventually felt very definitely led to the episcopal church, which was a good fit for several reasons not worth going into right now.
Get this....even then, 10 years after leaving the borg.....I was still all wound upside with some leftover jw ideas....more than I realized.....even though I knew the wt stuff was all wrong, still.....it does take a long while for all that to get out of your system, man.....when I joined the EC, i secretly thought, I need to write the church headquarters and tell them how to structure their bishops' visits better and improve the organization......jw style.......hahahahahahahaha.....thank god i never got around to writing that ridiculous letter.
Well okay so now I'm back to mainstream christian belief....really and sincerely.....and it felt good, and i got a lot of comfort from the sacraments, the majestic words of the liturgy, the beauty of the ritual and architecture, etc etc......and if you dont know, the EC and anglican churches in general are pretty broadminded, there's no regimentation and there's room for different points of view.....all very cool for an exjw. But....
I soon realized I wasn't making lots of new friends as I'd expected (they dont love bomb you in the EC.....not unless you belong to the same country club, lol).....and that's because I was not willing to tell everybody at church I was gay.....I was out to my mom and friends, yeah, but this was small town south, 1980s.....still not cool at all to be publicly out to the whole world.....besides i had a job to keep hold of.....so I wasnt willing to really let people get close enough to know who I was....naturally you dont make many close friends that way.....but I got okay with that, I'd go to church once a week, pay my respects to God, receive the sacrament, and keep my personal life separate.....do my personal prayers at home. A lonesome feeling, spiritually....but hey I was used to it.
Yeah, some people at church might have been okay with my being gay.....but you never know, and I had suffered so much on account of my sexuality in the borg, didn't want to go through that again.
So life goes on.....then 6,7 years later between one birthday and the next, my lifetime partner (supposedly) decides to move on to greener pastures....and then my mom unexpectedly died.....i had no family left at all, left completely alone in the world....was hurting real real bad.....I started drinking heavily and daily.....never had a drinking problem before.....soon I realized I could not stop.....scary but I was caught in the trap.
Year or two later I was driving to get beer one night.....i remembered a line from al anon I'd attended briefly years before....none of which made any sense to me then.....but I'm driving and praying, God I'm powerless over alcohol and my life has become unmanageable. Not expecting any particular response right then....just admitting the fact....so I get to the store and go in to pick up my beer....and the compulsion was gone....just gone.....didnt buy the beer that night.....which if youre not an alcoholic you cant understand, sounds insignificant.....but if you are one then you know.....that was a true miracle. No angelic visions, no voices in my ear....just the simple absence of that compulsion. Far as I'm concerned that was God....it certainly wasnt me because I wanted that darn beer! lol But I didn't need it......a miracle, plain and simple.
Next night though, prayer didnt work....but I felt hope that something could break the chain....so started going to AA meetings.....every day, every day....read all the AA books I could get my hands on.....seemed great at first....but....guess what, turned out I was still a screwup just like I had been as a jw.....never could get more than 90 days sober.....usually not more than 30 days.....even joined a gay AA group.....i was in a bigger town by this time....but the program just did not work for me long term....not sure why.....just didnt. Other folks were getting sober, or been sober for years and years....but not me.
Now let me say this. Theres a lot of real wisdom in those AA meetings, and a lot of great lessons in the Big Book and the 12 step book especially, stuff I think everybody ought to read and reflect on, alcoholic or not.
But....I did come to see that even AA is like the jdubs in a couple of respects....one, they or at least the hardliners so to speak, really believe they have the one and only way to 'salvation' and you will most certainly die if you dont stay with their program....and two, if you dont stick with the program and succeed they too will drop you like a hot potato. Understandable.....a recovering drunk doesnt need the temptation of being around somebody who's drinking.....but still, you do get 'shunned' so to speak.
I should mention after I left the borg I spent 17 years, off and on, going to counselors and therapists for depression....that didnt really work either. Just a natural born screw up all around, thats me I guess, lol. So I was disgusted with the idea of therapy, not interested in going through all that again with the drinking issue.....besides i knew......counselors would just tell me to go to AA, so what would be the point.
So this rocks on another 3-4 years, trying and failing, trying and failing. Finally i quit going to meetings....discouraged....ashamed. But I did start having monthly chats with a sympathetic priest from church. Mainly he'd just listen and empathize. Didn't help me stop drinking but was nice to confide in someone who didnt judge or hammer me, just listened. He did encourage me to at least try to attend the Eucharist once a week for six months to a year, and I did.
I know you've been waiting patiently for the great big technicolor Readers Digest happy ending to this drunkalogue.....but sorry man, this is real life, there isn't one.....just this: towards the end of this six months I finally met a guy online from another state....we clicked....visited back and forth......going good.....then had a little falling out....broke it all off.....didnt phone for a couple months....I was disappointed but not about to cave, you know how it goes....when i was happier the drinking problem had got a little better - not fixed, just not so bad....now it got bad, I mean real bad.....as in I'd drink two quarts of booze and a suitcase of beer in one weekend.....then be so sick I couldnt go to work on monday, and maybe not even on tuesday....I knew if this kept on I'd eventually lose my job....and with no family or friends to take me in.....no savings, nothing.....pretty soon i'd be one of those skanky guys living under a bridge....though I knew I'd kill myself before I ever got to that point, wouldnt want to live on the streets.
Yeah I was way scared....desperate....had tried everything, nothing worked....story of my life....but I could see I was going downhill fast....so one day I get down on my knees with a dining room chair.....I prayed with all my might, please God help me, help me now, make me like I was before this drinking problem started....I could always just take it or leave it.....thats what i prayed for.....not to quit drinking forever and always....like a good AA.....just to be like I used to be. Not that I hadnt already been praying all this long time too....I had....but it was, okay God its now or never, please help.
No dramatic response.....sorry.....I know theres supposed to be a knock on the door here....a telephone call.....a book falls open.....a vision of light.....nope, none of that. RD would never buy this story, lol.....too dull. But over the next day or two, a quiet, very tiny little thought....completely unexpected.....call C---.....the guy I had broke up with. A tiny little thought.....I didnt see the point of it....even if it was from God or whatever.....but I called....we reconnected.....fell in love.....before the year was out I packed up and moved out here to be with him.
And before another year was out, I realized I was indeed back to where I had been....I could drink or not drink normally.....buy a suitcase of beer, drink 3 or 4.....the rest might sit there six months before I drank another. And here is the significant point: this was without me trying to stop drinking. Totally not trying to not drink. Somehow it just happened. Wasnt praying every day for it, wasnt reading AA or bible stuff, my partner didnt ask or demand it (tho he was never a big drinker himself).....I really did not try to stop drinking....it just happened that way. I didn't do that....I couldn't....it happened to me....gradually....easily.....without my conscious effort. Really.
So you see my prayer was answered....I became like I had been before.....though it took a while for that to dawn on me. I dont' know how. It just did.
So does this story have a point, youre thinking? I don't know, you tell me. A psychologist or an atheist might say, well something happened in your subconscious mind to change the drinking thing, that's all it was.
But of course nobody can see or feel the subconscious.....just like nobody can see or feel God....so I'm not gonna get into that question. Both explanations, lacking concrete proof, are equally plausible, I guess.
And no, life hasn't been 'happy ever after' since then.....as it happens just five short years later, my darling C--- dropped dead one day of an unexpected heart attack. His homophobic family was real ugly.....took the house, everything they could lay hands on, had to pack my stuff in the truck and leave in the middle of the night....life goes on and its never been a bed of roses. But for right now I do have all I need to live a quiet, modest life with most of the everyday middle-class comforts....and now a new boyfriend here, maybe longterm, we'll see.....things could be so much worse and are for so many people all around the world....so I'm learning to just accept that life is what it is on any given day, and be grateful for all the good things I do have....not worry so much about what I dont.
I was a little afraid after my partner died, like oh no is the drinking problem going to come back? but it hasnt....still just take it or leave it, most of the time leave it.....rarely even get a buzz on....just not an issue, i'm happy to say.
Dont go to church anymore.....would like to sometimes, but....guess you know the Anglican Communion is all torn up with the gay thing these days.....local church is ultra conservative.....so I'm not going there. But I have my little short morning, night and mealtime prayers I say every day....and though i've finally gotten to the point of wondering if the bible and the early christians werent also another misguided cultlike operation....still.....there's just a very quiet feeling here in my heart that Somebody up there....call him/her/it what you will....not sure the name really matters.....Somebody really does love me....is looking out for me.....and has been all my life....and though bad things happen sometimes in this life, there is another bigger and better life to come. Meantime the most important thing here is to live an unselfish life.....which i try and fail miserably at, natch....look at my track record, lol....always the screwup......but at least I try in my little tiny ways. but somehow even that's okay.....i hope.
Heard a biker dude, real rough background, say one time in the AA rooms.....i know i'm on the right path when i feel clean inside, and good things happen.
That's all I can say. Make of it what you will. Find your own way.....ask and ye shall receive.
