Recovery

You can’t dance in public in Iran (Insta). A woman dances for a video recording and the police pull up.

I sat down to meditate at 5 AM, and fire trucks and lots of sirens were going off. They eventually turned them off and then they left. In NYC there are lots of sirens reminding you how fragile life is.

I get a second hour sit at 7:15 AM with my Iranian friends. Today Shams, his battery went out, but we chatted a bit and he thinks Trump is going to win. He's pessimistic about politics. I think Trump is going to lose in a landslide. I hope anyway. 

All names are changed to protect anonymity. 

Sepehr ended up talking to me after the meditation, and he discussed his struggles quitting using marijuana. Amir has talked about his struggles with quitting marijuana. I looked up MA, and found a daily reflections book. I mostly did AA, but I'm going to have to learn a bit about MA. 

I have a Buddhist recovery blog, that I don't write in much because they advertise and I don't get any of the money.

Most people hide recovery because there's so much judgement and shame around it. Lying and hiding helps keep addiction the way it is. 

My story is that I grew up in Wisconsin, which might be the most alcoholic state in the union (recent evidence). If you look at graphic representations of alcoholism in America, Wisconsin stands out as being a problem area, the whole state. 

Someone used to put a keg in the middle of a field, and you'd buy a red cup for $5, and try to drink as much as you could until the police came.

The drinking age was 18 but just before I turned 18, they jacked it up to 19. 

I started going to a bar when I was 16. I didn't get carded there until I was 19, which is funny. There were other bars that were notorious for not carding. Then there was getting friends to buy you booze, or places that let underage people buy booze. 

It wasn't hard, but it was also an adventure. 

The adventure ends when you're legal, but there's still an air of adventure. I would drink on weekends. That's called binge drinking. It wasn't until much later that I began to drink every day. So many years down the road, in my late 40's my girlfriend asks me to quit. 

I was working in child welfare, and I would ask some fathers to quit drinking for the family, and they never would. So when my girlfriend asked me to quit, I had to go into recovery. That was 2015, 9 years ago. 

I got almost a year, and then I went California sober, I smoked weed, and that became a problem. I have struggled with relapse for about 8 years. I have some time now, and my last lapse was only a puff. I really cut down quite a lot, despite relapses, and I've been fairly sober for about a year, but strict time, including a puff, I have 3 months. 

My higher power is the three jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. 

I wrote a book about applying the Christian 12 steps to Buddhism. I've read lots of recovery books. I even used to counsel people before I went into recovery. So I'm quite happy to support Sepehr and Amir who are in the contemplation stage of recovery, wanting to quit, but not really fully committed to quitting.

I feel like I'm going to keep sober the rest of my life, but I do want to try a Greek retsina because I read it taste most like the ancient wine they discovered in Iran. I had some beers at my cousin's wedding, until my mother said, "So you're not an alcoholic any more?" I didn't really enjoy that wedding the way I enjoyed the party the night before. Thing is you can drink a little and it's OK. But then a few years later you're back to the bad place, all the time, it's a slow progression with someone like me. I can control it for quite a while. I just don't want to try that game any more, I really seek sobriety. 

I don't want this to be a recovery blog, but recovery and addiction is an issue with these young Iranians I'm friends with. 

I'm not sure how openly you can talk about these things in Iran so of course I've changed all the names. 

In friendship you meet people where they are.