to my mind, are the times to go to work, fight it out with yourself, answer yourself back. Say to yourself: “All right. Perhaps I never will do anything spectacular. Maybe I’m not any ball of fire, never was, never will be. Suppose I have to plod along in the middle of the road just like the vast majority of human beings—scoring a small success here, a small setback there, never getting very far ahead, trying not to get too far behind.’’
If we face these thoughts honestly and without shame, we have done something. We have turned our depression into an adjustment that is a necessary one for most of us. It is quite probable that our lives will be spectacular only in that they are so much better than they were during our drinking years. We will be important only to ourselves and the few who are close to us. If we stay sober, and we know that we must, we can say these things to ourselves and go on from there.
To us as active alcoholics, the word “mediocrity” meant all the dull, boring aspects of life that we were trying to escape. If we couldn’t be tops, we didn’t want to play at all. Well, most of us—not all of us by any means,but most of us—are pretty run-of-the-mill individuals. We can do a job as well as the next fellow, but perhaps not any better. We can make as much money if we work as hard as he does, and if we can stop this frantic drive to prove that we are remarkable people, it is quite likely that we will settle down and really enjoy whatever life has to offer us. And it offers a great deal now that we are sober and can appreciate it.
There is one job that we can do superlatively well, and there isn’t anything that can keep us from doing it if we are serious in wanting to. That is the job we do on ourselves, inside ourselves. It means clearing out a whole mess of false values, unrealistic ambitions, and worn-out resentments, and putting in their place the qualities we want to have—kindness, tolerance, friendliness, for instance. We can begin to see what the real values of life are, and they are very different from the hazy, distorted dreams we had of becoming famous overnight.
If we can really talk to ourselves in this manner during our depression, we have made use of it. Instead of letting it submerge us and perhaps drive us into a slip, we have used it as a stepping-stone toward a better understanding of what our sober lives can hold for us.
In our happier moods, we will still daydream, and I wouldn’t want to stop. But they will be constructive dreams, rather than mere flights of fancy, and if we keep them within the bounds of possibility, we will have a good chance of making them come true.
M.N., New York, N.Y.
Just Keep On Going
April 1976
I’ve had a lot of depressions during my sobriety. Many have lasted for six months, some for a year, or two or three years. I have stuck to the AA program, also to friends in AA, and this has saved my life. I’ve tried everything from psychiatry to special diets and megavitamin therapy. Nothing has worked except putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going.
I believe in a Higher Power, and I believe that my Higher Power, if I really turn over my depression, will free me. I am working on this now, because I am beginning to come out of a depression. I am becoming able to change those things I can while accepting the things I can’t change, at least for the time being.
I was overwhelmed by money problems, by the death during the last few years of six dear friends, and by a life situation that looked totally unmanageable. But I didn’t reach for the bottle; I didn’t hit a psychiatric ward; I didn’t jump off anything higher than a horse or a New England stone wall; nor did I swallow anything more detrimental to my health than caffeine, tannin, or chocolate sauce.
I know from past experience that sitting around and brooding is the worst thing to do. Trying to figure it all out in my head brings on waves of fear, anxiety, and self-reproach. So I say, “What can I do today for myself and others?’’ I always write out a list of things, check them off as they get done, and carry those I don’t get done over to the next day. When bleak thoughts come up, I remember that I have already turned them over. They mostly have to do with the past and the future. What I can do now is what counts.
I also try to laugh at my own state of woe. I find something funny to say about my attitude. And laughter is great; even if it’s forced at first, by and by, you can really laugh.
I am grateful for a lot of things: the long stretches of good life that I have had; the pleasures of the outdoors with young members of my family. We love each other; we are good friends. Because I have leveled with them about my past drinking, they’ve been able to unburden themselves about their own problems. This has closed the generation gap, and we are able to talk about everything and anything.
As a writer, I haven’t worked as consistently as I might have. But some of my things have been published, and I’m not ashamed of them. I certainly don’t write well when I’m depressed, but I do it anyway. Without AA, I wouldn’t be writing, because I’d have been dead years ago.
Thank God for all the wonderful people, professional and otherwise, who have helped me or tried to. Even when the help has not succeeded, it has kept me going, kept me trying. And I have been able to use some of the help and advice.
I try to help people, in and out of AA. I speak when I can. I meet with a group of other AAs who are prone to depression, and we help one another. We tell one another to accept the state we are in and to relax and keep going. We encourage one another to regain self-esteem by pointing out the progress we’ve made. Depression and anxiety can breed all kinds of unpleasant symptoms, such as loss of memory and attention, giddiness, heart palpitations. We discuss this, because we have resolved not to fight unpleasant feelings, but to accept them and go about our business. We sometimes telephone one another when we are feeling at our worst.
Once a week I go to a painting class for handicapped people and the nonhandicapped who bring them, and I help set up the paints. I have just joined it and haven’t done much yet except help my friend, who founded the group. She has no use of her arms or hands, but she drives her own car with her feet and drives me to class.
Spending a day alone or eating dinner alone is hard when I’m depressed. This is when “poor little me” really sets in. However, I read the papers, try to watch news programs, and really enjoy reading books. I get to movies and plays and concerts. Walking in the woods or on the beach is a joy, and I do it every chance I get. I always have my car radio on for news and music. I have friends in and cook dinner for them or ask somebody in for coffee. And bless my friends, I’m asked out a lot.
I am immeasurably grateful for the sense of values I have learned from AA and psychiatry—but especially AA. I know that I am not a total loss, even when I think I am. I know that freedom and usefulness, love, outgoingness, and sharing are the important things in life. But even more important, I have to care for me and achieve a sense of self-worth. So I continue to listen. I am still open to suggestions. I continue on my way. And I am on my way up.
F.M., New Canaan, Conn.
Self-Pity Can Kill
February 1973
Over and over, through the gaiety of the preholiday season in December 1965, I chanted this litany of despair: “I gave all I had to give, and it wasn’t enough.” And on Christmas night, I made a drunken and almost successful suicide attempt. Consciousness returned in the special-care ward of the local hospital, where doctors waited to determine whether brain damage had occurred during the moments when my heart had stopped beating, thirty-six hours earlier.
It would be nice to be able to say that I promptly joined AA, stopped drinking, reconstructed my collapsing marriage, and never again suffered an attack of the Ploms—the poor-little-old me’s. But a divorce was to come and two more drunken years were to elapse before I took my last drink.
This dirty linen might have been washed in the privacy of the Fifth Step if I were not convinced that its obvious message should be passed along: Self-pity can kill.
True, alcohol was the catalyst. It required a combination of alcohol, self-pity, and a