There were only a few of you guys around last year when I did my brilliant “Lenten Reflections.” OK, not so brilliant, but if you’re struggling with drinking and using Lent as a time of personal / spiritual growth, you may just get something out of my thoughts. To recap those who don’t know me, I’m a former Catholic theology professor turned agnostic who gave up teaching nearly 9 years ago after a spiritual and financial crisis. I was cynical and dark at first but, over the years, have experienced a lot of personal growth and am actually quite devout, monk-like (for the most part), and joyful. I continue to live out my agnosticism within the context of Catholicism. I also struggled horribly with drinking since age 12, going some 1650 nights off in a row secretly drinking before discovering TSM last January 2013. I’m on day 7 AF and going for the whole enchilada – no drinking until Easter, which will be 56 AF days. I have not gone that long since age 19, when I had an amazing religious conversion via the charismatic movement (speaking in tongues, evangelizing homeless people, the whole 9 yards!). I also have no intention of drinking on Easter; it’s just a foreseeable date.

The Silent God

So, when I was in college, I really felt a strong urge to become a Catholic priest. This urge is one of the most amazing feelings possible – sort of a whole body tingling with a constant “mystical” feeling. It’s hard to describe, but sometimes as I’m driving home after a long night shift and my brain is in that place between awake and asleep, I feel it. I savor it. About then, my head bobs down in sleep, jolts me up, and I get a weak little hit of adrenaline. Tired driving is just as bad as drunk driving.

Of course, I also was in love with my now wife of 22 years. We had the classic on-again-off-again relationship while I discerned my “calling.” I have a vivid memory of me in the woods near a Franciscan friary in Ohio, laying prone on the ground in total surrender to God, waiting for an “answer” to my dilemma – To be a priest or not? To marry or not? All I got was silence. Dead silence.

Eventually, after dozen of retreats and visits to this or that monastery or religious order, I got married. I started graduate school at a Catholic seminary, started in lay ministry, and tried to live the best of both worlds. Fast forward 13 years past 10 years of parish ministry and 3 years teaching at a university, and I had “shared my faith” until there was nothing left. All I could hang my hat on at the time was the classic question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” I shrugged my shoulders. I no longer cared.

They say losing your deeply held faith is akin to losing a loved one. I turned to my wife for support and got none. She simply told me, “If you tell our kids or my family, we’re getting a divorce.” Ouch. That’s about the last time we talked about it.

Still, the loss of faith itself was a profound experience in its own way. Imagine going from a lifelong belief that an omnipotent God and the communion of saints watches all you do, that upon death you are going to be conscious and living in eternal glory, that the hand of God is directing the world, to the complete opposite. Maybe at death we forever lose consciousness? Maybe my sins don’t have consequences beyond this life?

There are several contemporary Christian songs that I find inspiring in my agnosticism. “Held” by Natalie Grant is one of my favorites and has a great line: “This is how it feels…when the sacred is torn from your life, and you survive.” That simple line about sums up my past nine years.

So, where does drinking fit in to all this? I think, in some ways, alcohol filled that spiritual void that was left when the sacred was torn from my life. Much of my religious experience to that time was very much feeling based – the gut twisting highs of charismatic Christianity, the calm, mystical feelings I felt so powerfully with the priesthood thing. As you may know, I was never really a fall-down drunk. I sought that “perfect buzz” and wanted to sustain that for as long as possible. Every once in awhile, I’d hit the sweet spot and it was darned close to a religious experience.

But, as we all know, alcohol is a cruel mistress, as are all artificial highs. Once you’re hooked and lose control, it’s not so fun and mystical anymore. It actually sucks quite a lot. The perfect high gets harder to get, and the “consequences of sin” become so much more apparent. I never considered AA at any point because of my distaste for the ephemeral “higher power” that was somehow going to rescue me. This God of deafening silence that I felt would never be bothered with so trivial a task. I tried to quit many, many times on my own power. In eight or so years, I was never actually able to even go a single day after such dramatic pledges.

I remember one low point very well. My last-gasp hope (or so I thought) was to buy a breathalyzer, confess my addiction to my wife, and blow each night to prove that I wasn’t drinking. The first crack in my plan was that my wife and daughter opened the box before I had a chance to intercept it and work up the courage for the “big reveal.” At dinner, with my whole family there, my wife asks, “Why did you get a breathalyzer?” Of course I had to lie and make up some lame thing about making sure at nights that we go out that I, and our friends, stay under .08. The second and more fatal flaw was that, by the time I got the courage up to reveal the plan, I had already come up with multiple ways that I could beat the plan (e.g. drink in the morning or drink right after blowing a zero). I remember jogging near that time and feeling so desperate and hopeless that I actually started to cry a bit. Waaah. That was about 1.5 years before TSM.

Perhaps God led me to that youtube video that first exposed me to Naltrexone. Either way, once I started TSM and started to experience life without alcohol, it impacted multiple areas of my life. Spiritually, I’ve come out on the other side way less cynical, much more hopeful about most things, and much more agnostic about my agnosticism (doubting my doubts, if you will). I will likely never be able to return to the faith of my youth, at least not in the form that it was in at the time. That cat is out of the bag. But, I’m much stronger as a person – whether or not God and the saints are watching, I want to be good and explore the sacred and love. It’s interesting that Mother Teresa apparently was quite a harsh agnostic (some say atheist) for much of the last few decades of her life. She no longer felt God, her secret letters reveal, and doubted whether there was even anybody out there in the cold night (or, in Calcutta, the hot and smelly night). Yet, she served, she loved, she prayed. Not perfectly, for sure, but she never gave up.

I want to share a song that’s been special to me. I think that music can be a very powerful aid in our struggles against addiction (if you don’t have Spotify Premium for $10 a month, you should get it). Recall that my main TSM song was “Angels or Devils (Live)” by Dishwalla. The below song, “I Feel You” by Schiller, is also important to me. Often, when I’d achieve that perfect buzz of alcohol akin to a religious experience, I’d play this song and be brought into a form of ecstasy. The “you” in the song represents, to me at least, “The Other.” That nameless One we can sometimes feel but can’t grasp. This song has gone from being my #1 “drunk” song to my #1 sober song. I often listen to it in the twilight in my backyard. The sky is darkish blue, there’s a nice breeze blowing, I’m aware of my sobriety. I enjoy sobriety. I love the feeling now more than I ever loved the “perfect buzz” (which I still foolishly pursue at times). I appreciate it and am so aware of it because of the thousands of times I’ve brushed it aside for the much inferior pleasure of alcohol. I smile. I lay in my hammock, and I play it.

I feel you, in every stone
In every leaf of every tree
That you ever might have grown
I feel you, in everything
In every river that might flow
In every seed you might have sown
I feel you, in every vein
In every beating of my heart
Each breath I take
I feel you, anyway
In every tear that I might shed
In every word I've never said
I feel you, in every vein
In every beating of my heart
In every breath I'll ever take
I feel you, anyway
In every tear that I might shed
In every word I've never said

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."

This quote refers to the Buddhist concept of shoshin, or "beginner's mind." It refers to an attempt to have a clear mind, empty of pre-conceptions, when approaching life. It is probably similar to what Jesus meant by being "like little children" -- "Unless you become like little children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 18:3). Recall, also, that the Greek word for "conversion," as in "repent and believe," is metanoia, which literally means "mind change."

All of us here (i.e. problem drinkers) are struggling to change our minds. TSM quite literally "changes our mind" on the neurochemical level. All those connections that say "alcohol = good = must have now," which we have built up over hundreds and thousands of drinking sessions, (hopefully) crumble over time. So, Naltrexone does its part subconsciously, but we have to do our part consciously. Part of this, of course, is taking action that makes our minds associate good things with being sober. Before TSM, I thought not-drinking was boring, stressful, dreadful. Now, I honestly associate being sober with

*being a fun dad
*sleeping well
*working out or running in the evening
*being more reflective
*smiling / laughter / true happiness
*sexual prowess

When I was just starting out 15 months ago, I would try to do something akin to the "beginner's mind," and found it helpful. When you're in the throes of alcohol addiction, your mind is filled with (a) past memories of drinking, (b) habits, (c) thoughts about alcohol and your future (e.g. drinking during the upcoming holidays). I would try to clear my mind from all these things. As 5:00 would roll around, I'd sit quietly and think, "Right now, if I had never drank before, would I really want or think I need alcohol?" I would really try to "feel" any cravings. Most of the time, I couldn't actually "feel" anything. Sure, sometimes cravings can feel like a burning in the chest or stomach, but generally there was no "craving" apart from my "expert's mind." As the initial quote suggests, my "expert mind" just "knew as a fact" that I had to have a drink to sleep, to enjoy life, to deal with stress, to perk myself up, to be a passionate lover, on and on and on. Of course, my expert mind was truly deluded. It saw very few options -- Beer or vodka? Maybe a little of both? Maybe some rum?

The beginner's mind, the mind like a little child, sees many more possibilities as 5:00 rolls around.

Side Notes...
*A good example of this principle is the famous experiment where they placed people in rooms that had no view of the outside, nor any clocks or way of keeping time. The question was, How long would people sleep if they had no pre-conceived notions about night/day or time? It turns out, they slept way less than they normally would have.

*My 16 year old the other day asked me, basically, why women tend to get "crazier the older they get." (She wasn't implying that men don't, too, she was just referring to all her friends' moms). This would also follow the principle. As they become "experts" on everything, their mind is clouded with so many presuppositions, experiences, biases, habits, etc..., that they just get a bit crazy. Just saying.