The World According to Chuck

Here’s a trick question: How does an alcoholic deal with stress?

The trick, of course, is that an alcoholic deals with stress the way he deals with everything else in life, including peace, joy, tragedy, comedy, and politics: He doesn’t. He uses a chemical to ignore it.

This is why the first year of sobriety can be pretty awful for some, and why we lose so many people a few months in. Yeah, 12-step programs work, but they’re only the best (statistically speaking) solution to a very, very difficult problem. The success rates are dismal.

Life is hard and complicated, and it doesn’t give you a break, and a recovering alcoholic has very rusty life skills. Stress management is key, and frankly if you don’t have some sort of higher power in your life I don’t want your odds.

In my case, I had a pretty firm grasp on a higher power, not to mention the fact that I was desperate to end the insanity and the chaos. And I had no legal problems to deal with, no job issues or divorce or any of the hundreds of things waiting for some when they start a sober life. And I had an intact family, battered but still hanging in there.

So knowing what I faced, I embarked right away on a stress management program, and being sort of an absolutist I aimed at eliminating stress altogether.

It can be done, trust me, at least for a reasonable period of time, but you have to have the ideal situation. And some things are out of your control; I always have John, and I made the grievous error of tearing my rotator cuff and needing surgery.

Still, it’s been a pretty stressless past year, and it was time to push forward, nudge the future a bit. So I made some decisions, registered for classes, and started sending out resumes. I also started on a diet and exercise regimen that I hope will get me healthier and thinner.

I began my online class, went to my first Wednesday night class (four hours), and yesterday spent the entire day, 8:30 to 6, in a weekend crisis management class. Tiring but OK. There was stress but aside from some mild irritation last night, I thought I handled it well. I’m on top of my game, smoothly sailing, give me your best shot, I got this thing down.

So changing a flat tire on a busy road in the pouring rain this afternoon with my butt sticking into oncoming traffic was merely a reminder that this is a game of chance, a new roll of the dice every day, and that stress is probably best managed not by avoiding it or minimizing it, but by the way we approach it. This is, in fact, the essence of the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage, to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I might also ask that THE SPARE NOT BE FLAT, TOO, but then Sundays are pretty busy days for God. And the rain makes the flowers grow. And I burned a whole bunch of calories.