Well, since you ask, we came across a man like that just a few weeks ago! We gave him food from our Church's food pantry, we took him to church with us, we went to AA meetings with him, we took him into our sober living home because he felt that it would be a better place for him to recover, we even took him out with our group after evening church to dinner at a local restaurant!
Adjustments were needful, of course. It's never easy at the start. He had no money, his pay was not due till - well, today, as I write this. But we could let him stay a week or so till he got paid, after all, given his church attendance and AA meeting attendance, it was clear he wanted to progress.
Then, and yeah, I know you see this coming, payday came, and whoops - he decided to head out to his hometown, hundreds of miles south of here. No more church, no more AA meetings, certainly no paying back the guy who ran the last place he had stayed at - like he had said he would - and not terribly surprisingly, no paying of me.
After all, he wasn't going to be staying here any more, so why bother, eh?
Times like these are why that phrase that Mark Twain said about dogs comes so frequently to my mind. "If you take in a dog, and give it a home and food and love, it will be loyal to you all the days of your life. This is the key difference between a dog and a man."
Amen, Mr. Clemens. Amen.
Yet is it really so terrible? Are men cut of such a poor cloth, are we as a species truly so deeply flawed?
I'd like to think that we are not so terrible. The French have a saying, that to understand all is to forgive all. And given the nature of my own job as a Program Supervisor, and that I'm a recovering alcoholic/addict myself, I think I understand a bit of what prompts this kind of thing.
Is it that he's running off to drink and drug? Of course it is. Is it because he's a terribly malignant person who was just scamming all along? Possibly...but I doubt it. With alcoholism and addiction, it's not so much the person being "evil" as them being "weak". And in some cases "uneducated as to the reality of things".
And partly for some physiological reasons, pertaining to their pleasure center of their brain having been burned out by repeated drinking and drugging. Or at least habituated to a FAR higher amount of needed stimuli to "register" anything.
A normal person can derive pleasure from a child's laughter, a silly limerick, a nicely scented flower, a clever turn of phrase in a sermon. Not so for the man used to a bottle of whisky and a vial of coke, and other even less savory hedonistic pursuits involving the kind of women not known for being brought home to momma.
And such pleasures may be cheap and tawdry, but they are the pleasures many alcoholic/addicts are more used to.
So what happens from the just very recently "recovering" alcoholic/addict's perspective?
Well, he made a tentative decision to stop all that nonsense, and all at once, with a rapidity that he found astonishing, a church group swoops in to make sure that all his problems will go away. Need food? Sure! Need a new place? No problem! Need to not pay for a few weeks? It's all good! Need aid in getting a real job? Sure! Need a ride? You bet!
It's quite a good amount of blessings, and almost in the twinkling of an eye he finds himself sitting in one or the other of my sober living homes. And whichever one it is, it will be adequate, but poor. No getting around that, it is what it is. And the food will be wholesome but unremarkable. Not much getting around that, either.
And he'll be going to AA meetings and church - both new and shiny, and so the sheer novelty makes that okay...for awhile.
But the few days is now a few weeks. There is no more "newness" and the shiny has worn off. The payday from the last silly job is about to arrive. He owes the last guy. He owes the man who took him in. He'll need to pay back some of the other guys he borrowed money from. When it's all said and done, he'll have jack crap, till later on, when he can get his first paycheck from a job he does not even have yet.
On the one hand, all is pretty good. He knows that if he finds some job washing dishes that the guy - me - won't boot him just for him needing a few weeks to get that next paycheck. And he has enough food. He has, in fact, everything he needs - and absolutely nothing he wants.
And so he sits on his bed, in a room that has no privacy, just another guy in the same boat as he is, and he ponders. And if we were to synopsize his thoughts, the main one would be - "This is as good as it's going to get."
What a depressing thought. But he knows. He knows that all he has to look forward to, from this point on, is that crappy bed in the crappy non-private room, in the crappy sober living home (and they're all crappy) and for entertainment he can go to a meeting, listen to some boring sermon, go to a meeting, listen to more boring church stuff, go to a meeting, or attend yet even more boring church stuff.
And if you're thinking of non-preachy social activities, remember, he has lost the ability to enjoy those without a boost, and nor is he at home with any of the new folks who don't do those things.
And he knows that when he does get a job, it will be crappy. The hours will suck, and barely give him enough to pay what he needs to pay and save a smidge, so it will take months and months to save any amount at all. And his boss will be half his age, and be ready with finger snaps at a moment's notice and ever ready with supervisor's favorite phrase, "Hey, ya got time to lean, ya got time to clean!", a phrase first spoke by Ahriman-Hotep to the guys who were supposed to sweep up the dust kicked up by slaves dragging those blocks through the desert sands to make the pyramids.
He can sit at home doing nothing, or he can...do nothing. His life is work, AA meetings, church. Church, work, AA meetings. AA meetings, church and work. With plenty of boredom and stupid house politics thrown in. Wonder why sober living homes - and any group homes - and any prisons - have so many petty fights and squabbles?
Boredom.
So now he is pondering his choices. Persisting in choosing the right course will mean boredom. Crappy work, no real fun, bunch of stupid meetings, bunch of boring church crap.
Now, he might even know, that if he did that for a year or two, that he'd have his own car, his own place, a better job - maybe even getting to snap his fingers at others! - and then, the Holy Grail, some actual halfway decent girl that one could possibly take home to momma!
But that is so far off. And it's so little, even then, isn't it? I mean, remember, he's a drunk and a druggie - but not necessarily retarded. He knows full well that the reward for that year and a half of hell will be...the least existence our society has to offer. A cheapie apartment. A used car about to break. A job only marginally better than dishwashing, if even better than that. Still no huge amounts of money for fun. Still not much fun to even be "allowed", as he knows that if he relapses, he loses all that and is right back to where he is now.
So here he is - already with nothing. Nothing but that $577 check. Does he "invest" it in a year and a half of what would be, to him, pain? With then the 50% chance that at the end he will join the ranks of the working poor? And 50% that he will be right back to where he is now?
Or does he go smoke some crack, drink some booze and see if Trixie's number in his Obamaphone is still good?
Too often, the choice will not be for church, work and meetings. The only decision at that point is how much self-deception they need to get back to their addictions. Some will simply go at once to it, from the bank to the dealer's. Others will need to lie to themselves. The "I'm moving back home, it will be better for me to start from scratch there."
Yeah, that sounds logical - but oh yeah, the start had already been made here, so all that's really doing is delaying things. An addict moving, by the way, is like a fat man looking online for the "right" exercycle. A delaying tactic. Because while I - a fat man - am searching for just the right exercycle, while I'm budgeting for which is most affordable, while I'm searching for where on Craigslist a used one might be, while I'm idly thinking about maybe one day saving for such...etc....what I am NOT doing that whole time is actually exercising!
Thus an addict/alcoholic not ready to quit will always be moving. Always be changing anything - anything but his habits. "This other sober living home will be better for me!", "This other church will be better for me!", "This other town will be better for me!", "This other job opportunity will be better for me!"
Never will the job they have, the home they have, the church they have be good enough. Because only through constant change can it look like they are doing something, while doing absolutely NOTHING to address the real issue. Which is that they need to stop drinking and drugging and just settle in for the boring year or two needed to burn through to the other side.
Because I did burn through, and the great secret is this:
Yes, it actually does suck. It sucks hard enough to make you cry, I know, I have cried. You must make yourself go to the boring and menial job each and every day. You must learn to jump at fingersnaps and learn the wisdom of those ancient words about leaning and cleaning. And you must go to meetings, as stupid as they are since you're not a "real" alcoholic like those losers. And you must go to church, even though it's also stupid, since you don't need the "crutch" of Jesus and hymns are stupid and they're sinners, too!
But if you do it...if you do it while gritting your teeth and knowing that its this or you relapse and die...then a funny thing happens.
It gets better.
Slowly, but it gets better. Your body starts to get really clean, not just that first three or thirty day clean, but it starts to actually heal a bit from the years of abuse you gave it. Your job, well you get more used to it, you know the folks there, they know you, it's not all bad, you can even have a bit of fun now and then. The meetings, well, somewhere in your "90 meetings in 90 days" regimen that you did so your wife would think you were taking it seriously, you actually had a revelation, and realized that you were as much a loser as anyone there - and more of a loser, as they had at least wisely admitted they had a problem, while you were still too arrogant and pride filled to take even that first baby step.
And church? What started out as a "have to", slowly turned into a "don't mind doing" and even - what's this? Even turned into something that you started to get a bit of enjoyment out of now and then. That as almost a year went by, it came to be something that you looked forward to. That somewhere, in the AA meetings, good work, and healing body, your soul had came to have real knowledge of your Savior, and really accepted His sacrifice for you.
And not relaxing your guard, but still burning through, by the time year two came around, you could - like at the beginning of your life, in your innocent childhood and still pretty innocent twenties - enjoy a good book, a nice conversation, a good sermon, the scent of a rose, a sunset, or even just snuggling with your honey while watching Netflix.
You didn't need a Hydrocodone or a shot of tequila or a hit of a crack pipe. Life, life without hedonism, life without abuse of substances, was enough. Was enough to make you feel pleasure.
You wish you could convey that to those just starting. And more to the point, you don't just wish, you do try to convey it. But they aren't where you are now, after your years of hard work. They aren't hearing the words you are so desperately pouring out to save them. I am generally regarded as an eloquent man, but against those deliberately deafened by addiction, my words often fail me. And thus fail them.
I am always terribly sorry about that. I know the man who left thinks that I am upset with him. Why would he not think that? But my real upset is with myself. Was there more to be said? Could it have been phrased better? Would more talks have aided? Less? Could I have it dumbed it down more? Or did I need to explain it more intricately?
What were the magic words that would have let him know that if he did work at it, that even if it sucked now - and it would - that it would get better later?
I will have to contemplate further, and re-evaluate the words said to him and others, so that I can be better prepared next time. Ultimately, it is on each individual to decide for sobriety, and to work it till they succeed. But if hearing some true words can aid them in making the right decision, then I want them to have that, too.
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