in-con-Crete

Here’s a story I kept in my head for a long time and only know I figured that it may have shed a bit of a light on who I am, or at least who I was for a long while.

It came to me after watching the Jackass movie couple weeks back. If you never watched one, it is a real events show where people signed up for being subjected for all kinds of crazy and often physically painful ordeal that are fun, but also sometimes stressful to watch. After watching that I started asking myself, what kind of experiment of the kind would I allow myself to participate in, how much embarrassment and pain can I take. Then this memory came and I started to dissect it, and what came out of it was no longer a potential Jackass material. It was a look into more of a insanity and recovery material. I think I learned something from that.

What happened was in 1998 I went to Crete Island with a group of people. The idea came from my Mom who used to work with one of the organizers, a school teacher. The group consisted of high school kids. So there were about ten of them, plus two teachers, and then there was me. I was in the second year of university, and age-wise I was in the middle. Thus the kids looked up to me as one of the teachers, only I wasn’t. Not really. I was already enslaved by alcohol quite a bit, and I was enjoying life too much to be looked up to in terms of being some sort of example of what another person could aspire to grow up to.

We flew from Moscow to Heraklion which is in the north of the Crete island, stayed a night in the hotel and the next day we took a bus all the way down to the south coast. From there on, for over two weeks we were to do a backpack hike back to Heraklion along the west coast. Sometimes we’d take a bus, but most of the time we walked. And we camped a lot in the middle.

On the third day of the trip, after we spent a couple of days in a camping area (terrorizing local five-star hotel with our taking over their swimming pool, haha), we moved out into the wild, which started with hitting the mountains. We walked for a several hours. All was well, but around five pm a nasty thing happened.

I was walking with everyone, I think in the middle of the group that stretched out for about 15 meters long line. I was getting more tired, and walked slower. Very soon I started to let people behind me walk past me and before I knew it I was way behind everyone. Then I stopped.

It was a hot day still, probably about 30C degrees. I felt very tired. I leaned against the rock we were circling on a long serpentine walk. That’s when I lost sight for several seconds. Everything went black, literally. I was so amazed I didn’t even panic. When the sight came back, that’s when I began thinking a lot of stupid shit.

I must say I used to hike before, but there were longer and longer gaps between those trips, so I think I started to lose the skills. For example, how to distribute the backpack weight, or how to drink water often, and things like that. By the time I was at a high point on a Crete mountain in a 30 degree heat at five pm, I was out of water and my back pack was heavy and I was carrying a bag that belonged to one of the kids, I think. So I screwed myself up. That happens. It is one of those things you learn from. But that is not what was troubling me. It was mental stuff that was kicking my ass.

As I was dehydrated and tired, I was also getting heavily resentful and afraid. Resentful at my Mom because somehow it was her “fault” that I am now here, all alone, unable to move, hot as hell, and everything is going weird and I am now weaker than anyone else, including the younger kids in the group. Afraid of everything – of what is to come, of what others will think of me, of not going to make it through, and that’s just beginning of the trip! So I had some sort of nervous breakdown, and I was not enjoying it at all.

The leaders of the group came back several minutes later and had a chat with me. They’ve shared some of my load and walked me back to the rest of the group. I had some water. Then we all went together again and I made sure I didn’t separate.

Around sunset we came to our point of destination, a restaurant with a camping area. We ate and hung out and had some wine and it was a good time, but before dinner I was still stressing out. I smoked nervously. The record that was now playing in my head was “the greatest hits of poor me.” I felt like no one in the group really felt what it was like for me to be there on the mountain all by myself, scared, possibly sun struck, and all messed up in the head. I only shared a little bit with one kid who I befriended at the beginning of the trip, but even to him I didn’t talk about the mental stuff. Which probably did both of us a lot of good.

The next day we moved on for more adventure and the rest of the trip was excellent. I certainly had a great time and still remember it all with smile on my face. We hiked a lot, I climbed mountains, we cooked great food and we chased each other in the valleys for the fun of it, and it was probably one of the best times I ever had, period.

Now that I am thinking of it, it looks like that very negative experience was some sort of a trial I needed to go through to have a good time later. That is possible. But at the same time, there was a lot about that evening that makes me think of my journey of recovery.

How so?

Well, to start with, it was my own fault that I didn’t save enough water, carried too much crap in my back pack and have physically distanced myself from the group, without warning anybody or/and asking for help. How often people who suffer from addictions of all kinds do that? Right. Check.

Secondly, the resentment part. It was certainly not my Mom’s fault that I ended up in Crete on the top of a mountains, scared shitless. I made a choice to be there. I was happy to go. So blaming it all on someone else is wrong. As for fears, we have a lot of that in pre-recovery, and in recovery, and all the way after too, yes, but it is in recovery that we have a chance to look at most of those. I guess I didn’t really look much into my fears up to that point. Well, after that I did none of that either, honestly. So, resentment and fear. Check.

And the drinking part is big. I was drinking for several years by then already. I was drinking each time I could get my hands on booze and I set no boundaries. So my alcoholic mind went raging when confronted with unwanted stressful situation, loaded with fears up to the rim. Booze and outrage. Check.

And then what? That’s when the recovery-related part came in. The leaders who came to check up on me cared for my well-being. They wouldn’t leave alone because I was a part of the group, yes. But they could’ve just told me to get my shit together and get moving. Instead, they shared my load and went with me. That’s what people in AA do, and that’s what they helped me with when I came to AA twelve years ago.

My mind was still crazy after that evening trip. I was full of pity for myself, because I felt alone in my misery and no one seemed to know the depth of that pit. So I remained sick for a while.

And then I had rest. And I allowed myself to be a part of the group. I communicated with others. And I enjoyed that immensely.

I went on drinking for the rest of the trip. Never too bad until the last night, at Heraklion. That was a mental disaster, although at that time I could still handle it well on the outside. It was later when both physical and mental states of my life went completely wacko. I could’ve learned from many experiences, including that Crete one. I haven’t until it almost got too late.

Is this a story of recovery? Well, maybe metaphorically, yes. There is lots to learn from here, for sure. These are the ones I need to remind myself of on a regular basis. They help me keep myself in check. These are my hidden lessons to benefit my life time study of concrete recovery. If I forget how much pain and embarrassment, feign or real, I had to deal with in the past, there is a big chance that I will keep welcoming them back into my life and it will hurt way more and compromise the good life that I’ve been having thanks to choosing sobriety and accepting and working on the help I asked for.