It's Fun to Be in the I-O-OH-P (Not): The Dictionary of Self-Loathing

Of all the faux profound psychological games one is forced to play in either group or individual therapy, the one I hate most is the Positive / Negative game.

The idea is to write down. on one side of the paper, all the negative messages you've received about yourself from family, peers or other outside sources since your earliest days of childhood, and then to write down, on the other side of the paper, counter-balancing positive messages to tell yourself.

This is the second time we've had to play this sort of self-loathing game in the Eye-Oh!-Pee. The first time it just depressed and humiliated me. The second time, last night, resulted in one of those moments where if there had been a loaded gun in the room I would surely have turned it on myself, pulled the trigger, and blown my brains out in front of the whole class.

By the time I was done with the exercise, I had a list of negative messages as long as your arm -- but nothing at all in the positive category. There simply is nothing. It's no good putting on s smiley face and just Making Shit Up. 


Of course we were then expected to read our lists to the whole damn class. Of course. You can't express anything privately in these sessions. My head was downturned and I would not meet anyone's eyes, so I was called upon last. I said, "I don't have any positives." The instructor said, "Well, start with the negatives and maybe we can help you with the positives." I said, "I'd rather not." Seriously, who wants to read out a litany one one's flaws and failures when that is all you have? 


Next we were told to pick one of our positives and write it out in big letters. I did mine in block letters with shading. I wrote:

NOTHING.

ZERO,

The instructor saw this and said, "Doug, if you're really stuck you can use one of the messages on the blackboard." 


I had read the positive messages on the blackboard earlier. It was all Complete Bullshit like "I am a Caring Person."


Well, no, honestly, I'm not. I mumbled something to the effect of, "I don't believe it," and went right on shading my Nothing and my Zero. 


The instructor said, "Doug, I'm concerned. . . " and before I could even think "Bully for you" B____ chimed in from across the table. B_____ is a big, loudmouthed junkie who is just the sort of person who used to push me around on the playground when I was in school, but he leapt in with, "Yah, I'm concerned, too; you're a good man an' --"


I guess my expression told him to put a sock in it. I wanted to tell him, "What do you know? You don't know me from shit."


I was down for the rest of the evening, right up until bedtime. I didn't sleep well. I guess that it's remarkable that I wasn't tempted to take a drink, not that any stores were open where I could have bought the stuff. But I have to wonder if some of these social worker/instructors really know what they are doing sometimes. Do they know what cans of worms they are opening? Do they know that they are playing with fire?


-- Freder.

It's Fun to Be in the I-OH-O-P (Not!): Questions with No Answers

I am cursed with a bitter sense of humor that shows itself at the most inappropriate times, especially in Meetings for the sake of Meetings, Stuck -Up social occasions where people who have no right to take themselves seriously attempt to do so (The Oscars would be a good example of this), and Intensive Outpatient Program sessions that are run more or less by the cookie-cutter book.

Two Wednesdays in a row we have been given a Post-It note and asked to write upon it our names and our current mood. On my first night in the program I didn't know what to expect. For my mood, I wrote down "Terrified" and when it came my turn to say this out loud to the group, the woman running the meeting got an awfully sour look on her face. Her partner said, "Terrified of what?"

I said, "Terrified of everything. What's not to be terrified of?"

They moved on.

The woman running the IOP is a woman who claims to have a sense of humor; but she would not recognize humor if it were jumping up and down in front of her, holding a sign that said "HUMOR" in big red and gold letters.

This week, the two councillors were joined by a trainee, G_____, who is much more savvy, knows how to work the room and get responses, and can tell a joke when he sees it. This week, when it came time to write my name and my mood on that obnoxious yellow post-it note that doesn't actually stick to anything, I wrote: "A 'mood' would be an Emotion, Captain."

Everyone in the room donned either a puzzled, bored, or sour expression except G_____, who was the only one who "got" it. He nodded and smiled and said, "Yes, it would!" I was forced into the position of having to explain myself. I said, "I guess that would be 'irreverent.'"

The councillors knew what I was saying -- but among the "patients" of the IOP I was met with blank stares. "What does that mean?" One of them said. They literally had never heard the word. Even the woman sitting next to me, who works in an attorney's office fer crine out loud, didn't know the word.

I was asked to explain and this really floored me. I thought, What am I, a blasted dictionary? Do I look like Mr. Webster? Why, you pointy-eared, green-blooded aliens, go get yourselves a damn dictionary and look it up! I stammered and hemmed and hawed. I use words with specificity. I never thought of "irreverent" as all that mystifying a word. Yet they were serious. They didn't know what it meant, and I'm not used to having to define words that have been a part of my vocabulary for about 43 years.

Next we were asked to write down our answers to 32 so-called "open-ended" (read "loaded") questions. And because that's the way they do things in the IOP, we had to go around and around the room, all giving our answers. Mine were alternately flip or full of self-hatred, and I think a majority of the room was mystified. When asked to name "something I really like about myself," I wrote: Nothing.

The junkie sitting next to me wrote "My penis." and his junkie girlfriend sitting next to him wrote "My boobs."

So you see what we have to deal with.

The evening ended with yet another Round-Robin. I hate these. At 4 East, we had discussions. If you had something that you wanted to offer, you were given the opportunity. It was productive and constructive, because, like Mister Ed, people only spoke when they had something to say. Usually it was worth saying, and worth listening to.

A Round-Robin is a completely different animal. The group leader asks a (usually inane) question, and everyone has to answer it, whether they have anything of value to offer or not.

Last night, for the second time, P_____ asked, "What sort of tools do you feel that you need in your Toolbox in order to be successful when you leave this program?"

Inane. Just inane. Not only does the metaphor fall on tin ears to me, but I feel that I was given my sword and shield at 4 East and that it is only up to me now to use them.

I never know how to answer that question. But, thanks to my equally irreverent friend S______, I know how I'm going to answer it when it inevitably comes up next week:

"A screwdriver."

And the final Round Robin question for the evening was an equal Peach: "What have you learned about yourselves this evening?"

I passed. I couldn't say what I was thinking, which was, You mean something that we didn't already know? Not a god-damned thing.

But now that I've written this post and have had a chance to get my thoughts in order, I absolutely know what my answer should have been: That I am not a dictionary and if you don't understand what I'm saying, look it up in your damn Funk & Wagnells!

-- Freder.

Welcome to 4 East: On the Variety of Spiritual Experience

Towards the end of my first stay at 4 East someone gave me a copy of the AA "Big Book," the third edition, "Not the most recent," they said, "But the best."

I've been reading straight through it, in small bites, of an evening. As AA's roots are in the 1930's and most of this material is contemporaneous with the times, it's written in a formal, mannered style that's easy to digest. Their most basic tenant is, an alcoholic cannot do it alone, cannot quit by himself, on his own force of will. Check. I got that. It was made clear to me earlier this month, although I had already begun to suspect it.

Their next most basic tenant is that one must surrender themselves to a higher power -- by which they mean the God of the Bible, pure and simple And Nothing Else. There are a few wimpy cop-outs here and there where they tag on words like "your perception of a higher power" so as not to offend the different branches of the faith,

But the book's chapter on agnosticism is revealing. It is woefully inadequate and under-thought, and can be summed up crudely as "Well, you have to change your mind or this isn't going to work for you."

I haven't read nearly enough of John Muir, but in the small bits and pieces of him that I have read, I don't recall him tossing God around here and there like garlands of flowers. And yet none could deny that he was a spiritual man. When he wrote about his thoughts of Nature and Supernature, he used metaphors like "Cathedrals of the Forest." He was not, shall we say, a conventionally religious man, but found spirituality in the ground underneath us and the trees around us and the mountains cradling us.

Would he have felt at home in AA? I doubt it.

Neither the book nor the organization seem able to take into account the infinite varieties of spiritual experience that don't involve organized religion or dogma. With one exception.

Buried deep, deep within chapter two is a quote from Carl Jung. Jung was not the figure in the 1930s that he has become today, and the quote is not even directly attributed to him, nor is his name used more than once (he is otherwise referred to as "this doctor" throughout the small section that I describe).  But it has the ring of Dr. Carl!

Jung was, essentially, a conventionally religious man, but he expressed himself in such remarkable ways, not just throwing God and Jesus in your face, but really trying to get to the core of what spiritual experience was all about:

Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are

called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are

phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional

displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes

which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are

suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions

and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to

produce some such emotional rearrangement within you.

You go, Carl! I was kind of astonished to find this little nugget of reason buried in the mound of conventional Religiosity. It not only makes sense to me, but it makes me want to take my Jung books back off the shelf and re-read them -- and aside from that, I lived it and experienced it in 4 East.

I experienced it in the group sessions, listening to the stories the other patients told, choking back the tears. I experienced it in one-on-one conversations with my roommate and others on the floor. I experienced it in the eyes of other patients who were reacting just as powerfully to what I heard -- and sometimes to what I said. I experienced it in the tears that I shed every day and the tears that I watched others shed. I experienced it in the words of certain of the councilors, both individual and in the group sessions. I could feel myself being humbled, day by day, and I could feel my thinking begin to turn. It was just the short of emotional rearrangement that Dr. Carl writes about above. But it had nothing to do with God. Unless--

If you try to tell me that God is a self-determining, self-conscious Being with an Ego and an Id, a painter with a design for every living thing, a bearded old man sitting up in the clouds on a throne, a being who actually cares about all the little details like whether or not I choose to crawl into a bottle, I'm going to tell you that I think you're a pretty Gulli-Bull.

But I do believe, have always believed, that it's possible to draw a diagram of the thing that might actually be the pulse that runs through the universes, whatever you want to call it. It's not a diagram of my invention. It looks like this:

Well, actually, this is just an infinitesimally small piece of it. First, pick a triangle, any triangle. That's you. (I get the one in the lower right corner, because that's where I always squish myself in a crowded room). 

Every living thing: plant, animal, human, even Republicans, gets a triangle of their own. I don't say it's you, I'm just saying let it represent you for now.

Pretty soon you get triangles nested within triangles nested within triangles, expanding infinitely outward into the universe. When every currently living thing in the universe gets its own triangle, and everything that ever lived in the past gets its own triangle, and everything and everyone that will ever live in the future gets its own triangle, and all those triangles are nested within an even larger pattern that cannot possibly be comprehended: that, my friends, is God.

OK, my friend, my dear friend, if you are reading this, I have to give you some sort of a name. I can't keep alluding to an empty noun. I will call you Joan Arkwright, and in some ways it is a lousy name for you. because you are neither a saint nor a martyr. But you are my hero. You gave me hope, you gave me strength, and you put your faith in me. When I was speaking with you, I was speaking with just a tiny little piece of that great patchwork design, and I say the same about the group sessions and the people I shared them with. We had some great groups.

So, while I tend to agree with Jim Morrisson that you cannot petition the Lord with Prayer, I do believe that some powerful shifts of thinking and ideas can occur when a handful of these triangles collide at random under emotional circumstances.

We are all pieces of what AA likes to call the Higher Power. That's my God and I'm sticking to it.

-- Freder.

It's Fun to be in the I-O-OH P (Not!): AA= Antipathetic to Asperger's

Just back from my third (and last for this week, thank goodness!) official AA meeting. We are required to attend three each week as part of the Intensive Outpatient Program, and for this reason alone I may have to leave the program. I don't knock it -- if it works for 99 out of a hundred people, then it's doing what it's meant to do. But I strongly believe at this early point that I'm the one in a hundred that it's no good for.

The second two meetings at least were not as bad as the first, because I had the sense of get out of there before they all started holding hands and reciting The Lord's Prayer. Now there's a point in itself. They pretend to welcome all beliefs, sects, denominations -- but let's say I were a Muslim Alcoholic. Holding hands and saying the Lord's Prayer would not be cool.

For my part, when it comes to God I don't say yes and I don't say no. I say, "Whatever happens will happen." But I also say: "Don't anyone dare shove your damn religion down my throat because I'll puke it up and shove it right back at you!"

The strongest adherents of AA insist that it's not a religious organization. And yet God is all over the place in AA, and the very structure of the meetings is similar to that of a church service.

Never mind. I can deal with that aspect of it, knowing that it's there, seeing it for what it is -- and also knowing that I do have a Higher Power -- and she works in the building next door. If AA is telling the truth about letting you decide who or what your Higher Power is, they'll just have to accept that.

No, the part of me that makes AA so difficult is the part of me that is strengthening again the longer that I'm sober.

It's not that I'm an anti-social person, as so many people have misunderstood throughout my life -- it's that I'm a non-social person. Alcohol loosened and opened me up and made me much more social than I truly am. The head psychologist who spent a total of fifteen minutes with me before rushing to judgement after hearing a fraction of my issues was quick to dismiss my self-diagnosis as being someone with a mild case of Asperger's Syndrome, and gave it a completely different name -- more to prove that he was The Boss and would be Making the Calls than for any good reason. Then a third guy came to my room and gave it a third Completely Different name.

And you know what? I no longer care what anyone wants to call it. The fact is that I have a  social disorder, the symptoms of which seem to be pretty much the same across all three diagnoses.

And when I stepped into that first AA meeting on Thursday night, my heart shot up into my throat and it was just as if my soul was lifted out of my adult body and deposited back into the body of that little kid in the First Grade who sought out the most remote, emptiest part of the playground and just sat there in silence, waiting for the bell to ring.

Here was a gymnasium full of people, all of them strangers, not one of whom I could talk to.

My old instincts took hold, and I went straight to the back of the gym, where I sat with my hands pressed between my knees and my shoulders hunched.

If there's anyone left out there who doesn't know how I feel about large gatherings of Strange People (and to me, most Normal People are Strange), I'll refer them to an earlier post on this blog called "A Nightmare of Hell." I went into this meeting in a state of serenity and strength, knowing that alcohol would not be a problem for me that night. I came out of it desperate for a drink, clawed by anxiety and fear, so upset that I shouted out loud and scared Whitey.

Instead of drinking, I took one of my anxiety pills and my last mood-evener of the day, poured myself some ginger ale. By mid-afternoon of the next day I had finally regained my Happy Place, the place where I knew that I was safe from drinking.

But then there was another AA meeting last night, and another this morning, and I sure hope this gets easier as the four weeks in IOP roll on ahead of me. Because if it doesn't, I will be buyig a bottle and relapsing before you can say "Danger Will Robinson!"

Not all solutions work for all people. I understand that most Normal People like Rituals and Large Gatherings -- but I can't stand either one. And since neither AA nor I will change anytime soon, I guess we're about to find out what happens when an Irresistible Force meets an Immovable Object. . .

-- Freder.

Welcome to 4 East: Therapist Roulette

Every day at 4 East you get about an hour one-on-one meeting with a therapist -- either a PMHNP or. . . or. . . drat! I can't remember what the other category is!

On my first stay, I got really lucky. I'm not going to write much about her, because we're kind of friends now and I want to keep it that way. She's a wonderful person. She's not the only one who helped me at 4 East -- but she's the only one there who put hope into me, who put strength into me, who showed real faith in me.

The second time, I worked primarily with two other therapists sharing almost the same first names. I'll call them Ilsa and Ilse, after the title character in a series of vile exploitation movies.

I don't know whether they compared notes and worked in tandem, but a better Good Cop / Bad Cop routine you would not be able to find anywhere else. First up was Ilsa, the Good Cop. She practically twisted herself into contortions trying to be nice, trying to be understanding, trying to be Caring -- but there was a notable artificiality to it all. It was a put-on job, and if she and I accomplished anything at all in the two sessions that we had together, I can't say that I remember it.

Well, no, that's not entirely true, now that I think back. She gave me the assignment to come up with an Affirmation, which at first just made me roll my eyes. But in casting about for something that I could possibly use I stumbled upon the following quotation from Thomas Merton:

"It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced."

It's too long to be what they call an "Affirmation," but it's as close as I'm going to get, and I keep going back and back and back to it, because it addresses the core of the issues behind my drinking. So some good came out of meeting Ilsa. Just to put some perspective on the matter, I'd rather work with her any day of the week than with the woman who is running the evening IOP sessions that I am currently attending, but how much that says is anyone's guess.

Next up was Ilse, the Bad Cop, and what a very Evil Bad Cop she was indeed -- although I guess her methods are effective if you don't mind bleeding all over the floor.

Every therapist has their own style, and Ilse's style is to spend the first few minutes of the session sizing you up, checking you out, feeling for the weak points. Probing. Once she's found  them, she strikes. First she kicks your shins out from underneath you. When your knees hit the ground, she clouts you a good one on the back of the head with a billy club. When your face smashes into the pavement, she sits back and gives you the Evil Smile.

All metaphorically speaking of course, except for the smile.

So -- you're lying there, stunned, and a pool of blood starts to form underneath you, and you're not sure what part of your anatomy it's coming from, and then she begins to ask more questions.

I think my answers were along the lines of "Guh --gurgle -- wah -- please don't hurt me anymore!" and my thoughts were more in the direction of Why won't they let me see the therapist I had the first time I was in here? I liked her! She gave me hope! She didn't kick me around the room!

Nonetheless, I don't believe that it's possible for an alcoholic to move on without having to answer some hard questions -- and most of the time, we probably have to be forced to face and answer them. I'll say it again: Every therapist has their own method. Sometimes, as with Ilsa, it's an artificial method. Sometimes, as with Ilse, the methods are harsh.

And then, once in a lifetime, you make a real connection. 'Nuff said!

-- Freder.

The Return of Doctor Shrinker

Today was my first session back in mandatory counseling (two words which I just now seem to have spelled correctly for the first time, despite the unbelievable amount of times I have typed them!)

The title and the picture may lead you to believe that I am mocking the sessions or not taking them seriously. This is not true. I am fully invested in the experience. But -- you have to have a sense of humor about things, yes? Otherwise, what the hell's the point?

I vomited so many issues up into that woman's lap that I don't think she knew where to begin. And I believe that's the biggest issue: If I had FEWER issues I might be able to, you know, sort through them and deal them out into nice even stacks and look at them objectively. Instead -- it's like the end of Alice Through the Looking-Glass with the cards flying all about, this way and that.

She took FIVE PAGES of notes.

We have agreed that I need to speak to a Substance Abuse Councilor, which is something that became evident this week, during the latest round of the flu or whatever the hell this illness is which has been biting me on the butt for two weeks now (although, once again, and I hope for the final time, I have AT LAST, in the past couple of days, beaten it).

I knew that my heavy drinking was not causing the problem, but I also knew that it couldn't possibly be helping. So I quit. Just like that. "Cold Turkey" as they say.

And that was even worse. Within fifteen hours I had broken out in an all-new fever (having only just got rid of the last one!), I was back on the couch drenched in sweat, and my hands were shaking almost comically, almost like something out of Reefer Madness.

I did have enough energy to hop online and check out the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, where I went: check, check, check, check -- could go on for weeks?

This was not acceptable. I would end up in the hospital again, and believe you me I am never going to allow that to happen ever again! It was not just a humiliating experience on so many levels. It separated me from control over my life, and more importantly it separated me from the only things that made my life worth living: my home and my kitties. I swear to you, even if my appendix is bursting through my body, I will never allow this to happen again.

So I crawled back into the bottle. Three drinks later I was feeling fine. Not drunk, mind you -- just not shaking and not drenched in sweat.

Do I believe that the situation needs to change? You betcha. Who caused it? Me. My new damn doctor wasn't doing anything at all for me, and so I self-medicated to a degree that alarms even myself. I'm still self-medicating. This situation needs to change. So -- as soon as I get the referral, I'll be over to the substance abuse councilor, I promise.

Meanwhile --

I threw up so many issues into that poor woman's lap and I sobbed and I cried and I even told the joke from Mel Brooks's wonderful film Blazing Saddles:

CLEAVON LITTLE:

You drink like that, and you don't eat?

You gonna DIE!

GENE WILDER:

WHEN?

... and instead of laughing I sobbed like a damn baby.

-- Freder.

Of Weeping Angels and Weeping Chefs

My two current televisual obsessions are Doctor Who (no surprise there) and Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (perhaps a little bit of a surprise?).

Of the latter, I go into it without delusions. I know what's going on. Every single frame of it is nothing more than a commercial for Gordon Ramsay, and I'm sure he wouldn't have it any other way. But its ostensible conceit -- the producers find restaurants that are on the verge of collapse, then bring Ramsay in to fix them over the course of four days, a process which usually involves fixing the owners as well -- is oddly compelling to me.

The foul-mouthed Ramsay generally finds disgusting food and even more disgusting kitchen conditions, on a level that make one think twice about setting foot in any restaurant, ever again. He also generally finds owners who are either apathetic, or deluded, or have lost their way in the daily grind. One, I would swear, was an undiagnosed Asperger's patient. He kept wandering around with a "deer in the headlights" look on his face, completely lost, while his father-in-law constantly berated and insulted him -- the opposite of a productive atmosphere. The show pays to have their kitchens cleaned and refurbished and the dining rooms redesigned, while Ramsay works over the menu, the chefs, and everyone else who gets in his way.

Except that sometimes he's been really nice. He seems to be a good judge of character, and a lot of what he does here is a combination of pyschotherapy and motivation. Sometimes the owners just need a good swift kick in the pants or a slap across the face, and he does not shy from delivering that. Other times they need support and a renewed sense of self-worth, and he delivers that as well, insofar as anyone could within the timespan allotted.

It doesn't always "take." Ramsay returned to a British Pub one year latter to find that the owner had reverted to his old ways and was alienating the staff and customers.

Regardless of the results, I can't seem to stop watching the damn thing. I keep seeing myself in the owners, and wishing that someone like Ramsay would come along and give me some motivation -- or a kick in the pants, or a sense of self-worth.

As for the Doctor, BBC America has been stripping the Russell T. Davies seasons at 5:00 PM weeknights, and I usually get home in time to catch most of it. It's a real mixed bag. Davies deserves kudos for getting the show back on the air, getting it a real budget, changing the format, transforming the show from a half-hour soap to a real prime-time contender. But also for hiring Stephen Moffat to write one story a season.

I don't like the Davies years well enough to spend $50 and up for the DVDs, but I have started going to Amazon, picking out the episodes that Moffat wrote and watching them full-screen on the new computer for just 98 cents a pop.

I've watched two of them now, and have been really blown away both times, actually applauding after last night's episode, "Blink." I'm sorry, but Davies isn't half the writer that Moffat is. I haven't seen writing this good on TV since the early days of Northern Exposure.

"The Girl in the Fireplace" is a virtual template for themes that Moffat would explore in greater depth when he took over the show. While checking out a seemingly abandoned spaceship, the doctor finds an 18th century fireplace that is actually a gateway into a little girl's bedroom. That little girl is being terrorized by clockwork automatons who scan her brain, declare that she's "not ready" and then leave. The automatons (and, now, The Doctor) reappear at various times throughout her life, and as the young girl grows to womanhood she finds herself falling in love with the curious stranger who reappears every time to protect her from the automatons. (and who never gets any older). As it turns out, she grows up to become France's Madame de Pompadour, and the automations want to use her adult brain to repair their ship. They've been building time portals into her life, and at last they've caught her at the ripe age. But if the Doctor closes down the time portals, he'll be stranded forever in 18th century France.

You see, it takes a long time to describe one of Moffat's plots.

If "The Girl in the Fireplace" is a thematic Statement of Principles, then "Blink" could well be the Pilot for Mofat's tenure on the show. It's remarkable in that the Doctor hardly appears at all. We're in the present day, while he's trapped in 1969 by  new series villains The Weeping Angels. This time, it's up to a girl from the present day who's never met the Doctor to get information to him in 1969 so that he -- get this -- can record a video that will one day be inserted as an easter egg onto 17 DVD titles; a video that will get information to the girl in the present day that will allow her to defeat The Weeping Angels and free up the Doctor's TARDIS.

Are you following this? Trust me, it doesn't even begin to cover all the wrinkles that Moffat gets into this story.

It is brilliant and clever and it takes the show to a whole new level. The original Doctor Who was not for everyone. It was cheaply made and eccentric and sometimes long-winded. I loved it without reserve in nearly all its incarnations, but could completely understand why lots of folks walked away.

This is different. If you've never seen the show, or if you've seen it in the old days and had enough, get your hands on a copy of "Blink" and start there. It's been many moons since I've seen something that made me want to grab people by the shoulders, push them into a chair and say, "Just sit down and Watch."

Blah-blah-blah, burble-burble-burble. Had enough? I don't blame you.

-- Freder.

It's Mandatory. . .

Dr. Shrinker, source of my councilor's nickname.

In the days and weeks following my mother's death, I was not allowed a single day off from work. It was graduation week, followed two weeks later by Reunion week and all the preparation required for that. Meanwhile, I was falling apart in more ways than one.

I kept begging for time off, and my boss kept saying, "No, you need to be in a busy people environment," her code phrase for "No way, it's too busy here."

People were asking me questions about my mother's memorial service and I had no answers to give them. With no help in the planning from the rest of my family and no free time during the week to make the arrangements, nothing was happening. People at work were saying behind my back "Why doesn't Doug take some time off?" Well, I wasn't being allowed to, even though college policy gave me three bereavement days, and I had plenty of vacation time racked up.

We had to lay my mother's ashes to rest on Memorial Day because that was the only day I could get off.

The next day, I was a basket case. Unfit for duty in any sense of the word. I had been drinking, of course, and I simply could not pull myself together. I tried to arrange for the day off. To make a long story short, I was called into work anyway.

Where it became obvious to everyone what I'd known all along: I had no business being there that day and needed some time off.

I was called into my boss's office. The college lawyer was waiting for me there. I was actually in tears. He took one look at me and ordered me into Mandatory Counseling. I was given a list of names and numbers to call. All I wanted was some time off to make the arrangements for my mother's service. Instead, I was having a nervous breakdown aided and abetted by the college and alcohol.

I was not opposed to the concept of counseling, but the word "Mandatory" really got under my skin. The college is not my damn big brother, and anyway I viewed the college's treatment of me as part of the problem.

The next day I came to work as normal, but met a friend in the walkway. I told her my predicament and she insisted that I had the right to time off and they needed to give it to me.

I decided to take it. I emailed my boss (who was out) and told her that I was going to use the day to go to Augusta to make the final arrangements for the service.

This I did. And it was the first day of relief in a month's time. Making the arrangements final was a big step.

I did not follow through on the counseling order. I considered letting them fire me. I was not going to let them meddle in my personal life.

One day I was called back into my boss's office. This was the terrible row that was the catalyst for all that the stress and pressure and grief and despair and the effects of the drinking had wrought on me. I left early and made the call to Dr. Shrinker from home. The next day I was in hospital.

-- Freder.

"Is your journey really necessary?"

Yesterday was a dousing of cold water. I won't tell you about my reaction, because it's beginning to sound like a broken record, even to me. But I will ask the question:: if I'm hit this hard at this stage of the game, how in hell am I going to hold it together when they actually begin to pull the house apart?

The day started early with me once again trying to make the house presentable. This was made extra-difficult by Spooky, my incontinent cat, who was having a bad day, pooping absolutely everywhere as fast as I could clean it up. I had to change the towels on the living room sofa.

I was expecting one guy, a representative of the auction house. Instead, when they finally found me (about 15 minutes late), two guys got out of the car. And told me that Mr. J______, in person, would be coming along, too. I told them that once we got into the house it was going to be single file all the way. They didn't believe me at first. Then they stepped inside, and fell silent real fast.

The thought of these three big men somehow navigating that space gave me the willies, but it didn't seem to faze the cats at all. Patchy sat quietly on the top of the davenport and watched them without much interest.

This is the third time I've had to give a tour of the house to strangers. Picking at my mother's ashes. It took about an hour. By the time they left I really, really wanted to add some vodka to my orange juice. But I don't do that anymore.

Then a rush to get into work, then another rush to get downtown by 11:30 for my appointment with Dr. Shrinker (I should blog about how the Mandatory Counseling thing came to happen), only to find that I had the wrong day and the wrong time. She was very nice about it, her schedule was clear, so she saw me anyway.

I was able to report the reduction in my drinking. She wants me to completely go cold turkey, but I'm not quite ready to go that far. We talked about the day that the auctioneers will come to clean the house out. It was the first time I've broken down in front of her.

She said that I should look at it differently. My mother's things will be cared for, and will go to people who will enjoy them,

I took pictures in the closed guest room before bedtime. Lots of Steiff and paper Halloween in there. Some of it will be staying with me.

-- Freder.