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Yes, I know I promised you a post on “Have I ever done anything I could have been arrested for if only I were caught? What have those things been?”.

Yes, I know this isn’t the topic.

Yes, I know it’s been over a month since my last post.

No, it’s not true that the reason I haven’t posted it is because I don’t want to answer the question “Have I ever done anything I could have been arrested for if only I were caught? What have those things been?”. Although I don’t really want to answer that question.

In fact, the programme and I have not been getting on very well recently. I’ve been going to meetings and thinking, well, I’m hating this, why am I here? And I’ve not been talking to people in the fellowship, or using my sponsor, or really doing anything of the stuff that’s suggested. And it felt, well, pretty hypocritical to be writing about the 12 step programme when I’m not working it.

The good news, for me, for today, if anyone is interested, is that whatever low-level malaise that was affecting me over the past few months seems to be lifting. Tonight a Daniel Johnston song came on Spotify (don’t you just love Spotify?), and for the first time in a long while I got the kind of spiritual lift that sometimes it seems that music can give me. Here’s the song. I can’t talk any more as I have a meeting to get to.

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Daniel Johnston - Life in Vain

Next topic: we’ll deal with that tomorrow.

In recovery we are often told to listen out for the similarities and not the differences. This can be hard - it’s pretty natural to seek to compare and contrast your history with other people’s stories. There’s a killer word that gets fired back at you when you start sentences with the words “I never…” or “I didn’t…”: the word is YET. I sat in my early meetings thinking “well, I’ve never been arrested, I’ve never been to a mental hospital, I’ve never seen the inside of a cell…” and distinguished myself from the other people in the room. Maybe they were more hardcore than me? Maybe I wasn’t a proper addict? Maybe I didn’t have to do all the stuff they did? Some of them spoke of relapses - well, I’d abstained since I’d got into the rooms, so that wasn’t going to happen to me either, right? Well, not yet. The occurrence of some of those “yets” (well, all of them actually) in the course of a full blown relapse helps me understand a little more clearly why members of my fellowship say “But for the Grace of God” when they see people in worse positions than themselves. It’s all out there waiting for us. I may be clean, one day at a time, but in the meantime my disease is doing press-ups in the hope that I get complacent.

I’ve mentioned to one or two friends that I’ve been doing this blog. I’m not sure whether publishing it is an entirely sensible idea, but so far the reaction has been supportive (or at least there’s an absence of negative), and it does force me to write something positive about the programme on a daily basis, so for the time being I’m sticking with it. One of those friends emailed me the following song by Nick Lowe. I’ve been conscious of it before, I’d heard the Johnny Cash cover and been vaguely aware of the original on an episode of the Sopranos. And I listened to it once in a rush and thought, yes, nice song, but a bit obvious maybe… Something a bit more obscure, perhaps…? Some more jangly indie-pop, maybe?

Well, I’ve just listened to it a couple more times tonight, and of course The Song Is Going In The Blog, and what is more, I’m sticking the lyrics up too. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Nick Lowe and The Beast In Me (from 1994’s The Impossible Bird).

Nick Lowe - Photo: Dan Burn-Forti

The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bonds
Restless by day
And by night, rants and rages at the stars
God help, the beast in me
The beast in me
Has had to learn to live with pain
And how to shelter from the rain
And in the twinkling of an eye
Might have to be restrained
God help the beast in me

Sometimes
It tries to kid me that it’s just a teddy bear
Or even somehow managed
To vanish in the air
And that is when I must beware
Of the beast in me
That everybody knows
They’ve seen him out dressed in my clothes
Patently unclear
If it’s New York or New Year
God help the beast in me
The beast in me

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Nick Lowe - The Beast In Me

Next topic: This Too Shall Pass