Damn Yankee, George S Geisinger [my reading book txt] 📗

work-a-day world, like any normal people.
He told me one time that he and one of his buddies were driving the Capital Beltway at high speed, back in the day when the speed limit was 70mph. They were smoking a bowl and tripping. His buddy was driving his classic Mustang, the one that kept getting him pulled over by the cops up in Jersey, but this was down by DC.
They were just cruising along on the Beltway, and the guy says, “Hey, man, I need a hit off that pipe.”
But my friend had been an addictions counselor, and he said, out of habit, “You don't need it,” a couple of times, to make his usual, professional point, out of habit, and handed the driver the bowl.
He said it another time, “You don't need it,” and the driver threw the guy's bowl out the window of the Mustang at 70mph in dense traffic on the beltway.
It wasn't like he could say something like, “Hey, what do you think you're doing?” or anything like that, at that particular moment. They were both tripping on mescaline at the time, and one could never tell what that driver might do next.
Another one of the nice things he did for me was help me move one time. We talk on the phone, and exchange email, keep in touch. It's a heck of a nice friendship for a guy like me, who can relate to his stories and visa-verse. We can all use a friend, somehow or another.

Chapter 6

I used to have a lot of anger about God, and people who talked about Him. Sometimes I still do. Turns out that my anger was mostly about my father, his violence, and his paranoia, not to mention my other abuses and other abusers. My father was a minister when I was a kid, and an irresponsible man. He talked about God a lot, being a minister, but was some sort of hypocrite, the way he was always beating on all of us at home, to get what he demanded, and just acted like a little Hitler around the house all the time.
I believed he'd kill us, sooner or later.
He left us all high and dry when he felt like it, too. He finally decided he wanted to leave his family behind, with no visible means of support, whether we survived or not. He went to Florida to sun himself, because he “needed to get some rest” after getting his big PhD. He didn't finish school and get a good job so he could support his family better than he ever had when he was a preacher, before he got fired by the church. He finished school and bailed out of our lives.
I was a kid, and was terribly offended by all that.
That wasn't God's fault, although it connects with my emotions that way sometimes.
Now, I did spend a lot of time in churches over the years, and much of it was because I just wanted to. There were always things I enjoyed about church, from time to time, when I was temporarily on an even keel. There have been things I've resented about churches over the years, too.
I even took a college-level Bible study course in my late 20's. I was also a church musician, singing in choirs and playing the trumpet and the guitar for various congregations on Sunday mornings as a youth, and as an adult.
I've had a considerable background in the Faith.
When I finally figured out that I needed to get sober, I figured out Who to pray to, and how to pray to Him. Somehow, I just knew. Then, I did the most natural thing for a drunk to do: I went out and got drunk again.
Well, God came to me while I was drunk that last time, and He ministered to me in every way I needed Him to. There had been times I'd had a relationship with God when I was younger, so it wasn't completely unlike me to open myself up to God's help.
I never gave up completely on my faith.
I had prayed for help when I had my breakdown in university, and got the help. The same with my relationship with my girl, whom I wanted to marry, when I was in university. I didn't know what to do with her, after I knew I was going to be a liability to her like Dad had been to Mom, so I asked God what to do. He told me that I could not take her with me, so I broke up with her.
There were many things, over the years, that God has helped me with, and getting sober was one of them. My aunt always told me to pray about my smoking, and I finally did it. I got honest with God, and admitted I smoked because I couldn't stop without His help. Then, I was set free from my nicotine addiction, just as I'd been set free from my drug addiction and alcoholism.
I've always had a lot of problems with my thoughts, feelings and beliefs, and still do see a Christian Psychotherapist, take medications, the whole nine yards, but the thing the Lord has done, is consistently facilitate my circumstances, and help me with things that no human being, therapist or otherwise, could ever have known how to help me with.
What it's taken on my part, is a commitment to openness and honesty. It's taken willingness to be cooperative and faithfulness to avoid the things that I'm trying to avoid. I learned to stay away from bars, parties, and smokers, and to keep myself from romancing the idea of drinking or smoking, whenever I've had to be around such things.
I don't wish I could smoke or drink.
I don't miss it.
I'm grateful I don't have to do it.
The thing about being actively addicted to something is a matter of feeling a sense of urgency about continually doing the substances. God has taken all that urgency away from me.
I'm free of it.
Avoiding substances is being faithful to what God has asked me to do with the rest of my life. It doesn't bother me that I'm avoiding substances everyday, because I've been taught, by experience, and by the Lords direct guidance, that the only way I can continue to live at all, is to avoid the substances that gave me so much trouble for so long. It's not a burden to do this, it's an honor and a pleasure.
I enjoy this life.
There's nothing in it like paying obeisance to a violent, belligerent man who has a lot of demands, like my dad was doing when I was little. It's a matter of having a lot of nice things in a nice life, like a clear head, a healthy self-esteem, and the ability to utilize my talents, instead of being ashamed and disgraced on a daily basis.
It's as if I'm almost earning a decent life, by not doing things that make me sick. There was a long time I thought differently, but God helped me see that I was destroying myself, and that He needed my help to give me a good life. He'd already carried me through a million catastrophes, seemed like. He finally showed me that I could choose to live sober, or die on the spot.
He was that direct about it, just as I needed Him to be at the time.
The benefits of staying sober are mind boggling. There are just so many things I have as advantages in life now, that I'd be an addict to want to trade them in for more substance abuse. What I mean is that I have the natural propensity to do addictive thoughts and behaviors, but I realize it would only precipitate disaster.
I've written all these things about my life, not to gloat on the idea that I did so many wrong things and got away with them, which is not so, but to work some of my ideas out, and find a way to give myself some serenity about the life that I've found beyond being a Damn Yankee, flower child, hippie.
Where my life was a nightmare in so many ways while I was younger, sobriety has given me the gift of deliverance. I have plenty of every good thing now. I feel very well most of the time, and am enjoying so much more of my life than I ever thought possible, with a conscious, voluntary contact with my Maker.
I just want to speak and write His praises, and if you're this far in this book, I think you'd want to hear me say so.

Cover graphics by Fiona Johnson and http://www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Text: George S Geisinger
Publication Date: 04-22-2012

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