Step 1 - on Caffeine/Food
...Admitted we were powerless - that our lives had become unmanageable
1. How many times and in how many ways have I tried to stop or control my caffeine addiction?
Eating tons of caffeinated sugar-free energy bars.
Eating raw organic sugar-free desserts with cacao in them…for 15 years I did not know that these desserts also had a shot of espresso in them. Did this 5 times a week, for ten years driving 30 minutes each way to the raw foods restaurant.
Drinking ice cold southern Lipton tea...like my Mama did.
Drinking liters and liters of Diet Coke daily.
Switching to Green tea.
Using only $500/pound White tea.
Using just espresso.
2. How have I been dishonest with others and myself and how have I tried to hide these behaviors?
Been dishonest that Yerba Matte was not caffeine.
Honestly not seeing the connection drinking caffeine between eating and when I did, I just went into euphoric recall and couldn’t “remember with sufficient force” to stop myself.
Thinking that I could drink caffeine only with good friends on special holidays.
3. How have I tried to justify, rationalize or explain my behaviors to others and myself?
When I asked my father at age 12 if coffee was bad for you he said “Not as bad as other things”.
My 100 year old virgin Catholic monk sponsor, when he was dying asked for coffee...so I rationalized that it was okay for me, too.
I made a deal with myself: If I don’t act out sexually...I will reward myself with caffeinated desserts.
How has my coffee affected the following aspects of my life?
. 1) My feelings?
Numbed my feelings. Got me feeling excited for 45 minutes and then I felt wretched for 11 hours
. 2) My physical/mental health?
After coffee, I eat too much to come down from the high then:
My fingernails are yellowing and look corpse-like.
My arm is getting deep red age spots.
Hard to breathe-more like heaving.
My right shoulder is killing me.
Left side of my neck hurts.
Knees and back hurt.
Stiff all over.
My belly is extended.
I am sweating.
Clothes don’t fit.
Body stinks.
My heart hurts some.
My skin feels like it’s exploding from the inside.
I feel like I slightly want to pass out.
I feel stuffed.
Slightly congested.
Feces and gas smells really bad.
I feel listless.
My hands feel too stiff to play guitar.
Very slight headache, not much.
. 3) My spirituality?
I didn’t believe God would have anything to do with something as simple and small as my coffee addiction.
. 4) My relationship with myself (integrity, self-respect and self-esteem)?
When I am high on coffee I don’t care about developing my relationship with myself...I just want to be high.
. 5) My relationships with family and friends?
I notice that my character defect of narcissism magnifies when I am high on coffee.
. 6) My finances/career/education?
Four Starbucks double lattes a day is about $16/day or $477/month.
I am much more inclined to work on my career or education if I am not high...on anything.
♣Step 1.1 on Caffeine/Food
What if I could be a winner...by admitting I was a loser?
The most beautiful sentence in the English language is said to be “God is love”.
I find the following sentence more beautiful and more personal:
“ God, please help me stop doing _____.”
Why?
Because it takes me out of the Bible, the Koran, the Pentateuch, the Bhagavad Gita, the Big Book and the 12 X 12 , all of which are postcards of where God has truly been...and places me, gently, humbly...right where the Living God is truly.
It doesn’t get any better, in my experience, than being in God’s presence. That is unspeakably indescribable...yet, it is open to anyone.
It requires something though...it requires self-honesty and God-humility.
Those are tough qualities to come by, as an addict.
We are a rebellious lot, sadly stemming from our childhood experiences, and the very tools by which we survived: doing the impossible, never stopping, never giving up, trying to get everyone to like us, or the other extreme not caring whether anyone did, ignoring or burying or feelings, never asking for help or never standing up for ourselves...all these things defeat me when I need God the most.
I am hard headed. No one can tell me what to do. In that sense I am simply retarded in my emotional growth. I am an arrested adolescent.
It is going to be really hard for me to have a contrite heart if I am like that.
Painfully, but fortunately, there is a solution to this...Hitting bottom
It can be a divorce, a custody battle loss, an arrest, a life threatening illness, being fired...or it can be, for some, simply, “ Being sick and tired of being sick and tired “.
Here is a simple internet definition “Those who have a contrite spirit are willing to do anything and everything that God asks of them, without resistance or resentment.’
But I only get that way when I say “ I am a loser “.
Oh!!! That is so painful. Especially for men, and especially for Americans who, since 1945, have dominated the world.
Listen to those words “I am a loser”and see how they grate at your very soul, because that is what is at stake here...your very soul.
“ God, please help me stop doing _____.”
Because when I try to stop, I fail and fail and fail...and I won’t ask for help.
This posture may work for Superman, Mighty Mouse, Popeye, Zorro and John Wayne, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone characters.
But, if I am too proud to ask for help from any other human on earth, maybe I can ask God for help
“ God, please help me stop doing _____.”
♣Step 2 - On Caffeine/Food
...Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.
What do I hope my life would look like if I were restored to sanity around?
. 1) My feelings?
I like the not being crazed for food from caffeine.
. 2) My physical health/mental health?
Body stops stinking.
Back, shoulder, neck, and knees hurt less.
Breathing better.
Skin getting smoother.
My headache is diminished.
Nails look way better.
Conformation improves.
Occasional blips of hope and peace
Sense of smell returns slightly...after having green drinks, instead of coffee
No desire for meat or dairy.
Painful constipation from meat is over.
The numb, tingly fingers are gone.
Leg, chest and abdominal (Cobra) muscles begin to bulge.
New jeans fit.
I become slightly interested in fashion.
. 3) My spirituality?
I like the feeling of health from cardio, which I do when I am not high.
Cardio was my first outreach for spirituality when I was 8 years old and began to run.
. 4) My relationship with myself (integrity, self-respect and self-esteem)?
I like not being fat from meat or dairy.
I like the anti-inflammatory of live greens.
. 5) My relationships with family and friends?
I am in the middle when I am not high on caffeine: not narcissistic...not codependent
. 6) My finances/career/education?
Save $477/month from Starbucks
I love to read (education) and I love to play the guitar (career)...when I am calm, from the absence of caffeine
♣Step 2.1 - on Caffeine/Food
Honestly admitting that I am powerless over food and doing what I have to do to not overeat and get fat...I then practice the principle of hope for some things in my life:
First, with God’s power I want to stay thin:
Staying at 128.8 pounds every day is important to me.
It keeps away the compulsion to eat too much.
It keeps away the obsession to lose weight.
My mind becomes free.
What I notice is that I more often than I’d like, I feel weak at 128.8 but in truth, I am acting strongly...So, strength sometimes feels like weakness.
Workout with cardio every other day running and then biking five days a week:
This gives me physical courage and strength. And, it gives my heart the pump I need to feel serene emotionally.
Eight sets of 40 push-ups every day five days a week:
This gives me the conformation that I look for in myself and know that I am capable of.
Eating mostly living foods from our garden:
There is something ameliorative about freshly harvested greens which is very youth giving...and at 66 I appreciate that a lot.
Reading books:
I love how my mind can not only be detached from my own problems but also,in reading, I get to spend my time with some of the greatest minds that have ever lived...and that is very pleasant for me.
Praying all the time:
...nothing satisfies me like this. Clearing my mind of it’s “pain and problems” so that I am able to reach my soul, and that is where peace of mind is...and only there.
Playing music with my friends:
My need for creativity is met here and it’s fun.
♣Step 2.2 on Caffeine/Food...practicing the principle of hope
I don’t want to fall backwards and get stuck ridiculously close to curing addiction and fail. That would be nearing unbearable. I want to move on forward and find out what happens...no matter what.
I hope to maintain my 128.8 pound daily body weight.
I hope to maintain my no caffeine use.
I want to continue practicing humility through anonymity.
I want to enjoy avant-garde music. I have this week joined a James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake weekly book club and I am writing music using his writings as lyric/narrative content and have started writing for stand-up bass and acoustic guitar and rehearsing once a week. I have started practicing again....so fun.
I hope to maintain running five miles, or biking for 90 minutes, five days a week.
I hope to maintain my 8 sets of 40 push-ups, five days a week.
I hope to maintain having three 12 ounce “living foods” drinks every day from the garden my wife grows and drinking them within five minutes of harvesting.
I enjoy periods of finite chastity practiced with my wife for clarity and intuition...even if it is just a few days, or even just one deliberate day.
Prayer five times a day with Prayercall anchors me and keeps me going in the right direction. It is my Light to my path.
Reading Fran Lebowitz, C. S. Lewis, Ernest Becker, Gerald Durrell and George Eliot this week...for giggles.
Frequent use of breath prayer from 50 to 500 breaths to access my soul is now the peak of my spiritual life. It is at least on par, for me, with unselfish service in getting connected with the God of my understanding.
Enjoying being with my wife and son and singing together or visiting wooded areas.
♣Step 2.3 on Caffeine/Food
If it is true that 98% of addiction is mental obsession then what can I do about it...assuming all physical addictions are stopped?
Probably the best action to take for mental sobriety is to share “experience, strength and hope” with other people who want to be sober, in whatever addiction.
There is a cleansing, creative, joyful power that is the Living Spirit of God which flows through me, and is available to anyone else who is willing, that heals and makes my mind healthier than any other activity when I serve others.
The second two activities that are very mentally healing, sobering, steadying and calming are prayer and meditation.
People refer to these as though they were of equal importance, but that is not true.
To the beginner, prayer, or speaking to God, is most important.
But to the more advanced student of God meditation is more important.
Why?
Because in the beginner the many voices that are heard within: the addictive voices craving for more, hurtful expressions of family members that one may have carried for years, the voices of wayward friends giving bad or immature peer advice, or just understandably commercially motivated voices of media...all need to be stilled.
Initially this is not possible except through drowning out those old messages with repeated, solid prayer.
Eventually, the mind begins to be calmed and listening to God, or meditation, becomes more fruitful.
So prayer and meditation become, only after service, the best “treatment for the mind” as my friend’s “Church of Religious Science” used to say.
♣Step 3 - on Caffeine/Food
...Made a decision to turn my will and life over to the care of God, as I understood God.
What I am willing to do in order to be restored to sanity?
Here are three things I’m willing to stop doing, and three things I am willing start doing to realize those hopeful things in my life:
To start doing:
Work out every day on running, biking, 6 sets of push-ups/day, yoga/free weights/abs
Practice the guitar as a 9th step.
Read voraciously.
To stop doing:
Worrying
Thinking about a van to drive or land to buy
Performing
♣Step 3.1 on Caffeine/Food
There is an old joke: “Of all the things I’ve lost...I miss my mind the least.”
There is another: “I am glad I lost my mind. It used to sit on my shoulders...and just bother me.”
There is something wonderful that begins to happens when I contact God...my mind starts to be my own again.
You would think that if you gave your “life and will” to God that you might become a slave or an automaton, but actually the opposite is true.
God, unlike a child, or a demanding boss does not need your “life and will” to be okay...so He releases it back to you.
The mechanics are: I give my mind to God. He gives it back to me. I can then use my mind creatively.
Saint Augustine said it this way “Love the Lord...and do as you please”.
Contrarily, if I keep my mind to myself, and do things my way, I usually run things into the ground with personal excess, become physically addicted, and then my mind is then just a slave to obsession. So, I actually lose my mind...even though I think I am in control.
♣Step 4 - on Caffeine/Food
...Made a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves.
The Big Book say on page 64 "We had to get down to causes and conditions".
Why do I use caffeine and food? To change my feelings. What caused those feelings?
If I can inventory my life and find what is the originative source of that pain I might be able to develop self-compassion.
Here is one source. Beware this is ugly:
My father was trained in Military Intelligence at the Presidio of San Francisco between 1954 and 1956.
My father was also a lifelong alcoholic.
When I was five years old I saw something that I was not supposed to see, or recognize that was very, very incriminating and would have cost my father his freedom or his life.
The next day my Father put me in a blue duffle bag, tied it, and hoisted me up between the braces below the joists in our suburban home’s basement.
The weight was too great, so he used the rope from the duffle bag and tied it over a horizontal steel beam.
He then took out a baseball bat and beat me...until he believed that I was dead.
The unspeakable horror of this action usually puts people in a temporary state of shock, to which denial is the most easily available tool to deal with this level of terror...so I have kept this to myself the last 32 years that I have known about this...but it will not wait any longer.
The feeling I feel, when I am not hyper-vigilante, is the feeling of being beat to death.
It looks similar, facially, to extreme exhaustion or advanced depression, but it is neither.
I have avoided this feeling all my life, for the last 60 years.
The God of my understanding, or rather of the God of my then “not-understanding-much-about-at-all “ healed me through various persons acting, I believe, on His behalf.
This left a lifelong fascination and interest in the healing of injury and illness, deep within me.
That fascination with healing would supersede any academic or artistic interest, or activity, which explains why my success in both of these fields, though quite extensive, disciplined and extended, were only modest.
I am so grateful for God’s healing processes and for the people who are skilled at healing.
There is something fascinating, not so much about those skills, but about a personage that would be motivated to share those skills freely...it is thrilling, really, bordering on the magical and angelic, for me.
Whatever it is, I am humbly grateful to have received those gifts, freely.
The extreme abuse impacted me, but the love and care afterwards...changed my life.
My abuse was very extreme, but most abuse is not.
There are six types of child abuse:
Physical neglect: Lack of food, shelter or clothing. Most people in the US don’t suffer from this.
Emotional Neglect: If you didn’t receive the kind of emotional information that you regularly get at PrayerCall, when you were a child, then you were emotionally neglected. Pretty much everyone in the US suffers from this.
Emotional abuse: If you were “shamed, blamed or controlled” as a child then you were emotionally abused. Patrick Carnes, the founder of sex addiction recovery, says that 96% of sex addicts were emotionally abused.
Physical abuse: beating, hitting, slapping, pushing.
Verbal abuse: the use of obscenity or profanity while expressing anger
Sexual abuse: Not just genital contact with adults, but sexualized humor, “talking trash” around children, or adults having pornography in the house are just examples of being sexualized too early in one’s life.
Patrick Carnes says that there is a 400% greater chance that someone will become a sex addict if they were abused as children.
For me, as I do a 4th step inventory of my childhood abuse, I experienced five out of six of these types of abuse.
The good news is...we have the tools to recover from all this things.
In the 7th step in the AA 12x12, p. 76, there are a couple of beautiful, aspiring lines:
“Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and his fellows.
We would like to be assured that the Grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.”
After my worst beating from my father I felt...rather dead.
Very specialized treatment was necessary to engender life to come back into me.
I absolutely must feel that feeling of being “dead” after that beating, which I never let myself feel, so that I can finally let it go...and I have been doing that recently.
But now, after the grieving, comes the choice, to focus on the beating...or to focus on the “angels” that God sent to heal me.
God healed me. I can now look at his “angels” and be grateful and amazed...or I can dwell on my father’s treachery and feel dazed and confused.
If it is true what the Big Book p.63 says “We were reborn”, unlike when I was originally born, I will have to take some responsibility in this new me.
I have changed all the bad stuff about me that I didn’t want everybody to know about…(Though I’m sure they already did know about it all).
Now I want to be accepting and funny.
That is a good posture for an old man…
Though I’m not old...damn it!
♣Step 5 - on Caffeine/Food
I shared my Fourth Step on the PrayerCall Meeting on September 3, 2020 which constitutes my Fifth step
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.