Recovery

by John Berryman

  Knock on the door, another, hesitant. Hutch’s wife came in. She looked nervous, a heavy-browed solemn short woman he hardly knew, mother of nine and veteran of Hutch. ‘Come on back, Alan,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Everybody’s sorry.’

  ‘I bet,’ he growled, touched though by this compassion he would as soon have expected from an eggplant. He was getting used to being a bad judge. ‘Come back and hear some more “superior.” Superior.’

  ‘I don’t see why it makes you mad. You are superior.’

  ‘What’s so superior about me? Who am I supposed to be superior to?’

  ‘Well, me.’

  ‘It’s not so, Wilma. Look. Hutch and I are friends, we’ve suffered and stood by each other, we are both so sick we might die, do you feel I’m superior to Hutch?’

  She was very reluctant but it came: ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. Now you are Hutch’s equal. Right? Come on, give.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Then how I can be superior to you?’ He was talking without thinking, reaching down or out to her simplicity, refusing to give in to this insufferable abasement. People who treated him with kid gloves made him want to strangle them. Respect yes, but self-respect: Severance was hell on worshippers.

  She sounded stubborn: ‘You said you felt “tumultuous.” ’

  He felt, slightly, trapped. ‘Did I? That sounds a little affected of me, but I’m used to choosing my words, and that is indeed precisely how I felt. For Christ’s sake, you know what the word means.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Anyway I would never use it. That’s the difference. Also, last Saturday you called Bob an “immobilized badger.” I never heard anybody say anything like that before, except maybe on TV, so I remembered it.’

  ‘I’m trained, Wilma, trained. There’s a superiority in expression. What of it? I can’t help it. Our feelings are the same. It’s not my fault.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was. Nobody blames you. Linda said she was sorry for insulting you. They gave her the devil. Come on back.’

  The sun was doing its duty through the dirty Venetian blinds of the tidy room, though neither of them looking down saw it. Wilma waited.

  Suddenly he could see no reason why not, and he gingerly followed her out, mumbling gratitude. At the end of the long corridor, friendly glances from various as he threaded through to the corner of the couch. Even young Linda gave him a guilty affectionate grin. He could tell Mike, when they broke up, that he had intended no slight, and the comparison that had occurred to him and why. He was glad to be back. He felt—chastened.

  From Severance’s Journal

  Sat. aft. Oddly I feel better, after the hell this morning.

  Why I slip:

  1. False pride (‘I am unique’: I am the one alcoholic who can drink and get away with it.

  2. Teen-age instability and overconfidence (used to getting away with anything, always have done, bec. loved and powerful: I can drink and get away with it.

  3. despair: so why not? (>suicide) I am wicked: and can’t bear it sober.

  4. Lifelong rebelliousness vs all programmes (AA) and rules and superiors—neurotic independence (of Dr Sh’s saying C might be ‘neurotically indomitable’) Refusal to admit failure at anything (exc, at last, tennis), e.g. six (hopeless) goes at playwriting. Weirdly inverted, this.

  5. Grandstanding—my clockwork slips made me the star turn every week or so, esp in Dr R’s Group.

  6. Whim. Pure feather whim. All the foregoing is no doubt true, but this is it. I need manacles. I know I won’t get away with it, I’ve never had an unconfessed (known to me, i.e. remembered) slip, but off I go. ‘Guckenheimer. Make it a double, with water.’ Will I really never pronounce those frightful words again? Not today, anyway.

  Almost unbearably depressing, though. I need a programme of iron. AA will never do it. Maybe becoming a Jew?

  In the Snack Room an hour ago—we were alone—Jeree suddenly opened her mouth and said, ‘I’m scared.’ Rush of love and pity. For almost two weeks now we have been sitting there hours a day and I’m not sure she has said one word since the first morning (been in treatment before). Later: she’s always shy, scared—but her psychiatrist helped her yesterday morning. If only she’d talk in Group; worked on her; you’ve got to come out.

  Hank Poore tells me (the Theologian of the Slip) that after nine years is it sobriety he still feels now and then that he can handle it. I have written Step One in the front of my 24-Hour Book and include it now in the 5 to 20 min. meditation every morning before washing—

  Scrotal fire.

  New to me?: ‘the Jewish conception speedily became unique. No other nation of antiquity ever came to the point of regarding itself as chosen not for its own advantage but for service.’ A bearing attraction.

  Also find: ‘Man may be the crown of creation, but he is totally a creature. God, not he, made him, his faculties, the world. What is more, he serves the good, if at all, in no more than in infinitesimal degree, and then with many an interval of truancy and unfaithfulness.’ Reassuring after my talk Wednesday (with Dr G and Fr Krueger) about policing my phantasies. I find I get nowhere again and again, almost give up trying. But doesn’t Christ expect more? I’m nervous sometimes with a faith that never mentions Him or the saints (though the Psalmist uses the word). On the other hand, the over-all sense here of the importance of the Person seems beyond Xtianity really. ‘No special privileges’ however, and I like that.

  David eh? Heavenly older sister he’ll have. (Peculiar to see Rachel an older any—I’ll have to give in and abjure ‘Baby.’) Always longed for one myself, or, no, younger. Developed them—N, Br, So, M (sooner or later drinking made passes at them. Not invariably. Often enough to be reconciled to not having had one, God help her and me). Young Origen was wise. Odd that just at this point. I wonder when. Is heredity a factor? Victimology a real field, with only a German or so and a Canadian doing anything to advance it so far.

  I’m not sticking to business. Find out from Dr G how much delay is plausible in traumatic response of this sort (if he ever heard of a case like this, and is it likely?). Two summers, the brilliant year. Snapshot of me on the sidewalk in white ducks and a blue jacket, arms full of trophies, Graduation day, my plump-spinster English teacher arm around my shoulder, admiring young brother grinning up at me sideways. A menace to him even then. Love. Then all to hell four years.

  Stick to business!

  Studying these Steps in Chapter Five appals me. I can only find one entry to hope: ‘Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.’ Surely these are the most reassuring sentences I have ever come on, if they are right. Now I seem to feel no resentments at present, I got rid of all that at Howarden in the 4th Step and last Spring again. Shuddered this summer coming on Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘When drunk, I make them pay and pay and pay and pay.’ That was me. Not just now; hate nobody. Wide experience of alcoholics, and recovering alcoholics, behind those four sentences. Hardly likely wrong. Hang onto this. (No merit, by the way, in my freedom from resentment: product solely of all-excluding gratitude. I don’t deserve the help I’ve had even so far. Ugly fact radiant, sometimes almost insupportable, that I should have a chance.)

  Better and better with Ruth. Another long talk about her pupils. She’s less afraid of them, and the two little brutes (one broke a girl’s arm in class last month, the other hoisted an atlas and slammed it down on the cranium of the little girl in the desk ahead of him—talk about the Generation Gap—in twelve years of mostly public school in the Southwest, Florida, New York, nothing remotely similar happened in any classroom I was in or heard of) have been, one removed, other’s parents brought to bear. She too thinks I’m getting on.

  Rachel excited, great eyes glowing in her less round, adorable fac
e: ‘Daddy, do you realize that it’s only nineteen days till Hallowe’en!’ I still hurt from when she suddenly didn’t want me to take her out for tricks-or-treats two years ago.

  Charley dropped me in my tracks this afternoon: ‘Your face is more serene the last day or two.’ I admit I feel pretty good, though I have no reason to (unless about the resentment-bit).

  Later. Terrible excitation, hair-trigger. Omaha stockbroker: ‘Didn’t Kafka kill himself?’ ‘Well, wasn’t he insane?’ (talked with Rita—he came back and apologized).

  Roberta Br, the most elegant pretty woman in Ohio, rushed into the Snack Room and embraced me in my chair. ‘I’m a hostile bitch.’ She was too; she must be recovering with her marvellous husband. Staggered.

  The little hippie Dan: ‘Was Washington a revolutionist?’ ‘Was X the son of God?’ ‘Who am I/ I’m one of the Revolution!’ I said, ‘There’s a revolution is there. Where? Who are its leaders?’ Long long pause—‘Abbie Hoff man.’ ‘Who?’ I laughed at him. ‘You’re a murderer—National Guard at Kent State, A-bomb and H-bomb, killing Nazis etc.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘look at my hands. That’s all blood.’ No idea that a revolutionary is learned (as well as deluded)—Mirabeau, Christophe, Blanqui, Che, Ho—especially the Argentine doctor sans merci, who rejected Cuba’s Soviet benefactors on the grounds of revolutionary ethics—namely, they were rude. Sweet pathetic exasperating kids, with nothing to put in play but a (temporary—and they don’t know that) life-style-in-opposition plus omnipotent ignorance. Their chances against the Pentagon-FBI-Ford-Boeing-the unions and the rest of the Establishment tyranny?

  I did not get either support or control from the AA group (they should have thrown me out after the third slip, ‘Go and drink yourself to death, Alan. If you want to come back dry three months, fine, welcome.’ Maybe this Chapter of Mike’s.

  I seem to need CONTROL in order not to drink, and a control I fear. Ruth kept me safe to, in, and from Mexico. Dr Rome, spectre and fact, kept me sober (or dry say) two months; I drank on Tuesday because I was leaving for upstate New York and would not have to face him the next night; I felt free. Imagine! feeling free. Christ.

  But where was the resentment? Ah, ah—of him. Those men are right right right. That’s what I’ve got to lie in wait against. Or rather: come out in the open with. But if I don’t feel any?

  I feel—good but—perplexed.

  14

  TUESDAY MORNING was dull grey out, remote, improbable. Severance, shocked to his root by Jeree’s First Step, was working madly on his own, but for some reason, for a change, he listened to Tracy Croy’s talk about feelings and defences Monday evening. ‘Jeree’s terrible Step One (desperate—suicide—one attempt already),’ he had written in his Journal, ‘brave and humbling to me: ALL-OUT but no hope. Gus made one attempt “Do you want to live?” no reply “You do want to live.”

  ‘Banish all pride, any sense of achievement from mine. Separate the history into I) alcohol 2) unmanageability of life. End with work on Steps II and III, and XII. The First Step without the Second Step is death, right away or around the corner. There is not one anti-proton of ongoing, esperance, in Step One. What will happen to her? Everybody crushed, except Gus, and Wilbur wasn’t listening.’

  Tracy, an active amusing self-critical but lounging man in a cardigan with a half-grown beard, used a blackboard, listing down the lefthand side various feelings and across on the right, in no particular order, the defences adopted by the alcoholized personality against not only their expression but their realization by the patient himself.

  ‘mad minimizing

  sad denial

  bad silence

  glad projection (reading into the other person the feelings you deny in yourself)

  hurt

  scared

  resetful

  ashamed, guilty attacking

  embarrassed explaining

  inadequate or confused humour (ugh)

  rejected chat

  accepting (whith whatever pain) intellectualizing (ugh)

  agreeing, complying (playing Group, smug, often hostile shifting’

  warm, cold

  shifting’

  Sick feelings, he said as lightly as if he were discussing a ‘dessert,’ produce sick thinking (delusion, masking true feelings) and then sick behaviour (drinking).’ The condition aimed at in treatment, over the two-year period, is ‘mental sobriety’ or ‘comfortable sobriety’ (= not want a drink). Just being dry was just being in hell. He knew a man who had been dry for eleven years on just the First Step and fear, and he was the most ill-tempered and tyrannical son of a bitch in the community, corroded by self-pity, frustration, resentment, and vanity. ‘stay real,’ he told them suddenly, and, ‘Let go. The more I admit I’m scared, etc., the less I have to act on it,’ and, ‘Once you’re real, you don’t have to be consistent. For instance, stuff like this: I am kind and loving, therefore I cannot be angry. Wow. How do you like that—which every one of us, every day in treatment, does. Alcoholics are rigid, childish, intolerant, programmatic. They have to live furtive lives. Your only chance is to come out in the open. Also phony lives, and they don’t know it, once the disease has really taken over the thinking; so they’ve got to level. You level with what? Your phoniness. It doesn’t take anybody in. Certain basic delusions are probably common to all alcoholics, but even those can be spotted by a patient in a different stage of recovery—not to speak of your Counsellors. You’ve got to help each other, and you can, though all of you are crippled. Say somebody in the Group is controlling anger (why is he, by the way? because he’s afraid of exploding and killing somebody), it’s perfectly obvious to the rest. They confront him with it. He denies it, with the utmost sincerity, they give him data, he pulls out and deploys his favourite defences, they are pointed out to him, and in the end, beaten, if he is lucky he admits it and not only admits it, he accepts it: he’s mad. Fine. I would be too. Everybody relaxes, and his long long process of recovery is under way.’ O where the final rout is Victory, thought Severance illuminated.

  At the beginning of Mini-group he asked Linc if he could propose a second Contract and heard the long man’s fancy-booted, casual ‘Sure. What is it?’

  ‘My feelings about my father. I used to blame him for ruining my life; but now I’m not so sure, just lately.’

  ‘How did he ruin your life?’

  ‘By killing himself when I was twelve.’

  ‘But you’re not sure.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘If you’re not sure, why do you want a Contract?’ Line sounded bored.

  ‘To find out, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Contracts are not research projects. They do not deal with the past. They deal with the Present, the real and unreal Present. If you’re not sure you have no problem.’

  Severance went into double consciousness. Through his mind sprang one of his favorite Zen stories (A Brahmin approaches the Buddha, bearing a gift in each hand. ‘Drop it!’ commands Siddhartha, and he drops the gift from the right hand. Goes nearer. ‘Drop it!’ and the lefthand gift falls to the ground. Nearer still: ‘Drop it!’—and the Brahmin understands) and the Boddhidharma story (the Master arrives in China to introduce Zen, the Emperor builds him a monastery but in some way irritates him, so Boddhidharma encapsulates himself in the monastery with true Zen perversity and refuses to see anyone. Six years pass, before a Confucian sage comes who is really serious, sits at the gate in vain, and finally cuts off his right arm and sends it in by the monk who is portering. Boddhidharma, very reluctantly, agrees to talk with him for one minute. He is admitted. ‘What’s the matter?’ said Boddhidharma crossly. ‘Master, I am in pain. Tell me how I can become happy.’ ‘Where are you in pain? Can you tell me where you are in pain?’ The Confucian thinks and thinks, at last he confesses: ‘No.’ ‘You are happy’) while his voice said, lifted a little, ‘But it’s killing me. I’m spending most of my time at it, it’s interfering with my treatment.’

  ‘This was forty years
ago,’ said Linc. ‘Right?’

  ‘Yes. More.’

  ‘Okay. Why does it bother you?’

  ‘I’ve got to know the truth. I’ve got to know why I was a completely uncharacteristic person for the four years after that.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  Severance controlled himself. ‘Look. Contracts are about feelings, aren’t they? Well, my present feelings are hopelessly mixed. I don’t know whether he was to blame or not.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘My wasted years.’

  ‘Everybody wastes years. Nobody is characteristic. But if you want to make a Contract about it, okay. Mildred, have you been thinking about your Contract?’

  Mildred, a sweet-faced tidy simple woman of fifty in pink slacks whom it was difficult to imagine sitting in her kitchen stoned, slopping a fresh one out of the lowering vodka bottle, had, and pretty soon she was conversing with the mother she hadn’t seen since her parents moved to the Coast ten years before.

  Then Letty defended for one hour and ten minutes her attempts to manage her unhappily married daughter’s wretched life, disarming even Keg with her wide, caring eyes. Only Harley mocked her; and nothing happened. Wilbur would not agree to go, on discharge, to a State hospital. Finally Keg stood up, with an impatient flip of his right hand, and went over to the board. He drew a long horizontal line, slashed a line cutting its center and marked off five divisions on either side. Above the left end he wrote raggedly, ‘playing it safe,’ above the right, ‘taking risks.’ Standing back, he looked harshly around the Group.