Fake It Til You Make It

I decided it was time to have my hair cut for the summer - one of those very short, almost boyish styles I favor in the southern heat and humidity - and by sheer luck, I drew a new hairdresser. He began talking immediately and non stop about his recovery in AA, the group home where he lives and it's rules, the gift and cost of sobriety, each and every step of the program, making amends to his five wives, changing his life and getting right with God. He was talking at me, working the program by sharing and carrying the message, reinforcing his own beliefs with every sentence. I heard all the slogans, all the right things, and although it was more information than I needed or wanted, I listened to it all and wished him success and peace of mind. Only my instincts told me he was trying to convince himself and maybe trying a little too hard, but recovery is very much an individual process, a day to day effort of finding whatever works and using it. Fake it 'til you make it is a popular slogan in AA.

I'm blessed to have a number of friends in recovery, all doing well and staying clean and straight despite the odds. Each has come to terms with their addiction and found a way to change their lives. They carry the message by the way they live, by example, and by actions. They have found new ways to deal with adversity and temptations and setbacks and new ways to celebrate and enjoy life. Many are music makers, continually exposed to alcohol and drugs and an old way of life that will always be willing to take them back. But they don't go - choosing the harder road and the longer life over the quick fix and the momentary high. I keep them all in my prayers as they keep me in their's.

These people are the exceptions - most addicts don't make it. A prominent young attorney favored arriving at his destinations with a glass of wine balanced on the dashboard. He walked with a precarious, stumbling stride and was dead before he was 45. I watched his self destruction with sadness and anger at the waste of life but could do nothing - all his second chances were lost in an alcoholic haze. A well known society woman reeking of liquor and unable to put together a coherent sentence at ten in the morning, a drug dealing doctor who carried syringes in his pocket, a salesman who lived for the end of each day when he could drink himself to sleep, broken people all, living on borrowed time and emaciated emotions. So I listened to the man cutting my hair and said a small prayer that he would find his way.