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I just started watching Andor, which is the 347th Star Wars spinoff show. Just kidding, it’s only like the 10th Star Wars spinoff.
To give a quick mini review, I can already tell Andor will be one of the two best, along side The Mandalorian. It is light years ahead of some of the other recent ones.
I was struck by a fascinating conversation in the pilot episode by the lead character, Cassian Andor, and his robot, Bee. Bee has a running gag that he sputters around a bit because there is an issue with his power source. And there is a moment when Cassian asks Bee to lie for him and say he was at home the entire night before. Bee responds by saying, “OK, but it is going to burn up a lot more energy from my power source to lie than if I told the truth.”
Whoa. That line hit me hard. When I was still active, I lied all the time to keep my b******t going. I think most alcoholics and addicts had a similar house of cards they were trying to keep upright.
And yes, I think all that lying drained me of my energy every day, literally and figuratively. It is physically exhausting to keep a complete sham going, but it also sucks any spirituality out of you and exhausts your soul, if that’s possible. Even when I would pull off another day running and gunning, I’d lay my head down on the pillow and feel a pang deep down in my chest. It’s an ugly feeling to know you just conned a bunch of people you care about.
But fast forward to sobriety, where I stopped lying. Does a lie fly out of my mouth sometimes? Yes, but not often. I know for a fact that I cannot be lying about much of anything and still be sober. If I start pulling con jobs again, it’s only a matter of time until I have to drink or drug (or both) to numb the pain.
What I am most interested in as it relates to that android quote is lying to myself now. Sometimes when I have a rough day and I think, “I should get to a meeting, but I’m sooooo tired, maybe I’ll get to one tomorrow,” it’s not lying… but it’s definitely not the truth.
Sometimes I’ll catch myself thinking somebody is an a*****e and I need to get even with them over that shitty email they sent to me, and I’ll have that sober voice in my head that says, “Hey, maybe call a sober buddy and run that by him first.”
But then the fired-up part of my brain pushes that aside and decides to sit there and stew for four hours. Then over those four hours, I’ll obsess over it, yell at my kids once or twice, ignore an important work assignment and on and on. I’m lying to myself that this is the right path.
To bring it back to that original quote, I still have moments where a thought or behavior is b******t and it drains me of energy. I go to meetings and try to do good behaviors so that I can fill up a spiritual gas tank that inevitably starts to drain a bit as the hours go by. When I start firing off lies and sugarcoating things and pretending I’m fine, I feel like Bee—my power source is losing juice twice as fast if I just told the truth or did the right thing.
So I guess the lesson here is… watch Andor? You’ll get more sober, or something like that.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
At my home group one day, a fellow announced he was visiting from out of town. After the meeting, I introduced myself. We got to talking, and I asked him what type of meeting his home group was. "It's a naked Step meeting," he replied.
"You're kidding!" I said. "Naked Step meeting?"
"Yes," he said. "After we read the Preamble, everyone takes off their clothes. We read the Step, share on it, and then we get dressed at the end of the meeting. Everyone's nakedness promotes honesty far beyond regular meetings."
Several months went by, and this man again visited my home group. I asked him how his naked Step meeting was going.
"Oh," he said, with disappointment. "The meeting broke up."
"Why? What happened?"
"Well," he replied, "people started to compare rather than identify."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, December 2008, by David O. of New York, NY)
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