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I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the recovery acronym “H.A.L.T.” which stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.
It’s been on my mind because I often spend a lot of time looking for answers about my thoughts and actions.
Why am I arguing with everybody today?
Why did that one email make me soooooo pissed off?
When that guy on the highway merged in front of me and didn’t wave his hand to show appreciation for the great deed I just did, why did I immediately think I needed to follow him home and yell at him?
When I spend all that time trying to find out what’s wrong with me, sometimes I neglect to consider the more obvious possibilities. Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired? Because the truth is, if you didn’t sleep last night and overreact to something your teenager or neighbor says to you… maybe the problem isn’t that you have a terrible character defect that requires you to go back to rehab or enroll in a month-long retreat to spiritually heal. Maybe you need a nap.
I bring all of this up because as I shared earlier this week, I went to Disney recently with my family. And as I have discussed many times, I had the ends of both feet amputated 15 years ago, so chronic pain is a big part of my addiction and recovery story.
In the leadup to the trip, I spent a lot of time contemplating how much HALT was going to be an issue for me and my entire family. Because guess what, a hungry and over-tired 7-year-old is no picnic and neither is her hungry and over-tired 44-year-old dad!
So I had my radar up throughout the trip for the two possibilities every time we hit a speed bump.
One possibility was that there was a program issue to consider. Did I need to make amends? Was I holding onto a resentment? Did I need to get a little sharper with restraint of pen and tongue? (An absolute yes to that last one).
The other possibility was maybe I was just having a human problem. Maybe I needed a nap or a sandwich. I sometimes forget that we’re all just animals, with physical wants and needs that are beyond anything a therapist or a sponsor can help you with. There’s no step work that I know of that will take care of lunch for me, or let me stop sleeping because I am so spiritually fit. Those are human body needs.
I’d actually like to add onto HALT with the letter P, because I can say with 100 percent certainty that pain and spiritual fitness do not play well in the sandbox together. When my feet hurt, it causes disruptions to everything I am trying to do. I am more agitated, impatient, fearful and negative. I just am. Same goes for if I have a bad headache or got stung by a bee. It drains the spirituality right out of anybody.
Pain is actually a significant issue for more people than I ever realized. Something like 20 million Americans have some form of disability, including me. When I share my story at a speaker meeting, I often specifically mention that chronic pain is something us alcoholics and addicts don’t often talk about much. But it’s a real thing. It can be a trigger to drink and drug to numb the actual pain. Or, for people who aren’t craving alcohol and drugs any more, it can be a trigger to just lose it sometimes. Again, it’s hard to be a spiritual superstar if you have three herniated discs. My sobriety and my pain levels have to work together.
So I am going with PHALT from now on, and I love what the contrast is between that acronym and what my takeaway from it is. In these cases, I like that being hungry or tired or in pain is often not my fault. It’s not some glaring sickness within me that I should feel shameful about.
Now, the addict in me wants to just leave it at that. “Yay, when I ranted at my kids in the minivan it was because I was lonely, which is a normal human occurrence and therefore I am not responsible!”
That’s not really true, either. Now that I have awareness of these things, it’s my freaking job to make sure I do eat a sandwich when I need to, and I do go to bed at a reasonable hour, and I do aggressively seek out connection if I am lonely, and so on. There are solutions for all five letters in my PHALT acronym, and if I don’t immediately pursue those solutions, then it’s on me.
So I need to own the idea that I only slept two hours some night and THAT’S why I am arguing with people too much or taking that snippy email too personally or getting mad because the merging driver didn’t say thank you according to my standards… actually, screw that guy. He still needs to know he owes me a wave.
Ah, I guess maybe I need another nap and a sandwich.
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:
A stranger wandered into the bar one afternoon and ordered a Manhattan for himself and a round for the house. Upon being presented with the tab, he realized he'd skipped the pool players and several card players in the game room, and insisted that they have one also.
The barman said, "That'll be $37.80."
"Have-one yourself," the stranger said.
So he did and made it $40 even.
The stranger then assured the barman that he didn't have a red cent, whereupon he was dispatched from the bar by the seat of his pants.
Sure enough, the next day he showed up again, ordered a double Scotch and drinks for the house. The same barman replied, "Sure pal, and I suppose you'd like to buy me one, too!"
To which the stranger said, "Not on your life, my friend. You get violent when you drink!"
(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 1989)
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