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This summer, I’ve been outside quite a bit and gotten some sun. I also have been lifting weights and running, so I feel good physically right now.
It made me think back to the last time I was in good shape… which was in 2008, when I was at my absolute bottom as an addict. I had lost a lot of weight, was doing some lifting and I was bronzed up because I’d been doing self-tanner like crazy.
I didn’t quite understand what was happening with me at the time. But looking back, it’s pretty easy to see that on the inside, I knew what I was—a raging alcoholic and addict who was living a giant lie and was probably going to die.
So to compensate for that, I tried to look as good as possible on the outside. But no amount of nice, new clothes or low body-fat could cover up what was really happening. I was rotting on the inside, and it was impossible to hide. I remember a work colleague who hadn’t seen me in a couple of weeks gave me an alarmed look in the office one day. “You look like you’ve lost weight,” she said. “Like, maybe too much.”
I blew her off in the moment but her comment stuck with me. But really, how much can nice triceps cover up for eating 50 Vicodin and six beers the night before?
When I was thinking about that period the other day, I specifically honed in on the self-tanning silliness. In that 2005-08 period, I got worse and worse every single day. Around the same time, I had two kids in three years and was able to take some time off. That meant long nights with crying babies, no work obligations, very little structure. I remember spending days in the house, blinds drawn, night and day blending together in a blur.
That’s when I started busting out the self-tanner. I’d never used it before. I never really cared about getting a good tan. But in my polluted addict brain at the time, I thought it would help hide the fact that I was sitting in a dark house high as s**t all day.
So when my wife and the kids were in bed, at around 11 p.m., I’d bust out containers of self-tanning lotion. I’d lather it on and stand in the living room until it dried. Then I’d cake on another layer. I was usually winding down after 10 hours of alcohol and drugs, too, so I think my accuracy wasn’t great. More than once, I remember spotting myself in the mirror and thinking, “Why does my stomach have one spot that is dark and looks like the outline of Arkansas? And what’s that weird bowling pin shape on my forearm?”
It was a mess. Literally and figuratively. I was embarrassed to be using self-tanner all night, so I hid the vats of tanning cream the same way I did my pills and empty beer cans.
My wife asked me one time, “Did you spill some kind of lotion on the couch?”
“Lotion? What kind of lotion? You think I’m just walking around with huge tubes of lotion?” I fired back. I did a lot of gaslighting back then, even with self tanner.
Let me be very clear, I have nothing against self tanner. If anybody out there uses self tanner, awesome. I could totally see myself using it again some day. But what I am digging into is that my motives were terrible for using it at the time. It had nothing to do with getting a tan. It was about trying to hide my addictions.
I didn’t understand what was really happening back then. It’s helpful in retrospect to look back and see how our disease thinks, how our brain tries to hang onto the life we’re living even though it is killing us.
I’m not here to say I no longer care about my appearance. Far from it. I do. But I care about it in a way that I hope is healthy. I try to make sure my insides and my outsides have a dialogue with each other, that they’re both in a decent place and play off each other, rather than trying to cover for the other.
I know that sounds kind of meta, but I just mean that I want to have a balanced, spiritual, contented life. For me—and I am only talking about myself here—I think that being spiritually fit helps me to eat better, and I think eating better feeds my spiritual fitness. I need a good balance.
Lately that means I have been purposely getting outside quite a bit. The sun and the clouds and the breeze and the rain… that stuff all helps me. Then I come home and sit down on the couch and I am glad that I will not be leaving any mysterious sunless tanner stains on there. For today, anyway.
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
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.
Three worldviews:
The pessimist’s: The cup is half empty.
The optimist’s: The cup is half full.
The alcoholic’s: Are you going to drink that?
(Credit: AA Grapevine, June 2001, Jana D. from Los Angeles, California)
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