I have been sober for 26 years and heavily involved in recovery that whole time, more vigorously than ever in the past five years during which I came back from a very difficult mental health crisis. These last five years I have rededicated myself to working on myself and helping others. I have been saying for a while that my true calling in life is to help other men get sober. And I still believe that. Seeing the light go on in a previously hopeless man never gets old. Miracles do happen on this earth. And I get to witness them all the time.
Meanwhile, I have developed several very close male friends my age who have gone through a crisis of meaning very much like the one I went through 5 years ago, but they are not addicts. While our recovery literature does say that drinking is but a symptom and underneath that we drunks suffer from a “spiritual malady,” you do kind of need to have a problem with booze to get in the front door of AA. My buddies have the spiritual malady but not the drinking part.
I have become a fan of Richard Rohr, most particularly his book, “Breathing Underwater” in which he compares his Christian faith with recovery and concludes not only are they identical but that all humans are addicts in need of spiritual help. We just use different words to talk about the very same thing.
From a biological standpoint, I have become interested in Anna Lembke’s work particularly in “Dopamine National.” Dr. Lembke is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Her conclusion biologically is that we are all building dopamine (addictive) pathways in our brains, whether through exposure to booze, drugs, sex, gambling, social media, video games, phones, dating apps, etc. Chemically and biologically, if we look at the brain circuitry, we are all addicts.
In recovery, of course, we have meetings. Lots of our meetings our single sex. I have lots of sponsees, who in turn have sponsees. At some point last year my “sponsee family” began to meet on Sunday nights. It was great. Men sharing with men on recovery, but also everything else. It was so great we started inviting sober men who weren’t in our sponsor “lineage.”
THEN, I started to think about Rohr and Lembke and my friends with the spiritual malady but no drinking problem. AND I started to read Jed Diamond’s work on male mortality. Men die, on average, 6 years early than women. Big factors are suicide and addiction, but also every other major disease. The underlying cause, as far as I can see, is isolation. And male isolation that has gotten a whole lot worse not better as a result of COVID.
I decided to open our Sunday night group to all men. We settled on this descriptor: This is a welcoming and inclusive group for those who identify as male of all races, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, age or belief who are seeking a more meaningful life.
We decided to bring in inspiring speakers on some aspect of manhood and allow the men in the room time to respond and share. All speakers will address some aspect of living a life based on spiritual principals. All participants are welcome—sober addicts, active addicts, non-addicts, searchers of any variety or simply men interested in hearing the week’s speaker.
We tested the format last fall and launched it at the start of this year. Future speakers include the most well-known War Photojournalist, a sober-Ranger-yogi instructor, the principal of a 1,000 student k-12 school whose students are all of color and all poor talking about why boys in that environment lag 3 years behind and what we can do about it, a former inmate in Sing Sing who has built the most successive re-entry program, an Olympic coach, and a special forces veteran still suffering acute PTSD.
So far, it’s not necessarily the speakers that are the most moving, as great as they are. It’s the men who show up and share from the heart. This is a men’s group on steroids. It’s on zoom, with a speaker, so less threatening that many. First timers can hang in the back with their cameras off to check out what this is all about. But all who attend seem to connect. Break the isolation. Get something out of it to go back and look at their spiritual malady with a different perspective.
MEN PLEASE JOIN US. WOMEN PASS ALONG TO A MAN YOU LOVE.
The best way is to join our Facebook Group here.
Or just show up. We meet every Sunday at 8 pm EST. We are very strict about time. It is always just an hour. First half our speaker, second half hour audience response. The zoom info is here:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9687597534?pwd=WWdIWXpGTXJYcnhvVGJMV2JjSjZJdz09
Meeting ID: 968 759 7534
Passcode: Tom
Hope to see you there, or on our FB Group.
You are not alone. We are here figure out how to navigate the pressures of manhood, the search for meaning in our life, and spirituality whatever that means to you. Namaste. Big Love.
Tom
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photo: iStock