Dear Tribers,
I disappeared last month and haven’t been on the internet since. Nevertheless, those of you who gave me support in May over at Kos, I owe you a diary.
First of all I wish to express my thanks to many of you, especially Holy Handgrenade. It was a diary from HHG that I read one Sunday morning about his recovery while drunk that hit home and made me cry – the denial of my own alchoholism broke through my unconscious like a tital wave. The next day I went to AA here in Germany. Unfortunately, that lasted a little over a week as I truly had no controll or mindset to accept a life without booze…I mean, what was I going to do when I actually had to be alone with myself????
I hit the bottle again and it became worse until I woke up one morning from passing on my balcony with a noose tied around neck. Then I decided I really needed help. I checked myself into a very, very nice sanatorium in the mountains of Sauerland (in the European sense, not a crazy house – think “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann) for rehab/depression/PTSD. Thank you socialized medicine, because although the nurses didn’t wear Gucci uniforms, it was so nice that I thought that this is what the Betty Ford clinic must be like and that I could never afford this in the US: my co-pay was 80 euro.
While there, my mom who practices Buddhism in No. Cali sent me two books; one on meditation and the other, “The Art of Happiness” by Howard Cutler, M.D. and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Now I’ve always despised pop-psychology self help books, but I soon realised that His Holiness is waaaaaaaay far from that. His words made a very deep impression on me. For instance, I just got back into cyberspace to see the new Pat Robertson issue. One commentor, here or on Kos, thought that the Lord should take them all now. My perspective may have changed as I remembered what HH said, something like “our friends do not give us the opportunity to grow, only our enemies do that. Therefore we should be grateful for our enemies and look to them as our teachers with admiration and respect”. Now for someone who lost his country and has had his people oppressed and tortured, those words are very poignant and really put this issue into perspective for me.
Yesterday was a very, very strange day. One my way to an electronic superstore, I noticed a display of all the Dalai Lama’s books in the window of a bookstore. Secondly, once at my destination, there was a Buddhist monk in robes shopping. Then it turns out that there is a Wing Chun Kung Fu school about six blocks from my apartment (and had my first lesson last night). Finally, I found out in passing that the bus stop 200 meters from my home goes directly to a bus stop in Iserlohn (20 minutes) which is directly in front of a Tibetian Buddhist center. All in one day! Strange days indeed! It seemed as though all of these opportunities for my own growth just presented themselves to me, or maybe I am just more aware, who knows.
However, the real purpose of this diary is to not only thank Holy Handgrenade, Pastor Dan, Dammit Janet, Military Tracy, Susan Hu, and the countless others who showed me so much support in May, but to also let you know that the progress has hit the right time and right place for me. I really had to sink lower to learn that the booze is not the right medicine for the PTSD and depression but only made them worse and gave me another sickness to deal with…but dealing with it I am.
Thank you all so very much
