My Hair Is Too Curly

Alcoholics have such fun thinking. Seriously, when I stop to consider how an alcoholic's mind works, I am usually delighted with the findings and charmed by the thinking processes that are in place. Some non-alcoholics are delightful and charming, too, but I'm more interested in the alcoholic mind. Probably because I have one.

A few years ago, I worked at a sobriety club. The building needed a lot of work, structural as well as cosmetic. As the manager, it was my responsibility to have the building unlocked whenever materials were to be delivered or workers were there. We had recently expanded the hours of operation and had yet to find club members willing to hold the club open for some these hours so that responsibility, too, fell to me.

I also had the club business to attend to and had to come in when no one else was there in order to see to that. Did you know that when the club manager is on site everyone else loses the ability to think? If the manager "Is In The Building!": Replacing a roll of toilet paper is a gargantuan task that can only be tackled by a professional. Even though you know the extra sugar is kept in the cabinet below the coffee pot, should the dispenser become empty, you are not qualified to refill it. If there is a card game on and others won't interrupt their game to let you play, go tattle to the manager so that she can give them a detention for being bad to you. But I digress. (This information may be shared in a separate posting.)

Suffice it to say that I was spending many hours at the club in addition to my other responsibilities. Not to worry, I can handle it. After all, I AM SOBER!!

Then I got my hair permed. I'd done this any number of times so it wasn't like I had to adjust to a brand new hair style. Except, this time, the curls were too tight and that was a problem. I hated it. I wanted it to look like it always did. I wished I'd been born with curly hair. I wished I'd never gotten a perm. Climbing aboard the boat "Insanity", I settled in for a long trip.

A couple of days later, my miserable voyage was cut short by another alcoholic. He had noticed that I was stressed out and took me off to the side to ask what was going on. I listed all the stuff I was doing at the club: coming in early, rushing home for dinner, then coming back to the club for the evening shift and staying late. Then I said, "But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that my perm is too tight." I really believed this. How he listened to me and kept a straight face, remains a mystery.

After I stopped ranting and raving, he said, "I can't do anything about your hair, but I can get volunteers to take some of the load off of you." Which is exactly what he did. In the space of what seemed to be minutes, he had people assigned to cover all but 2 evenings each week. Even though the overwhelming schedule wasn't what the true issue, in my opinion at the time, I began to feel better and act more sanely.

Whenever I think about this experience, I have to laugh because it is such typical alcoholic thinking. When I focus on what I believe to be the root cause of my being restless, irritable and discontent, you can almost bet that's not the real issue. They say that alcoholism is a disease of perception and they just might be on to something there.

I know that I have a disease of perception but that's okay. Most of my friends have it, too. When one of us lists what is going on in their life that is frustrating to them, when they are finished venting, the other is very likely to say, "Well, at least your hair isn't too curly!" The emotion spent (by venting to another), we can both laugh and then proceed in a more rational manner. I do so love being in recovery, no matter what my hair (or yours) is doing.

Have a good and sober day.