There is a group in Jacksonville called the Saltwater Cowgirls who partner with my friends at Lakeview Health. They call it surf therapy: providing lessons in surfing and life for the residents in addiction treatment at Lakeview. I lived on the ocean in Jacksonville Beach, but I have never surfed. I am not a strong swimmer, and I am afraid of sharks. Surfing recently influenced my sobriety, however…
Work vs. Surfing
Think about it – surfing is the perfect avocation for someone in recovery. It is physically taxing, involves lots of water and occupies both hands. I am thinking of surf therapy at the moment, because I met up with an old friend the other night. He was visiting his mother in Grand Rapids. Karl lives in California and gears his successful business life around the surfing swells. Every day, he checks the wave patterns and weather on his Surf App, goes down to the pier and determines when he will work and/or surf, based on his survey of the ocean. Something about storms in New Zealand and wind transferring its energy to water…
I admire that kind of passion. Talk about a health and wellness prioritized life.
Hole in the Wall
Anyway, I haven’t seen this guy in years and my point of reference (ironically) is our drug and alcohol fueled college days at NMU. Also, we worked together at a drug and alcohol fueled dude ranch one summer. My only request for our meeting was that it be in “a hole in the wall with a booth”. It seemed fitting to reconnect in a bar.
Four hours later, we had polished off about a gallon of water each and I had downed three club sodas and cranberry. We forgot to eat with all the lobbing, back and forth, of stories with endings we already knew.
The time he stepped over a friend passed out in the doorway of Lee Hall with a blithe, “He’s fine. Leave him there.” The time I made fun of a fellow Creative Writing classmate who had used the words, “dark” and “dank” in the same sentence. The time he walked to the Campus Clinic with the flu when the wind chill was 80 below zero. The time the dude ranch staged a faux, nighttime “robbery” and he played the bandit. Cantering through the woods in the dark (drunk) to surprise the guests on a moonlight ride, he took a low hanging limb to the forehead. A temporary setback as he crawled back onto the horse and resumed the playact. The fact we were alive to tell the tales after all the tripping, toking and chugging we did in the crazy, hazy days of our youth.
While his yen for the ocean and the seeds of my alcoholism were germinated.
When You Don’t Even Think About Drinking…
Sigh…
Okay – I am getting back to the surfing thing now. There is something gratifying about reconnecting with someone who has remained essentially the same. I don’t mean stagnated. I mean fundamentally the same as they were at 18. Curious, funny, fit, smart – the same parlance, the same catch in the voice… And now, living a life that is dictated by health and wellness and surfing…
There was no question of drinking. I didn’t have to explain (although he knows my story) or excuse myself. Karl says none of his friends drink. He might have a beer every once in a while. And it brings me back to the things I have said before about recovery. If you find a passion, find something to occupy your hands and your mind, you have a better chance of success. Karl says when he’s surfing he doesn’t think of anything else. He says it is, “So damn fun, it’s addicting…”
It is gratifying to reconnect with someone who seems happy. To learn recovery lessons from someone who has never had a drinking problem. And when I ventured to speak of regret. About what I should have done, back before my drinking became deadly, Karl said, “Yes. But if you did that, you wouldn’t be here now.”
How very surfer dude, California.
It’s funny, the choices we make; the paths we cannot alter. The ebb and flow of experiences that define us. And the fact that a storm, thousands of miles away can impact the surface of the ocean as a surfer rides a wave…
Today I’m not drinking because I’m finding something to do that occupies both hands…
How come you’re not drinking?
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