March Of The Normies

Norm…ie!

“There’s no such thing as normal people – just people who haven’t shared yet.” – Unknown

There is a word we bandy around in recovery circles that refers to those who aren’t in the grips of alcoholism or addiction.  A word for those who seem to “get” life and who seem to be gifted with the ability to actually deal with life rather than jump into some addictive or obsessive behaviour.  The word is “normie”.

As in “normal” folk.

We don’t use the word with contempt.  It’s not a war cry.  It’s not something uttered in hushed knitting circles.  We don’t wince or grimace when we speak of the normies.  If anything, there is a sort of reverence for the normies.  We are often in awe of the normies – how fantastic that these men and women can take on life and not succumb to mind and mood altering substances and/or behaviours to numb the pain of just being.  Who are these aliens who can just regulate their emotional temperature simply by allowing themselves to do so?  How dare they show up to the Big Game with their shoelaces double-tied, minds sharpened and bodies at ease?

Normies.  Just how do you do it?

I used to go to work either hung over, with drink in me, or planning my next drink.  I couldn’t leave the house without some numbing booze in me or at least the expectation of some to come.  I dared not plan any sort of interaction with another human without pouring some poison down my throat.  Why?  Why not?  My illness told me that I was worthless and that I couldn’t do anything without alcohol in my bloodstream.  I felt sub-human and I drank just to feel part of the race for a moment or two.  I needed chemical propping to meet the day, or at least just look at myself in the mirror.  I needed armour and a shield to move through the next 24 hours.  I wasn’t enough on my own.

I’m off to the office dear – did you pack my Lunchables and my backup Odor Eaters?

So as I made my way to work, I used to look around at the folks around me and would, in all seriousness, wonder how the hell did they leave their homes without some sort of emotional fortification?  I had a hard time believing that those people sitting beside me on the subway or walking with me weren’t on something.  Anything.  I didn’t trust others.  I just wouldn’t and couldn’t understand why these other humans didn’t modify their minds and perspective through some sort of inner chem trail.  I didn’t buy the idea of sobriety in others one bit. But there they went – marching through life seemingly unaltered.

It was early in my recovery when I started to hear about the normies.  As if they were pagan gods – to be be put up on pedestals and worshipped in some arcane ways.  Many spoke of them as if they had the Book of Life and knew instinctively how to manage all situations. Bad day? Covered. Anxious?  Covered.  Broken light bulb? Covered and covered.  Just turn to the index of the mythical tome and boom – there’s the answer.  Normies seemed to have all the answers.  We alkies paled in comparison. We didn’t have the schematics on us.

And that’s the problem – that whole comparison thing.

That’s the book I’m talking about. Mreow!

My father once told me that we don’t know what others are going through, to not make judgements. He gave me the example of some friends who seemed to have it all, but who had some tough issues in their lives.  I couldn’t believe it – you mean those people had problems?  No way.  You want problems?  I have problems, don’t you know? {glug glug} Ian MacLeran once wrote “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”  And I have slowly begun to see this.  And it’s changed the way I look at others around me.

What I have come to understand is that brushing all non-alcoholics / addicts with the same brushstroke does them and me a disservice.  I know we say it partially in jest and awe, but that’s just a way to keep ourselves separate.  I realize that in my recovery it’s vital to identify with and consort with other alcoholics.  I realize that in a “takes one to know one” mindset, I can be of maximum service to another suffering alcoholic. But I also realize that over-identifying in that manner also keeps me away from the other 90% of the population I share my days with.

Alcoholics and addicts didn’t invent the notion of isolation and escaping from one’s self.  We certainly perfected it. We didn’t invent the spiritual journey as a way of deepening our connection to ourselves and our higher powers.  We didn’t invent meditation and soul-soothing ways to seek and touch the sacred portion of our inner landscape.  We didn’t invent behavioural modification or talk therapy or any other method others may use in their own recovery model.  We just happened to stumble upon them as desperate acts of healing and recovering from a deadly disease.

“Little dude, what time’s the meeting start?”

So I need to get off my spiritual high horse and see that everyone, in their way, alcoholic or not, is seeking.  They may not even know they are seeking.  They may be caught up in their own escapism to realize that they are craving something past the external.  Some never touch that part of their internal lives.  And that’s fine.  I certainly didn’t touch that for 40 years. Or if I did, I recoiled from the pain of self-examination.

That is why I love when non-alcoholics / addicts read and comment here.  I think it’s an honour to have other seekers to add their views and voice to the discussion.  It also shows me that perhaps we have so much more in common than I make it seem like.  The perspective I get from my non-alcoholic friends here is phenomenal.  I learn as much from them as I do from alcoholic seekers.  That’s because we are on the same team, in the end.  I am not different, other than the fact that if I pick up a drink, I have a good chance of dying.  I am not different, other than I just have to be more vigilant and be in contact with others who suffer from what I do.  Other than that, we are looking at the stars from the same vantage point.  From the same dirt ground.

Said high horse just rocks, doesn’t it?

Because in the end, normies have their problems too.  To downplay them in comparison to me is folly for both parties.  Non-alcoholics have issues too.  They may not down bottles of rum or pop pills, but people have their ways of escaping.  Good and bad – from reality TV to extreme sporting to gossiping to online porn to emotional eating to video games to overspending.  Karen at Mended Musings wrote something a while back about numbing and how there is a fine line between relaxing and numbing.  Everyone is guilty of numbing out.  And that’s fine.  Nothing wrong with escape now and then, in a healthy and non-destructive manner.

The more I can look at the similarities rather than the differences to others in my life, the more I see that I am just a small, tiny part of this whole thing and that I am no better nor no worse.  Sometimes I will get on the subway, and instead of wondering how these people manage their days and how they are better at it than me, I just think about how we’re all God’s children.  He loves them as they are, and so why shouldn’t I?  And why shouldn’t I do the same for myself?

We all have our fears, resentments, anxieties, phobias, ways of seeing things.  We all consciously or unconsciously seek a way of being in this world, of an inner sanctuary, of serenity.  We seek in different ways, but the goal is the same – to be comfortable in our own skin, to be of service, to leave this planet a better place than it was before we arrived.  Normal is no longer a brass ring for me to grasp.  Just being me is where I need to be.  And that’s it.  Because there are no normal people – there’s just people.