Prodigal Punim

What's a Punim anyway?

Hello. As I begin posting here, I thought it was best to introduce myself. I come from mixed stock, and grew up in the lap of suburban upper-middle-class bliss. And like most of my peers I was totally disaffected, socially awkward, a closeted gay-boy who had no idea what any of that meant. (Perhaps less than most of my peers were closeted gay-boys, but I digress.)

I was almost originally-interested in getting high. I mean, I knew I didn't fit in with my peers at school, at all. I had a small group of friends who were two and three years older than me that I knew from summer camp. As they (perhaps at a more age-appropriate stage) began experimenting with alcohol, marijuana, LSD, and other drugs that were available and stylish at the time, I did too. So at 11 and 12 I began smoking pot, drinking, experimenting with all kinds of sexuality. This was it. I had been waiting for this. I couldn't ever do it alone, I didn't even know what I thought was missing. But whatever it was, fucking off and getting stoned were the best stand-ins I'd found yet. 

I am genetically half-Jewish. My mother's side is German and English (with some Mayflower blood), and originally Congregationalist Christian (though my mother converted to Judaism when she married my father in the decade before my birth). My father comes from Ukrainian, Russian, and German Jewish stock. Generations of irreligion had left us fairly unobservant and ignorant. I would not say that Judaism or my Jewishness was a source of anything other than burden - certainly not spiritual fulfillment or guidance. 

I retro-suspect that my connection with those camp friends was at least partially because they were also Jewish. I was surrounded by mostly non-Jews in my life, besides the times when I was physically inside the synagogue. Camp was an environment that was almost entirely Jewish - though not religious or even intentionally culturally so. The camp was totally secular but populated by Jewish boys from all around the US. Perhaps I'm overstating cultural understanding, but these guys were much more my speed. It helped too that the normal age barriers set up by school were more pliable at camp, so that I found boys who were closer to my maturity (or immaturity) level. 

The experimentation continued through middle school. My relationship with my parents deteriorated precipitously. I ran away from home in 7th grade - after which I had my first run ins with jails and institutions. I spent 10 days at an in-patient adolescent psychiatric ward, and 5 weeks at a day-treatment school in a neighboring suburb. Needless to say, much of that year was something of a wash.

I returned to private school in '95. This was the year I became a daily user. It was the last year I would have before a near continuos stream of interventions that escalated to the point of my being sent to an emotional growth boarding school in upstate New York. This chapter of my life, though only two years long was seminal in many ways. I will be writing more about that residential treatment experience, how it helped, and how it hurt. There are components of myself that are only there because of my time at this place. There are other things I've struggled with almost continually because of their unique and quite orthodox approach to the 12-steps.

I was very much treated as a prodigal son when I returned from boarding school and headed to college. Well, as much as my folks could muster it. They still had zero trust in me, and I've spent the last 12 years earning that trust back. But there was a potent sense that I had been lost - as good as dead - but was now returned. I was going to 9 meetings a week. constantly studying the Big Book and the 12&12, praying in the ways they taught me at boarding school.

I spent years wrapped up in 12-step groups of all stripes. Every day at the boarding school was one giant AA meeting with homework and no smoking. In college I attended every meeting that was practical at first. By the end, however, the novelty was wearing very thin, and the limitations of the program began to make themselves quite apparent to me. Again, I will write more extensively on this entire experience, but suffice it to say at this early date that I had mastered what AA and its sister programs had to teach me, but I was far from 'recovered' or totally restored to sanity. I tapped deeper into my roots, into Judaism.

And I used. I used and felt bad. I went to therapy and I prayed. I would return to meetings, but I couldn't listen to it anymore. It was too deeply tied to my experiences at boarding school. I used and felt bad, and used more and felt worse. It took years to find a way to be me. To accept who I am. To allow myself to be that person without the guilt trip. Without the judgement of some impossible standard, and without constantly finding fault in me.

This blog is dedicated to documenting my experience in the world of mental health, self-help, support groups and religious/spiritual growth. It is a portion memoir, a portion review site, a portion critique of extant forms, a place for reviewing and commenting upon the meat of 12-step recovery, its shortcomings, and how this Prodigal Punim balances it today.