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One of the things I always say about my active addiction days was that it was never boring. Terrible? Yes. Potentially deadly? Yes. Financially and spiritually catastrophic? Yep. Heartbreaking to everybody who cared about me? Yes.
But boring? No.
I was thinking about that the other day at a meeting where we read a recent Daily Reflections passage that was about freedom from alcohol and drugs, which gave us the freedom to do so many cool things.
I found that not having to drink and do drugs every day was the ultimate relief. After not being able to stop for years, I suddenly had put together one week, then two weeks, then a month, then two months of nonstop abstinence, and it felt freaking great. That was the “freedom from” part. It was awesome.
Then I hit a point at about three or four months sober where I was like, “Is this it? Who am I? What are my goals?” It was a natural moment that many addicts have, where the rush of early sobriety wears off a bit and now you’re supposed to pay your bills on time, show up at work every day and lead a normal life. The adrenaline of hustling to find drugs, pay for them, take them, then cover up your using had occupied so much time and energy that suddenly that void could be felt. And I felt it.
This was the “freedom to” part that I needed to figure out. What was I going to do with all that time and energy now? I ended up figuring out that I wanted to pour myself about 20 percent more in to work, 20 percent more into family, amp up my recovery efforts and also pick up some hobbies. I started really getting into sports, movies and TV shows to occupy my time.
But what about the “who do I want to be?” part of things? That was a longer process. I went through various phases where I tried not swearing for awhile, tried a bunch of churches to see if I could get into that, tried the workaholic thing for awhile and various other incarnations of who I was trying to become. I eventually landed on the version of me that exists now. I’m still into lots of the same stuff (sports, movies, TV). Church didn’t quite work out. And holy shit, I swear as much as ever.
The point of this entry is just that it dawned on me how hard early sobriety can be, followed by that chunk of the first year where most of the fires are out but now you need to rebuild. That process can be tough, and it takes awhile to find your footing in this new life. If you’re in that place, I’d say stick around and give it a chance. The reality is, as tricky as that space can be, it’s also the ultimate “freedom to” chance, where you can kind of be whoever you want to be. And you can probably swear quite a bit, if that’s what you want!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
On New Year’s Eve, Judy stood up at the bar full of alcoholics and said, “At the stroke of midnight, I want everybody to be standing next to the one person who has made your life worth living.”
The bartender was nearly crushed to death.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2000, Dave S.)
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