Before you blow me up for an obviously provocative headlineâgive me a moment.
Hello friends and readers. This essay is part of my continuing frequency during Septemberâwhich is National Recovery Month. My intention is to share my opinions and experiences having lived decades as a practicing drunk and addictâand then having spent the last nearly 15 years clean and sober. My intention is to make you thinkâto make you question the narratives youâve heard about addiction and recoveryâto help you better understand the challenges that face people living in the throes of addictionâand to show you that we can recover.
I hope you enjoy todayâs offering. Please share it around with those it might help. I welcome your comments as always.
Sobriety is Easy.
There is something fundamental about sobriety and recovery from addiction. A belief in something more powerful than yourself. You ainât all that⌠is the operating system we must learn. Humility means different things to different people. Those who talk about it often, and claim to understand it, are often the least humble among us. Itâs like the person who always has to say to tell you the truth. Red flag every time. How âbout just telling the truth instead of prepping us that the truth is coming. As ifâŚ
Iâve always kept my recovery program extremely simple. Which isnât to say recovery from a life of boozinâ and usinâ is easyâit most definitely is not. It is somewhat simple though.
Donât pick up a drink.
Stay connected.
Donât isolate.
Clean up your own side of the street.
Help others.
Ask for help if you need it.
Donât pick up.
God, the Universe, the Source, the One Spirit, or a room full of other drunks can all work as a higher power in oneâs life. Donât get snagged up in the terminology or the religion of it. Just so long as I remember that itâs not always about me, me, me.
There were decades where I was careening recklessly around life with little fear and even less regard for myself and others. Somehow, Iâd land on my feet. Someway Iâd notch an accomplishment. Iâd screw something up, and those around me would forgive me. Deep down I rarely forgave myself. One place of danger for many recovering alcoholics who actually make a go of long-term sobriety, is that nagging thought of what could I have done had I not been fucked up so often? Bad place to goâso I donâtâvery often. Now, when thinking of the past, I try to treasure the particular memory and remember those that I experienced that moment with.
Looking back, I see so many examples of divine intervention in my own life. So many bullets dodged. So very many times my antics should have cost me more than they did.
One definition of grace that Iâve seen is that Grace can be variously defined as Godâs favor toward the unworthy or Godâs benevolence on the undeserving. In His grace, God is willing to forgive us and bless us abundantly, in spite of the fact that we donât deserve to be treated so well or dealt with so generously.
Whether or not anyone deserves Godâs grace is hardly the point. It comes without our asking for it. It comes whether we want it to or not. It is a gift. We must accept that gift in order to heal.
The question invariably comes up when Iâm speaking with a person who is still in the grip of their addiction. How did you do it? The honest answer is that if I knew the answer to that question, I would have done it years before. When confronted by my family in a loving and terrifying moment of intervention on November 23, 2009, something inside me said enoughâaccept this giftâtry something new.
Whatâs weird about it now is that it doesnât seem that hard. Weird how perspective and distance work that way. At the time, when my life depended on it, it was the hardest thing Iâd ever been through.
The author Malcolm Gladwell in his third nonfiction book, âOutliers, the Story of Success;â references the 10,000-hour rule of skill mastery. The rule was developed from a study by Anders Ericcson, which researched experts from various fields of business, science, and sports. Gladwell uses The Beatles, Bill Gates, and other examples of people who practiced a particular task or method or way of doing something until they achieved success.
The 10,000-hour rule doesnât often work for recovering addicts and alcoholics like me. It can get easier, but youâre never an expert. Every day I live in a World that glorifies and glamorizes self-medication. I donât judgeâI did it for decades. But it stopped working for me. Clean and sober works way better for me now. We talk a lot about one day at a time. Some folks in recovery would cringe to hear me say out loud that itâs easier now. Theyâd say oh heâs setting himself up for a fall, for a relapse. Whatever.
But it isâeasier. Sobriety, not life.
Bear with me while I unpack a little sports analogy. All of us have seen that gifted athlete at the top of their gameâand weâre moved by the skill, athleticism, grace, and effortlessness of their motions. Roger Federer, Simone Biles, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Tiger Woods, Allyson Felix. They make it look incredibly easy. They make it look effortless. It is not. Perhaps their lives outside of their particular sport of expertise is not so smooth. We have plenty of evidence of thatâtop athletes and performers in their trade who struggle and fail at everyday livingâfuck up relationshipsâgo brokeâget arrestedâmakes asses out of themselves in the public eye. But on the field or court they elevate. Why? Because they have put in the hoursâthe sweatâthe focusâthe sacrifice. They have humbled themselves perhaps for decades before reaching the glorious top of the stage. They have fallen flat on their faces dozensâhundreds of times in the pursuitâin the learning.
And hereâs a point to make. Even experts lose. Even the top athletes get beat now and then. Their odds are better that theyâll winâbut they nevertheless still fail.
This isnât the case for all athletes. It also isnât the case for all of us who recover and attain some level of expertise around sobriety. It takes what it takes. It takes time. Some of us donât ever get itâfrankly most of us. Those that succeed have to put in the hours (130,000 to be exact at this moment)âthe sweatâthe focusâthe sacrifice. We have to humble ourselves before our higher power. Then and only then can we stand and proclaim to others that we know a little bit about the thing.
So back to the headlineâSobriety is Easy.
When I proclaim that sobriety is easy, what I mean is that itâs easy for me to not drink or take drugs these days. Iâve been through enough challenges and heartache and loss and anger and fearâand stayed soberâthat I know how to do it. I donât fear it. I donât pick up. I stay connected. I donât isolate. I clean up my own side of the street. I help others. I ask for help if I need it. I donât pick up.
Life still comes at each of us hard. Every day. Isnât one day at a time really all any of us has? Anyone who has suddenly lost a loved one (everyone) knows this fact. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is all we have.
Living life as a sober person with a sober mind is something worth celebrating. The odds are stacked. Letâs do thisâitâs fucking easy.
Thank you God for another.
This is good stuff my friend, and I live for provocative titles :) God bless your very important work in this space my friend.
Love this Dee.
My personal struggle has always been with nicotine, but as a nurse I can tell you that alcohol is the most deadly and destructive force on the planet. ETOH Withdrawal is no joke and neither are the DTâs, it literally kills people every day. So please be very damn proud of yourself for being sober for 15 years. â¤ď¸