116,750 hours...
The "gift" of change.
There is something fundamental about sobriety and recovery from addiction. A belief in something more powerful than yourself. “You ain’t all that…” is kinda 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. It’s like the person who always has to say “to tell you the truth…” As if.
I’ve always kept my recovery program extremely simple. Which isn’t to say recovery from a life of boozing and using is easy…it most definitely is not. It is somewhat simple though. Don’t pick up a drink. Stay connected. Don’t isolate. Clean up your own side of the street. Help others. Ask for help if you need it. Don’t pick up.
God, the Universe, the Source, the One Spirit, or a room full of other drunks can all work. Just so long as I remember that it’s 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, I’d land on my feet. Someway I’d notch an accomplishment. I’d 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 go…so I don’t…very often. Now…when occasionally 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 I’ve seen is: “Grace can be variously defined as “God’s favor toward the unworthy” or “God’s benevolence on the undeserving.” In His grace, God is willing to forgive us and bless us abundantly, in spite of the fact that we don’t deserve to be treated so well or dealt with so generously.”
Whether or not anyone deserves God’s 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 I’m 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 “enough.” Accept this gift. Try something new.
What’s weird about it now is that it doesn’t 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 I’d ever been through.
The author Malcolm Gladwell in his third nonfiction book, “Outliers, the Story of Success;” 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 doesn’t work for recovering addicts and alcoholics like me. It can get easier, but you’re never an expert. Every day I live in a World that glorifies and glamorizes self-medication. I don’t judge…I 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 “it’s easier now.” They’d say oh he’s setting himself up for a fall, for a relapse. Whatever.
But it is. Easier. Sobriety, not life. Life still comes at each of us hard. Every day. Isn’t 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. Thank you God for another.