January 14 2024
At the end of last month I crossed the threshold of my 4th year of sobriety. How wild is that. Here are some brief reflections on the past 1,460+ days.
+ My understanding of addiction has broadened and softened. My association with the word addiction before I got sober was limited to something like “not being able to stop drinking or drugging” and “only a small minority of people are addicts”. Now I see addiction as something like this: anything I return to repeatedly that disconnects me from what I’m feeling or experiencing. While I am no longer drinking nor do I ever think about drinking, I do see my addiction pop up when I’m feeling lonely, scared, or anxious in the forms of eating sugar, using my phone, and watching a ton of tv. Those are three of my addictions I’m aware of now, and I have no doubt there are others I go to and don’t realize it. When I feel sadness, I want to feel something other than sadness, so I’ll eat a sleeve of Oreos. It disassociates me from the sadness, but within an hour the sugar rush wears off, my awareness of the sadness returns, and the next day I have diarrhea. I call it my poo poo hangover.
+ My desire to flee from the emotions that I don’t want to feel through my addictive processes is a tremendous signpost for me, if I am willing, to allow the emotions to exist, to sit with them. It’s not bad to feel lonely or scared, just in the same way that it’s not bad to feel hungry. I can sit with those feelings and allow them to be my teachers.
+ Sober drunks are fantastic people. Being in AA has put me in rooms with people I would have no reason to be with otherwise. It’s such a unique array of people. Before I got sober I assumed AA meetings were filled with stumbling, down and out people who had a hard time getting their lives in order. That was a shortsighted assumption, and it was also true. I just didn’t know that so, so many people, and me, were stumbling, down and out people who had a hard time getting their lives in order. Some people in the rooms are tremendously wealthy, some have nothing, some are highly educated, some didn’t finish high school, and so on. Name your category of people, and they are in those rooms.
+ Listening to the stories of others in AA every week, without passing any judgment or responding to to their stories except to say, “thank you” and “glad you’re here” and “keep coming back” has been a gift, one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received.
+ To have people listen to my stories every week, whether I feel like shit or I am feeling strong, has kept me sober. I absolutely cannot do it alone.
+ Being sober has little to do with refraining from substance use. Living a sober life to me means taking things day by day by being grateful, keeping track of where I am resentful and contemptuous, making amends with those people and places where I can, remembering that I’m so powerless (which is different than lacking agency), that I can daily turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand God and receive care from God/people/the earth/art/silence/etc. It’s about not drinking and it’s also about living as fully as I can, becoming more truly me every day, little by little.
+ I am a better father because I am sober. My boys, to their young memories, have not seen me drinking or drunk. What they have seen is a more engaged father. I’m more present, attentive, slower to rage. They have also seen a father who is an addict and they help me spot those places and give me the opportunity to let go (if I’m willing to do so). For instance, Waits came into my room the other day and told me I’d been on my phone too much. I looked up from my screen and said, “What’d you say pal?” What an annoying kid.
+ A year ago I changed my sleep schedule to go to bed when the boys do (between 8pm and 9pm), which allowed me enough rest to wake up between 4am and 5am. The morning hours before the boys wake have become sacred to me. I used to put the boys to bed, go drink til 11pm, then wake up in the morning feeling lethargic and annoyed and rushed. I still feel those things sometimes, but very rarely.
+ I miss celebrating with people with drinking. And that’s ok. It’s ok to miss parts of it. I miss bars, too.
••••••••
I’m a grateful man. I have everything I need. Some days I feel awful, most days I feel wonderful and filled with wonder. Life has not gotten any easier since I stopped drinking, but the ways I engage the tough parts and the beautiful parts have dramatically shifted. Thank you to any of you reading this who have always had me in your corner. Thank you to those of you who have abstained from drinking in solidarity with me at times when the people we were with were drinking. As a good friend of mine says, “I cannot do this alone, I need all the help I can get. I have an excellent chance of not picking up a drink today because you’re in my life, so thank you.”
