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When the pandemic began and it became clear I was going to be working from home for awhile, I made a vow to start cleaning out my house. I promised I was going to go through all of my old boxes and clothes, figure out what I could donate and what was garbage, and clean out my basement.
I’m proud to say I followed through on that vow.
Did it take me 22 months to crack open the first box? Yes. Yes, it did. But hey, I was getting warmed up for the past two years, ya know?
In all seriousness, I started going through boxes this weekend and I brought one up that blew my mind. It was all of my paperwork from 2007 and 2008. So it was bills, taxes, health insurance statements, etc. from the worst period of my life. I got sober in November of 2008, so this was mostly a paper trail through the ugliest, darkest days of active addiction.
I’m not someone who forgets what those days were like. I remember vividly what the bottom looked like and felt like, and I can tell you 10 stories off the top of my head about how I should have died every day and how terrible it was. I don’t need any help keeping it green, as we say in the 12-step programs. It’s still pretty freaking green in my brain.
But this was a paper trail. This was a documented walk down that path, and even if I remember those days clearly, it was still the kind of refresher that I could use once in a while.
The paperwork was basically in chronological order, with the top being early 2007—when the sharp decline into constant overdoses and flushing my life down the toilet—and the bottom being the end of 2008, right after I got into recovery.
Here’s what I found from the addiction part of that time period:
—An insane amount of medical bills, many of which were fake injuries and made-up visits to urgent cares and pain management clinics to get painkillers.
—A large amount of medical bills for my wife and newborn kids that were unpaid and heading for collection agencies. I always paid for my medical “needs” first.
—About $96,000 in credit card debt, with constant late fees and threatened cancelations. There were at least five of those bills that were sent to collection agencies. I also found a bunch of loan applications that were all rejected… I was trying to borrow money from Discover to pay off the Capital One credit card that I used to pay off the Chase credit card.
—Nonstop overdue bills. I just rotated what I could and would pay, and then I’d get late car insurance and electric bills that said “Gentle reminder” because I was three months late.
—Bills from a psychologist that I went to for awhile to appease the people around me. I think I visited his office 50 times and I’m not sure I told the truth to him one time. I just wanted people off my ass, and I was willing to pay $75 out of pocket per week to stay drunk every day. Though, according to the paperwork, I actually didn’t pay him on time very often.
—Job evaluations that were… not good. Not terrible, either. I managed to be an average or “just good enough to not fire” kind of employee. But it wasn’t exactly proud reading what was in that box as far as my workplace. It was somebody just barely hanging on.
I could keep going but you get the point: If I were trying to convict myself of being a drunk and a junkie, I just found Exhibits A-Z to enter into evidence. And shocker, it would have been an easy conviction. This was a perfect time capsule of a terrible life—a life with a wonderful wife and two very young kids that was falling apart. It was pretty sad, to be honest.
I’ve found the longer I’m sober, the more I have repaired the old damage and can laugh about it now. But that means I think I sometimes round down the sharpest edges so they don’t cut as deep. Lemme tell you, looking through that paperwork, it cut deep.
But then I got down to the bottom of the box, and I saw a few bills that were paid on time and I found pamphlets and service guides for the 12-step programs, as well as some paperwork from my rehab, I started attending at the end of 2008. I was a little confused about why I had guides on how to be a treasurer or chairperson of meetings since I was so new to recovery at the time.
But then I gradually started to remember pestering my sponsor about doing service. I remember being so grateful to the programs because the minute I got sober, my life started to turn around so quickly, so beautifully, that I wanted to immediately give back. He explained that most groups ask that trusted servants have a certain amount of clean time under their belt—usually six months or more—but I dogged him so much that he eventually said, “I’ll tell you what. You may not be quite eligible for some service work, but read all of these guides on how to do it, keep coming, and at the next business meeting, you can volunteer, tell them your sobriety date and desire to do service, and we’ll see what group conscience is.”
Sure enough, at the end of the December, with only about 50 days sober, I had been showing up every day, putting chairs away after every meeting and connecting with members at that meeting that they made an exception to group conscience and let me start chairing a meeting.
The next month, my sponsor told me maybe I should consider becoming treasurer for the group if the group again waived its sobriety qualification. He mentioned that the current treasurer was looking to hand off. So the next month, I studied up on the paperwork about how to be a treasurer for the group, raised my hand… and I got voted in as the treasurer. It was only then that I realized the treasurer who was looking to hand off was… my sponsor. What a great long con!
But it got me started on the service path, and it got me into a new phase of my life, as I rediscovered at the bottom of that box. I ended up having quite a busy weekend tearing up all those documents, and it was a great feeling, to be honest. I don’t have a lot of paperwork in my life like that any more, and I’m confident if I stay on this path, I can continue that.
In case you missed it, I put together a fun mini comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes. Check it out HERE! (It’s behind a paywall)
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:
A husband and wife were sitting in their living room. He said, "Just so you know, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug."
His wife got up, unplugged the TV, and threw out all of his beer.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2006, from Tim)
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