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I saw an old interview with Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and he was talking about the meaning behind “Under the bridge.” He was describing how that song was a snapshot of him, many years ago, going with a friend to score drugs, and ending up under a bridge, high, with a bunch of other drug addicts.
I was struck by how he described the scene as incredibly lonely—because there were people everywhere. It made me think about the definition of loneliness, which for me is one of the most deadly, dangerous things in life. I can’t spend much time being lonely. And what he was describing was being lonely while surrounded by a LOT of people.
I have this visual of me from 2005-08, alone in a dark room, late at night, drunk and high, my whole life a lie. I was all by myself except for two of my cats that would always hang out with me. God knows what they must have thought.
I remember sitting in my guest bedroom many nights, vowing that this was 100 percent the last time I would ever do this, that I had to stop drinking and drugging.
It’s a picture of extreme loneliness, and it’s true: That absolutely is how hundreds of nights ended for me. And I did feel alone.
Then I contrast that visual with what happened when I went to rehab and got sober… I picture all of the people hugging me, cheering me on, telling me they love me. Again, that happened. Those are real images in my head, because they happened to me.
Those visuals are also incredibly valuable to my sobriety. One shows how my life looks if I pick up a drink or drug. The other shows the exact moments when my life changed and I knew I didn’t have to drink or drug any more.
But here’s the thing about both those pictures: Neither one is the WHOLE truth.
In that first image of me alone, my wife and kids were in other parts of the house. I still had a job, good friends and a loving family. Were they fed up with my behavior? Yes, lots of them were. But they were still in my life. They still gave me birthday presents and invited me over for Christmas. So my addictions were pushing me away from them, which means my loneliness was a choice that I made every day.
In the second image, it’s true that I suddenly found an army of people to support my new sober journey. And they did. But I also had moments where I found myself at the edge of the herd, not sharing at meetings, not going to meetings very often, taking a week off from talking to my sponsor.
I also started attending holiday gatherings and work meetings without any liquid courage running through my system for the first time as an adult, and I realized that it’s a totally different ballgame to hang out with people and converse with them and be with them if you don’t have a buzz going. So I had moments where I felt awkward and just avoided people… and discovered that you can be lonely in sobriety, too.
But I realized there’s also one common theme among those two images—that in both cases, when I was lonely, it has usually been because I was choosing to be lonely. I still enjoy time to myself and find it healing in the right dosage. That’s solitude, though, which I consider different from isolation and loneliness.
I can’t get lonely. I have all the tools to avoid loneliness. I just have to choose to utilize them.
There’s a version of me that is sober but goes to my daughter’s field hockey games and sits 50 feet away from everybody else so nobody bothers me. There’s a version of me that sometimes stays up way too late so I can have full control of the TV by myself, with nobody stealing the remote.
But that version of me isn’t really happy. There isn’t enough connection, and I need connection to stay sober and keep growing. So today, I am going to throw on “Under the bridge,” make a few calls to sober friends, sit 6 feet away from people instead of 50 and pet my cats a little bit more than usual.
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
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:
An AA member attends a business function and is questioned by some tipsy coworkers about why she isn't drinking.
"Oh," she says, "I'm allergic. When I drink, I break out in strange spots… like Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York…"
(Credit: AA Grapevine, October of 2004, from Jensine B. of Scottsdale, Arizona)
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