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I’ve been reading quite a bit the past few days about September being Recovery Month, and I found myself gravitating toward some of the grim statistics about overdose deaths and alcohol sales the past two years.
And I did spend some time thinking about the beautiful people I’ve loved over the years who we lost to addiction. I went to a meeting once where a guy closed the meeting by saying to think about all those who today picked up their first drink, and those who drank their last drink. It was haunting then and remains haunting that every day people start their career as alcoholics… and others end their careers.
But I also had to snap back to what I think the larger message of this month should be for me—which is focusing on the word recovery, not addiction itself.
I often think about the many ways my active addiction could have ended. One is that I overdosed and died. Another is that I got arrested and went to prison or an institution. Another is what has happened so far, which is that I went to rehab, fell in love with 12-step programs and have stayed in the rooms for my entire sobriety.
But there’s also a scary version of my life where I went to rehab, sobered up… and then stopped participating in recovery. So I’d have been abstinent from drugs and alcohol—which is an awesome thing!—but I wouldn’t be getting any better. I wouldn’t be spiritually fit. I wouldn’t be recovering. I’d just be a dry drunk.
That is a miserable proposition. Nobody wants that, believe me. I know that because even on the path I’m on, I still have moments where I don’t do any work, miss some meetings, retreat from my sober network and start to become a jerk. It only takes about a week for me to be 50% more argumentative, combative, difficult, gossipy, judgmental, godless, angry and sure of myself. I often think about how much the recovery phrase of “contempt prior to investigation” begins to come true when I am drifting a bit from the program.
So I am going to try to celebrate Recovery Month, not “I didn’t drink or drug” month. It’s just better.
I’ll give you a funny recent example from my life that comes to mind when I think about not drinking vs. recovering. I was home with my 6-year-old one weekend day, and I decided to clean out the refrigerator. It takes about 10 minutes, and my daughter popped in just when I was winding down and asked me to come out and see her do a cartwheel in the backyard. I said, “I would love that, but give me like 10 seconds.”
So she stood beside me as I cleaned out weird green s**t from the refrigerator that used to be food, and she counted down from 10.
10, 9, 8, 7…
I wasn’t done yet, so she started over again.
10, 9, 8, 7… as I am dry-heaving at stuff from three Halloweens ago. I felt my head starting to explode a little bit.
The dry version of me barks at her in a way that I will feel bad about later.
The sober version of me that I wish exists would have had a nice, calm conversation with her about being patient, that I am excited to see the cartwheel but need to finish what I am doing.
The sober version of me that actually exists sensed that I was about 83% too annoyed at the nagging to have that ideal conversation. But I also know that it’s perfectly acceptable to walk out of the room and take 10 deep breaths and come back.
When I did that, I realized I could take a look at the cartwheel, breath in some fresh air instead of the moldy food I had been huffing from the back of the fridge, and come back and finish five minutes later.
So that’s what I did. That’s recovery to me—as a friend once described it to me, “Recovery is the pause between thought and action.” That’s what I will be celebrating this month!
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. I found this one amusing because it is a time capsule back to 2001, when the digital world was a new frontier. For most of us Zoomers, online recovery has been a regular part of our lives, especially the past two years:
After sharing my experience, strength and hope at an online meeting for the first time, I felt very much a part of the growing online world and proudly declared myself an official “cyber-drunk.”
“That’s fine,” an oldtimer responded, “as long as you remember you’re not a virtual alcoholic.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2001, Anonymous from New York, New York)
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