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The other day, I did a long weight-lifting session. When I was done, my arms were shot. So when I grabbed my phone, it legitimately felt hard to pick up.
I started laughing, because it was the first time my phone literally felt like it weighed 300 pounds. That’s the old cliche in recovery, right? That our phones are terrifyingly heavy?
And early in recovery, that certainly was the case for me. I took advice to get to 90 meetings in 90 days, find a sponsor and call him every day. But I only called him. It got to the point where he said, “Dude, you need a network of sober people. Not just me.”
I jokingly said, “Ooh, sorry, Mr. Important Busy Pants, I guess I am getting a little too clingy.”
He had a good sense of humor, so he laughed it off and explained what he meant. “Nah, I’ll talk to you every day. I’m happy to do that. But there will be times when I am unavailable, times when I don’t know what to tell you, times when I am flat-out wrong. That’s when you need a long list of trusted people in recovery.”
I was struck by the humility of what he said. He was openly acknowledging he didn’t know everything. That’s been a message I have carried with me ever since then, because I have found that I don’t really want the know-it-all’s version of recovery. I want to be around people who are still actively seeking to grow in recovery.
The importance—for me—of the 1-2 punch of meetings and the phone reminds me of when I had a few injuries in my athletic career and would get prescribed physical therapy. I’d go into the therapy place for an hour and do stretches and workout stuff, then they’d send me home with a list of things to do on my own. For some of my injuries, I followed the directions. For others, I just did the work in the office and ignored the rest. You can probably guess which injuries healed up the best.
Same in recovery. From Day One, I have gone to meetings—usually four a week, no matter what. But I’ve also had periods where that was all I did. On the other hand, when I go to meetings and make a few phone calls every day, my life is much better. I need to pull out that 300-pound phone.
At one point in recovery, I found myself utilizing my drive to and from work (about an hour, total, every day) to make a call or two in the morning and evening. I usually caught up with the same general group of guys, usually all doing a similar commute to and from work. One day, a guy joked that we always end up pouring out our souls together… with turn signals blinking in the background. We started calling ourselves “The Blinker Boys,” and the name took off with a few other guys.
To this day, I love the power of the phone. That one call can go so far in getting me spiritually fit. I always encourage people to try talking to a different person in recovery every day for a month—it’s a good way to build a network, one turn signal at a time.
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.
A drunk with a 3-foot tall parrot on his shoulder stopped at a watering hole and took a seat. “My goodness!” exclaimed the bartender, when she looked up. “Where in heaven’s name did you find that?”
“Just stop at any bar around here and you’ll find dozens of them,” screeched the parrot.
(Credit: AA Grapevine, July 2003, Pat M.)
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