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I was at a meeting recently where a newly sober guy mentioned that he can’t believe how much the juice has been worth the squeeze early on in his recovery. As he kept talking, I found myself nodding along. Sometimes I forget how much easier sober life is than active addiction. That’s because sober life is pretty damn hard sometimes, and I don’t always want to feel what life on life’s terms is causing me to feel.
But holy s**t, I had a moment listening to the guy talk about the contrast between how brutal it had gotten to maintain his drug and alcohol habit, versus staying sober. He was saying that he used to spend all morning every trying to recover from the night before, then he’d sneak in some work and life stuff, then he’d start planning and executing on how to get loaded for the rest of the day. Now he goes to a meeting once a day and calls his sponsor, and he is sober.
I get that. I think I used to spend something like half my day securing substances and then consuming them, and then planning to try to figure out how to get away with it the next day. It was an impossible chore for my body to just not fall apart every day, and it was an impossible chore for my soul to be living such a lie while trying to maintain a job, a marriage and a family. I once heard a guy say, “Drugs and alcohol became a full-time job, and I already had a job.” That was me.
So the juice being worth the squeeze part of this is that I don’t have to spend 10 hours a day to stay sober. I don’t know what the exact amount is for the typical alcoholic, because I think it’s probably different for everybody. But I know for me that when I average an hour a day on recovery stuff, my life is good. When I average an hour-and-a-half every day, my life is even better. That’s a small squeeze and a lot of juice.
For me, that hour-and-a-half tracks out to a meeting every day, plus some phone calls and some get-togethers with sponsees and/or my sponsor. Lately I have been car-pooling to meetings with other alcoholics, and I consider that an awesome 20- or 30-minute bonus of sober living time.
So when I tally up the time and effort required to stay sober, it’s ridiculous in comparison to how much time, money and spiritual energy I needed to keep drinking. Even when I was still a few years from being a full-blown alcoholic, I wasn’t drinking every day. But when I did, I would go from 5 pm to midnight, then throw up three times during the night, then need some caffeinated concoction in the morning to try to balance out the damage from the night before. Even then, as a heavy drinker, it was a lot of squeeze for a little bit of juice.
As I type this, I am sitting at home and wondering if I really need the meeting that I was planning to go to tonight. I have that voice in my head saying, “You got to a meeting yesterday and the day before. You’re good! Plus, it’s cold out. Put on some college hoops and lay on the couch.”
But guess what? I think there’s no juice in that squeeze. So I am headed for the meeting.
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:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
"I was in Al-Anon for nineteen-and-a-half years before I came to AA. If there were a denial countdown, I'd still be standing."
(Credit: Grapevine, July 2008, by Anonymous)
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