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I was at a meeting the other day where we read the first few paragraphs from the chapter of the Big Book called “A Vision for You.” The first page, page 151, is worth a read or a reread if you haven’t looked at it in awhile.
I was struck by the idea that that first paragraph kind of summarizes all of our stories, which I think you could boil down to this: In the beginning, drinking was a solution to a problem. At the end, it was THE problem on top of every other problem.
I especially lingered on the first two sentences of that reading where it says: For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry.
When I thought back to my early drinking days, alcohol and drugs did those exact things for me. It meant partying with friends, laughing all night, and not feeling any worries in the world.
That, of course, didn’t last very long before the laughs died down a bit and the blackouts began. I’d say anything after my college years was lonely, quiet, sad highs by myself. So it definitely could be simplified down to conviviality at the start and, as the Big Book says, “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization” at the finish.
My big takeaway from reading that section of “A Vision for You” is how important it is for me to replicate very similar things in recovery as I did with what drinking used to do for me. I need conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination, and I need to find a way to deal with boredom and worry.
For me, that means a strong 12-step program that isn’t just a solution to drinking. I need recovery to be all the things that drinking was in the beginning, with laughter, companionship and connection. Drinking gave me a lot of that, and I need sobriety to, too.
I know some people just need recovery to keep them from the bar. I need it to be a new way of living, and I have found that it can be that. I laugh harder than ever and feel more connected than ever, even more than those early days of partying. And it’s nice to be able to find that place without every night ending with me barfing in a dive bar men’s room!
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 had a really good reason for working Step Nine and making amends to my family and friends: I didn't want a parade of people at my funeral singing, 'Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!"
(Credit: Grapevine, February 2009, by Carol K. of Sarasota, Florida)
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