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I was talking to someone who I used to hang out with during my first year of sobriety, and one of the things he mentioned to me was how bumpy my entire life had been back then. That wasn’t his opinion—those were direct quotes from me at the time.
I remember what he was talking about. I had gone to rehab and everybody in my life was cheering me on at first. But after a few weeks, the rubber met the road. My credit cards had to be paid. I had to show up for work. My family needed me to be a dad and a husband, and to mow the grass and be honest about some of the stuff I had been up to.
It was around that time that it felt like the world was closing in around me. I always think about that scene in Star Wars where most of the main characters are trapped in a trash compactor and the walls start smushing together. That’s how it felt.
As my old friend described that to me, I also got a warm and fuzzy feeling about what sobriety people were able to do for me at that moment of my life. They hugged me, told me I was doing great, that they had gone through similar stuff, and that it had worked out okay for them. Some of them said everything turned out fine but that it was bumpy and they relied upon sober people to steady them. So I tried that, too.
I remember thinking that that sounded like sober people could be my lifeguards. Think about lifeguards. When they jump in to save somebody, they probably don’t know the person. They just have a job to do it and they do it, with a singular focus of helping somebody out of the deep water.
That’s what sober people were for me back then—lifeguards. I remember that nobody gave me any solutions about how to pay my bills better, or how to improve my marriage, or hire an accountant for tax season. They just loved me through it all. Granted, their love was unconditional because there were no conditions—they weren’t married to me, and I didn’t owe them $10,000, and they hadn’t hired me. So they didn’t have any strings attached.
But still, what incentive did they actually have other than it was the right thing to do? The answer is both nothing, and everything. As the old saying goes, to keep what you have, you have to give it away, and that’s what they were doing. They were helping me because it helped them.
That is worth thinking about now for me. I have an obligation to be a lifeguard whenever possible, and also to remember that when I hit a pothole in life, I still have lifeguards and I need to use them. It sounds so simple, but I catch myself getting farther and farther into sobriety and being less willing to be vulnerable sometimes. I feel a little embarrassed to pull a sober friend aside and admit I am walking around arguing with anybody I run into, or that I sent a petty email, or that I gossiped too much. I feel like I should be better than that, and I don’t want to admit it.
But the old phrase “you’re as sick as your secrets” applies to small secrets, too. It’s so easy to get swallowed up by the idea of “That’s not big enough to call my sponsor about.” Meanwhile, I am getting closer to a drink when I do that.
So I am going to try to do a better job of waving at my lifeguards to dive in and save me… even if I am swimming in the kiddie pool sometimes.
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 counselor asks a detox patient: "Tell me, does alcoholism run in your family?"
The drunk slurs, "Run? Hell, most times my family is so drunk they can hardly walk!"
(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Donny B., August 2004, Wurtsboro, NY)
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