Tag: recovery

#Gratitude

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I’ll be the first to admit, some of the phrases former alcoholics use can be pretty cringe-worthy. “Trudge the happy road”, “Sobriety is a gift”, “One day at a time”.  These platitudes got under my skin in early sobriety.  I found the distillation of such a difficult, important, and painful process undermining.  The one that bothered me most, though, had to be “gratitude”.

“Yes,” I thought, “I get it. I have a car, somewhere to live, that’s awesome. I have some good people around me, that’s awesome too. Why do I suddenly have to become someone that marvels at the freaking trees to be a good sober person?” Continue reading →

In Control

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I have a confession to make.

Lately, I have lapsed into a very strong sense of complacency in my sobriety.  Having just passed 21 months sober, and having stopped going to meetings, I felt secure in my habits.  Nothing sends a wake-up call like a good, old-fashioned crisis.

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The Aesthetics of Sobriety

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When I was drinking, at my heaviest I was fifty pounds overweight.  The extra calories from the wine itself, paired with the fact that most of my calories were being eaten late at night just before bed, meant that my weight had slowly crept up despite my physically active job.

Near the end of my drinking days, I felt this profound sense of loss of autonomy over my own body.  Not only could I not control my addiction, but I felt like I had lost my sense of control over my physical health and wellbeing.  I felt uncomfortable in my clothes, in my skin, in my own body.  This type of self-loathing created a cycle inside my head of wanting to escape from myself when I could.  When I was much younger, my escape came from self-mutilation.  Now that I was older, it was right into a few glasses of wine- which was, of course, only making things worse.

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New Year’s Eve

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Last New Year’s Eve, I was just over three months into my sobriety.  Things had been difficult, but not excruciating.  I felt I was on my way, trudging the path with a fair amount of success- I hadn’t had a craving in weeks, and I felt sure that I was solid in my program and my sobriety.

I remember being both nervous and excited for NYE.  There has always been something special about New Year’s for me, such a promise held in that one second between this year and the next.  It was a new start, a clean slate- a new chapter of life awaiting, perfectly bookmarked by the beginning and end of a year.  It had always been a happy, celebratory time, and I thought that this year could still hold that same special place for me without drinking. Continue reading →

Possibilianism: Step Two

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Recovery is certainly a journey in personal growth and open-mindedness.  It asks us to be open, to be honest, and to evaluate our beliefs.  Step Two and the “power greater than ourselves” attempts a basis on a spiritual level.  This step is widely considered to be an important part of the foundation of the Twelve Steps.  It therefore became essential that I amend this step so that it could be built upon in a way that would work for my own program.  I do not believe in a higher power.  I tend to call myself an atheist, because it is usually the most effective way to answer the question I know the person is really asking: “Do you believe in God?”  I do not.  However, I do not consider myself an atheist at heart.  I am a Possibilian.

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The Worst Things

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I have this terrible habit when I sit in an AA meeting.  When someone is talking about when they used to drink, I instantaneously imagine them at their worst.  Did they drink in bars?  Drink at home straight from the bottle?  Did they try to hide it?  Did they throw things and get into fights?  Or did they sip white wine and cry while watching romantic comedies?  I’m not sure why I have this gut reaction.  Perhaps I’m a bad person- a carnivore for human suffering.  Or maybe I just wonder if they were worse than me.

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A Life Divided

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Of all of the things alcohol was to me, predictable had to be my favorite.  I knew what it would taste like, how that first fuzzy head rush of the first drink of the night would feel, and how it was completely accessible from pretty much anywhere.  It was predictable in other ways, as well.  It would make the stress of the day melt away, it would relax me, it would make me open up and socialize.  Alcohol did things for me nothing else in my life could.

My life was separated into two distinct parts: when I was drinking, and when I was not.  By quitting drinking, I had to give up that predictability.  I knew I would have to learn how to live a different life, somehow finding a way to get through the day without the knowledge of the 6pm finish line.  I wondered how I could possibly go through my day with no reward in sight.

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Changing: Step One

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As I mentioned in a previous post, rewriting the twelve steps of AA was an incredibly important part of my initial sobriety.  I found the general process of the steps potentially helpful, but saw some major flaws in its execution.  It seemed to me that taking the steps as-written could potentially take an already desperate, broken individual and take them down even further into self-pity and hopelessness than they had already gone.  The original steps included things like “admitting powerlessness” (Step 1), naming every single one of your “character defects” (Step 6), and eventually doing a nightly inventory of each time you were selfish, self-centered, or dishonest that day (Step 10).  For my own sobriety, these were not exercises I needed to be doing to begin to regain self-confidence and self-respect.  Luckily, there were resources available that would allow me to carefully examine each step and rework each one to better empower and enlighten. Continue reading →

AA Without a Higher Power

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As an atheist, my first foray into AA’s rooms was not one of interest, but one of desperation.  After exploring avenues of virtual support, I decided I needed some face-to-face accountability.  Politics about AA aside, I was interested in facing the difficult questions I would have to ask myself as a result of the steps.  I was hopeful, but also skeptical.  AA’s program is heavily built upon a “higher power”, and this was one aspect I was entirely uninterested in.

AA has, undoubtedly, become the most prominent source of help and support for alcoholics all over the world.  So what happens when your own beliefs don’t fit in with the “higher power” mantra?  Is it worth it?  Can the program work if you don’t believe in god? Continue reading →

Sobriety & Your Inner Dialogue

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The whole IDGAF attitude that alcohol gave me was irreplaceable.  Nothing phased me, nothing mattered and I could make any situation into a non-issue with a bottle or two of wine.  Caring was unnecessary.  Also unnecessary were a whole host of other emotions I knew I was numbing out, but also knew I didn’t need.  Giving up drinking made me feel, and this was, in a word, awful.  I was constantly and consistently questioning my own judgement.  Are my thoughts rational right now?  Am I overreacting?  Or is this how I should have been reacting the whole time?  My inner dialogue was wrought with skepticism and a general negativity, and I had no idea how to stop it- or if I should even try. Continue reading →