I’m grateful for for a really great meeting. I’m grateful for other alcoholics. I’m grateful for feelings of ease and peace. I’m grateful for the soft breeze. I’m grateful for staying the path. I’m grateful to always see the light around the edges. I’m grateful to be sober today.
If you’ve been waiting for the optimal moment to check out the “Anyone Anywhere” Meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous—tonight at 7pm (edt) — just might be the time.
My Sponsee, Daniel, celebrated a year of sobriety yesterday. That is a really big deal and was very, very moving. He spoke at a meeting and then people repaired to a nearby restaurant to celebrate. Down at my end of the table, the conversation turned to “the obsession.” Someone in early sobriety was wondering when exactly would the obsession be lifted and exactly how does that happen. Asking for a friend…
This gets into the deep, dark magic of the Program—when you’ve kind of built this entire life around drinking or using and have come to believe that it is essential—how exactly does one excise it and then not ever think about it again? Because that’s eventually what happens and it doesn’t come with any kind of trumpet fanfare or even a rimshot1—you just realize one day that you’ve gone for [fill in with number] hours, and then days, without thinking about that thing that you used to think about all of the time.
I can remember a spring weekend two years ago. My daughter and her husband had visited and we’d had a really lovely weekend. Everything was just great. They left, I went to the grocery store, the weather was beautiful, all of the indicators in my life were pointing in one direction. I was happy. I was standing in the check-out line—which at this particular small grocery can wind all the way back past the dairy and the seafood counter. I looked up and there was a display of Rose wines and I immediately thought:
This would be a perfect time to drink. Everything is good. No one will ever know. You’ve kind of earned it.
During my ten years of “early sobriety,” I relapsed a lot. I don’t think I ever had more than four months of sobriety at any point during that time. The problem with relapsers is that the question in their heads turns from “should I drink,” to “can I drink?” And smart alcoholics can pretty much always find a way to drink. I had to plan my relapses—threading the needle between antabuse half-lives and likely random tests at the IOP or scheduling my drinking to make sure I could blow a zero on the SoberLink twice a day.2
So back to that particular gorgeous spring afternoon, I looked at the bottles in the display and I felt that familiar tightness, the sublime anticipation that was always so much sweeter than the actual event. I thought about sitting on my balcony, my triumphant and secret return to the world of solitary drinking, you know “get a case of wine and mess around like we used to.”
I laughed out loud. I pretty much always have airpods entombed in my ear canals when I’m in public and there is pretty much always music playing. I laughed loud enough that I heard it through the noise cancellation—-and so did everyone else in line. The absurdity of that thought, that crazy prehistoric relic of the bad old days, there was nothing to do but laugh. The reason that everything was going so well was pretty directly linked to the whole sobriety thing. I laughed at how ridiculous I was and how willing I was to believe all of those same lies—even after they had been exposed as lies over and over and over. Even after I had seen firsthand how much good stuff there was in my life. Even after I lived through all of the bad stuff.
Somehow, the Program changes “can I drink,” to “why would I want to drink?” I think that is around the time “the obsession” floats away into the mist. How does that happen? Reading the Book, working the Steps, finding ways to be of service, all somehow work to reduce the size of the hole, shrink the need and then one day you realize you’re free, and you’ve been that way for longer than you think.
Daniel is now officially working on his second year of sobriety. Watching him find his footing and embrace the Program has been a miraculous thing. I think part of the mysterious equation of Alcoholics Anonymous is the cumulative weight of the evidence. Last night at the meeting, there were three people celebrating anniversaries of more than twenty years and Daniel celebrating one. It’s kind of hard to argue with evidence like that. Why would you want to?
I mentioned to a friend that I thought I needed an airhorn—here’s another reason…
Isn’t there some saying about a broken clock being right twice a day?
Go, Daniel, and nice one with the rosé, TBD. 😀😀😀