Daily Gratitude List 10.21.22

How the Snake Sheds its Skin

I’m grateful for twists and turns. I’m grateful for not knowing what comes next. I’m grateful for trust falls with the universe. I’m grateful for moments when I’m overcome. I’m grateful for seeing what’s changed. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Oh boy. Things are kind of messy over here. I’m generally pretty tidy, pretty organized, but I’m emotionally all over the map these days. Like I always say, first things first, and the first thing you should do is read this:

Growing Pains: Sober Girls Edition :)

I like to blame a variety of calendar-related things for my current emotional condition, but sometimes it just feels a lot bigger than that. One thought that has popped into my head several times recently is that it can’t be very comfortable when snakes shed their skin. I really don’t know that much about it, but have found sloughed-off snake skins before—-just thin, dry husks that used to be snakes.

Sometimes it feels like I’m getting sober the same way. I say “getting sober” on purpose, because even though I’m marking three years of sobriety tomorrow, I see that’s it’s a process, not an end result. It’s a design for living, not a deck project you add on the back of the house.¹ I was horrified at my very first AA meeting when someone celebrating a bunch of years talked about going to a meeting every day. Huh, every day? For like 20 years? I knew I had a problem, but I was thinking that just a few of these AA meetings would do the trick, right? That should be plenty, especially for someone smart like me.

It’s ok to laugh a little bit at me. That was almost 13 years ago. While I’m very proud of my three-year winning streak, a 3-10 record isn’t necessarily something to sit back and savor. The Big Book declared in 1939, right up front, that Alcoholics Anonymous:

Are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. [italics supplied]

Big Book, p. xiii

That’s how they get you into the seat, the prospect of recovering from this disease, recovering some of what you lost. It’s later that you find out that “recovered” is a tricky word and that apparently there is a somewhat-undisclosed maintenance obligation in the contract for this new life you’ve signed. Freedom from addiction, freedom from anything comes at a cost—in this case, it’s signing up for a program of unceasing spiritual development. That is definitely not what I wanted 13 years ago, not what I was willing to do. I kept drinking instead.

A big part of my own spiritual awakening has been realizing what I had to leave behind. It hasn’t been easy letting go. I think my erratic, swerving emotions the past couple of weeks have a lot to do with all of the looking back I’ve been doing. I can see the dried out husks of what used to be me, the versions of me that drinking helped produce. It has taken a lot of effort to detach from those old constructs and leave them on the trail behind me, it has been profoundly uncomfortable. But looking back is no way to drive.

I’ll mark three years of sobriety tomorrow and I’ve been announcing it in the traditional way, “On October 22nd, I’ll have three years of sobriety.”² It’s important to do it that way to let people know what it is possible, that the hard work and the commitment and the courage can come together and produce miraculous lengths of sobriety. However, this alcoholic is looking at things differently. Yes, as of tomorrow, I will have been sober for three years, but I think how I’d really like to announce it, is this way:

“I’m Randall, I’m an alcoholic and I started working on four years of sobriety today. “

Thanks for Letting Me Share

1. It may be more accurate to say that I’m getting sober bad metaphor by bad metaphor.

2. Seriously, 4 twos and a ten? How can that not be a winning hand?