I’m grateful for the way things change. I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for kindness, warmth and empathy. I’m, grateful for new chances and new challenges. I’m grateful to be sober today.
song of the week:
You might be wishing there was more of a backstory today, but there was remarkably little indecision about the sotw. I listen to a lot of Bootsy Collins, and when I heard this, it immediately went into high rotation—this is a great song to play when maneuvering in the subway, playing “first off the subway,” or just being engaged in one of my slightly dangerous fast walks through the environs of the upper east side. I do believe that if you saw me on the subway, you might not guess that this was what I was listening to.
Here’s the bigger problem, life is suddenly really good and I’m not completely sure how to handle that. Adversity, darkness loneliness, those are things I’m familiar with and maybe even have a playbook for. When things are stable, I’m happy, things are going well, that starts to be a little terrifying. The semi-prehistoric, alcoholic lizard brain that I carry around, has this maybe irrational fear of other shoes dropping. Historically, when things got good, maybe I had 30 or 60 days, things were good at work, the personal life was not quite so shambolic, and that’s when the fear would set in.
For so long, getting sober was like a high-wire act, I could manage a start, get a little momentum and take a few quick, brave steps out, but the the familiar refrain was heard soon enough:
“We will never make it to the other end.”
That voice, declaring the ultimate futility of the enterprise, was pretty authoritative, when he talked, I listened. When he said I couldn’t stay sober, well, I didn’t. I’m not sure why he had so much power, but he did. The other sneaky voice that would emerge when things were good was the one congratulating me for having attained whatever limited period of sobriety, but subtly suggesting that maybe the thing holding us back from true happiness was the whole sobriety thing. Maybe we should just stop telling folks about the alcoholism and just pretend to be like other people, drink here and there, keep most of it on the down low and out of sight.
The common denominator: the belief that I couldn’t live without drinking. The idea that there was no life I could manage unless I was pretty toasted most of the time. That’s why, 30 or 45 days in, the wind would start to blow, the wire would start to sway dangerously and I knew it was time to end this charade and get back to who I was and how I lived. Meaning, back to drinking by myself in bars and living la vida alcoholica.
There is often a real aversion to alcohol in early sobriety. Folks who are trying hard to stop can have a pretty rough time when they have to be around the folks who can still drink and carry on and have fun and live life, the #ODAAT thing seems like a pretty solid way to count off a jail sentence. That’s how I looked at it for a long time, like sobriety was a sentence being imposed on me. Sobriety for me, was like living in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.” Was there an egg eating contest? Not that I remember. Were there lots of sweaty nights, regret keeping sleep away, that kind of resembled a night in the box? Yes, there were.
While there is that aversion to alcohol and alcohol-laden events, but the fight was never with alcohol. The fight was with myself. The Steps don’t really focus on drinking or not drinking, they focus on identifying the essential elements of one’s self and creating an environment where some of those essential elements can start to change. How does this actually happen? How does this actually work? I don’t know. Writing essays about the nature of the Higher Power you believe or don’t believe in, seems a little odd when your entire life is strewn with shame and fear and disaster. How can thinking about God make a difference when you are standing alone surveying the field of wreckage?
For me, it was finally realizing that as long as I insisted on piloting the craft, there would be more debris fields to ultimately reckon with. As long as I was a free agent, acting on my own impulses and desires, well, the same shit was going to keep happpening. How else could it go?
I was sitting in Tompkins Square Park, it was the Spring of 2021, I had been in NY about six months and had about 18 months of sobriety. I was working the steps pretty hard and was writing an essay about what I believed in. Suddenly, I realized the point, there was a Higher Power that organized the universe, the world around me. When I saw things accurately, I wasn’t some kind of demi-god, able to bend events and others to my will, I was someone who didn’t know how to live; didn’t know how to live a life of purpose and meaning on my own. Or so I thought.
The critical change, the missing piece, was finally believing the right thing. That the power that had gone to the trouble of creating the whole world around me, didn’t require me to drink my way through life. The more I let myself believe in that Higher Power, the more I started to see that drinking didn’t facilitate whatever plans the Big Guy had, drinking did not usher in the things that were supposed to happen, they actually prevented them from happening.
I do think we have the power to manifest things in our lives, I began to cultivate the idea that there was a plan for me, a way for me, it just required that I stop drinking to cultivate it. It was those little glimpses that threw me, a little like learning to ride a bike, you start rolling along and you realize Dad isn’t holding the back of the seat anymore, you’re on your own and it’s actually working. You’re riding a bike. Of course, this is usually punctuated by a crash or two in the early days, but that’s ok, it’s an iterative process.
At some point, there isn’t thought involved, you’re just gliding around on your bike and it’s pretty tremendous. That’s how thing are for me these days, things keep falling into place, I get a little happier every day and more things happen to justify the happy feelings. The problem wasn’t alcohol, it was me. The answer wasn’t just stop drinking and avoid all further contact with alcohol, it was taking a good, hard, very long look at myself, and eventually feeling enough love for myself that saving myself seemed like a good idea.
Maybe there’s another shoe out there waiting to drop, ruin my good mood, harsh my vibe, but those things don’t hold the power they once did. I used to see those bad outcomes as the harbingers of the life I was meant to lead, doomed to lead. Now I see those bad outcomes as products of the toxic swirling thing that was my life when drinking. I’m happy, I’m funky and I know it. I’m sober, not because I stopped drinking, but because I finally had the courage to face myself, acknowledge that I needed help and allowing change to sweep over me.
Here’s the thing, if I can do this, then literally anyone can. I was someone that professionals in the field regarded as a hopeless alcoholic. How do you change a hopeless alcoholic into a happy person pursuing a meaningful, exciting life? Simply by believing there was something better meant for me; that I was part of an astonishing world where the things that are supposed to happen, generally do happen. In that world, there are no spare shoes to drop.
Happy Friday
Have you heard the new Billy Joel song? “Did I wait too long to turn the lights on?” hit me right in the feels. All I could think was this song is about getting sober… I know it’s supposed to be a love song but I heard it as me getting back to the me before I started drinking. I was a huge Billy Joel fan at 13 (started drinking at 18) so that hits me.