Since it has been almost 25 years since I got sober, I sometimes forget what those early days were like. And so, like a newcomer in a meeting, it helps me to hear from an old-timer that making big changes is hard, and it comes with a lot of effects that we don’t anticipate, and most of all it is , for most of us most of the time, a process rather than an event.
Certainly some people have a moment of extreme lucidity and lose the thought of drinking forever, but for me it wasn’t like that. My first meeting was in July, and my last drink was in February. But I knew at my first meeting that I was in the right place. And I knew that for any chance at sobriety, I had to stay there – to keep coming back, as 12-steppers like to say. Also, for me, I had to be honest while in the meetings, with myself and the others in the room, because it was only by looking honestly at my situation that I could ever hope to get out of it.
What brought me to my first meeting was a huge wave of fear washing over me. I had for so long believed that one day I would get sober, and it was that thought that enabled me to keep drinking. When I realized – and this was rather all at once – that I was not going to get myself sober, I became terrified. I was like a person looking into a deep hole and realizing the bank I was standing on was dissolving. That was an honest admission of my situation, and the fear I experienced was very real. It made me ready to try something else – in that case, going to a meeting.
Once in the meeting, I remember that I felt very deeply that I was in the right place. None of the details made any sense to me: people in a circle talking, steps, traditions, any of it. But I knew I had landed in reality, that these people understood what I was going through because they had been through it as well, and that whatever they were doing here was working – unlike anything I had ever tried. So I stayed, and I stayed honest.
The problem outside the meeting was that my life was to a great extent organized around drinking, smoking, and trying to make people happy. I lived with non-sober people. I hung out with non-sober people. I went to bars and parties. I kept beer and marijuana around my life at all times. And all of that had to change if I were to have any chance at sobriety.
And that was really, really hard. I needed so much support from the people in the meetings, eventually from my sponsor, and from my higher power. In those days, my definition of “god” was simply that voice that had always told me, as I began to drink or smoke, that I shouldn’t be doing it, that I will regret it, that it never works anymore. I simply decided that whatever that voice was, wherever it was coming from, whatever its intention, I would call it god and try to listen to it. Because it was right.
And so I tried. And, having reached that point of desperation and landed in a meeting, I was at last trying something real, something that had a chance to work, and I was not trying it alone. I followed the simplest advice: Go to meetings, and don’t use. And if you do use, forgive yourself, then go to a meeting.
It was very much like turning the wheel on a large boat that was moving quickly through the water. The intention to turn had been set, but the boat didn’t turn at once. All I had to do was keep that wheel in place, despite all the resistance, and if it meant changing where I lived, who I hung out with, and where I went, so be it. But that was hard, and I need to be reminded of it. The key is to try, forgive yourself for not turning your life around at once, be honest with yourself and others about how things are going, then keep trying.
Right now I am, once again, a beginner at meditation and trying to have a spiritual life. I once went on meditation retreats and read spiritual books. Today I struggle to truly count 10 breaths. And when I get lost around 3, or 7, I gently return myself to 1 and try again. I remember that gently returning to 1 is the same as going back to a meeting after using. That “gently” is the key, but returning is the basis.
Return. Forgive. Understand. Keep trying.
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