A GIFT THAT GROWS WITH TIME
June 26
For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 151
The longer I chased these elusive feelings with alcohol, the more out of reach they were. However, by applying this passage to my sobriety, I found that it described the magnificent new life made available to me by the A.A. program. "It" truly does "get better" one day at a time. The warmth, the love and the joy so simply expressed in these words grow in breadth and depth each time I read it. Sobriety is a gift that grows with time.
I started drinking the same way most middle-class Australian kids did. Drinking luke-warm cans of pre-mixed spirits out of a backpack at a local playground at a night where my mates and I had all told our parents we were staying at one another houses.
I’ve been self-conscious since I can remember. When I was five years old, I signed up to play Rugby League and cried my eyes out at the first training session, refusing to come out from behind my mum’s legs. I was too shy, ashamed, and embarrassed by what the other kids might think of me.
Drinking gave me the confidence to step into who I truly was. To be temporarily unashamed of myself. It was well received. Momentarily, I was accepted for who I was, and it felt great, so why wouldn’t I be drawn back to drinking?
In my late teens, I found stimulant drugs, which only exacerbated the above. I thought I was fucking Superman with a belly full of beer and a brain full of cocaine, and people liked me. Or at least I felt like they did. So why wouldn't I be drawn back to drinking and doing drugs?
What I hadn’t realised, though, was as my drunken and fucked up persona grew more confident, my sober persona was shrivelling into an anxious, anti-social mess.
The longer m,y drug and alcohol abuse went on, the less and less I would be able to socialise when sober. It got to a point where I wouldn’t leave the house on a weekend unless it was somewhere where I could drink.
Ashamedly, I remember getting the shits at my partner for taking us out to somewhere nice for dinner but they didn’t have any “normal” beers on tap.
At the time, I couldn’t give a shit about the food, the experience, or the wanky fruit-filled beers. I saw even date night as an opportunity to drink as much as I could. Most date nights would end with my partner heading off to bed, me staying up drinking, and even getting a bag of coke dropped over so I could sit up until 5 am on my own being fried out of my brain.
Then I got to a point where if I was to be going somewhere on the weekend, I would have to be able to drink there, it would have to have been I would like, and I would have to have had beers before I went and even on most occasions have an order of drugs pre-arranged.
By this point, I was refusing to do anything even remotely social or sober. I would either be drunk, high, drinking or I wouldn’t go. I was a terrible partner, but at the time, I was so sick with self-loathing and self-obsession that I couldn’t see past the idea that I was always the victim of everyone and everything.
Eventually, I stopped going anywhere. Maybe the pub for a few hours, but by the end of my drinking and drug use, I just wanted to get some cocaine, go home to where I knew I had plenty of beers, no one would be around and I could spiral into that person I was so comfortable being yet too ashamed to let anyone see.
I had rid myself of any and all meaningful connection.
I would spend all weekend isolated from my pregnant partner. In the back yard, in the shed, convincing myself I was way too smart for her to know what I was up to. I just wanted to be alone, and get as fucked up as I could.
I despised rugs and alcohol. I despised myself for becoming so reliant on them. But this is the part I think most don’t understand: getting sober is scarier than it is to stay living in that constant state of guilt, shame and remorse because that state of guilt, shame and remorse is familiar.
Life without your most trusted, longest serving and most effective coping mechanism, that’s fucking scary. And I think that’s why so many of us HAVE to hit rock bottom.
As fucked as it was, I’ll always be grateful for hitting my rock bottom and the period that led to it. I have to be. As I sit here with 799 days of sobriety under my belt, not only is my life better than it ever has been, but it’s better than I ever even knew it would be able to be, and it’s getting better.
It’s not perfect, it’s not easy, and it’s not without its faults. But it’s better than ever and the trajectory is good.
Why?
Because I have a program that has taught me that I am unimportant. It’s taught me that a life of service to others is ultimately the greatest way of being of service to myself. It’s taught me that if I just do my best each day to make the right decision when presented with one, things will usually be ok. Irrelevant of what happens to or for me today, the world goes on, and that’s liberating. I’ve always been okay and I always will be. If I’m ever not okay, that’s when I’ll worry about it and do something to change that.
My program has given me peace between the ears, which allows me to be present, and enjoy life for what it is. I am grateful because, without that rock bottom, I would never have achieved that peace.
As they say, if drinkin’ was better than this shit, we’d all be out there drinkin’.
Cheers Wankers.
X.
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Running for Resilience Ben Alexander Brent Ford Running Rare The Milkbar Reflections of a Clare Bear
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“The trajectory is good.” - I am so happy for you Sam. Looking forward to a run next time we get the chance.