Stick with the Winners: But Who?
One of my favorite paradoxes was something I heard from a comedic Alcoholics Anonymous speaker while I was in early recovery. He talked about how confusing early recovery can be because we hear things like “Stick with the winners” and “Don’t take other peoples’ inventory.” The issue he brings up is that it’s impossible to stick with winners if you aren’t taking their inventory.
To hopefully provide some clarity on the situation, I’ll share my experience with this. Taking inventory is human nature, and it’s going to happen whether we want to or not. I think the overall point of not taking someone’s inventory is that we need to check our motives when doing so. We can do this by asking ourselves some simple questions:
· Is this helping their sobriety by taking their inventory?
· Is this helping my sobriety by taking their inventory?
· Am I taking their inventory because they hurt me?
· Is what they’re doing any of my business in the first place?
Sobriety is a selfish program in the sense that we have to do what we have to do to stay sober. In this article, I want to discuss my view of what winners are and how I chose who these winners were within my circle. Unfortunately, in order to stay sober, I had to remove some people from my life. The great news is that I learned the meaning of what true friendship was by sticking with the winners.
I Surrounded Myself with Chaos and Gossip
In my active addiction, I was drawn to chaos. Chaos doesn’t necessarily have to mean that people are rioting and burning down buildings. I hung around people who were prone to drama. In a sick, twisted way, I enjoyed it. Growing up in chaos, it’s what I felt comfortable with. I stuck around people who always had drama in their lives and would discuss it freely with me, and maybe this made me feel more “normal” because I knew I wasn’t the only one.
I hung around people who were constantly having problems at work or with their family. I stayed close to people who enjoyed gossiping about other people. Much like my drinking and drug use, I knew it was wrong, but I was drawn towards it. Not only did I like being around people who were prone to drama, but I brought my fair share as well. I remember countless times being with friends, not knowing what to talk about, so I would gossip about a mutual friend even though part of me knew that it was wrong.
The Change Had to Come from Me First
They told me that the only thing I had to change was everything when I got sober. Through going to meetings, working with a sponsor and reading the Big Book, I learned that my way of living wasn’t working and it often is what lead me to getting drunk or high. Living in a life filled with chaos, I had no other escapes other than drugs or alcohol. The great news is that they also told me that I didn’t have to live that way anymore. Through working a third step and analyzing my fourth step, I realized that many of the resentments I had were for things that I did as well.
The most important lesson I learned in recovery that it’s a lot easier for me to fix myself than it is to fix the rest of the world.
When I’m working a third step in my daily life, I stop doing my will. My will is to be in chaos and drama, and it’s also to start chaos and drama. If I’m living in the third step, I’m living a life of spiritual principles in all of my affairs. My will is to gossip about others or look down on people. My will is to argue with others who disagree with me. My will is to not take your advice and do what I want, get hurt and then complain to you about it. Again, I didn’t have to live that way anymore.
The first winner that I had to stick with was myself. Why on earth would anyone who’s a winner want to hang around someone like me if I’m not living like a winner? If I want to stick with the winners, I had to be with the winner. This made me work on myself. I stopped lying. I stopped manipulating. I stopped thinking about myself all the time and thought about what I could do to help others. Amazingly, my relationships with friends and family improved quite a bit by making the changes within myself.
Who is a Winner?
Unfortunately, I can’t give you the answer to this question. Why? Because it’s my opinion that this is a completely subjective topic. A winner to me might not be a winner to you and vice versa. The first time you’ll encounter this is when you’re on the search for a sponsor. Does this person have what you want? Some people want a sponsor who has a great job and makes a lot of money. Some people want a sponsor who has a spouse and children because that’s what they wanted. Me? It was much simpler than that. I wanted peace, serenity and sanity in my life.
I’m going to share with you who I perceive as winners for my personal recovery. Please remember, this is my personal recovery, and I’m not here to tell you what’s right or wrong for yours. This is simply in hopes of maybe helping the wheels turn in your head so you can begin to decipher who a winner actually is.
In my sober living home, there were a few guys who I perceived as winners. Sure, none of us had our act together as a whole, but my best friends in that house were winners in my eyes because they shared my desire to stay sober and have a better life. They were guys who went to meetings, had a sponsor and were actively working the steps. These guys helped save my life because we all encouraged each other to do these things. Even to this day, my mom loves seeing these guys when I come to visit because she knows that they helped save my life.
There are four of us from our time in sober living who are still sober four years later, and I attribute that to us all having the same idea of what a winner is. We hung out with many different people from the rooms of AA and NA, but we knew when to keep our distance. There were plenty of people in our larger social circle who weren’t going to meetings, working steps or talking to a sponsor, and it showed. While we were there for them and invited them over to our house for gatherings, we kept a boundary because we didn’t want to get drug back into old habits.
I learned very quickly what a dry drunk was, and I didn’t want to be one. I saw people who were still living the way they used to live even though they were sober, and I didn’t want that for myself. I learned from them and strengthened my own recovery so I wouldn’t go down that same path. This wasn’t just with fellow newcomers either. I had to look at people with 1, 5, 18 and 30 years of sobriety and ask myself if they were a winner in my eyes. People often told me “clean time doesn’t equal recovery.”
Do They Practice these Principles in All of Their Affairs?
This is something many of us forget constantly, but it means a lot to me because it’s where a lot of my issues came from when it came to organized religion. I always had an issue with people who practiced a religion, but they only took parts that were convenient to them, and this is mentioned as well. I kept hearing over and over in the twelfth step that we practice these principles in all of our affairs, and it made sense to me.
If I’m going to be a winner and work this program to the best of my ability, I’m not just going to talk the talk. I had to start practicing the principles in meetings as well as outside of the meetings. Patience, tolerance and understanding were principles I had to carry with me everywhere I went. Doing my best to practice these principles started turning me into a better person who stopped judging people for who they were or who they are now. Maybe it was my ego, but I wanted to be a good example of 12-step programs outside of the meetings.
My sponsor told me that the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is the program of recovery, so since the Big Book talks about people in the program practicing these principles in all of their affairs, isn’t that what makes someone a winner?
I had to start looking at people in the program and asking myself if they were doing what I was trying to do. Even if they weren’t, were they putting in an effort to do so? I realized early on that just because someone finished the 12 steps didn’t necessarily mean that they were living a life of spiritual principles. While they may be leaps and bounds from who they once were, they may still be acting out of selfishness with skewed motives.
Sticking with the Winners Needs to Translate to Daily Life as Well
In my opinion, we can’t limit this mentality for recovery people only because we practice these principles in all of our affairs. What about our friends outside of meetings? What about our families? What about our coworkers or employers? When I moved back to Las Vegas, I had to cut two of my best friends out of my life, and they’re two guys I grew up with. I had to do this because all they wanted to do was go out drinking. One is a hard drinker and the other is an alcoholic. Luckily, my friend who is an alcoholic has almost a year sober now, and our relationship is better than it has been in about a decade.
My mentality used to be that friendships and relationships were based on quantity, but I’ve come to realize that they’re based on quality. It doesn’t matter how many friends I have today to hang out with, and it certainly doesn’t matter how many I have on social media. Today, I have a very small group of friends that is more precious to me than when I was living in my addiction. I’d rather have 10 people who I can count on rather than 100 people who I don’t feel are beneficial to my recovery.
I’m grateful today that I have that clarity, and I understand how important it is to my peace and serenity. One of my alumni speaks at the detox group at Desert Hope and talks about how the staff is here because they care and not because of the money. He says this because he knows it’s true, and I appreciate that. My old career made me a lot of money, but it was a career where I was encouraged to live a life opposite of spiritual principles, and many of my coworkers were the same. I never went back to that career even though it paid well because my peace, serenity and sobriety is priceless.
Now, as part of the American Addiction Centers alumni team, I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by winners. Each member of the alumni program is someone that I value as a coworker and friend because they inspire me to continue to improve my recovery and life as a whole.
My only hope for this article is that you’ve gained some insight into what a winner might be. Remember that you’re not forced to maintain any relationship that’s not beneficial to your recovery or your growth as a person. Also remember that if you can’t find winners; be the winner. You’ll find that the more you improve yourself to be a better person; you’ll attract others with the same mentality.
