A Room with a View
It’s Worth the Work.
A philosopher once wrote that life is like a huge house, a mansion, with many, many rooms, each one different from the next. Unfortunately, most of us limit our world to just one room, not knowing that the other rooms even exist. As a result, our knowledge is confined to our experiences in that room. If someone tells us that their room is much larger, we base our comparison on the size of our room because that’s all we know. If ours is 10 x 10, well then their big room must be 15 x10 or even 20 x 20. Wow, we think that is big.
(BTW, If you know who that philosopher was, please leave a note in the comments below, thank you.)
Defining Our Room
In any event, most alcoholics start building their rooms at an early age. Me, I started on orange extract at the ripe old age of 13. Living in a small conservative town, we had a limited choice of vices until we grew older, but that’s another story. We were big shot seniors in grade school when the wildest 6th grader on our block bragged that you could buy lemon extract at the IGA store up the street, and we could all get high. Sure enough. Off on our bikes we went. I think that cake ingredient weighed in at 80% alcohol. But lemon extract lasted only so long before we graduated to orange vodka, purchased by way of a bribe to anyone walking out of the seediest liquor store in town. Then wine, beer, gin, the list was long. . .
And alcohol became king.
I’m not bragging about how early in life I became a drunk; I’m just saying that alcohol quickly became the focal point of my life. It slowly but ever so surely defined my room. Everything I did involved alcohol or a craving for it. It can’t be fun if there’s no booze. I have a million sad stories between the early teens and the early ’40s, but the point I’m making is that I couldn’t imagine life without King Alcohol because that’s all I knew. Enriching my life meant two-fifths instead of one. Throw in a few cases of beer and enough mac and cheese to get me through the week, and I’m in heaven.
The Great Plateau
I hit bottom at 43, came into the program, and after a few false starts, it took hold. As I was slogging through the first years of sobriety, I developed a solid case of ‘sober, so what’. Life without booze was boring. Aside from the absence of trauma, there didn't seem to be much benefit to staying sober. I whined about it around the tables. It’s a fairly common affliction I was told, a plateau in my journey. Ok, so my wife had more trust that the guy coming through the door after work would be sober. (I had relapsed before this 11-month stretch.) I was home on time. My youngest son welcomed me back; my oldest was still angry, albeit less and less. Sundays seemed to drag on forever. Beer commercials leaped off the TV into my lap. But is this it?
Just Imagine the Good Life
I mentioned my complacency to my sponsor, although I didn’t have to. He could see it. His answer was to imagine the best possible life I could have and then multiply it tenfold. That’s what good sobriety will be like.
Keep on keeping on, he said, don’t quit before the miracle.
Yeah, whatever, I mumble under my breath each time he gave me his little pep talk.
For me, a good life means quitting this AA bullshit and getting back to a 12 pack in the fridge, a bottle of gin under my front seat, and another one under the spare tire. Yep, that’s what I need, coach; that’s a good life. Take away the booze? I don’t have a clue what you mean when you say ‘good life.’ My response was, of course, based on my limited knowledge because I had never experienced the optimism, the wonder, the joy found in normal life. My life had revolved around alcohol. That was my room.
He was right, of course, as most sponsors are.
A Fabled Life
There’s a fable about a woman who has lived her entire life in a remote Russian village. She spends the better part of each day waiting in line at the food stand at the corner, hoping to scrape together the ingredients for a half-decent meal. More often than not, she finds very little food left by the time it’s her turn. If she gets there early on a lucky day, she might score a turnip or two, maybe a piece of sturgeon or a scrap of meat. Enough for watery soup on a cold day.
Her neighbor, who often waits with her in the line, has a niece living in the US. The niece sends letters every few months, and in those letters, she talks about how the American grocery stores are filled every day with vegetables, fruit, meats, cheeses, and bread, and it’s all fresh.
Upon hearing this, the woman imagines these stores must be stocked with dozens of turnips, chicken, sturgeon, potatoes, mushrooms, cabbage, and even sausage. Maybe honey in the summer! What a life this would be, she thinks, with food like this, always there at the end of the line, ready for cooking, like a festival on a summer day.
The following year, the woman is able to emigrate with her family to the US. After days of passing through immigration, she insists on visiting these grocery stores to see if it were true. This whole grocery store myth sounds, well, too good to be true. Upon entering the store, she is taken aback by the bright lights and the clean floors. She hurries to the produce section, and she can’t believe her eyes.
It’s true! Every possible shape and color. Carrots, yellow and red peppers, leafy lettuce, red radishes, parsnips, yams, and potatoes, on one side; oranges, apples, blueberries, grapes, and raspberries, on the other side, case after brimming case. With her senses overwhelmed, she faints, overpowered by the sudden sight of all this goodness.
We Are No Different
Many alcoholics have spent the majority of their lives in this metaphorical line for rotten food, somewhat complacent because it’s all we know. We can’t envision what our sponsor means when we’re told to keep at it.
For what? Show me!
But the truth is, if we are ever presented suddenly with a vision of our life as it will be 5, 10 sober years from now, we’d be shocked, overwhelmed. We’ve never witnessed such a thing. That’s why in our early stages of sobriety, when we walk through this boring plateau of a ‘sober so what’, we are skeptical of the promised life because it is beyond the walls of our room, off our charts.
Believe me, after many years of keeping on, I can assure you it’s there in the next room; the one with a beautiful view.
Just keep keeping on.
If you need help to cope, you’re not alone.
If you’re ready to try something different, read beautiful hangover and discover what I did to get freedom from alcohol. Do whatever it takes to stay sober for 30 days: go to your doctor, try Smart or AA or Hip Sobriety or Soberistas.
Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind. Try Moderation Management.
There is a whole community of people waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.
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