The Pink Cloud
Floating as if everything is now ok
That was easy! I don’t know what all the fuss was about. Ninety meetings in ninety days and I am cured.
Whew!
I thought it was going to be much harder. I mean c’mon, look at me. I must be a superman. Two decades of alcohol abuse and 90 days later I am right as rain.
I wish…
It sure felt like that though. My goodness the world felt right, and my mind was extraordinarily clear, but it was an illusion.
I don’t know the science, or the voodoo, just that for some strange reason I felt normal. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that pink clouds aren’t normal, and some of the decisions I made during this period haunt me to this day.
Yah, that’s right, I ignored one of the major precepts of recovery, don’t make any life-altering decisions in the first year. That very pink cloud that made me feel like everything was ok, was a perception filter, and it was altering my perception.
I went merrily along with life, changing jobs, getting married, even having a child. The pink cloud wasn’t there through all of this, it turned very dark and cloudy within a few months. I stopped going to meetings, lost my job, had to move, life began spiralling. My wife even wondered aloud why she had forced me to quit drinking in the first place. I was miserable and it was taking its toll on my family.
Why didn’t I follow the program…
So, after two years, I started all over again. I found a group, found a sponsor, and started to focus on the reasons I drank in the first place. I was no longer deluding myself, I was determined to get my mind healthy, probably for the first time since I was a teenager. There would be no pink cloud this time. Damn the torpedoes, I will persevere until my demons no longer control me and alcohol is no longer my first response to stress and hardship.
For some, the groups are enough, for me, it took a little more, in fact, it still takes a little more, decades down the road. I don’t know if I was born this way or if alcohol abuse was the cause. It really doesn’t matter.
What matters is that I now believe I am powerless over alcohol and that I need to be vigilant about my mental health and emotions if I wish to remain sober and free.
