The Time is Now — Life in Sobriety
With sobriety comes newfound pressure. Being on mind-altering substances, including alcohol, allowed you to escape your lack of self-worth. It enabled the masking of your strengths and gave a justification to not reach your full potential. In fact, it allowed you to be pretty okay about being a mediocre version of yourself. You really didn’t mind not reaching your goals, because you had your friend. And that friend became your vice, your comfort, your crutch. It became your scapegoat.
Now, you’ve stopped using. Where to from here? Suddenly, the time is now — not tomorrow, or next month, next year — it is now, and you have to start living again. You need to get up and face the day; you need to arrive to life and get your hands dirty. Otherwise, what is it all for?
God it’s like starting from the beginning again. In fact, that is exactly what you are doing. The grace and innocence of a newborn child? — I liken that with the newcomer. Because they are starting right at the beginning of managing their lives, and now without their dummy. And they’ll cry, they’ll laugh, they’ll scream, they’ll love, and they’ll be uncomfortable at times and warm in others. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be. Which is an enormous jump from barely being anything within the womb of active addiction.
What this time allows for is recalibration. Recalibration of direction, of ambition, of energy, of love and of people. And suddenly there is a plethora of opportunity. Perhaps not opportunity presenting itself, but opportunity that you need to go and find.
However, some recovering addicts are totally stuck in their rut of self-doubt and defeat. Now, add to that they they have no escape — it may be a double whammy and could be debilitating. It might take more than not using to start to eradicate that innate lack of self-esteem. I mean, isn’t that the one area that you’ve excelled at over your life of active addiction? — you’re excellent at thinking you’re not.
So let’s get back to basics…
What drives that fire within you? Harness that. This is where clean time can be used to your advantage. Utilize your sobriety, your clarity of mind and your newfound energy. Channel that energy into everything that you couldn’t and didn’t do because you were lost and so deeply in love with your drug of choice that you couldn’t see past your rolled up note. I’m devastated when I hear of recovering addicts who feel such immense loss without their drug and aren’t seeing the glass as being half full (of alcohol-free wine, of course). I can’t even call it half full. That damn thing is overflowing — and it is up to you, and you alone, to make sure that you capture it and allow none of it to go to waste. So what are you waiting for?
Did someone tell you as a child that you wouldn’t amount to anything? Fuck it. Did you never quite fit in with your peers, or were you often criticized? I’m sure that the humility and growth in character borne out of lack of acceptance is not even quantifiable for you just yet — but it is there. Did your spouse leave you because he believed you to be going nowhere? Well, isn’t that just his loss. Because look at what you have done — you powerful being. You have overcome the tremendous challenge of taking on the hurdles of day to day living without your drug to smoothen your ride. Instead of the path of least resistance, you’ve taken the one less travelled. And the fight is not over yet.
It is just for today.
Yet every single day, you arrive in your proverbial suit, your briefcase filled with reminders of your life in active addiction, your pen inked and ready to jot down all the reasons why you find yourself here. You show up to recovery every single day and you’re there to work. And that shows more strength and bravery than most. So to those that told you, including yourself, that you can’t accomplish what you want to accomplish, or left before you had given yourself the chance to try, well they should take a damn hard look at you now. And if you can achieve the monumental feat of sobriety, there’s a wealth of other greatness that you can achieve. You just have to buck up and arrive.
Dedicated to D. A.
