Drinking Again

I have been kept sober since the day I walked in to recovery and asked ‘those people who stay sober one day at a time’ to help me. For six years I have been alternatively glad to be sober and not so glad to be sober. Every time one of my friends decides to drink again or returns to the program for help, it sets off a storm of thoughts and emotions in my head.

I would suspect that this same thing has been happening in these rooms for over 75 years. I suspect it is part of the recipe that works to keep us from taking the first drink. When these folks return, their suffering is acute, their confusion is running high and their health is at a low. More than a few times this has been served up to me on a day that I show up at a meeting with thoughts of drinking, again, running around in my little pea-brain.

So far, I have only had two friends that returned to drinking and seem to be doing fine. How many leave recovery never to return, and live happily-ever-after? I will never know. These thoughts run through my mind over and over as the years go by. The thoughts persist even though I have found nothing but friendship, love and laughter with these people. 

On a day when I am courting feelings of discontentment with my sobriety and a friend decides to drink or use again, it is not unusual for me to feel left behind - the nerd, the loser - going to another meeting on a Friday night. Confused and stunned, I sit there and wonder what it is all about. I get engrossed in thoughts of myself and what I might be missing out on. My mind begins to eat away at my resolve to stay sober.

That is where this power we talk about that keeps us sober so important. Thus far, I have kept doing the things that are suggested in the book our program is based on and have continued to hang out with people in recovery - thus far the thinking subsides and I am kept sober another day. I wake up the next day, almost without exception, so grateful that I did not drink. I am filled with relief that I do not have to go through the pain of early sobriety again.

The physical suffering of sobering up is not the only thing that I do not want to repeat. I also do not want to have to go though the confusion and fear that I see my fellows endure on their return. And, I certainly do not want to repeat that first year of discomfort that comes with ego-leveling.

Of course all the thoughts I ponder of what it would be like to return to sobriety after drinking would be moot if I were to drink and never make it back to recovery. I have known a couple that relapsed and died before they could come back. I know many others that were incarcerated before they could return.

There are a lot of things in the process of recovery that keep me sober, I think that the relapse of my fellows may be one of them. Yesterday, I got to share an evening with someone I love that has returned yet again from a relapse. Again, his journey has set a storm of thoughts and emotions off in my head. Again, I have been kept sober one more day.

Hold that thought...

James