FINDING LIFE IN THE RIGHT PLACE

When I began my journey in recovery, I found an old faded piece of paper with a paragraph written on it. I honestly do not remember where I found it but I found significant meaning in its words and have it now on the bulletin board next to my desk. This is what is says…

POSITIVELY NEGATIVE

We drank for joy and became miserable. We drank for sociability and became argumentative. We drank for sophistication and became obnoxious. We drank for friendship and made enemies. We drank for sleep and awakened exhausted. We drank for strength and became weak. We drank to feel exhilaration and ended up depressed. We drank for “medical purposes” and acquired health problems. We drank to get calmed down and ended up with the shakes. We drank for confidence and became afraid. We drank to make conversation flow more more easily and the words came out slurred and incoherent. We drank to diminish our problems and saw them multiply. We drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell. We drank to cope with life and invited death.

Those words could not ring more true. I drank for all those reasons and had all of those negative results. Now that I am sober, I have found and achieved all of the positives. I could not be happier that all I had searched for, I found in sobriety. What a blessing it is!

I remember vividly how prior to my sobriety I lived in a state of constant fear and anxiety. I thought that the only way I could get rid of that and function was to alter my mood with some substance. I believed I needed that to be social and interact with people. I thought that only drunk or high could I accomplish anything worth while. I needed to be under the influence to sleep without nightmares or to awaken and face the day. I felt like I needed to be drunk or high to be “normal.” That could not have been a bigger misconception.

What I figured out in sobriety was that I needed to find the root of the fear and anxiety and work through that. By the grace of God I was able to do that. Having put in that work I can now sleep through the night just fine and awaken ready for the new day. I am able to socialize with others and put myself out there. I can accomplish whatever I set out to do with the knowledge that if it does not work out, that is okay. It is not the end of the world, usually it is a great lesson. My favorite saying these days is “nothing is that serious.” I have come to truly believe that. The only true and valid worries I have are only for my children and grandchildren’s health and wellness. As long as they are okay everything else in life will work out one way or another.

Looking back I can remember so many times when I just couldn’t understand why I was so lonely and could not keep solid friendships. During those times I believed; of course, that it was everyone else’s issue and that they were just horrible people. It wasn’t until I got sober that I realized the problem was me and not them. I was demanding in my friendships and extremely clingy and needy. I believed that people should know exactly what I felt or needed without my verbalizing any of it. How crazy is that. When someone didn’t provide what I expected or spoke a truth that I didn’t want to hear I would stop speaking to them for days or weeks at a time. I always was the one to reach out again in desperation of course and would say I was sorry only to repeat it all again. Eventually that behavior drove all my friends away. In sobriety I have been able to mend some of those friendships but sadly there were a few that were unrepairable and I have to accept that.

It is very difficult when we are in the throws of addiction to see how it is ruining our lives and not in any way making it better. We are not able to think rationally or see anything clearly. The addiction is so important that in our minds everything we are thinking makes sense and all the problems are outside of us. Usually it is only when we have hit rock bottom to we even entertain the thought that there is a different way. Now that I am sober, I find myself quite sad a lot thinking of people in the midst of addiction and all they are missing out on. I wish I could help each and everyone of them.