Dealing with the past...
As I hit 18 months of sobriety recently, I was surprised by a new wave of remorse and regret for my years of alcoholism. Anyone who drinks for 30+ years has their share of events - blunders and missed opportunities - that they regret. We deal with this in AA step 4 and subsequent steps. But this was more along the lines of the subtle ways that I behaved as an active alcoholic.
-
I wish I had focused on empowering my spouse and others in my life, and celebrating their lives and accomplishments. Just being supportive or whatever I spent most of our marriage doing is not enough. Just being smugly content with "not being as bad a husband as my dad often was" in terms of how I treated her was clearly not enough.
-
I wish I had worked on the art of pausing before reacting. Slowing down conversations and events and instead of just reacting with first instincts and emotions, really listened and proved an understanding of what was happening or what was being said before reacting or responding.
-
I stopped completely on building my skills as a person. The positive that I can take from dealing with my alcohol problem is that I am genuinely immersed in a path of working on me and becoming a better person to others.
-
Humility and belief in my higher power (God, or whatever form you can believe in), goes a long way. This world does not exist FOR me. I’m in it. I’m a small piece of a huge puzzle, and the more I worry and fret over my own petty concerns and the more I believe I am in complete control of what happens, the more I am likely to be frustrated, angry, fearful, anxious. I control my words and actions. I do not control the words and actions of others and I don’t control events (good or bad). Accepting this is an incredibly powerful tool in transforming how I view the world!
Having completed the 12 steps I feel I have put most of my remorse behind me. But the feelings of what could have been different swell up from time to time. I found it useful to confront it by sharing the information above with my two sons, with the thought that perhaps reading this as well as some further details on my childhood depression would shed light on the problems that can arise in our lives.
"No thanks, I'm not drinking tonight...", it's a line I have used in sobriety on a number of occasions. It's my first line of defense in responding to what we all have to deal with in recovery. "Surely you want to have a drink right? Why wouldn't you??".
I was never NOT shocked during my drinking days when someone would abstain or cut off their drinking after maybe one drink. It seemed inhuman, and certainly felt unnecessary. So now, to be that guy that occasionally goes into a setting where a drink is available even encouraged, and NOT accept a drink... really it is a surreal feeling to be that guy!
There is frequently discussion in AA meetings and other recovery settings around how to handle such situations. It's obviously a huge pitfall of sobriety to be around your drug of choice. And its further complicated with alcohol recovery in that its use is so widely accepted. We are bombarded daily by advertising telling us to drink their brand, showing people enjoying friends and family doing ...
I actually feel guilty when people ask me how I'm doing. In a world where there is a large segment of the population that believes the world is evil, broken, is about to end, or wish that it WOULD end... I am enjoying life far more than at any other time in my lifetime. I've overcome addictions and daily alcohol abuse that had me retching, shaking and drinking at 4am every day. I drank lethal doses of alcohol daily. I took my life to the edge of the cliff and bounced off of it. So I'll see your existential threats to humanity (climate, viruses, or whatever those may be) and raise you a huge IDGAF. Life is fragile and fretting over our existence isn't going to change that.
Okay, it's not that I really don't care. But I do believe the egotistic nature of mankind is what is really at work here. Humankind is intellectually curious, ambitious, somewhat greedy. We have become conditioned to always want more and more, leading to expecting more, eventually to DEMANDING more ("OK, Karen" ). While certain ...
How often does this happen to you - when you hear a line of discussion in an AA meeting and you wish you were recording or writing things down. It's like you're receiving words of wisdom from a well written book. I had just such an experience this past weekend, and I will try to share it with you.
The topic was "how do you move forward with your sobriety in times of turmoil".
The first gentleman that spoke on the topic shared that his biggest source of turmoil in his life has always been himself - his conflict with others, his anger, his abrasive reactions to others in his life. While others may do us wrong, the one constant in our interactions and problems we have with other people - and the only one which we can hope to control - is ourselves.
This guy spoke of a another man that had come to do work at his house shortly after he had gotten sober. The man was disheveled, reeking of alcohol and smoke from the previous night or perhaps hours before. Upon realizing the state of his worker, ...
