Shifting from Sobriety To Recovery

If I were to walk into an AA meeting with 10 people in that room, each person sober for 10 years, I would be met with, “We have 100 years of sobriety in this room.”

I want to know if they were drunk when they came up with that logic.

Then, I have to be reminded of my shortcomings by calling myself an addict every day.

Drinking is nothing but a visible shame war- and being forced to acknowledge yourself as an addict no matter how many years you’re sober, while counting your days only perpetuates that war with yourself.

When you try to speak about something other than drinking, like maybe why you drank, you’re reminded to keep the war with yourself alive.

And when you try to speak up, you’re patronized with their impeccable logic that the battle scars you’re wearing aren’t rock bottom yet. Because, remember- their “collective” sobriety is a testament of their initiated wisdom.

It’s this vicious cycle of shaming yourself and listening to stories about how after 10 years of sobriety, when they were cut off while they were driving, they wanted a drink. But they didn’t succumb to the disease that can take them at any moment. This is a true story.

The irony is that they’re looking for threats outside of themselves when they’ve been conditioned to be their own predator.

Focusing on not drinking is only putting a bandaid on the wound. Bandaids protect the wounds. They don’t heal the wounds.

And when you have a fire raging inside of you, a bandaid will only melt into it. You can’t extinguish a fire by blowing the smoke.

The days don’t and won’t matter if you’re suffocating in that fire.

We’ve all had our hearts broken and experienced some kind of trauma- maybe the death of someone we loved, or abuse that incapacitated the relationship we have with ourselves, or betrayal that fractured our ability to trust. Those leave holes.

And that’s exactly why we resort to, and eventually, rely on substances. We tried filling those holes instead of allowing ourselves to feel complete in the fragments.

It doesn’t mean we romanticize the pain, it means we honor it with the same sanctity as the memories we cherish.

It also doesn’t mean we look for wars because we’ve already survived them.

So, let your heart bleed. It’s ok.

Life is about learning to sit in the duality of our emotions, without needing to fix them.

The fire is going to burn whether you stand still or you keep moving, so choose to be forged in it.

The initiation isn’t in the days, the “collective” years, the threats lurking around the corner, or the battle scars. The initiation is walking the path back home to yourself.

I’ll see you soon…in the meantime, love yourself so much that even a Hallmark Christmas movie would be jealous.