Today I celebrate 18 years of continuous sobriety and want
to reflect on tackling the beast of addiction and the benefits of recovery.
Not long ago I had a dream in which I bought a pack of
cigarettes, drank alcohol, and ate ice cream. It’s been 34 years since I’ve had a cigarette and 10
months since I’ve had any sugar, and yet my inner addict is never far away.
Brian asked me if there were times in these 18 years when I
was close to having a drink? Nothing recent came to mind, but the beginning certainly
wasn’t easy.
Omar Manejewala writes, “You can’t fight cravings; you can
only outgrow them.”
Facing an addiction requires growing in new ways when times
are hard and the old coping mechanisms are ones I don’t want to
use. I’ve learned to pray more earnestly than ever and to tell people
what’s going on, even when it’s not pretty or doesn’t look like the put-together
image I’d like to present.
I also have learned to take a deep breath, take a walk, take
a nap, read a book, take a bath, drink tea, or journal about what’s eating me
in order to ride the wave of desire, which is an old neural pathway that gets
lit up when a situation emerges and escape seems like the best action.
Of course, I still escape. I read voraciously, I shop with
tenacity for the “perfect” whatever I’m hunting for at the time, and I spend
too much time rehearsing what I’m going to say, should have said, or should have kept to
myself.
And none of this recovery happened overnight. Identity gets formed over time, and in
community, so hanging out with other recovering alcoholics and food
addicts helps normalize what affects only a small percentage of the population
actually. There's still plenty of stigma surrounding addiction, yet people in recovery are the happiest, most honest and generous people I know.
If someone had told me 30 years ago that someday I wouldn't smoke, drink, eat sugar or flour I would have gasped. But it gets easier. I can do hard things because I don’t do them alone. I believe that anyone else can too. There’s nothing
special that allows me and millions of others to be sober or abstinent while
someone else struggles. We just made a decision and kept coming back until it
stuck.
It’s not the easiest path, but it’s so worth it, that if
you’re in a place of deciding to give up something that’s not serving you,
please reach out and let others help.
You may, as I have, be given a life beyond your wildest dreams.
