18 Years Today

 

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.