door lightI love to beat myself up over every little thing I don’t get quite right.

The words were thoughtless, the syntax confusing, the tone ambiguous, should have exercised, or shouldn’t have eaten that. I live with regret, despite that I am now taught otherwise.

Am I to not regret the drinking past or not regret last night’s blow up over the house rules? Geez, when do I finally get it right? When do the ducks line up? When’s the golden moment arriving when I cease this guilt over mistakes? Rather … when will the mistakes stop?

Initially, I was glad to not be hung-over, to remember, and to not have loved ones mad at me. For the briefest of moments, I felt I had arrived. It was short-lived. There was no homecoming parade for my sobriety. Despite my feeling I had accomplished Olympic type achievements, it would go unnoticed as time passed. Not because it wasn’t an achievement, but because it was what I was expected to do all along—be a responsible, contributing member of the family, society. There would be no reward for doing what was expected.

So why am I still regretting, even in sobriety? Shouldn’t this be gone by now? For me, the answer is a yes and a no.

First and foremost, I thought alcohol was my problem. Real recovery means that I see I am the problem, but here is where I have trouble closing the gap.

Where does my alcohol-ism end and my human-ism begin?

What I have learned:

Every problem I face (that is not directly related to my drinking) is a problem that every other human faces to some degree or scope. The challenges I face are not exclusive to me as a recovered alcoholic. They are challenges I face as a recovering human. I am human. I am imperfect in my human body. I make mistakes. I say the wrong thing, the wrong way, at the wrong time. I say nothing when I should have stood up for myself. I say yes when I could have said no. I say no when I could have said yes.

My ability to accept all of my blunders, exactly the way they happened, and grow from them is one of the main reasons I stay sober. If I continue to see that I am bad or damaged or wrong or inadequate I will be at the bar quickly, with little to no forethought on the matter of not drinking. I simply will no longer care because when I am drinking I can pretend I am alright.

There is no pretending in sobriety. Well, maybe a brief period, but the truth is relentless. It knocks until I answer. It gets bigger over time, not smaller. And this happens without a drink in my belly.

I can quit suffering from my alcoholism when I have sufficiently done the work to clear up my past and maintained my sobriety while doing so.

I can quit suffering from my alcoholism when I have made an honest effort to live a principled life.

I can quit suffering from my alcoholism when I can accept that it is part of my past and my past is part of me.

My alcoholism is a part of what got to me this moment right here—now. I am a more loving, more compassionate, more driven person for having traveled it. (Ask me that ten years ago and I would have denied it.) Today this is an irrefutable truth.

I am no longer suffering from alcoholism. I haven’t had a drink in over ten years. So why do I suffer?

  • I suffer because I do not know how to align with the truth of the situation.
  • I suffer because I lack clarity.
  • I suffer because I lack confidence.
  • I suffer because I refuse help.
  • I suffer because I want to see it my way and reject your way.

I suffer because (at some level) I don’t know how not to.

And then I am reminded by my alcoholism how lucky I am to have tools to help me navigate humanism.

I can forgive myself and choose again. My mistakes don’t define me.

The definitive mistake I do not allow myself to make is the mistake of thinking a drink is a good idea.

And the memory of my alcoholism keeps this in check—today.