How can it not be? How delusional we’ve become to think we are prepared to suddenly step in and handle life—be fine. Call me pessimistic, or even cruel, I prefer to think of it as REAL. I think if we know something is going to totally suck, then we are more prepared for the long haul. And it’s a long storm of emotions.

How can we comprehend the bitterness of early sobriety when those in long-term recovery repetitiously tout its greatness? If one more person said, “keep coming back” I was going to strangle them. Didn’t they know, didn’t they understand how hard this was for me? What was wrong with them? My life at 8 months sober appeared worse than my life with no sobriety. At least if I wasn’t sober I didn’t have to feel it. Now I had to feel. It sucked. (A vulgar word, but it drives the point.)

I was no more prepared to be sober than I was to travel to the moon. What made me think I could do this?

Here’s the issue—It was no longer an option.

The stakes were high. High enough that I could hear the inner voice pleading, “Enough, I am not willing to risk losing more. Despite the agony of not drinking and the agony of drinking … I must figure this out.”

Bam!

Now here’s the killer. We think at that moment that the battle is over. After all we made a choice, a decision. Now we’ll just tough it out for a little while and be fine. Wrong!

What that Bam really means:

  • Not only are we not drinking but, we are never drinking again if we want long-term sobriety … and if we want long-term sobriety we have to be in this for the long haul  … and if we’re in it for the long haul, well then f*** we might as well just drink to deal with the pain of knowing we don’t think we can stop drinking for the long haul.
  • The structure of life as we know it will be smashed to tiny, itsy-bitsy pieces. A wrecking ball is appearing within the next 30 days to destroy every belief we ever had about ourself. Everyone is telling us this is great and we get to silently hate them as we struggle with our unique situation.
  • Every feeling we ever not wanted to feel will be showing up in some form during the first two years (individual results may vary). It will almost kill us to face it, face that person, face that pain and we will want to kill them or us. One gets us to jail, the other a hall pass to come back to Earth and give it another try until we figure it out (again, individual results and beliefs may vary).
  • We are embarking on the toughest journey we have ever faced and it pales in comparison to what we think it will be like … surf wave vs. tidal wave.
  • Life has just begun, seems impossible, but true! And on many, if not most, moments in early sobriety we would prefer to return to our cocoon.

My Bam lasted a few years.  Was it easy? No. But I learned to do more than wait for the storm to blow over.  I learned what it meant to live life fully engaged and sober. I wasn’t a door mat, but I wasn’t a bitch. I wasn’t raging, but I wasn’t silent. I wasn’t fearful of everything, but learned to proceed with caution. I learned to love everyone and trust only those who had earned it. I wasn’t always feeling loving, but I learned how to access the feeling of love.

In all this mess I found me.

Find a resource to guide you, there are many. If we do not find a resource to guide us, to trust—we are certain to fail. We have too much confrontation arriving with this storm to battle it alone. Find a resource that you trust and get the help you deserve.

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We suggest you get the help with an organization that is in alignment with your principles.
Don’t know what your principles are?
Might be something good to find out.

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