I’ve been thinking about what sobriety means to me. Just my thoughts and not someone else’s…maybe. Anyway, what does it mean, other than not drinking. If it meant only not drinking, I would probably have been drunk a long time ago.
This new medication, which is being applied to keep people from not drinking, you know the pill that takes away the craving, probably will lead to drinking again. After all, alcoholics, who take this thing have already found their higher power…a pill. Besides, without the craving, most will not see a need to change anything. If a pill is our bottom, what’s the big deal? I know for myself that if someone would have given me a drug, which would have relieved the insanity I was going through in my bottom, I would probably reacted the same way. What was that all about? Let’s set ’em up again and give my friends a drink, too.
So, the first two things, which come to mind, to describe my thoughts on sobriety, are the acquisition of a higher power and change. And that’s just the beginning. Fortunately for me and a whole lot of others, Bill and the rest of that first generation of alcoholics laid out a perfect plan for the rest of us. The twelve steps and all the instructions have been freelly given to us.
But it’s not just these things alone, which I think about. It’s the results of the sober process. What’s happened to me since I began taking the actions my sponsor and all those other old timers told me were required of me. These were not just suggestions for me. They were absolute commandments or I surely would have drank again.
I think of sobriety as that mysterious process, which is termed “to grow along spiritual lines”. What that is is beyond my comprehension. It just is, as far as I can see. All I know is that, if I keep practicing these principles, I must be on this path. How do I know? I haven’t drank in all these years, or had the desire to do so. To me that’s a miracle.
What else? The change I have undergone has made me slow down. I have acquired a certain peace and serenity within. All those awful fears and anxieties have melted into the past. But more than that. My view of the world and the people within it has undergone a radical change. In other words, my attitude has been altered. I have experienced a more positive outlook on things and been able to give up the negative view I once held onto with such a death grip. And it would have been death if I hadn’t.
I came in with such a closed mind that my sponsor once told me that it would take dynamite to get it open. Somehow in the process I came to relax and to be able to take a deep breath and let go of some of my old ideas. Some still are hanging around somewhere in my mind, but in the main, the “dynamite” of the twelve steps and the resulting process has pried my mind much further open than in the beginning.
Lack of judgment was one of my trademarks in the beginning. Like Bill said, I my plan for living was stupid. By the time I was arriving at the ninth and tenth steps, with the help of so many others, I began to be able to slow down and see things in their proper perspective. For the first time in my life I believe. I began to be able to think and do things without that inner panic, which had plagued me so often in the past and could only be fixed by a drink. To make decisions I needed to make with equanimity. To begin to exercise prudence. Not always, but the ability began to emerge. I began to exercise foresight in place of short sightedness.
This is only a portion of this exercise today. But what sobriety really means to me is life itself. For that I am grateful to God and all those who have helped me along the way.