Measuring Recovery in More Than Chips

Measuring Recovery in More Than Chips
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Recovering alcoholics cling tightly to milestones. How many moments, hours, days, weeks, months, years can we go without falling down? I was at a meeting when the speaker found out a fellow member had passed away. Upon hearing of his passing, the speaker said, “He went clean, I hope?” I sure think Jesus would’ve taken him on or off the wagon.

I never felt it in AA. Avoidance of pain, fear of failure, and shame were never enough to keep me sober. As the milestones pile up, it feels like our skates get thinner and the ice gets slicker. Recovery demands more than time, and it demands a whole lot more than shame.

I’ve been reflecting on these milestones a lot lately because 2017 was the first full calendar year where I stayed sober. For a few years, I would slip every few months, as if I was running away from the pressure of holding too shiny a chip. But not this year. This year, I didn’t. This year, I dove further into sobriety instead of coming up every few months for air. And as I dive further into it, I understand what all of those slips were about.

Slipping was so easy. It was clear. I struggled to find an identity as a sober person, so slipping allowed me to stay a recovering alcoholic trying to claw my way back to abstinence. As demoralizing as slipping was, everything made sense when I slipped, but sobriety challenged me to explore who I was without booze.

I discussed this feeling earlier, but sobriety doesn’t make things clearer. It’s not a fix-all. Resisting temptation wasn’t just hard because of the addiction to alcohol; it was hard because it demanded sitting with all the discomfort that alcohol provided solace from in the first place. Slipping allowed me to turn my shoulder to the isolation, the obsessive quest for control, and the endless pursuit of highs that alcohol sedated and sobriety triggered. Alcohol took off the edge of perfectionism, but sobriety brings you to front line, up close and personal with everything you love and everything you hate about yourself. And sometimes those are the same things.

Sobriety plants you directly in the moment, no matter how uncomfortable, and looks you square in the face, declaring, “Your move, chump.” And it always is. And sometimes you run, sometimes you find some high on a treadmill or a thrill in the illusion of control over some bullshit facet of your life, like your waistline or your Instagram, but none of it lasts. You end up back in the moment with your bitchy, loving Aunt Sobriety, trying to justify your irrational anger at your dad, only to succumb to the clarity only sobriety can shove down your throat: that you ain’t perfect. But you are human. Too human.

I last drank when I was 21, but I actually abstained for 3 weeks when I was 18. (This did involve a 3-day bible study beach retreat. Take that as you will.) I remember walking to my college dorm on one of the first nights of my abstinence and feeling this overwhelming feeling of freedom. That’s the best word I can use to describe it. Freedom. This freedom that made me feel weightless; it filled me with a joy that reminded me of being in middle school. My relationship with alcohol took away this exact feeling that I can barely name. But in that brief eye of a rum storm, I felt free. Freedom from a pursuit, from striving, from trying to find something. Alcoholism was always about running away, and sobriety, as bitchy as she was, gave me freedom in the present.

Sobriety alone doesn’t hold that freedom intact. I took a job that I thought would redeem me right after college. I started 2017 working this prestigious (redemptive, ha) job that made me miserable, living in a city where I knew no one. Drives to and from work were sometimes filled with tears, and other times filled with apathy. After months of working a job that exacerbated my obsessive need for control I completely lost the joy I fought so hard to gain in sobriety. I hadn’t picked up a single bottle but managed to relinquish my most precious gift: freedom.

I quit my job at 23. I was unemployed. I was sober. I still struggled to find my identity as a sober person. The one thing stronger than the fear of being a quitter was the hunger for that freedom that colored my post-drinking world. I wanted to feel light again. I think quitting that job was the first time I let go. Recovery is full of self-criticism, guilt, and judgment. Quitting was an embracing that self-criticism, accepting it, and letting it go. For the first time.

For years, alcohol was my primary motivation. It fueled every decision I made. The quest for sustainable sobriety illuminates motivations I never understood in myself when I was drinking.

I discovered Kerouac at 18 during a particularly wet month during my freshman year of college. I loved every word of his booze-fueled adventure. As much sense as he made to me when I was drunk, he made more sense when I got clean. “The road is life.” It’s imperfect. It goes on. It moves fast. It’s all connected. It’s yours.

As I dive deeper into sobriety, I understand that recovery is a journey about more than putting down a bottle; it’s a journey for who you truly are, what makes you tick, and what you want to get out the life you should’ve lost. 2017 taught me that bottles aren’t the only thing that can take away your freedom.

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