A few years back, probably more like six and not just a few, I found myself cornered. I’d been clean from drugs and alcohol for 15 years, but I hadn’t been participating in alcoholics anonymous or any other twelve step type program. I’d tried therapy for a couple of years, but honestly I couldn’t find serenity or solace in my life again. Because it had been many years since I’d gone to a meeting, and I’d moved from Boston to San Francisco, I didn’t have anyone to reach out to when it came to sobriety issues. I was also going through one of the most stressful times of my life and I’d forgotten how to deal with it.
The good news was that I knew I didn’t want to drink or use drugs. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I didn’t think about it, but I was ‘white-knuckling,” holding on for dear life every day. My world was getting smaller and smaller and I was bottled up, so tightly coiled that I’d snap at anyone who even considered crossing me. My paranoia was on high alert. And then it happened….I found myself sitting alone again in my apartment for days on end. My daily activity was shower, get dressed, watch TV, eat, watch TV, eat, watch TV, eat, watch TV, sleep, and then do it all again the next day.
I was standing still. I was standing there waiting for the world to come to me instead of me putting my hand out for help. I didn’t think I needed AA still, but I knew what I was doing wasn’t working. Something needed to give, but it couldn’t be me going to AA. No way. That night I was on the phone talking to a friend. I am sure I was complaining about how this person or that person had somehow wronged me. During the conversation, and I remember it so clearly, just like it was yesterday, I stated “I wish I could drink…” the words had barely left my lips when I took a deep breath, my mind reeled, and that’s when I heard my friend say, “Let’s get you to an AA meeting.” He was on his computer and I could hear the ‘click-clacking’ of his keyboard. Thankfully the meeting was in walking distance because I don’t know if I could have driven anywhere. He told me to meet him in 20 minutes, and I did just that.
I won’t say the meetings were easy at all. It was hard to sit there because I felt like a fraud; like somehow I had cheated. I kept going, every day though, and some days I’d go twice. As a few weeks when by I realized my 15 year anniversary date had just passed and I purposely hadn’t collected a medallion. My friend asked me why I hadn’t so I told him I felt like a fraud collecting it, as I hadn’t been going all along, and I hadn’t put in the work. He looked at me, smirked and said, “Dude, you’ve done one of the hardest things there was to do. You suffered for so many years and didn’t drink, so get up there and just do it. Get over yourself.”
So I did. And you know what? No one stood up, pointed at me and called me a fraud!
It took a while but I was moving again. I wasn’t standing still. I was suffering in many ways, but again I wasn’t standing still. I now had friends to reach out to, go to meetings with, and to be there to help whenever I could.
I found my community and the promises came when my house was in order again.
Recovery Rob BIO
Recovery Rob is a 48-year-old man who has more than twenty years of sobriety, whose drugs of choice at one time were alcohol and drugs, and he has worked in and around the field of addiction for more than 20 years. Having just recently launched his own website, www.askrecoveryrob.com, he hopes to reach out and continue to help others who work through their process of addiction and recovery. Recovery Rob is a professional writer who has published two novels and is currently working on his third. He has been writing and working as Pat Moore Foundation’s premiere blogger and content writer, which helps keeps Pat Moore Foundation’s addiction and recovery blog top-rated.