Tag: early sobriety

Neural Pathways, An Old Photo, & a Warm Day Ahead

I’ve been reading the news this morning and even after only a short 39 minutes I am feeling overwhelmed. I’m grateful for this daily gratitude practice which has really made a difference in my outlook in this difficult time by rewiring the neural pathways in my brain.

My iPad’s Photo’s widget showed me a photo of my dear sweet son from five years ago when he was almost eight. It was shortly after I started my recovery journey but I can see in his smile that we were having a great day at the park. I’m grateful for the reminder that I my decisions impact others.

Living near the Chesapeake bay can provide for some interesting weather phenomena. Today we are enshrouded in fog because the air temperature is warmer than the water. While it concerns me greatly that it will be nearly 60 degrees nine days before the winter solstice because I know that climate change is the cause, I am grateful to have a warm day ahead of us and plan to get outside.

Posted on by damien 4

Confessions of a Man Addicted to Boots

I have loved boots as long as I can remember. I remember having rubber boots that buttoned around the front when I was very small, wearing sandwich bags over my feet to go out in the snow. When I was in second grade, after we moved to the sticks, I started asking for a pair of cowboy boots, and a insulated vest, because that’s what the kids who’s parents had farms wore to school.

My parents got me a pair of cowboy boots for Christmas and I wore them long after they were too tight for my feet. The were the coolest — the toe, vamp, and heal of the uppers were light brown and the shaft was dark brown with white stitching on the sides.

In high school, I was one of the kids who wore combat boots. I wanted Dr. Martens desperately, especially in the ox-blood color but they were expensive — and the skin heads wore the ox-bloods. The rumor was that you’d get your ass kicked if you were wearing them and were caught by the skins. To boot (pun intended) they’d steal the boots right off your feet. One of my childhood friends got caught up in the skins, and he was the one who told me these stories. I believed him, whether they were true or not.

All this is to say, that I come by the boots thing honestly.

When I got sober though, boots took on a new meaning for me. I had tentatively started tweeting about my sobriety, under my original handle “ddeville.” As I learned more about the Traditions, I felt a need to anonymize my handle. I started out with “sobercyclist” but there was another person who was using this in place of her name and it was confusing to folks. As I sat at my desk one afternoon, wearing a pair of harness boots, I came up with “soberboots” and I hastily registered this domain name. And I quickly developed a sense of an identity around the name soberboots.

I remember feeling out of place at meetings. I had no criminal record, no DUIs, no arrests, no fights, none of what I saw as the trappings of an alcoholic. I thought that I needed to be a hard ass. That I needed to craft an identity that fit the picture of an alcoholic in my mind. I don’t know where I got this, admittedly insane, idea. But I confess that I liked the name “soberboots” because it came with an air of toughness that I felt I needed to be a person in recovery. And I started buying more boots.

The first pair was a legitimate replacement for a worn out pair of ankle high boots lace up boots that I already had. It was a pair of Red Wing Moc-Toes with a lug sole. They were super stiff. They were hard ass. I felt like a bad ass in them.

Next I bought a pair of Red Wing Beckmens in Cherry Featherstone leather. They were a glorious shade of oxblood. I loved the color and I was no longer worried about skinheads beating me up and stealing my boots. And like all Red Wing boots, they were hard ass. Super tough.

Here’s the thing about Red Wing boots — they aren’t fucking comfortable. I know that some hipster out there will argue with me on this, and frankly I don’t give a shit. They are stiff as hell, completely unlined, and most people complain that they take for ever to break in. I’m here to say, that I don’t think they ever break in. I tried my damnedest and I don’t think I ever got them fully broken in even though I wore them nearly every day for a couple of years. And, they are super expensive. I’m embarrassed by how much money I spent on those boots to be honest.

A few years into my sobriety, I tried on a pair of Blundstones which are originally from Australia and are classic Chelsea boots. And they were like slippers — super comfortable boots. Like no pain at all. They look great and while they aren’t cheap, they don’t even come close to what Red Wings cost. Once I bought these boots, I almost never wore those hard ass Red Wings again. I still loved the look of them, but every time I put them on I found myself taking them off as soon as I could. I recognized that I wanted to be comfortable more than I wanted to look like a hard ass.

At the same time, I was becoming more comfortable in my sobriety. I realized that I needed to be me, not some insane idealization of “what an alcoholic looks like.” I found out that some of the dudes in the rooms who looked the roughest and toughest, were actually really compassionate. I learned that masculinity is not defined by boots and muscles, but by the ability to connect with others. I learned the difference between toxic masculinity and being a man.

Sometimes I think about changing the name of this blog. But I don’t think I’m going to. For one thing, my buddy Mark has said that the name is one of the greatest names he’s ever seen for a sobriety blog. And secondly, I feel like there’s still a metaphor in the name. I am walking a path of recovery, and I often wear boots, which provide me with protection and support — kind of like recovery does.

Posted on by damien 0

Having Fun in Sin City, in Recovery

Vegas is not my favorite place. I didn’t like Vegas when I was drinking and I find it overwhelming now as a sober guy. It’s really more about being an introvert than it is about the drinking, drugs, and debauchery that are on public display. I am sensitive to being overly stimulated and Vegas is a constant buzz of activity, blinking lights, and noise. And yet, I’ve found ways to go to Vegas and enjoy myself.

It took me a long time to get here though. In my first few years of sobriety, the trips to Vegas felt like a burden. I felt like I was being tested — put in an untenable situation. How could a guy in recovery be expected to go to Vegas?

I get to go to Vegas roughly twice a year for my job. Usually for one technical conference and for my company’s sales kick off. Both are grueling events that start at 8 AM with sessions until 5 or 6 and corporate “fun” events in the evening. Corporate “fun” is code for drinking. For the first several trips, I would grind through the days, make an appearance at the corporate event, and then retreat into my room. It was a strategy, but probably not the best strategy.

Last summer, I tweeted my dread about going to Vegas and a fellow technologist who is in recovery responded with a tweet that reframed my perspective. He said, “Vegas has great food. It’s a Fat Boy’s dream. Let me know where you’re going and I’ll give you some restaurant recommendations.” Now, I’m actively working to not be a fat boy, with some success, but I love food and so this resonated. I got some recommendations and made some plans.

Previously, going to Vegas and partaking in the drinks at the corporate events meant that I didn’t spend any of my money at these events. I ate what they offered, which is generally garbage, because I really didn’t care since I was getting loaded. But now that I’m sober, I really do care about the quality of the food on offer. And the company has policies about not expensing food at these events. Since they are paying for all the catering — I get it, even if I don’t like it — I’m not allowed to expense any meals that I get on my own.

Vegas is expensive. The same cup of coffee that I get for $3.13 at my local Starbucks is over $7 in Vegas. Lunches, a sandwich and fries, are over $25 in the hotels. I don’t like it, but I have reconciled that I am making a choice that helps me to stay sane and sober in Vegas. So I spend my own money and don’t worry about it.

I’ve also learned that I don’t need to be at every corporate event. This past trip, I didn’t attend a single corporate party. And guess what? No one noticed and no one cared. It helps that I’m open about my recovery. My management knows that I don’t drink and so the expectation that I’ll hang out at a drinking event isn’t there.

Since I got sober, I’ve been going to a lot more concerts, and guess what you can find on pretty much any given night in Vegas. That’s right, a concert. And not just a local musician busking on the sidewalk. I now make it a point to look for an act that I’d be interested in seeing when I go to Vegas. Last summer, I saw Jackson Browne one night in Vegas and this past week I caught Aerosmith. I’ve gone by myself, and I’ve invited members of my team to join me.

Again, it’s money out of my own pocket on a business trip, but it’s worth it to keep me sane. I’ve also realized that I used to spend more on booze in a week than the price of a ticket to a show. A ticket to see a band is money well spent when I put it in that light.

And so, my perspective on Vegas is changing. Whereas I used to say, “I have to go to Vegas twice a year for my job.” Now I can honestly say, “I get to go to Vegas for my job.”

Do you travel for business? If so, how do you keep yourself busy when the corporate parties get rolling? Drop me a line in the comments with any additional ideas.

 

Posted on by damien 8

Step 3: This is Going To Require Some Help

‌Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

I must admit that upon reaching this step my thoughts were something along the lines of this: “So, here we are. Face to face with the religion inherent in these steps. God. Him. I’ll never be able to deal with this.

Many people told me something along the lines of “but it’s God as you understand Him. Not helpful. My understanding of God was that he was that relative who came over at Thanksgiving, got drunk, insulted everyone, and pissed in the bathroom floor before leaving in a huff. That was my experience with the God of my childhood.

It wasn’t until I understood that I could let go of that God, the God of my childhood, that I was even able to consider this step as it is written. And, to be honest, even then it triggered me.

I was not ready to give up my free will or my life to a deity. I read and re-red the step. I dissected it over and over and completely missed the critical words in the step.

Care of.

When I noticed these words in the step I felt like I’d been thrown a life line. Maybe I could work with this?!

My sponsor at the time told me to read the Third Step Prayer in the Big Book and you say it every day for two weeks. I didn’t do that. I couldn’t get past the archaic language. It ruffled my feathers so much that I decided to “fake it til I made it” – bad advice in my opinion but that’s another blog post.

After two weeks I told my sponsor that I was ready to move on to step four. “No your not, you haven’t done step three yet.” I don’t know how he knew that but he did and I confessed that I couldn’t get past that language and he told me to write it in my own words. Apparently I am not alone in this because the blog post about re-writing the 3rd step prayer is the most viewed post on this site.

Even after writing that post I was not sure if I’d done it right. I continued to search. I’ve read many alternate versions of this step in Secular AA sites and books and I like this version from The Alternative 12 Steps: A Secular Guide to Recovery a lot:

Make a decision to be open to spiritual energy as we take deliberate action for change in our lives.

When I break down this step today, I’ve eliminated all the references to a deity and spirituality. For me, it’s really quite simple.

I can’t do this on my own. I need help from a variety of sources and I need to be willing to ask for it, regularly.

Posted on by damien 1

Step 2: It’s Not What I Thought

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I cringed when I first read this step. In my mind, that capitalization of the word power clearly meant something. And that something was an interventionist God that was going to fix me. I was having none of it.

I’ve written extensively about my struggles with the God Talk in AA. It all comes down to a spiritual trauma inflicted upon me by a person in authority in the Roman Catholic Church. Quite simply God is a trigger for me. How could I possibly work through a step that triggers me?

Not very well is the answer. I spent months, wrestling with this step. I read countless books about alternate takes on the steps. I read about Buddhism and the steps. I read about secular versions of the steps. I read and talked and tried to reframe it in a way that would work for me. And I failed. Nothing satisfied my angst.

Then one day I was re-reading a journal entry that I wrote shortly before getting sober. If there ever been a moment of clarity captured in words in my life this was it.

‌September 21, 2015
Severna Park, MD / 65F, Cloudy

I cannot keep living like this. This is not living. This is a slow, painful suicide. What else can I call it, but that. Night after night of not quite enough booze to kill me has to be taking it’s toll.

I am terrified of the thought of AA. Terrified of not having a drink ever again. Terrified of the stigma that society puts on people like me. The ones who can’t drink within reason.

The first few gulps at the end of the day seem to put my world back on it’s axis. Level things out — but it almost always ends in guilt and shame. Deep senses of depression.

So, I have to make a choice. I have to stand like a warrior and fight against this foe who is trying to and eventually will kill me. It’s time to stop this madness.

It’s time for AA.

It literally jumped off the page at me. There was, in fact, a power greater than me that restored me to sanity. That power was my own mortality. I knew that if I were to continue drinking I was going to die a slow and painful death. I knew that I was not ready to die. I knew that I needed help and that I would find that help in AA. And that gave me hope.

Today I firmly believe that the power greater than ourselves referenced in step two need not be the same as the God of our understanding that makes its first appearance in step 3. The power greater than ourselves is what ever makes us seek help. It’s whatever gives us the hope that there is a way out of the mess we find ourselves in. For many people, that power is the God of their understanding, but it doesn’t have to be.

Step two is all about hope. Hope is so important in early recovery. Without the hope that things would get better, that I would get better, I could never have achieved a week, let alone a month, or even years of continuous sobriety.

Hope and Faith are sisters. My wife has told me that I have a strong faith. At first I thought she must be joking. How could an agnostic like me have a great deal of faith? But she pointed out that I always believe that things will get better, that things will work out, even in the most horrific and tragic of situations. I believe that because my life experience has shown me that it’s true. That’s resilience.

When I look back now, I can see that I’d already taken step 2 when I walked through the doors of AA. I just didn’t know it at the time. What I did know was that I had hope and even faith that things would get better. With time I came to understand that with support I would be able to stop drinking and live a rich and full life.

Posted on by damien 2

Speaking My Truth, and My Truth Only

My story is pretty unspectacular. The abbreviated version is that I began drinking heavily in response to some unresolved trauma from my childhood triggered by the birth of my son. I subconsciously knew this at the time of my drinking and after getting sober I know this to be true to fact. I hadn’t always been a heavy drinker, there were times when I’d binged, but by my early thirties, I was pretty mellow.

Over the course of my first year of sobriety, I did a lot of listening at meetings. I heard many stories of the first drink holding some sort of magic. Stories where people had become addicted nearly instantaneously. Stories that were not my truth.

I also heard many sayings. Sayings that seemed to make some sense for many people, even if they didn’t make sense to me. Sayings that went counter to my understanding of the universe based on my own experience.

Gradually, I found myself adopting these sayings. I found myself changing my narrative to fit the stories I’d heard in the rooms. I began to believe that perhaps my drinking had been troubled all along. That perhaps I’d had a problem from the start. I began to believe this in my core. Until one day, I didn’t.

I was reviewing my life, once again, and I came to realize that no, I hadn’t been an alcoholic all my life. And even though I perhaps showed some tendencies early in my drinking career, my drinking had not adversely affected my early life. The narrative that I’d started to tell myself, was not my narrative. It was the common narrative of the group. I was adopting it even though there were parts of the story that weren’t true of me.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things that get said in the rooms. I’ve been thinking about how some of them resonate and others don’t. I’ve been thinking about how at times (particularly as I was changing my own personal narrative) some things resonated after they’d previously rang hollow.

And I’ve started to question things. How much of what gets said again and again in the rooms comes from a person’s own experience? How much of it is learned experience? How much is just being repeated because others have said it before?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. I know that for some people what they say in meetings is their true experience. But I also know, that I found myself saying things as if they were my experience when they were, in fact, not from my experience.

I’ve learned that it’s important for me to be true to myself. I’ve learned that I need to be vigilant against adopting a narrative that is not my own. And I’ve learned that I have to be careful to share what is true in my experience rather than simply parroting the words that were said to me.

This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Posted on by damien 8

It’s Time to Slay the Dragon

This weekend, I’ll be heading up to State College, PA for the first time since I got sober for the annual Blue White weekend. For those of you who aren’t Penn Staters, this is a spring scrimmage football game complete with tailgating and about 100 thousand other Penn State fans. It’s also one of the last big weekends for Seniors who are getting ready to take their finals and graduate.

When I was an undergrad the Blue White weekend was always a great time. We’d get up early, head to the stadium, party like rock stars, and maybe go to the game. Actually, strike that, I don’t think I ever went into the Blue White game when I was an undergrad.

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a bit nervous about making this trip. I’ll be in the town where I learned to drink. I’ll be in the town that has my favorite bar, Zeno’s Pub. Even though I haven’t been to Zeno’s in years I can still smell the place.

I have avoided going back to school since I got sober. At first it was out of necessity. I got sober in the fall of 2015 during football season. I remember sitting down to watch the first game on television the weekend after I went to my first meeting. I lasted about five minutes before turning off the tube. The game was so triggering. I had never watched a game without drinking.

But with time the necessity of avoiding State College turned in to a fear of State College, even though my sobriety was getting stronger. With time, I was less afraid of going to State College and relapsing, than I was of going to State College and not knowing what to do with myself. The idea of going to State College and not going to the bars just didn’t seem feasible.

I’ve come a long way, though. I’ve been to weddings of fraternity brothers. I’ve been to lots of company events and happy hours. I’ve been around booze and not had a problem. Hell, I’ve even had a bottle of whisky in my house unopened since the day I quit drinking. If I’d wanted to drink, it likely would have happened by now.

The truth is that I really don’t want to drink because I know where that would lead.

So, I’m going to Penn State this weekend. I’m slaying that dragon. I’ll be putting that fear behind me. I know it won’t be the same as it was before. I know that there may be times when I feel like I’m missing out on something. But I also know that I can do this.

Thankfully, there is a Collegiate Recovery Center at Penn State now. And I plan to attend a meeting on Saturday night with them. I may also hit their sober tailgate. It will be a good way to get connected with my school in a healthy way and I’m looking forward to it.

I know that I’ve come too far and that what I’m really missing out on at this point is spending time with some of my best friends. I didn’t get sober to spend my days living in fear. I didn’t get sober to leave good parts my old life behind with the bad. I got sober so that I can live a rich and fulfilling life. And being connected to my school is part of that.

The featured photo is from a trip to Dublin in 2014 for the Croke Park Classic.  Cleary, this was prior to me getting sober.

Posted on by damien 7

Just Like Don

This post was originally published on the site Transformation is Real in the fall of 2016. The curator of that site is looking to transition the site to a new owner and so I’m republishing it here to ensure that it remains available moving forward.

On the morning of November 28th in 1977, Emil pulled the trigger of a .22 caliber rifle after covering the muzzle with his mouth. In all likelihood he died instantly. He was my birth father. I was five years old and my brother was just three. I have precious few memories of time with my birth father. My brother has none.

They say that the root of every addiction is trauma. And I suffered deep trauma as a young child.

After my mother and birth father separated, my mother moved us into my grandparents’ house. Although the situation was highly dysfunctional, I was not aware of it. It seemed perfectly normal that my uncle lived in what amounted to a shed behind the main house. And it didn’t strike me as odd at all that he had to store his urine in empty milk jugs in the refrigerator. Years later, I would realize he was likely being tested for drug use.

By the time I was in the fourth grade I had been enrolled in five different elementary schools and had lived in six different homes. We’d lived in several apartments and houses around the Baltimore and Washington metro area before settling in the small town of Taneytown, Maryland just south of the border with Pennsylvania.

From that time on, everything seemed normal in my life and I was a happy child with loving parents.

We were already living with the man who would become my father, when my birth father committed suicide. It was Don who gathered us together with Mom to tell us that Emil had died. He gathered us up in those broken years and did his very best to make us whole. And with time, we became a family.

Somehow he knew that my brother and I had suffered enough trauma and that adopting us wasn’t going to help, so he loved us as his own for the rest of his life. His unconditional love for our mother and for us provided us a safe refuge.

I always wanted to be like Don. He excelled in his profession. He was highly respected by people who met him. He was a man of character, honor, and dignity. But most importantly, he was the best father a boy could ever have, especially a boy who had lost his birth father to suicide. When Don died in 2002, I lost my best friend. I was crushed.

From a young age, I always envisioned myself becoming a father. I always envisioned myself being as great a father to my son as Don was to me. I imagined myself taking my son hiking, fishing, and camping. I imagined myself teaching him to shoot guns and hunt when he was old enough. I imagined teaching him to do all the things that Don had taught me to do. I imagined becoming his best friend.

In 2007, my son was born and I thought that my dreams were about to be fulfilled. He was the spitting image of me when I was a baby. He was perfection as far as I was concerned. He was an amazing little package of joy and I was ecstatic to have him in my life. I was on top of the world.

But it wouldn’t last.

I found out quickly that being a father was challenging. I learned that there were a lot of sleepless nights. I discovered that life is uncertain and that I was responsible for keeping this little boy safe. I discovered that I was scared. And on many occasions I wished that I could just talk to my father once again.

All the pressure of being a father, and all the fears that came with it, triggered something in me that I’d never expected. Within eight months of my son’s birth, I’d begun to go off the rails. I began to drink every day.

At first it wasn’t that much, a beer or two, but quickly it escalated and by the time he was four I’d progressed from beer to bourbon, and was beginning the downward spiral toward my emotional bottom. By 2013, I was a stone skipping across the rocks of a dry river bed of emotion and I finally came to rest at that bottom in September of 2015.

I have not worked out exactly what happened, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my addiction hit me with full force shortly after my son was born and that my bottom came when he was nearly eight years old. The fact is that I pulled myself together and sought help in a Twelve Step fellowship when my son was roughly the same age as I was when my life began to stabilize as a child.

While I am certain that I was not the worst father in the world, I was far from what I’d imagined I’d be, and I was nothing like what Don had been to me in my son’s early life.

There were times when I made big mistakes because I was drinking; times when I failed completely as a father. One of the worst times was when my wife and my son went to visit his grandmother for a week and I chose to stay at home under the pretense of work but in reality because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to drink like I wanted to on the trip. Every time I spoke to my son on that trip he was in tears because I wasn’t with him even though he was having tons of fun with his grandmother and uncle.

I felt like a complete failure during my drinking days.

I felt that I was ruining my life and that of my son and my wife. I knew that I needed to stop drinking, but I could not imagine a life without alcohol. I was certain that they would be better off without me and while I never seriously contemplated suicide, I found myself wondering if things would be better for them if I were dead.

Assuming that I don’t suffer a moment of temporary insanity, on September 23, 2016 I will celebrate a year of continuous sobriety. In the past year, I’ve started to become the father that I’d always dreamed I would be. I’ve gone from being ashamed of myself to being proud of myself, not just because I stopped drinking, but because I’ve become available to my son.

One of the first things I noticed was that I could walk him into school without an overwhelming fear of being discovered. I learned how to spend time with him, doing things that he wants to do, like playing with his Legos, reading Captain Underpants books, and shooting hoops with him—I hate basketball (with a passion), but I love shooting hoops with my boy.

In the spring of 2016 we went on our first camping trip together. It was with his cub scout pack. While there were plenty of challenges, including a canoe trip with the clumsiest scout in his pack, an encounter with an angry goose protecting her nest, and sliding down the floor of the tent all night because we’d pitched it on a hill (his choice) rather than flat ground the trip was a huge success. We both had lots of fun and I was sad when it was over.

It wasn’t long ago, that the idea of a cub scout camping trip scared the daylights out of me because I couldn’t imagine doing it without drinking.

Because I’ve been sober, I’ve been able to do the right things. I’ve been able to be both physically and emotionally present for my son. I hope that by doing these things, I’ll help to heal the wounds created by the trauma of living with a drunk father for seven and a half years.

I’ve got a long way to go to live up to the image I have of Don, but I know that I’m on the right path. I also know that maybe I don’t have to become the perfect father that I remember—maybe, just maybe—Don wasn’t perfect.

And maybe, if I just stay sober and continue to be physically and emotionally present for my son, he’ll think of me the way I think of Don when he’s grown up. If that happens, I’ll have done the best that I can.

I’ll have become the father that I was meant to be.

Posted on by damien 5

Why Do I Stay Sober?

Yesterday, one of the #recoveryposse on Twitter asked “what’s your number one reason stay sober?” Without hesitation, my initial response was “Because I’m genuinely happy now even when things aren’t always great or don’t go my way.”

It’s a great question because the answer to it holds meaning for those who are sober as well as those who are interested in getting sober. When I was drinking, the idea that I might live without drinking was foreign. I could not conceive of a happy life without alcohol — despite the fact that I was profoundly unhappy. But when I started to explore the world of sobriety I heard people talk about what it was like to be sober, how their lives were changing for the better, how they enjoyed their days and were not bored. I heard about the gifts they’d received in their new lives and I desperately wanted those gifts.

In the end, I’d lost hope.

It wasn’t easy. When I first put down the bottle, I struggled mightily. There were days when I couldn’t think about anything other than a drink. There were times when I lost my shit — Like the time that I got angry at dinner and threw a half eaten hamburger across the kitchen before storming out to go to a meeting.

But I kept hearing messages of hope.

When I heard people talk about the richness of their sober lives, I heard hope. Hope that things could and would get better. Hope that I wouldn’t live my life in quiet desperation, waiting for that chance to come when I could take a drink with impunity. Hope that I wouldn’t always be on edge, that I wouldn’t lose my shit and throw hamburgers across the room. Hope that I would feel better. Hope that I’d have fun again. Hope that all would not be lost. Hope that I’d be happy.

Now that the moon has orbited the earth more than a few times since I gave up the bottle, hearing the answers to this question is a good reminder to me of why I must remain sober. When I hear someone say, “I need to stay sober or I’ll die,” I think to myself, “yes, yes, that’s it.” When I hear someone say, “I stay sober for my kids,” I think “Yes, that’s it too.” When I hear another say, “Because I can. Never could have imagined my life free from that prison, and I’m not throwing away that gift,” I think to myself, “That’s also it.”

There are many reasons why I stay sober. But as my friend Sean says, the biggest one is because “my life is better without alcohol.” Sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of that. Sometimes the appeal of the sweet release of whiskey sounds good. Sometimes the idea of a cold IPA on a hot summer day sounds wonderful. But when I really stop and think about it, my life is better without those temporary releases — that’s why I stay sober.

Posted on by damien 3