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                         Staying Sober in the Tough Times

  

Recovery can feel wonderful, especially in early recovery where we can often sail happily along, get to meetings, hang out with our AA buds, do our step work, talk with our sponsor, embrace prayer and even sometimes dip our toes into meditation.

Recovery, even long term recovery, can feel wonderful too, because after a while we relax a bit. We now know for sure this AA thing works and that it's the best thing that's ever happened for us. We share our program with confidence. Life is good and just keeps on getting better.

Even so, being obsessives, we often can project a painful future for ourselves. We can worry ourselves crazy about things that may never happen. 

Living in the moment, living One Day at a Time, is the best way to keep those "What Ifs" at bay.

But what about when we're suffering from something other than our built-in, often-negative, thoughts? What about when bad things actually do happen to good people like us or our loved ones? What do we do then? 

We do the same things we do during recovery's good times. We pray. We meditate. We call our friends. We go to meetings (lots of meetings), we study our AA literature for answers, and we share our pain with others.

We are - all of us - 'spiritual beings having a human experience,' and part of that human experience includes pain and loss. 

 Parents die, friends die, siblings die, sometimes our children die (or remain estranged). Pets get killed in the road, our house burns to the ground, we're told we have cancer, we're made redundant at work, a loved one leaves us for another, a traffic accident leaves us physically broken, a loved one commits suicide, violence arrives to shatter our world - the list for trauma goes on ...  It isn't selective. I've experienced eight of the above circumstances during my sober years. Others have stayed sober having experienced far worse. 

Sometimes our painful events arrive in batches, sometimes in just one single horrific life-changing episode. We will all experience pain and loss at some point in our sobriety. It's a given. We can't head that off, but by continuing to grow in our recovery, we will be able to handle whatever shows up.

And when those dark days arrive we must pick ourselves up off the ground and go to more meetings to share our pain. We talk with our sponsors. We lean on the support of our friends in the program (and others) who show up for us in our time of need. We cry, sometimes we wail ... we hurt ... but we don't drink.

There is nothing that can happen to us that taking a drink won't make worse. 

Sober we can set aside our own suffering to reach out to others who are suffering still more. We can be there for a dying friend or family member, we can cheer them with our presence or hold their hand as they leave us. We can be the rock for others to lean on.

It took pain for us to surrender our alcoholism to a power greater than ourselves. That experience taught us God seldom becomes a reality until God becomes a necessity. 

Painful as our present time may be, we will one day see how the experience itself brought us spiritual testing, healing, and then growth. We will learn that God is with us through all the events of our lives, from healing a paper cut to mending a shattered heart. All we have to do is ask.

In AA we learn how to turn to our Higher Power for the strength we need during the hard times. When we share our pain in a meeting we can hear God's voice in the responses of those there. We feel His comfort in the love and concern of our friends. 

I was once told that every time I went to a meeting when I didn't want to go, when I reached out to a still suffering alcoholic during a time when I'd rather just hide in bed with the covers over my head, when I'd look only at my part in whatever wrongs I thought were being done to me by others - in other words, when I would continue to do-the-doing no matter what - I would be paying into an AA insurance policy that would pay back dividends during life's tough times.

That insurance policy has paid me back a hundredfold over the years. Prayers I made in the good times came back to lift me over the bad times. Friends I made in all those meetings were there for me, front and centre, when I needed them most.  

It's all too easy to forget we have a mental illness. It's the third component in our spiritual and physical one. So even when things are peachy-keen we can go to bed feeling on top of the world and wake up the next morning wanting to kill someone - perhaps even ourselves.

I recently heard someone say they had one day of sobriety, this day - but they also had managed decades of sobriety by practicing each day on how to keep it. I love that! 

We really do only have today's sobriety, but the longer we stay sober the more we learn that it's really true that the bad stuff - whatever it is - will pass. All we have to do is hang in there and continue to do - and be strengthened by - what we know works. 

             

We need to understand our alcoholism and we learn that from studying our Big Book and the 12&12. We learn there that we suffer from a chronic, terminal illness and we learn what to do to keep it under control. 

When our recovery feels painful it can indicate a need for more step work, sponsor time, reaching out to AA friends, or for the very real "fix" of more meetings. Meetings are medicine to help treat our mental illness. 

With zoom meetings now available 24/7 around the world, we can get to our "clinic" whenever we need to. If you are hurting in your life today - Go!