Am I capable of being sober?
Dear John,
I am reaching out because I randomly fell on your page. I am in healthcare and I am struggling with my drinking. This isn't new for me. I have been to treatment and AA. I appreciate your transparency. It's very inspiring to me. My addiction of choice is alcohol. When did you finally see the light? I feel like I am never going to see it. It's been a good 10 yrs for me. I have been to treatment enough to practically teach it but as we all know self knowledge avails us nothing. I love the rooms of AA and have had amazing support but that hasn't kept me sober either. Sometimes I get scared that I am not constitutionally capable of being sober. Did you ever feel this way? Did you just have a moment where a light bulb came on?
Dear resilient one,
Thank you for reaching out and being brave enough to ask for help. I want to acknowledge the tremendous work you’ve done: going through treatment and making your way into the AA rooms. I was a “12-stepper” for almost two years before I chose a different path. The rooms were critical to helping me talk openly and honestly about my struggles. They created a community for me when I had none. And, it was an incredible reminder to see newcomers come into the room, broken, afraid, and confused, but also courageous and willing. I attended both AA and SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous), and I have to say that SAA is like a master class in accountability and sobriety. Behavioral addictions can be particularly exposing when being rigorously honest as we can’t blame a substance, but exercising my accountability muscle over and over was vitally important. Not just that, but being in fellowship with people who didn’t judge or condemn me was equally important to owning my truth.
When I hit bottom, I hit hard. The pain of landing where I did: shattering my family, hurting people I loved, missing my daughter’s 8th birthday because I was in rehab, the loss of friends and family, and the shame and embarrassment was enough for me to realize that I never wanted to go back there. For me, alcohol was no longer a choice and neither was infidelity, lying to maintain a duplicitous life, pornography, or paying for prostitutes. If any one of them were an option, all of them were. It’s not that a “slip” or “relapse” would have been so terrible compared to what I had done, but the violation of my integrity would have. I worked hard to create a new community, one filled with people who supported the best version of myself. I distanced myself from people who supported me drunk, acting inappropriately, or engaging in any of the myriad of behaviors that degraded my worth and that of others. I worked hard to repair the damage of those willing to accept my atonement. I worked harder to maintain my integrity and let my life be a living amends. I have been around close friends and family who’ve struggled with sobriety and relapses, pushing those closest to them away, ending up isolated and alone, and some of them ultimately dying. I never got to the point of stashing bottles, needing eye-openers, or liver failure, but I drank enough to put people in danger, numb my shame, and distract me from the real work of getting whole.
10 years is a long time to be struggling with anything, especially yourself. You must be tired! I am sure you could teach others the workings of treatment and recovery, but it isn’t about thinking your way through it. You are right, self-knowledge avails us nothing, otherwise we would all have been strong enough to stop through sheer knowledge and will power alone. For me, the light came on when I was in so much pain, I wasn’t sure I could go on, but knew I had to. It was about feeling the pain. It was about realigning my head (mind) with my heart and my gut (instincts/intuition). It was about developing a relationship with something bigger than me (Spirit). It was about getting real and granular with my values, which are integrity, nurturance, play, stillness, and connection. As I am sure you’ve heard a number of times before, “your bottom is when you choose to stop digging.” For me, I reached a point where I just couldn’t lie anymore. It was exhausting maintaining the compartments of my private, deceptive, compartmentalized life and that of my public one. It was a scary thing owning the entirety of my truth, but you are only responsible for your truth, not other people’s interpretation of it.
To be continued next week…
With love and light,
John Moos, MD