Day: 1,461

Four years sober today.

Well, that happened. My friendly neighbourhood sober app has been counting the days for me since I stopped drinking. It gave me a congratulations notification. I’ll take that.

A few weeks ago, I joked at work with some friends that being sober is overrated. Joked? Dare I make fun about something so serious? But I did. Nobody died and I survived to tell the tale. But after everything I’ve achieved to remain sober for almost four years, it got me thinking.

Have a got to a dangerous stage now were I’m taking my recovery for granted?

I joked in private. It was to diffuse a difficult situation at work that we were dealing with at the time. I tried to lighten the mood and it worked. I’ve found myself doing this now and again in other areas of my life. I do it rarely and only with people I trust. Friends who know me well enough to understand that my recovery is solid. They know that now and again I can make light of it if I need to. But that’s just me, it’s my way. But maybe I shouldn’t.

I’m at a point where I rarely think about drinking alcohol every hour (or second) of the day, as I used to. I simply get on with my day-to-day stuff. But right at the very beginning, every part of my body screamed for the alcohol I’d deprived it from. My brain was on high alert 24/7. It had to be. But in time, and as life gradually improved, the urgency wore off bit by bit. I began to trust myself. It was irrelevant if others trusted me or not (although life is so much easier when they eventually do).

The only person who needed to believe in me – was me.

Everything crumbles to dust if you can’t find the courage and strength to believe in yourself.

You kick, and you kick hard to get the demons further away until eventually the inner screams fade to whispers. But they are constantly waiting.  Don’t be fooled by the peace and solitude you’ve created in your head. The demons are there waiting, ready for the next round of guilt and self-degradation.  

I remember writing in a very early post on here that I’d seen my own blood so many times in one horrific form or another, I could recognise it in a line-up. I never want to go back to that passive disregard towards life again. A life (if you could call it that) when my daily mantra was ‘I pray that the next drink will kill me.’ 

Nobody gets sober years under their belt by luck or because it’s easy. It’s a slow, laborious, and often hellish process that I don’t want to repeat again. Flukes aren’t something that exists in anybody’s recovery

In recovery, the only time luck comes into play, the only reason I’m typing this at all, isn’t because I’m superhuman or my organs can survive any torture I put it through. It’s luck. Pure luck. I shouldn’t be alive. But here I am. Our friend luck is the only reason any alcoholic or addict survives the liquid Russian Roulette.

Overconfidence and ego are lethal in the early months and years in recovery. They are as real a danger to us as walking into a pub or pressing a dealer’s number on your phone.

Overconfidence and ego give you permission to feelimmortal, that you’re immune from all that life can throw at you – ‘bring it on, I’m strong enough to handle it.’ You become dangerously deluded. It’s human nature. But all this bravado is the flimsy, Marvel comic audacity of a child, crying behind a cheap mask

Recovery doesn’t exist within smoke and mirrors. It exists because there is a need for it to exist. You have to make it work or you die.

I know this because very early on I was plagued with overconfidence. I’ve also seen countless other recovering people fall for the same mental scam again and again. We fail miserably – again and again.

You can’t just have one! As the saying goes – one is too many and a thousand isn’t enough.

But you do need confidence. It gives you the self-assurance to make informed choices. It helps you be assertive and to stop your life and soul becoming stale. It gives you the nerve to delete negativity and move on safely. Without it, the everyday becomes merely a static snapshot.

But allow that confidence to overinflate and, well . . . we know where that one goes.

Balance in anything is key.

Last year I read fifty-two books.

No big deal there. Many people read much more, others much less, some nothing at all. So what! It’s a big deal for me! I’ve read books voraciously since I was a child. I was the typical NHS spectacle-wearing, nerdy bookworm. I lived for the words and worlds wrapped within paper covers. But for the thirteen years of hardcore drinking, there was nothing. Everything I loved became distorted through the bottom of a wine bottle. I could barely even see.

My beloved art, music and literature didn’t stand a chance.

Nowadays I go about my everyday business of life like everyone else. But floating around inside my mind is a constant, critical awareness of all the mental traps I could easily fall into at any given time and place. It isn’t something that occupies my full attention 24/7. But over the years of constant brain-training and support, it’s a part of me that now silently exists inside, keeping me safe. A kind of addicts sixth sense, or antivirus.

A blind person cannot see, therefore all other senses are heightened and fine-tuned to compensate for the loss. A recovering alcoholic cannot drink alcohol, therefore . . .  a recovering drug addict cannot use, therefore . . . A recovering gambler cannot bet, therefore   . . .

You get the picture. I ramble.

This post is a bit of a messy mix-and-match of everything I’ve written here since I began. I’ve no doubt plagiarised and repeated myself. But some things are important enough to need repeating. These are simply some of what I’ve learned up until now. It all got me here, four years on. But everyone is different. If anything in here helps anyone, even in a small way, I’m happy. But find your own way. Throw away what doesn’t work for you and stick with what does. There are no fast and hard rules in recovery. Make your own. It’s your life.

This is mine, so far.

So, do I take my recovery for granted? I hope all the above answers that.

Take care and stay safe xx