1 year and 11 days sober! In the history of me, this length of time has never happened before. All this doing well stuff is odd and alien. It’s almost too surreal to take in. But to remain well, I must accept it to continue with a new life. It’s simply another weird day in my office of addiction and recovery.
Historically, I’m accustomed to doing everything the wrong way. Embarrassing myself and acting pathetic was the norm. Listening to the daily accounts from people I knew, of the fool I had made of myself, I had simply resigned and accepted all the negatives as my normality. As an addict, the positives didn’t seem an option.
I couldn’t (wouldn’t?) fix any of it. I had accepted my lot. That was simply the way it was. I’d shrug it off as just another day. Physical and mental pain was easily blotted out by emptying a bottle down my throat. I perceived true normality as so alien and surreal that it appeared completely unattainable.
I was comfortably numb in the hell I had created for myself.
Unfortunately, hell has tentacles. They spread out and wrapped themselves around the people I loved, hurting them in the process. I was dragging them down into the darkness with me instead of holding their hands as they tried desperately to pull me up into the light. Like many other addicts, I had to learn the hard way. My personal devastation was well-deserved – or so I thought.
But here I am doing well. My hopes and dreams are slowly but surely becoming reality. It hasn’t been easy and often felt impossible at times. I’ve had to work incredibly hard, 24/7 to achieve the things I have so far. I’m doing well. But it feels odd.
I still retain the cynical darkness of an addict. Paranoia and apprehension always lurk somewhere.
“Why is all this happening to me?” I used to say in the bad old self-pitying days. I’m still saying it now, but thankfully for good reasons. I’ll always peep around the corner and expect something bad when I’ve done something positive. I slightly shudder at praise from friends and mentors, looking around to check it’s me they are talking to. Always on my guard. Learned behaviour, I guess.
I even paused this blog and made it private at one point because it all seemed to be going so well. People were saying fantastic and encouraging things about it. Go figure!
It’s hard to give myself a break, a pat on the back or (on the rare occasions I look) smile at myself in the mirror.
It’s all very odd.
But good.
But odd.
So, these days I learn acceptance and seem to be doing well. In the very early days, sobriety was a strange, ridiculous, and frightening idea. But now I embrace it and deal with it. Getting sober is hard but I get on with it. Doing well is still odd and alien but I’m doing it. It’s far from normal – but what even is normal?
Believe me, I ain’t no saint. I’m sure I’ll do something ridiculous, embarrassing, stupid, and worrying. Maybe terrible things may happen to me. But at least it won’t be because I’m drunk. It will be because I’m human like everyone else. And that’s a thing I can now accept. Everything else will just take time.
Addiction – is it a disease or a choice? There you go, worms spilling out everywhere.
As addicts, we feel such a weight and burden on our shoulders. Anything we are offered to lighten our load; we greedily but gratefully grab at with white-knuckled hands. Just as we do with our substances when we are active users.
It’s natural. Of course it is. We’ll even believe: gossip, rumours, hearsay, tittle-tattle, Jeremy Kyle’s guests, Cosmopolitan columns – even The Sun newspaper if it means we’ll sleep easier at night. Anything! We’ll take all that thanks.
Around a month into my recovery, I had my first lightbulb moment.
I attended a five-day addiction course called, Intuitive Thinking Skills. Highly recommended!
It was a frightening but fantastic start to my sober career. I’ve kept many of the tools in my brain to this day. But the thing that will always stick with me, is when the facilitator asked us, the newly clean and sober, “how many of you think addiction is a disease?”
Of course, all our hands shot up as if we’d been asked how many of us want to win the lottery. Then the next, but devastating question came. “How many of you could stand in front of a room full of cancer sufferers and tell them that you have to literally pour alcohol down your neck twenty-four hours a day because you have a disease?” Not one hand raised. Just a lot of guilty-looking and defeated faces.
In that one sentence, he’d taken away our warm and trusted comfort blanket. We had a something that made every terrible thing we had ever done in addiction, not our fault. We had a disease. But then suddenly, we didn’t!
One simple sentence took that away from us. It was our fault. Bollocks!
Can you imagine a woman’s relief when her doctor gives her the news that the lump in her breast isn’t the cancer that has been giving her sleepless nights with worry. Benign. Doctors can give this sort of news because all the tests have been done and sent back to them. It’s all there in black and white. This woman does not have breast cancer! It’s official! And relax. The same for other worrisome, anxiety-inducing illnesses that turn out to be OK.
Unfortunately, having things down in black and white can also reveal the bad news too.
A doctor cannot do that for the addict. They can give out pills for the depression, anxiety, cravings, restless legs, and all the other many underlying side-effects of addiction. But no real good or bad news. Nothing is down in black and white. We’re simply just – addicts! That’s it!
Take my last lapse over ten months ago. Yes, please take it! But seriously.
When people asked me how it happened, I would tell them that I was: low, depressed, anxious, haunted with guilt, etc. I was simply walking to the coffee shop one morning and the next thing I knew, I was in a pub with a glass of wine in front of me. It just happened. It happens!
But magical wizardry doesn’t just happen, ‘Harry Potter and the Infinitely Filling Glass of Wine.’
What happened was: I was walking to the coffee shop one morning, stopped, turned right, walked into a pub, ordered a glass of wine, drank it in minutes, then ordered many, many more. All day every day because I chose to. I could have chosen to go to the coffee shop, drink my coffee and chill for an hour before I started my day. Just as I did every other day with the same emotions: low, depressed, anxious, haunted with guilt, etc. But that day, I chose not to. I chose.
If I could have taken a pill, puffed on an inhaler or jabbed my leg with something that stopped me walking into pubs and getting royally slaughtered every time I have one of my dark, drinky thoughts, I certainly would have done that!
Would I?
There’s still that massive elephant in the room – choice. Would I opt to take away that powerful option when I feel weak, low, and pissed off? The option to fight? Take my diseased thoughts away with a legally prescribed wonder-drug? I’m not sure.
Not sure because I’ve trained my own mind to cope with everything and the kitchen sink when it’s thrown at me. That’s all me: me, me, me! My work, nobody else’s! Many, many days, weeks and months of excruciating, emotional and mental gymnastics on my part. All me!
Would I let a doctor steal my thunder with another, extortionately-priced and no doubt highly-addictive – drug? If the option was given to me today? Right now? Actually . . .
No.
I enjoy making choices in my mental gymnasium. I enjoy my biblical, internal fights. I’m tougher now, as opposed to the weak old days, Balls like Titanium. I wouldn’t, not now. I enjoy the fight. But for others? If it saved and improved the quality of their lives?
Yes of course! Anything that is good, is good! But not for me thanks. That’s my choice.
If addiction is a disease, a drug would have been discovered/invented by now to eradicate it off the face of the earth. Rather than countless blogs like this, trying to work addiction out and how to cope with it, you would simply see online statuses such as, ‘I drank too much, then my doctor prescribed (insert wonder-drug) and now I’m fine!’
Or
‘I injected Heroin last night but the chemist gave me (insert wonder-drug) and I’m doing great!’ (insert smiley emoji). But obviously that is not the case. Thousands of books and blogs like mine exist. People are dying in their thousands every day. Lives and families are being destroyed. The drug dealers and the alcohol industry (the biggest drug dealer) are doing just fine and they always will. It is what it is.
But how do we stop doing what we shouldn’t do?
I’ve stopped. Many of my friends and mentors have stopped. Millions of people around the world have stopped. You, and the people you know may have stopped. It’s happening daily and will do forever. But how? None of us have had anti-addict medication.
Choice.
I chose to stop. Right now, I could choose to drink. I’m alone as I type this and nobody would know. But I don’t. My friends and mentors chose to stop. The millions around the world have chosen to stop. It’s what we do. We choose.
One of the strongest people and mentors I’ve ever met once said to me, “stick with the winners in life!” He meant stay with people who shine, who want to live and give back to the world. People who choose good over bad. Don’t waste time with avoidable negativity and people who try to bring us down every day because they can’t be bothered to put the work in themselves. I listened to him. It works. Learn from the best! And the wise.
So, addiction. Is it a disease or a choice?
It’s whatever you think it is.
All the above is only my opinion based on my own experience. Am I trying to convince you to think like me? No. Everybody is different. If you disagree with me, that’s fine. I’m not here to change your mind. I’m simply here, working things out for myself. But also, you won’t convince me to change my mind because . . . It’s my choice. That’s how it works.
It was April 2017 when I started my recovery. One of the few things I had left from the ruins of my own destruction was choice. The choice to carry on with my addiction to its inevitable and painful end, or the choice fight with absolutely everything I had left and see how far I get. Whatever happens, happens. I had literally already lost everything. I had nothing to lose. So, I got in the ring with everyone else, put on my gloves and fought. I fought bloody hard! But I needed help.
I was given mental tools and had my brain pulled apart by amazing experts. Peers and brand-new friends helped me to re-wire the damaged, frazzled sponge which was slopping around in my head. It still sputters, sparks and slops now and again but the damage is reduced. The harm has been minimised and monitored to carry on the constant sober war.
Sadly, as we all learn very quickly, the fight is life-long. We can’t take eyes off our opponent (addiction) for any amount of time or we are screwed. I found this out to my cost with two relapses.
But things do ease and calm with time and effort. Nowadays I’m lightly but constantly sparring with one hand whilst getting on with life with the other. I have focus and I have a plan. But most of all – I want to live. So, although I can never get out of the ring, I can fill it with hopes, dreams, friendship, love, and the little miracles that happen along the way.
It’s my new normal.
Understandably, it’s very frustrating for non-addicts to stand by and watch helplessly as they try to comprehend what we do and how we do it. But it’s just another day in the office for the rest of us. It’s something we simply must do.
If you ever see me about and I’m looking calm, cool, happy, and contented – don’t be fooled! It’s bullshit. Inside I’m ducking, dodging, weaving, and kicking the living crap out of my lifelong and mortal enemy. You’ll know what I mean if you’re fighting your own addiction.
In recovery, we are like The Borg from Star Trek. We are the collective, interconnected, the same – we are one! Whatever the country, language, gender, class, or status. But unlike the characters from Star Trek, we always try to be nice to our fellow humans.
In short, life is finally getting shall we say . . . interesting, to say the least! I’m getting there.
If you are reading this and you are struggling in your own recovery – keep going! Just keep going! Don’t ever give up! Who knows where it may lead? But wherever it goes, surely it must better than the hell you have come from. What have you got to lose?
Stumbling Towards Hindsight 