Meditations VI: Twenty Years Sober

Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved


Twenty years ago, on June 14, 1988, I walked into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and I was terrified.

Every night and morning and afternoon, before I’d walked in, I had prayed feverishly that A.A. would work for me. Prayed. Because I knew that it was the “last stop” for me. Knew it was the last house on the block. The last one that I’d ever see before I tumbled over the cliff and took that long, long fall to the rocks waiting below.

I looked around at the room I was standing in. People were everywhere. Sober people living without the bottle. Now that I was here, in 12-step recovery, I had to be without it. Without my crutch…my lifeline…my alcohol.

How would I do it? I didn’t know.

Didn’t know how I could get through. Couldn’t see my going through more than twenty-four hours without drinking. For the bottle was—I thought then—the light, the lamp that always had showed me where the path was. Showed me a way to get to the place where I could be safe. Where I wouldn’t have to feel….anything.

Beginning that June day twenty years ago, my constant companion for many months to follow was a kind of low-level terror. I was terrified of the sun rising on each new day. Terrified of its slow ride into the west each evening. Terrified because I couldn’t drink each day into night. Couldn’t drink each night into dawn. Terrified because, in my mind’s eye, all I could see those first sober months, was me standing at the entrance to a black-as-night tunnel. What lay ahead in that tunnel waiting for me? Darkness hid the path that would lead me to wherever it was that I’d have to go. And I was afraid of having to go there without my crutch.

I stood at the mouth of the tunnel and wondered: What was going to happen to me now? How was I going to be able to walk this journey?

I didn’t know.

What I did know was that I’d been drinking for 27 years. And though I’d tried so many times and so many ways, I couldn’t stop drinking on my own. I had, finally, come to the place where I desperately wanted to stop, but the fear of living without my crutch was so great that it paralyzed me…subverted every effort…showed me smoke and mirrors tricks that beguiled and persuaded me to stop thinking about stopping. So I had stopped because I’d thought it was shielding me from every emotion that had left me at the well of despair: abandonment, shame, guilt, loneliness, derailed expectations that cause the deepest, gut-wrenching kind of pain, hurt, anger and resentment.

The bottle had always said to me: Just pour the liquor and pick up the glass.

You can depend on me, it had faithfully whispered. I’ll protect you and you won’t have to feel the feelings you’re terrified of feeling.

But, finally, I came to realize that it was lying. Knew long before the court ordered me to A.A. meetings. Still, I clung to the delusion of the bottle as I stepped inside the rooms of A.A. Because I wanted life to be easy. The bottle kept promising me it would. And although I had long ago realized it never really kept its promise, every time I took a drink, I kept hoping it would.

In A.A. meetings, I listened. And when the other alcoholics talked about how you have to live without the bottle… have to step out every day on that smooth-looking stretch of land, hiding any hint of possible danger or misfortune ahead…how you have to keep struggling to climb those kick-ass hills planted in your path at every turn in the road…how—when life drops you into valleys so endlessly deep that you think you’ll never be able to climb out—you just have to keep going instead of running straight for the bottle, I shuddered.

How could I do that? How?

The only way out is through, they said. Whatever it is that you’re going through won’t last forever, they said. This, too, will pass.

The tunnel, which turned out to be my life, terrified me. The thought of taking the risk, of stepping forward blindly, without my shield—the bottle—of leaving myself entirely open, naked and vulnerable…how could I do it?

The only way out is through, they said.

No other choice. I’d have to take the first step. And the next and the next and go on walking through the tunnel. Go on through one day at a time. Go through. Sober.

I did as my days of sobriety turned into weeks, then months, then a year. A year became two, then six, then eleven, fifteen. And now, twenty.

So many things were revealed over the years. Like the fact that I’d spent my life, not living, but running. Or the fact that I habitually future-trip, believing that I can peep around corners to see the worst that is surely coming, and prompting the paint brush in my head to always draw scenarios of bloody disaster on the canvass of my mind.

So many tests have been presented to me over time. And the tests, not the lessons, would always come first, I came to understand. Furthermore, a test was always about the lesson. Did I see the lesson within? Did I understand it? If not, the test would inevitably be presented again. For sure, a whole lot of times, I flunked the test. Had to retake it again and again until I saw what I needed to learn. As time, as sobriety, went on, sometimes, I’d pass a test or two the first time because I discerned and understood the lesson.

How did I get through twenty years? I’ll give you the short version. Honesty. (Admitted to myself deep within that I am alcoholic and that I’d made a wreck of my life.) Open-mindedness. (Acknowledged that A.A. had the answers I needed.) Willingness. (Tried a new, changed way of living that A.A. proposed.)

I had to do house cleaning using the steps, the fourth step in particular, so that I could find out why I had done what I had done. So that I would not repeat it expecting different results. So that I would not live in pain, resisting change.

I had to give up my secrets because secrets will take you back out. And because secrets make you sick, make your life heavy and dark, and make you want the bottle.

I learned how to connect. Connect with other alcoholics at meetings. At meetings where their voices mirrored my feelings and fears and hopes. Where they gave me messages of witness about what a changed life might lead to. Where they told me to try relying on Something Greater Than Myself to get me through. Sometimes, I didn’t understand the messages. They sounded like garbled words coming in through static. Sometimes, they were bright revelations. At those times, a light went on for me…a mystery was solved.

Twenty years ago, I started a journey with fear as my companion. Through all of it, the fear began to lessen as the void within me slowly began to close. The void that I’d tried to fill with alcohol. In time, I began to feel a Presence within where the void had lived. In time, I risked trusting it.

Sobriety, I heard early on, is not a destination, but a journey. My goal—progress as I journey, not perfection. Today, though I have twenty years sober, I acknowledge that I’m going to make mistakes. What I hope is to learn from them. Twenty years has taught me that each time I reach a plateau, there will surely be another ass-kicking mountain around the bend to challenge me to reach higher, go further, climb to the next level. As my partner says: “It’s always one thing after another.” She’s right. What I must keep reminding myself is that I’m grateful to be meeting the next thing, whatever it is, sober.