Early Sobriety really does feel like Childhood

In early sobriety, I really do feel like a kid again. I'm completely clueless. I have to bring my drinks and snacks everywhere I go, I put myself to bed early, I listen and just do what I'm told. For someone like me, that is so hard to do, but it's working.

When I went into treatment, I was not determined to change as a person. I didn't realize that getting and being sober would require me to completely let go of my old ideals, the idea especially, that I knew everything. When I finally came into the rooms after 3 weeks of treatment and still not feeling like I had made much progress, I truly had the gift of desperation. I was truly willing to do whatever it took to stay sober. I simply could not go back to the way life was, but didn't know how.

This led me to the realization, "I had no idea how to live a sober life," and for once in my life, I was willing to take the cotton out of my ears, put it in my mouth and just listen and do what the program (AA) suggests.

As I mentioned, I truly had the gift of desperation, which in most situations doesn't sound like a gift, but when you're starting over, when you've been living at a rock bottom with trap doors that keep leading to worse rock bottoms, you will do anything. I truly was desperate. I just had to sit in the rooms and listen to anything anyone would tell me because I had to believe in something. I had to believe something could help me and that I wasn't hopeless. While I was still in treatment, one of the group therapy facilitators said, "you can't hold faith and fear in the same hand and addiction is living in fear."

Every day when I wake up, I start with the basics, I'm reteaching myself how to live a sober life and starting from scratch. I wake up, I make my bed, I take my meds and I wash my face and brush my teeth, BEFORE I do anything else. I don't even check my phone until these tasks are done. When I have a problem or am faced with a difficult situation that I haven't handled yet as a sober person, I reach out. I tell on myself now, like a kid on the playground. If I feeling like drinking, the first thing I do is tell my sponsor, someone else in the program or anyone around me. Like a child, I have to learn to trust and build trust by being radically honest-- a totally new thing for me.

Every day, I have to fully lean in because I don't know what else to do. I don't know how to live sober-- this is an incurable disease that when active makes life unmanageable.

I truly believe that my Higher Power led me to the rooms. Through the program, I have been given an outline for the way to live. For once, I'm not going to question or test it. I have to sit down and shut up and do exactly what I'm told and what other people suggest of me, because they've found a way to navigate life sober in a world that doesn't want you to be.

Sometimes being told to go back to the basics is aggravating. I find myself wanting to challenge, fall back into my old ways, or push back when I'm told something I don't want to hear, but every time I go into a meeting I hear How It Works and I remember that if I try to be the person I was before sobriety, even if I'm sober substance wise, I'm not truly living a life of sobriety. Certainly not a life that makes me want to be sober.

Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it-- then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold onto our old ideas but the result was nil until we let go absolutely."

Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition of the Big Book, Basic Text for Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 58

It was not until I understood why the people in these rooms kept coming back, calling themselves grateful alcoholics that I was willing to do just what the Big Book demands of us-- be fearless and thorough and let go of my old ideas. By doing just these simple, yet virtually impossible things, I am beginning to see why people in recovery are so grateful. We have a program and a fellowship that demands us to be rigorously honest, yet is infinitely forgiving. We have been given a simple outline of how to live a sober life. Through the steps, the chapters and the traditions, through sharing our stories with one another, we are given experience, strength and hope. We have been so freely given a gift of how to live a life not just abstinently, but happily without substances.

The desperation that allowed myself to completely give in to the program and trust was truly a gift. Though I may feel like a child again, and at times I feel infinitesimally small, or stupid or helpless, none of those things are truly wrong. In the grand scheme of things, I am small. When it comes to sobriety, I am stupid. When it comes to helping myself, I truly can't do much. The realization of all of these things is a gift. Acknowledging these character defects in myself continues to allow me to grow, to keep coming back, to stay seated with my mouth shut.

The second biggest gift the program has given me, is a relationship with a higher power of my understanding who makes feeling small, stupid and helpless irrelevant. I am enough, loved and held by my higher power, and my relationship with them makes me enough and erases my fear. As I heard in treatment, "you cannot hold faith and fear in the same hand." If I have faith that the program and my higher power will restore me to sanity and dissolve my obsessive desire to drink, just that will happen. It was only through the gift of desperation though, of hitting rock bottom after rock bottom, of completely releasing myself and giving in, that I am able to receive any of the advice given from AA. So what if I feel like a child again? Children are awestruck, filled with wonder and creativity, and best yet, they haven't discovered the ability to escape from the world with substances, they're sitting and feeling everything. They trust what they're told and listen, because they don't know any better. And in early sobriety, we don't know any better either.