The hard but beautiful truth about the journey to being sober
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There is nothing manly in drinking to the point of a blackout and waking up in a motel room in a city you’ve never been to and wondering why and how you got there. It’s no measure of manhood to throw up all over yourself and someone else, to gag with dry heaves, to wake up on a bathroom floor next to a toilet caked with dried vomit, or to wake up with a pillow stuck to your head, glued there by the puke you upchucked in your sleep.
“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Such is the first step in the journey of recovery, getting and staying sober, seemingly simple but requiring guts to admit to a problem that we can’t handle without help. Some might say the man who gives in isn’t so tough after all. On the contrary, recovery may well be the toughest test of manhood. Most everyone who’s been in 12-step recovery from alcoholism for any length of time has probably heard the warning that “sobering up ain’t for sissies.”
There are a couple of other warnings we hear at the meetings. If we don’t remember our last drunk, we haven’t had it yet, and we all have another drunk in us but might not have another recovery. Tweak the second one step further: even if we have another recovery in us, do we really want to do the work – and it is work – to sober up instead of just drying out?
If we accept that alcoholism is a three-pronged disease of the body, mind and character, we can understand that not drinking by itself is insufficient for full recovery.
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Do we really want to endure the feared Fourth Step of making another “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves?” Or again humbling ourselves, sometimes on bended knee, and making “direct amends” to people we hurt with our drinking as Step Nine advises? Or questioning if we are qualified in Step 12 to “carry this message” of recovery to the alcoholic who is still drinking?
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Before those questions, however, we absolutely need to be certain we understand and believe that the “Power greater than ourselves (which) can restore us to sanity” in Step Three is not a god of some religion. The “power” is whatever source of strength we can trust to be there for us always, a power to which we can look for guidance and hope, for moral direction and integrity – the “spiritual” compass in 12-step recovery.
If we accept that alcoholism is a three-pronged disease of the body, mind and character, we can understand that not drinking by itself is insufficient for a full recovery. A dried-out brain may help to cure the physical, but it does nothing to heal the damaged emotional and psychological triggers that set us on that path to self-destruction alcoholism, nor does simply drying out help us to recognize the warnings of a relapse in the making. Absent of therapy or other recovery programs not based on 12-step philosophy, the “12 Steps of action” are our guide through the emotional and moral wreckage of our damaged psyches, to clear out the ruins and begin anew.
The inevitable result is a return to drinking, justified by the self-fulfilling prophecy that they “can’t go through with it” or “what’s the use anyhow?”
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Getting there is the hard part and not always for the faint-hearted, however. Our spiritual and character rehabilitation hinges strongly on taking personal responsibility for our drinking and facing the consequences of our actions when drunk. The collateral victims of our drinking can be everyone and everything from shattered and sometimes irretrievable family and interpersonal relationships to lost jobs, legal problems, financial debt, and ruin -all of which and to whom we are urged to make right as best we can.
All the while, we are advised to push our will and want aside and seek out and act on the will of our personal and individual higher power. This is the litmus test of spirituality and humility in 12-step recovery -to sacrifice our wants, usually selfish and destructive at their root, and bow to the will of a force of a stronger and greater good than ourselves.
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“What an order! I can’t go through with it.”
As the recovery literature predicts, too many alcoholics who set out in recovery find the process too intimidating, even demoralizing when they see themselves for who and what they are. There are also those whose displaced pride stands in their way of taking responsibility for their drinking and righting the wrongs their drinking has done to other people. The inevitable result is a return to drinking, justified by the self-fulfilling prophecy that they “can’t go through with it” or “what’s the use anyhow?”
The alternative to giving up is unacceptable to the alcoholic who has hit his proverbial bottom, who can sink no deeper and who is “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Therein lies the strength of the man – and the woman – whose willingness to “go to any lengths” to recover, to remake himself and to reclaim his life. His chances to recover are better than average.
Recovery is not a one-time shot but is a lifelong and evolving process.
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The road of the drinking alcoholic is strewn with broken whiskey bottles, broken hearts and broken lives, dreams, and hopes of something better that will never be. The road of the recovering alcoholic is swept clean of broken bottles and shattered lives and dreams, and there are no morning-afters and no disgust at the image of the man in the mirror. There are no hangovers, no shots of liquor at 6 o’clock in the morning to calm the shakes from the night before, and the memory of the night before is clear and, by the grace of God, has no regrets.
Recovery is not a one-time shot but is a lifelong and evolving process, and a logical question is how the alcoholic “knows” if he has emerged from the physical, mental and emotional haze.
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“Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps …” The first words of Step 12 that conclude with the program’s marching orders that send us out into the world: ” …we tried to carry the message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”
So what is this “spiritual awakening?” Some in recovery expect such a powerful promise to come with fireworks or in the form of a revelation or an event that suddenly opens their eyes to some truth or a light not darkened by regret, fear or anger. Most are humbled to experience a spiritual awakening that is as seemingly innocuous as uncovering a long- and deeply-buried truth of how they came to be what they became and how not to be that same person. Or an awakening can be something as simple as realizing that we never noticed a setting sun behind a towering oak tree and the sounds of children playing in a park near-by – because we had been too drunk to notice them before.
For the alcoholic man, one of the truest measures of his manhood may well be his choice of which road he takes – the one of the drinking alcoholic that almost always ends with insanity, prison or death, or the other road that is never-ending and almost always leads to reclamation of dignity, integrity and self-respect.
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Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
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Talk to you soon.
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Photo: Shutterstock
Thanks for sharing, Todd …I think I finally figured out that part about recovery NOT being a one-time thing and IS truly a lifelong process – PROGRESS ! 26 YEARS! Then, Sir, you can understand where I’m coming from.
Agree Mark! Good catch Jenelle!
Christopher: Great article and thoughts! I just subscribed to the Good Men Project, and this hit home. Recovery is not a one shot – now it’s done. It truly is a lifelong and evolving process. Some days better than others, all days better drinking!
Living in the blessing for 26 years, one day at a time.
Mark: LOL! Ain’t it the truth?
That and giving up cigarettes. Both are a bitch. Underlying assumptions of who we are as we use them are the root issue.
I love his story. However, the BB says; “Having had a spiritual awakening as THE result of these steps…” not, ” a “A” result of these steps…” Most people reasyhis section wrongly. A result, implies many. THE result of these steps, implies just 1 result. Xx