Progress Not Perfection

     Labor Day 1989 was the start of a journey I never expected to take. 29 years ago yesterday in the parking lot of a bar called Happy Days Again; I stood in the parking lot after the bar closed waiting for my ride while drinking a Bud Light   I didn't know it at the time, but it was the last drink I ever had.       I have been sober for more than half my life. Each anniversary is a mind-blowing miracle. I never was supposed to live to see 20 years old.  Once I got sober, I never planned on staying sober. It was to get the heat off of me, get my head screwed on tight and fix the mess that was my life. It never happened the way I planned it.  Despite all my resistance and negativity, not only did I quit drinking, but I was able to turn my life completely around. It took a lot longer than I wanted it to, but the promises did come true.      Having a lot of time under my belt does not equal having a perfect life....

The love of another will not be able to fill the void left by not loving yourself." - Anonymous. I have always felt different from my peers. As a teen and well into adulthood, I’ve perceived a void in my soul separating me from everyone else. Drinking was my means of coping. But my drinking career was brief, leaving me to deal with the void without the help of booze. Relationships were one of the ways I tried fixing myself after I got sober. I was convinced love was the missing puzzle piece. It would fill the gaping hole within me. Yet, I was a social misfit and had no idea how to approach women, let alone date them. Hence, I was a spectacular failure at dating. Shy guys with low self-esteem are not in high demand. Add in paralyzing anxiety and you get a very lonely person. I improved a little over time and learned how to fall into relationships. My low self-esteem raged and I did not feel worthy of the women I liked. I would involve myself with women I ...

I am continuing my exploration of fear and anxiety in recovery.  This topic has been on my mind a lot in recent weeks. I have always considered anxiety to be my primary issue. It’s no less serious than my alcoholism. Once I manage some sober time under my belt I no longer felt I had a drinking problem, but I had a thinking problem. It's a pretty common phrase in the rooms, usually meaning the way we think about drinking or even about how we live our lives in sobriety. I had no idea how to live, let alone live sober. I have always been envious of those in AA whose only problem is alcoholism. Their lives always seemed to click for them after they got sober. But that never my experience. I was baffled, often asking why recovery didn’t work for me. Why did I have to suffer?  I didn't even know what I was wrong with me until I had six years sober. It was then I finally sought outside help. I hate using the term mental health to describe my life struggles. It connot...

FEAR – Fuck Everything and Run!  Flight has always been my reaction to fear, and there is no emotion I hate more than fear. Anxiety and its incessant mental ruminations always accompany it. It chews me up and spits me out. Then there is the awful feeling in my gut that steals my breath and a pulse so intense it feels as if my heart is going to beat straight out my chest. It often feels as if there is no escape from this self-inflicted torment. No matter how much I drank, I could never escape my fears or myself.  I already wrote a blog post about dealing with long-term sobriety. This post centers on the risks of unresolved fear in recovery. There are no mincing words here, dealing with fear newly sober is a bitch! When first get sober, our only conscious fear is that of getting drunk again. It could also be the possible fear of being sober. Addiction has a twisted comfort; we love our booze. The bottle was often our best friends. Letting go of it seems terri...

Our primary purpose in AA is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. In the early days of recovery, our focus is on staying away from the first drink. After we get some time sober, we need to start working on the rest of our recovery. In the beginning, I sold myself short by limiting my definition of sobriety. I did not see that being sober is about so much more than staying away from a drink. It’s a brand new way of living. Sobriety offers us a chance to have the life we never thought were capable of having. Learning to live life on life’s terms is not always easy. The first sentence of the pop psychology classic The Road Less Travelled states that “Life is difficult!”  How true is that? It's even more so for the newly sober alcoholic. We may have decade’s worth of dysfunctional living we need to overcome. This takes time. Be patient. It's frustrating, but think of time as an acronym: This I Must Earn.  Have patience. By using the principles of the...

Great Falls Virginia  . I still have my struggles with anxiety and maintaining my serenity. In part, they are due to physical and geographical burnout. Sometimes life is life. I do what I can. I have a greater awareness of myself and my needs today. Serenity goes hand in hand with connecting with my spiritual side. This includes spending time in nature. Recent studies have advised that city living is detrimental to psychological health₁. Getting away from concrete and pavement and spending time in open green spaces is good for or us ₂. I didn't need a study to tell me that city life does not agree with me. I know first-hand having lived it. My professional life has had me sitting at a desk, staring at a computer monitors eights hour a day. Work is not the only part of my day. I have been commuting back and forth from Jersey to Manhattan for the past 20 years. I like my job, love who I work with, but the commute will be my death. The hustle and bustle of tr...

A blessing of long-term sobriety is perspective. Charting my growth through the lens of recovery. There are many instances where I sputtered and stalled but my life is certainly better than I ever dreamed possible. Without a doubt, getting sober when I did, saved my life. It took me too long to understand the gift of sobriety.  I still don’t see the entirety of it all. I feel blessed catching only glimpses of possibilities, which range from the mundane to the spectacular. I am convinced AA is but a start to a greater life. But I have to stay centered on the principles of the program to get there. The Steps are not a one-time exercise taking me from misery to serenity. They are living guidelines that can take me as far I want to go. Practicing the AA principles in my life has brought about a dramatic transformation of being. In the beginning, AA granted the means to get sober. It offers me a safe place to go for community and support. Most of it all it gave me hope. ...

            I want to preface by saying I am not a doctor, counselor or mental health professional. I cannot offer any diagnosis or treatment plan. I am sharing my experience in hopes that it will encourage those who are still suffering to get help. Life can be better.              My battles with mental health were more serious than my alcoholism. In retrospect, it was obvious that I suffered from depression as an early teen. I remember feeling different from all those around me. I was somehow less than everyone else. I don’t recall any depressive issues like I experienced when I was older, but I was painfully shy, lonely and anxiety riddled most of the time. Shamefully, my best friend during this time was the kid living next door who was five years younger than me. Most of my free time was spent watching TV.  When I started drinking, I quickly discovered that alcohol could melt the knot of exis...