I Had To Want Sobriety More.
Over the years, there have been a million times that I’ve wondered: why me? Why am I sober and so many other alcoholics are dead? And why are so many obviously alcoholic drinkers still drinking?
I can only answer using my own experience. I tried to get sober on my own and failed multiple times. I could only make it a few weeks without anyone helping me. Then I tried rehab – a jump start that I truly needed, but staying sober was up to me afterward.
I have kicked several addictions now – drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine – and there is only one thing necessary for me to stop destroying myself. There is only one mindset that “works,” that creates a space in my life for the miracle to happen.
It doesn’t work to pretend. It doesn’t work to “try.” It doesn’t work to move toward sobriety because I think I should. Only one thing truly works.
I had to want sobriety more than I wanted to keep using drugs and alcohol.
I had to want sobriety more than anything. I had to want to be healthy more than I wanted to stay sick.
For years I knew something was wrong. For years I thought about drinking, about how it was killing me, about what it was doing to my life. For years I watched myself deteriorate; I looked into the mirror and saw those dead eyes staring back. For years I wondered how I could fix the problem.
And then, one day, I actually wanted to stop. I wanted to stop more than anything in the world. I was willing to do anything it took to get sober. There were no more reservations.
No more, “But what if I’m not happy?”
No more, “But what if it doesn’t work?”
No more, “But … but … but…”
No. More.
When I started trying to get sober, it wasn’t because I really wanted to stop drinking. I tried sobriety because I had absolutely nowhere else to turn.
Nobody else could save me from myself. I had to give up on “trying” and start actually doing. I’d been trying for years. Trying doesn’t work.
In order to start doing something different, I had to be open to changing everything.
I had to change the thought patterns in my head, to change the behaviors I’d perfected, to change the person I thought I wanted to be. I had to open my mind to the possibility that what I believed – what I’d held onto with a death grip for all those years – was absolutely ineffective and, possibly, just plain wrong.
I had to do what other people told me to do, even though I didn’t want to, and I found my people in Alcoholics Anonymous – although sober people are everywhere in the world. Some people get sober through religion or family or work or therapy.
For me, anonymous support groups were the best way to open up and be honest and still do things my own way.
But no one stays sober who doesn’t really want to be sober.
Getting sober is hard. Staying sober is harder. It requires commitment and change. And really, truly, deeply wanting to change is essential for actual change.
So one day, I wanted to change more than anything in the world. I was done with my old life; it had run its course into the ground just as far as it could possibly go.
Unfortunately for everyone in my world, that psychic change didn’t happen to me until 1992.
I walked into the doors of my first rehab on May 4, 1989.