At an AA meeting the other night, someone said something to me that has stuck with me for days. "Go to any lengths for your sobriety," they said. "You would go to any lengths to get drunk and you need the same obsession and passion when staying sober and going to AA meetings." I've thought about that often in the preceding days.
I am lazy tonight. Rosa is over and cooking hotdogs for supper. I want to just "veg" out and do nothing. I want to sit in front of this computer and compulsively check The Homeless Guy's blog twenty times to only find the same post from last Monday. It is comforting and normal.
Go to any lengths for your sobriety.
This is when I need to wrestle my obsessive/compulsiveness into something positive like my brother and sister did with theirs to become doctors. To drive that long drive to Lagrange and sit an hour for a meeting even though I don't want to go. To go without a cigarillo for an hour even though it is uncomfortable. To deal with the social anxiety of having so many strange and unfamiliar souls around me. I need to go to any lengths for my sobriety and that means getting off my ass and dragging it to a meeting. It means getting a shower and shaving, and putting on some presentable clothes instead of these worn old cotton t-shirts and pull up shorts I wear around the house most days. I've got two hours to muster up the gumption to go. Let's hope I do something positive with this evening instead of sitting in front of this damned computer like I normally do.
8 comments:
You are doing well. Keep it up. Make the commitment to be the man you can be and not the alcoholic that keeps you from being all you can be. You have done so well, it's a huge step.
Hey I've been missing for a while... wanted to stop in and see what you've been up to. I missed seeing HOW you got your car back, but just glad you did. What a wonderful New Year's gift for you!
Get up and get going. You will benefit from the meeting. That gives you an incentive to shower, shave and dress, which is a good thing.
:)) 67 days since I came by the last time yer doing good.
You will use your energy fro something good, productive.
It's there, just see it.
You're lucky to have all those meetings! Get up and go!!!
sharyna
A wonderful lesson for all of us.
Thank you very much for your blog, Andrew. I've been reading along for some months now and you've helped me immensely. Especially when you write about your social anxieties, I can totally relate. For me the solution has been to force myself to join people... It gets easier after a while (thank God!) Then again, when I'm by myself for too long, the process needs to start all over again:( That's life, I guess.
Again, thank you so much!
I agree with that. Obsessive traits can be a powerful tool for changing habits. Just learn the right way and repeat over and over and over, until the new behavior become a part of you.
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