I Finally Stopped Running
The Beginning
I grew up in rural Australia. My childhood was one that most people dream of. The ocean, the bush and the boundless plains were my backyard. I was a tough kid for my parents: I threw tantrums and I was destructive. One of my first addictive behaviours as a three-year-old was compulsively picking up cigarette butts and eating them.
At the age of eleven my parents moved me to another school, and this caused a change in me. I had been at my primary school since I was four. This transition, including the sudden attention of bullies and a scary bus ride with high schoolers, caused me to become frightened. That fear and uncertainty became part of me through the rest of my childhood and into my adult years.
I was a pretty good sportsman and student, but if I wasn’t in first place then I saw no victory in anything. I always felt I had more to prove, so I lied, I embellished, and I tried to pretend that I was more than I was.
Running Away
I had sipped alcohol a few times throughout my childhood. But I was 14 or 15 the first time that I got drunk. I was around my family, and as a result the first time I got drunk was also the first time I needed to lie about my drinking. But I loved alcohol. It took away that self-doubt. After that, I got drunk any time that I could. From the start there were consequences from my drinking and my solution to those problems was to run away.
Chasing that dragon defined my life for almost 25 years. As a restless alcoholic, I roamed the world, but wherever I went I took that self-doubt, the desire to be more than I was, and the drinking along with me. It affected my friendships, my relationships, my family and career.
I never quite crashed and burned, but mostly because I was always one step ahead of it. I would skate out of town by the seat of my pants and tell myself, “I’ll be better in the next place.”
There is a profound pain in addiction, where the thing that is hurting you the most is also the only thing that momentarily soothes you. For many years before I finally stopped, I didn’t want to drink, I just did. I had mostly lost sight of the fact that there was another option.
I had also slowly shrunk my life to where the only thing left was drinking. My social life was soaked in alcohol. I no longer had hobbies, and my health was beginning to fail me. I made one more desperate relocation, hoping that this time it would be different.
Surrender: The Decision to Stop Drinking
It was different. It was worse. Within a couple of months of arriving, I had managed to create more chaos in my life than ever before. I was tired, I was lonely, and I was on the verge of losing my job, my relationship and, if my luck ran out, my life. I was beaten, and I was finally ready to try the one thing I had never truly tried before: stop drinking.
Previously I had tried to moderate, and even made a few half attempts at stopping, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was clinging to the belief that I needed alcohol to have fun, to connect with others, to connect with myself. The idea of stopping completely scared the shit out of me. So with all the courage I could muster up, I drove myself to an AA meeting and walked inside.
That was 14 months ago. In that time I haven’t drunk or used drugs, and my life has changed profoundly.
Change
The first few months were detox, not just from booze, but from the chaos and the emotion. I slept, I ate ice cream, I went to meetings, I listened back to every episode of the Recovery Elevator Podcast, and I did anything that I could to not drink. I was fortunate that my cravings disappeared quickly, but what replaced them was something more existential: the reality of my life.
There wasn’t much left when you took out the alcohol. Fortunately, I fell into a fun and supportive sober crew through AA, good people who take care of each other. That community and its support have filled my life back up, and that has been one of the biggest factors in helping me maintain my sobriety as long as I have.
Along the way, I have worked on understanding what led me to drink the way I did. I have also been forced to confront the damage that my behaviour caused over my lifetime. That seeking of answers and honesty was a first for me. I had spent my adult life running away from all of my problems.
This was the first time that I forced myself to sit with them and begin to make changes that weren’t just cosmetic: a new job, a new girlfriend, a new city. I was finally examining who I really was, what brought me here, and changing what and who really needed to change all along.
Community, Spirituality and Learning
Probably the biggest surprise of sobriety has been the development of a spiritual belief and practice. The concept of a higher power materialised in my life, and now time with that higher power, be it in a group of people being honest with each other, at the top of a mountain or at the beginning or end of each day, is the most sacred time I have. Prayer and meditation have become tools that I use daily to connect with the universe and with myself.
The community and friendships I have formed have been some of the best of my life. People in recovery are some of the realest that you will meet. The honesty, support and camaraderie that come with seeing others hit milestones and get better is so beautiful.
Literature has also been a big part of my recovery. Beyond the well-worn AA literature I have discovered a world of books dedicated to helping people get sober and get healthy. The Drop the Rock series by Hazelden Publishing helped me understand that I must take responsibility for my own behaviour. Authors like Melody Beattie and Tian Dayton have helped me see more clearly the family nature of addiction and the complex combination of nature and nurture that can cause it.
Endless Opportunity
Recently, my focus has become welcoming the endless opportunity the future holds. Getting sober has a way of widening your vision. Eliminating that binary feeling that nothing could exist beyond alcohol has made me ask myself, “What else have I been wrong about?”
The world is a big, beautiful place, and the universe has a way of giving you what you need when you need it. In the past I hid away from the world because I was scared that I would end up drunk if I left the house. Now I am free to once again step outside and explore the lakes, forests and mountain ranges, and I know that wherever I go I am going to have an experience that I, by definition, have never had before.
Each day and each moment of life is at the very end of time.
Much Love, Lewy
