The Call to be Sober: 5 things that may happen

July 2016 

I walked into my first AA meeting when I was 20 years old. 

I didn't get sober until I was 26 years old. 

I am now a couple months shy of 5 years of sobriety. 

Everything that happened in between was not for naught. My first few attempts were not in vain. And I was lucky that my reckless dice-rolling resulted in more tries, as opposed to game over. But in retrospect, I can see with crystal clarity that seeds were being planted the entire time before sobriety actually stuck. Calls were being made. 

Allow me to elaborate. 

Before I even became of legal age to consume alcohol, I was blacklisted from the only bar in a small beach town. The owner of the bar told me I was an alcoholic and to seek help. That gave me a reason to pause and consider what he was saying simply because he was a barowner and got to watch people surrender to alcoholism all day long. I figured he maybe knew what he was talking about.

So I went to 3 AA meetings and promptly decided it wasn't for me. Sobriety, that is, just wasn't for me. I was too young, I thought to myself. Don't you have to drink every day to be an alcoholic? I didn't drink everyday. Not even close. I only binged. Therefore, I am not an alcoholic. (justification #1)

It was within that year that I also:

• was tricked into an intervention after my work called my family to enlighten them about my perilous drug abuse, resulting in my temporary job loss.
• drove drunk and hit a tree but was never caught by police, thus no DUI.
• failed out of college due to my acute cocaine habit & consequential lack of attendance.
• nearly paralyzed myself (or died) after climbing out of a third-story window drunk and high, on a quest for more drugs, only to realize that I couldn't pull myself up to get back in the house (I was not indeed Spiderwoman) so I let go and fell to the ground on my back where I lay unconscious until a friend found me.

All this took place and I was still unblissfully unaware of how hazardous to myself I was. Despite countless people approaching me out of concern, some random strangers even, my ability to see was completely obscured by the thick fog that we refer to as 'denial.' I was getting "the call(s)", I just wasn't picking up. Every so often I'd work up the nerve to hesitantly pick up only to put it on call waiting. Looking back, I'm rather impressed with how relentless our brains are in rationalizing and justifying behavior. 

I turned 26 in 2011, at the end of another summer of hard partying and shame-spiraling decisions and found myself in my therapists office, bewildered yet again at why I couldn't control my alcohol intake and subsequent self-destruction.

She gently suggested AA. 

So I went. To a Friday night speaker meeting (so I could be sure I wouldn't have to talk) right on campus (I was back at school for fall semester finishing my undergrad degree.)

And I kept going. Weekly. 

I learned. And every time I went, I learned more. 

In the midst of saving my own life, I was learning so much good stuff. Some of the greatest gems of wisdom from some of the kindest humans ever to walk the earth sit in these AA meetings. 

So my sweet friends, in reflecting on the years before I made sobriety my lifestyle, I can recall 5 things that may happen when you get the call to be sober: 

1. people attempt to talk to you out of concern for your drinking/drug habits, give you (subtly or directly) 12-step pamphlets or recovery books (people is anyone--family, friends, teachers, coaches, strangers, employers, coworkers, mentors, therapists, etc.)

2. you spend a good amount of time wondering if you have a drinking/drug problem and consult Google for quick quizzes but when your result indicates possible problematic drinking, you determine a stupid google quiz is inconclusive anyway. 

3. you spend a good amount of time convincing yourself that you don't have a drinking/drug problem and could control it if you wanted to but you just don't reallllllly want to, or care to.

4. things are happening that you don't want to happen: arrests, jail, DUIs, loss of job, loss of friends, loss of home, loss of child custody, loss of motivation, loss of self.

5. nothing is happening. Your life is intact by all outside appearances (you're one of those "high-functioning" ones), but you feel a dull, occasionally sharp, aching that nags at you daily which you try to shush with more booze/drugs. The aching is the yearning for a better, more peaceful existence--one not enslaved to addiction. 

These are some of the ways you might hear your call to get sober. Everyone gets their own calls. 

The question remains: will you pick up the phone or pretend it's not ringing?