Deep down at the bottom of happy, joyous and free lies fear; fear that if I were ever to throw my sobriety away I might never get it back. It seems the older we get, the more times we relapse, the harder it is to come back and fully embrace recovery. I suspect that, as with a drug, I would want getting sober again to feel like the first time. I would want to feel the magic, and I don’t know how one could.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that, as a class, those of us in 12 Step programs die with incredible regularity.
My friend Terry was once sober for 11 years, but I didn’t know him then. During the 3 years I’ve known him, Terry has rarely been able to put together more than 60 days at a time. Terry is really smart and there are times in his life when he has been really successful. But that was a long time ago, too. Since I’ve known him, Terry has been intermittently homeless and unemployed.
He kept grabbing for a feeling from being sober that he never could quite grasp. He was possessed by his ideas of what being sober was supposed to feel like. The last time I saw Terry, a couple of weeks ago, he told me that he didn’t think he was going to make it. The sum of my experience with Terry led me to believe that meant that he was planning on drinking. Same story. Different day. So I thought nothing of it.
Terry’s ex-wife found him on the 19th, three days after he shot himself. His funeral was one of the saddest things I have ever experienced. It broke my heart. And it scared the hell out of me.
Tags: 1st Step
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i am sorry for your loss.
these things should scare the hell out of us! we are just a short space away from picking up at any moment — and that space MUST be filled with a power greater than ourselves.
(at least that’s what i’ve discovered these past 2 years)
i feel for the people who have a hard time “getting back” – it pains me when one of my sponsees in particular goes at least 4 or more days without reaching out. i know what she’s doing. i can’t give her a dose of willingness, it has to come from – guess where? – a power greater than herself.
this is a deadly disease. it isn’t looked at the same way a chronic illness or a cancer is and quite possibly never will be. you keep doing what you are doing to stay well and you won’t end up “found” somewhere.
God, rest his soul.
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The death part of the story doesn’t really scare me…. we’re all going to die sooner or later (and I’ve been living with hiv since 1992, so the grim specter of death finally got bored with me, I guess). But, the suffering before the death, the last impulse before the trigger was pulled–that is what saddens me. I’ve been there a few times in my life. The hurt, and the nothing that flip that switch are too much for me to think about on a Friday before bed….
Despair is the “sickness unto death”… but there is a cure, and we have it. It may only be a daily reprieve, but today is all we have to work with, so for me, it is enough.
Hope you have a great weekend.
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