Understanding the essence of an unmangeable life requires rigorous honesty of the life we truly desire and will work at to accomplish. There was a time in my alcoholism when just wasting away hiding out from my life was a blessing of sorts for me. Countless problems were dealt with simply drinking them away and so at those times my life seemed manageable enough to me. Of course eventually drinking was not enough either. Getting a mild drunk on and nursing that drunk throughout the day became the new requirement to keep my life manageable and just the way I liked it.
Being drunk is a wonderful asset if we want to be drunk. Nothing was more easy for me back in the day than drinking. How wonderful to just hole up and stay drunk. I actually prided myself on how drunk could I get and still do what i wanted to do with my life. Of course my wants were not lofty by standards of rigourous honesty. I pretty much just wanted to evaporate and dream up a better life than i had. What i had was not a life, so anything would have been better almost, including drinking, and I knew it, and so drinking made perfect sense. In that way I had a manegeable life. Just the way I wanted. LOL.
Sober today things are different. It's obvious to say today is different because of everything going on with my life now. I'm still an alcoholic and I still manage my life as I want. Yeah, as I want.
Every thing I have today originally began way back when I had my last drunk. That single day is the foundation of all my days since. Thousands of them. And more to come many of them to be my best days yet. All this from my agreement that I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable.
Step One was [and still is] a covenant with me and God. I could see where the other steps were going and so doing step one was useless unless i was gonna do the rest. That was my first agreement, do the rest or do none. My second was although God could run my sober life He could only do so because of my agreement and not before. As well, my agreement went only so far as my alcoholism went. My personal life was hands off for Him. He worked the alcoholism and soberiety terroritory but that was it, end of story. The third thing was that my part in all this was I simply just had to stop drinking. Nothing more then that. And it stayed that way until I could want to do something without be drunk to do it. Anything that I wanted to do and not wanting to be drunk to do i promised I would do no mattter how difficult or how much I had to change to do it. This last agreement put me in the position to test if being sober made any difference in quality of life. Without drinking, would I want sobriety? And wanting it, would I change to live a sober life? And living a sober life, would I stay sober for good and all? I had no answers for those questions on day one. What i did have though was the foundation to be an alcoholic drunk who did not drink alcohol to stay alive. I could actually stay alive and not drink. I so needed that alcohol to define me and being without was akin to dying for me. Would be sober give me just as easily as drinking did, would it give me the life I wanted to live? Otherwise, forget about it, you understand?! LOL. Alcoholic to the bone.
We each have our own walk through life both drunk or sober. My being a drunk changed me into something that I can never ever not be and I'm okay with that because of that last day i was drunk I accepted with complete honesty that all I wanted was to just be drunk and live that way always. Just get drunk and stay drunk, thats all I wanted. It seems a paradox that the more i accepted my want for being drunk the more I also accepted how powerless I was over alcohol. So I went with it, that new understanding and acceptance, and that led me right into seeing that my life was unmanageable because of my want for alcohol and not because of anything else i was doing or not doing. My wanting to be drunk all the time brought me eventually to wanting to be sober all the time because not being in charge of my own life was the ultimate evil to me and so anything that kept me in charge i was gonna do somehow. Paradox. It was a lightbulb moment.
From that day forward, with my Step One covenants with God, I seeked progress and not perfection. I got what I wanted in the end simply by being rigorously honest with myself and my life with alcoholism and sobriety. Even my obessions with alcohol itself, that old street friend who I loved to hate, exists only in my past life. My alcoholism illness is arrested today and my sobriety rules, just the way I want it to be for me.
Even after many years of sober living I still see the changes required to honor my original promises. I still do whatever it takes to live my life as long as it dosen't get me drunk in the doing. I am totally blown away with what i have been able to do without being drunk. I never would have believed life could be this awesome with out alcohol. I'm a believer today in being powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmangeable hands down. it's all so freakin' clear and obvious now.
RobbyRobot