Yesterday I was reading Bill W.'s story in AA's Big Book, and it was talking about how he would try to convince his wife that, even though he drank too much, it was okay because "men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk; the most mmajestic constructions of philosophic thought were so derived."
This really hit home for me-- I'm a writer and always thought that writing and heavy drinking went hand and hand, and that alcohol sparked creativity-- Hemingway, Bukowski, etc. I'm also a professional in a world where it seems the most powerful and successful people in my profession drink, and that the social life/networking revolves around drinking. So in the past I always thought either "how can I stop drinking when it fuels my creativity/ helps me do well socially in my profession...", or, "okay, so I drink too much, what's the big deal? It's because I'm creative and driven, and I will produce great things this way."
Now I'm realizing that I was full of it. I rarely wrote or did well at work when I was drinking. All that my life seemed to revolve around was alcohol and hopelessness. I'm only 76 days sober and already I feel so much more productive, energetic and motivated than I did when I was drinking. I'm not saying everything's magically fixed, or that I don't struggle with concentration/brain fog issues, or that sometimes I don't just sit on the couch watching Mad Men, because I do, but overall I think I will reach my goals much better being sober than drunk.
Also I was looking at the list of celebrity recovered alcoholics, and looking into some of their backgrounds since I hadn't realized that about all of them, and I discovered that many have done much more productive/successful things with their life/career *after* they stopped drinking.
Examples:
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Philip Seymour Hoffman went to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction soon after he graduated from college, and has been sober ever since... and most of his great movies have been after that, of course.
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Famous Alcoholics: Samuel L Jackson has been sober through AA for over 20 years (the link has pretty interesting snippets of interviews with him-- apparently he gets sent crates of Cristal that he obviously can't drink!
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Demi Moore, back in 1985, had to sign a contract to stop her own alcohol and drug abuse in order to play the cocaine-addicted character in St. Elmo's Fire, which apparently helped her turn her life around.
And then there is one of my favs, Craig Ferguson, who has been sober for a long time and is a very funny and successful comedian/talk show host.
It helps me to see that it's the people who are successful, creative, driven, etc... not the alcohol or drugs... and that they have done so many great things after getting sober. This inspires me and I hope it inspires some of the newcomers as an additional reason to keep going!