RobbyRobot

Yeah, that describes me to a T.

I graduated at 3 months. Completed my rehab stay. Completed my 12 Steps. I really had plans to go on to college in the winter semester. I even had it already set up that all my costs would be paid, my housing paid, all paid kind of deal. Apparently, I really rocked all their psych profile and aptitude tests and charts as an ideal candidate. I had my free ticket punched on the gravy-train again, same as always. I was always being told I could be whatever, if I would only care enough to try. Oh yeah? Hey, can I be an astronaut? Um, no, you have a physical disability. Sorry. Hmmm. Okay, okay. I know... I can have any color I want, as long as its black, right? Yeah. I thought so. You know what... later.

So what did I do instead? More success in the world was going to get me drunk again. I could really sense that. It was only going to be a matter of time. I needed to change that up, and start fresh in a life built for me, by me, and as me, as I am in real time. Re-invent myself.

I did tons and tons of service work helping others get something going for themselves in quitting alcohol and drugs. I purposely chose more poverty to learn about myself while helping others. I had not really helped anybody as a selfish street kid, and certainly not as a drunken teenager going on 24. Quitting at 24 gave me an new opportunity to give back in a way I couldn't have done any other way, and still be discovering me all the while. I chose my path with a purpose in my mind and heart to have a quality life without external conditions whatsoever. Its worked out really well, if I do say so myself.

Eventually, it too turned into an early qualified success. And then it wasn't. And by that time of again back to hardships, I was well known to myself through thick and thin, good and bad times, health and sickness, and life was for me like that old baseball glove that always fit so well, and caught more balls then it ever dropped. I adapted and innovated and moved on with it going forward.

Out of nothing I carved a life that still stands on the foundations laid in my first two years of recovery. Each recovered year brings me more of what I already have: a good quality life. I stay sober to enjoy what I have. I'm not sober simply because drunk is not what I want anymore. I'm sober because it would be more difficult to not be sober now these many years of being sober. Sober is as sober does, for me, anyways.

Thanks for the clarification, BTSO. As always, you're a great guy to have a real discussion with. Rock on, bro!