LaFemme

LOL:-D

But, maybe we are just way to caught up in words, sober, in recovery, recovered, cured...etc.

I'm aiming for healthy and happy:-)

suki44883

Yeah, my sobriety is MINE and no one elses. If I want to say I am recovered, what's it to anyone else? I'm just happy that I no longer drink and I'm enjoying my life. I'm not struggling or feeling like I'm missing anything. That is my idea of recovered and if it's not good enough for someone else, oh well. That's their problem, not mine.

Mat

I absolutely agree with you. The whole recovery community is very caught up in words and meta-arguments about those words. I have seen people who seem to base their entire recovery on catch phrases and semantics, and on the other side of that coin: people who object to or reject the path of others on the same basis.

My pedantic post above was meant to display just how silly and ultimately convoluted these word games can become. It is fantastic that people can draw strength from a catch phrase or clever remark, but it should be left at that. The problem occurs when people forget that these little quips are meant to be inspirational, but in reality are largely gobbledegook. People take them to be an objective reality of sorts that need be enforced/impressed upon others suffering from addiction, and a semantics war ensues.

joinedintime

There's a way I've heard it put that really rang true with me and I should have saved it. I've read it here on SR more than once but I can't seem to quite recall it.

It's kinda like this... but not really.
Sobriety is not drinking but still wanting to drink. Recovery is not drinking and being happy about it.

Anyway if we had a scale of 1 to 100 with 100 being good.
I'd put Drunk in the 1 to 15 range depending on how far your alcoholism has progressed....and it does get worse rather than better as you spend more of your life drinking.
Then I'd put sober way up there at 78 to 89 let's say
Recovery is 89 to 100

I didn't spend more than a minute coming up with those numbers, Meltdown, I'm just trying to make the point that while it's important to think about sobriety vs recovery, don't let the question distract you from being sober because you're right there in the neighborhood of recovery and you can smell recovery in the breeze from there.
When your in the 1 to 15 range, let's face it...it smells really bad down there.

Welcome to SR. Great question.

HideorSeek

This is a very interesting topic and I totally agree that recovery is a process. In my case, stopping drinking was the tip of the iceberg. I had to discover why I drank, in order to close that door. I have been sober now for almost 15 months (a miracle, in and of itself!!!) and I am continuously finding new evidence of my addictive personality...relatively harmless, but still. I am a person of "more". Somewhere in my brain, I am fearful that I will run out of whatever...clothes...food...I find something I like, I buy 2 (or more). They may run out, they may never stock it again...that sort of thing. I noticed the other day, I never actually finish a cup of coffee...I always top it off, when I have a half a cup left!

These sorts of behaviors are indicative of a "hole" in my soul. When is enough, enough? Alcohol was the same way for me. There was never enough.

Anne Lamott put this brilliantly, IMHO. (Paraphrasing>>>) "Treating one's addictions is like putting an octopus to bed."

So, to me, recovery is about self-discovery, healing and finding healthy ways to live. I use AA because I like the fellowship and I think the Steps are valuable. But I also do Yoga, meditate and read til my eyes pop out. One size does not fit all. The key, IMHO, is, after stopping drinking, to figure out what works for you and makes you happy, and do that.

LexieCat

Heh,

I like that visual!

I can totally relate to the "not wanting to run out" of anything. I've been doing some reading on Buddhism in the recovery context, and the concept of suffering as the product of attachment and aversion makes SO much sense to me. We are attached to our alcohol (and other things) and we spend all our energy struggling to keep that to which we are attached and avoiding the pain of what is unpleasant. It's what's been "running" me forever.

HideorSeek

My "thanks" button is broken! I knew I should have gotten 2!!!

RobertHugh

Understood, Josette. I was just trying to be funny about Matt Damon...but can see why you might have thought otherwise.

yeahgr8

Its like being back at the bar talking about politics;-)

Find someone who is recovered and has the sort of life you would want and do what they did...you can substitute recovered for any other word, e.g. rich, in a happy relationship, fit etc...sane people do this:-)

Harry01854

And even the AA Big Books tells us that.

I was introduced to AA while I was in an alcohol and addiction treatment center. I triedd AA then and it wasn't for me and I wanted to show them that they were wrong. I failed miserably.

But I tried them a second time also but I just remained sober and didn't do anything to change me from the inside out. And I ended up using again.

All I can say is the last couple of years of drinking and using drugs, I feared I was going to die that way. And I would have prefered dying than continuing a life that was destroying me. But, I wanted to live more than I wanted to die. I prayed that God would help. In my prayer I asked Him to get me back to AA. Guess what, God got me to AA, although a couple of years later than I wanted. This time though I had what I call, a Gift Of Desperation. I took suggestions and worked the Program of the 12 Steps to Recovery. The obsession to drink or drug has been lifted, for which I am forever grateful. And I rid myself of the wreckage of my past and made amendments to people I had hurt. Which in turn, freed me from my old self.

I have found a new way to live my life as a person that God would want me to be and I continue to try to help another alcoholic to acheive sobriety, which in turns helps me also.

I agree with LaFemme though and I also agree with JosetteCollins.

What is working for me is my choice. I have always had my own choices whether they were good or bad. Today because I am in recovery, I make a lot more better choices and I am a better person than what I was 10 years ago.

So Meltdown the choice is yours to make, nobody else can make it for you.