19 years

Today marks 19 years sober. I'm not sure what I have to say about that, but it seemed like a momentous occasion I should comment on before the day is over.

It has been a hard won 19 years. Especially this last year. Complacency, stress, anxiety, fear, loneliness...they have all haunted me this year. But I made it. 

How did I make it? The biggest thing: Fear of disappointing my wife. Certainly I'm glad that I had something to keep me on track, but I would like something a little more...positive(?) to keep me on track from here on out.

In the early years of sobriety, it was the dogma of 12 step meetings that kept me sober. And it did its job well...that dogma that keeps us addicts sober in the beginning though needs to mature, to become something...more...something...I don't know; less dogmatic. 

I strayed away from meetings because I constantly heard "old timers" saying the same things week after week, which usually consisted of something along the lines of "I haven't been to a meeting in a few days, and I am so crazy...". That is not me, and that is not what I want to be. That is not my idea of RECOVERY. Recovery should be being able to function in the world without the bubble of meetings/dogmatic rules and phrases...without having to switch the addiction to substances to an addiction to meetings. And for years I have done that-I've lived in the world, surrounding myself with people whose lives don't revolve around alcohol and drugs, and I've been relatively sane and happy.

But I do need something more, and I don't know what that is. If everybody and their dog didn't drink in the highland games, the games community might be all I need. But being around people drinking all the time makes it easy to normalize drinking in my mind when my defenses are already depleted from the many blows of this last year or so. One piece of dogma I can get behind is "Complacency is our number one offender." It is true...and I need to find a way to knock myself out of that complacency, so that I can prance-ercise my way down the road of happy destiny. So the games will continue to be a source of joy, and an outlet for my alter ego, but perhaps especially because of my involvement with the games I needs something more.

There is another level of recovery to be had, now it's time for this little Hobbit to off and away on a little adventure to discover what exactly that is!