Cope or die

Getting sober has to do with removing the crutch (es) from your life. More importantly, it has everything to do with learning coping skills that you lacked when you used.

As an (always recovering) addict, at some point I had the hard realization that if I did not stop the journey I was on, I was going to kill myself. I couldn’t tell if it would be by my own hands or by the vices I held so high.

I HAD to realize there were people who went through the same or worse than I and they did not escape into unhealthy vices. I had to decide my life was worth living and that it was time to find my healthy and embrace it fully.

It took God. It took accepting that I was unhealthy and that all of my choices were unhealthy. It took fully breaking down and releasing everything to God. My pain, my weaknesses, my stubbornness, my everything.

What’s hard for most of us addicts is that we endulge in instant gratification. We want what we want immediately.

Sobriety is long and drawn out and lasts a life time. That is NOT what we want to hear. That’s why I believe God blesses us in the little things so we can keep full ahead to reach our end with peace.

I have been sober for 11 years now. My life is not easier than it was. Yes I wake up knowing where I am and whst happened the night before. Yes my body is healthier. Life is not easier. It’s harder. But it’s my pleasure to cope sober.

I deal with stressor every day. I make a choice to attack it with God’s power daily.

This, my friends, is true sobriety.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonable happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

Reinhold Niebuhr