Milestones on the road to sobriety An educator’s experience reveals the power of hope

I had been a year and a half in AA. I had been through six weeks of intensive alcoholism treatment. Now I felt so good I decided I could be a social drinker – it’s called the insanity of addiction.

A woman who was an outpatient alcoholism counselor at the rehab program sat at my table as I started to drink the bottle of beer I had just bought. I was trying very hard to convince her that now, I was truly a social drinker.

She sat looking very depressed. She had reached out to me, she had listened to my story, she had talked to me, she had supported my sobriety – she cared. Her look of sadness and futility was spoiling my drinking. As a true alcoholic, this annoyed me. She stared at the brown bottle, then spoke:

“That bottle of beer is more powerful than all of us.”

My heart sank. Many people had tried to help me. I had made every effort I could to help myself. I had sat through group therapy and psychodramas and learned about my dysfunctional family. I wanted so badly to stop drinking. I had two young children; I didn’t want them to have a drunk as a mother.

Through the last year, as I had listened to other recovering people, I had thought I could never have years of continuous sobriety or serenity because I was just too weak. I wasn’t strong like them. I stood in the deepest darkness of all, the absolute absence of hope. I had slashed my wrist, watched the blood drip to the floor. I was a drunk, I was a lesbian, I was a wife and mother, I was the lowest, sickest, most unacceptable, perverted person I could be. I believed that then, and so, I was convinced, did the rest of society.

Now I stared at the bottle of beer as memories of my past year of struggle flooded over me. My friend was right! This beverage, this liquid in a brown bottle was more powerful than all of us. I went to the sink and dumped it out. Also the other bottle I had in the refrigerator. It was the first week of November 1971. I was 27 years old.

I haven’t drunk since. Thirty-five years and two weeks later I am still sober – but who’s counting?

It wasn’t until I had been sober for four years that my true recovery began. I had admitted I was an alcoholic, but I still hadn’t accepted it. In my alcoholic thinking, I still believed that everyone “out there” was drinking and having so much more fun than me. I resented that I

couldn’t drink.

At the beginning of the 1975 holiday season, depressed because I couldn’t join in holiday fun and drink like everyone else… I suddenly realized that I could drink. I could go buy some beer. My partner and I were living together and raising my children and the four of us had had many good times. I believed I was staying sober because she would leave me if I drank. I gave her the credit for my sobriety.

Now, though, I realized she couldn’t stop me from buying beer and drinking – though, of course, she could leave me. But as I thought of buying the beer, the voice within me said, “You are not going to ruin four years of sobriety. Why don’t you just get on with your life and stop making yourself, your partner and the children endure your depression over not drinking?”

That was the beginning of my true recovery.

From that day, I embraced my alcohol-free life. I took pride in my efforts, claiming the struggle of my early sobriety and the credit for it as my own. I also stopped fooling myself. Yes, I could decide to drink, but because I was an alcoholic, I could not predict the consequences, except to know they would be bad. I would lose everything I had worked for in the past several years. I decided I wasn’t willing to pay that price.

There have been important markers along the way, moments that have helped me realize my own growth. One marker came when I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. I thought of drinking to ease the fear of what the outcome would be, but quickly dismissed it, knowing it would only make things worse. I went through the fear, the surgery, and the post-op recovery sober, without another thought of drinking.

Another marker came one day when I realized that all the people and situations I had blamed for my drinking were no longer in my life. They had moved on, and so had I. This milestone involved taking responsibility for my life. No one had made me drink but me.

One night my partner and I had an argument and my first thought was “I’ll show her, I’ll get drunk!” But why would I get drunk and hurt myself just because she has hurt me? Drinking is not an answer to life’s difficulties. Another milestone! I was learning to use my own inner resources to cope with life’s hurts and fears.

Change is painful, but the only way out is right straight through it. The reward is that you find yourself in a better place with a lesson well learned. And the Universe – God, Higher Power, Infinite Spirit, whatever name you want to use – is always on your side.

For all my early resentments of being addicted to alcohol, for the pain of my early recovery, for the anguish of being a lesbian in a hostile society, I have come to realize the blessings of this path. My alcoholism led me to my career as a university professor, teaching full-time classes in chemical dependency for 26 years. Me! – a young, very shy, supersensitive person with a very poor concept of self and no self-esteem. I was convinced I was too stupid to go to college, much less ever be a teacher at the college level.

A day doesn’t go by that I do not remember I had a drinking problem. I stay vigilant and I never get complacent, but I do not live in dread that I may take a drink any minute.

I have learned through my teaching and from those who have taught me that to recover, a person first has to have hope. Hope leads to motivation, action and freedom. A good counselor or therapist can instill hope in an alcoholic.

Love and Light to all of you facing the fear of giving up your addictions – as well as all you gay and lesbian people, alcoholic, addicted or not – who have the courage to be who you are.

Sandy Scott, M.S., is a retired professor of mental health and human services at University College of Bangor.

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