I should clarify first, that I am in early recovery, you have been warned. Sober recovery can be summed up in four words for me: Honesty, Open-mindedness, Willingness, and Commitment. For most individuals with experience in a recovery program, H.O.W. is probably familiar. And everyone has committed to something right? This is what those four words mean to me.
Honesty is simple, right? Not so much for me. I am a natural liar and then the U.S. government sent me to school to perfect the art of manipulation. I am really good at manipulating people to get what I want and I can lie to myself and believe it. With that being said, I have to be brutally honest with myself, my higher power, and my sponsor. It is a raw honesty that I don’t want a lot of people to have to deal with because it could be harmful. My higher power can take it and expects it. My sponsor can take it and I have to have that as part of my relationship with him; if he couldn’t, then I would be looking for a different sponsor. Most importantly, I have to be able to look into that mirror and be brutally honest with myself. I have to acknowledge, sometimes out-loud that I screwed up royally, and remind myself the extreme consequences of my past drinking. I am not doing it out of some masochistic sense of martyrdom or I think I am a terrible human being – but I am when I drink. That raw honesty is to hold myself accountable, acknowledge my past wrongs, with the hope of being better each and every day.
Secondly, I have to be open-minded which has been a huge hurdle for me. Initially, it was just being open-minded enough to separate religion from spirituality. To allow myself the safe space to explore any connection I could find with something external as I have a lot of baggage when it comes to religion. However, being open-minded isn’t limited to my nascent connection to investigate my own spirituality; I have to work each day to be open-minded to others’ spiritual connection and their concept of a higher power yet be confident in my own connection. Otherwise, I get jealous, judgmental, and resentful when I compare my faith to others which stokes my insecurities, depression, and anxiety, resulting in drinking.
Then there is willingness. This one sucks because I have an ego that typically doesn’t fit into the same room as me. I want to do it my way because I think I used to be a badass special operator and Army officer. I have badges, tabs, and awards galore testifying to my badassness. Key phrase is “used to be.” It is not my identity anymore, nor was it my true identity. More importantly, where I always succeeded in the past through in-depth planning, knowledge, physical prowess, and sheer determination, I could not stop drinking to the best of my ability (Step one was rather difficult for me). So, I have to kill my ego daily, and be willing to take the advice and wisdom from the Big Book, other recovery literature, my sponsor, and those that have a track record of solid, long-term recovery. I have to be willing to accept the path my higher power has put me on and be willing to just do the next right thing, always.
Finally, there is commitment. For me though, there are different levels of commitment. I can say “oh I am committed to a life of recovery,” and that feels disingenuous, flippant, or hypothetical at best. I have to bring a ferocious commitment each day to my recovery. The closest feeling I can relate it to is one of the worst days in my combat experience. My small element of about 11 Americans with some Afghani army soldiers was ambushed by approximately 275 Taliban. We were worse than black on ammo and everyone was pretty much out of water. We had casualties. We got a resupply of ammo that was dumped from a Blackhawk into the middle of an open field. Another American and I ran into the field to retrieve the two aviator’s kit bags full of ammo and water. I struggled to lift the bag. I ended up dragging it 75 feet back to the compound. Every step was excruciating. I felt like I was dragging an M1A2 main battle tank through mud. But failure was not an option. I was committed to getting that bag back to my brothers. It was simple, if I left that bag out in the open, all of us would probably die. I had a strength that I never felt before. As a high level athlete with delusions of the Olympics in my future once upon I time, I thought I knew my own strength. No, the ferocious strength that flowed through me that day was different. It came from an external source. This is what I mean by being committed to my program of recovery. It comes from outside of me, from my higher power.
My recovery sometimes feels like that aviator’s kit bag. Failure to work my program of recovery will absolutely end in catastrophe for myself and the ones I love the most. Failure is not an option. Commitment means making tough decisions – doing things that I typically don’t do (thinking back to H.O.W.). When I channel this commitment for example, that 1,000lb cell phone may still feel 1,000lbs but I have the strength to lift it and call someone when I feel ready to break. When I am ferociously committed, I listen to my brother in addiction instead of blowing him off because it is my gym time. It is me telling a family member who is having a bad day, that while I really want to listen to them and understand what made their day so rough, that I am sorry, but I have to hang up the phone and go to a meeting right now. But I will call them as soon as I am done and my level of focus on them will be much more thorough. Is this a selfish callousness to how others feel? Do I go against the concept of self-care? I don’t think so. If I don’t ruthlessly at times commit to my program of recovery then I will relapse, either physically by drinking or relapse mentally, emotionally, and/or spiritually and that makes me worse than useless to everyone including me. Most importantly, I make the choice to not drink every single day and I employ honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, and commitment to make that choice a reality.
