Today marks the 30th anniversary of my decision to stop drinking. I call it my rebirthday. This was accomplished not by my willpower, it was accomplished only through a bizarre series of so-called coincidences that can only be attributed to Grace. If life is a school, some lessons are hard-learned. For me this was one of them and it took a whole lot of damage and misery to finally allow it to sink in that my life had become completely unmanageable due to my lifestyle choices.
The quitting was easy, maintaining required an outside source, for we who have a predilection to addiction are masters at rationalization. I needed, as most who get it do, a reality anchor.
Anyone who’s been on this path will readily tell you that life does not all of a sudden become beautiful overnight once the booze stops flowing. That false idea is in a large part responsible for the relapse rate, in my opinion. Life is still difficult, but when we make that decision to stop we embark upon a different arc in life’s continuum. We start to get outside of ourselves, a little at a time.
Thirty years along this continuum has not been perfect, far from it. But it’s better than the certain death that would’ve soon ensued had I not changed course. And the older I get, as for everyone, the more the specter of the end of days comes into focus.
We begin our lives essentially believing we’re immortal, to hold otherwise would seem to be a very morose life, indeed. As we travel our course in this “school” of life, notions of our mortality begin to creep in. Sometimes quickly, other times quite subtly, but generally in increasing amounts.
The last few years for me have had that mortality notion accelerated. As a “senior” now, my body is starting to break down. In the past four and a half years, I’ve had two serious heart attacks (the most recent one this past December was my closest call with eternity), have dealt with ulcerative colitis, and am currently dealing with a touch of bladder cancer. Prior to now only a few close friends know about the cancer.
I am publicly revealing these health maladies not to garner sympathy; the state of my health is actually quite common for my age group. Rather, it is to punctuate the need for us to be reflective about what we’re actually doing here.
And it is my belief, in an effort to confirm meaning in our lives, that we each have at least one mission to accomplish. The problem is only a very few of us actually know what that mission, or those missions, in fact are. The rest of us normally figure it out after the fact. So, given the mission is unknown, I think the best thing to do is to choose and follow one of the two base emotions: love. Then our missions will eventually reveal themselves, usually in a positive light.
Also, I’m not posting this to gather any congratulations on this milestone, either. It is not a victory, rather it’s the anniversary of a surrender. The final chapter has yet to be written, and we won’t know the full breadth until the Epilogue. It is instead hopefully an encouragement to those who are struggling with any kind of addiction that it is possible to have life afterwards, and a fulfilling life to boot.
It’s perhaps the hardest easy thing you’ll ever do: All you have to do is surrender.