Iโm not sure if Iโve written this before but there is a saying among many people who attend 12 step meetings: when youโre sober, your alcoholism is in the corner doing pushups. Cured, you are not. That’s what it means. It means that there will always be a part of you that wants to drink, and it does not grow weaker over time. If you succumb to it, it will defeat you. If you drink, you will go right back to the place you were when you were absolutely powerless over it. That sounds scary, doesnโt it? I suppose it is. As of late, I have been witness to my alcoholic personalityโs enduring spirit through my fear of failure.
The thought of relapse has been on my mind recently. This is not surprising, I am only 233 days sober. I am still very early in my sobriety and the recovery process. Lately, I have also been depressed. I am fighting through a fifth step in my recovery, and am suffering serious self-doubt. My self-doubt is centered around a meditation method to fight the urges to drink in early sobriety that I plan to release in the coming weeks. It is a method that I developed for myself in my first weeks of sobriety that completely erased the urge to drink during the that crucial time. I am afraid it will not be received well.
I think that my fear of failing with this method is driving these thoughts of relapse. There is no urge to drink, but I do have the urge to run away from my fear. I know that if I relapse then I have no right to put this out to the world, even though it is in no way a promise to keep you sober, just a tool that helped me. But I also know that if I relapse, everything stops. I stop going to meetings; I stop talking to friends. I stop all progress and will again only want to drink so that I can wallow in my self-doubt. Itโs like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I fear I will fail so then I drink to make sure I fail.
It’s insane, I know. I will always have this person in me that thinks the only safe place to be is drunk. Maybe itโs only this hard the first year of sobriety. Maybe it will always be this hard. Thatโs not an easy thing to contend with, not knowing if dealing with my alcoholic personality will ever get easier. Most people say that it does get easier but then again, a lot of people relapse after years of sobriety. And thatโs another scary notion, that it will always be possible to relapse. Because as I have said earlier, once I start drinking, it wonโt be a slow transition back into addiction, but a continuation of where I was when I was brought my knees by alcohol.
I know that the only way through this is to continue my recovery. I do not know what will come of this journey to recovery, but I know what happens if I donโt continue it. Maybe thatโs where this fear of failure comes from; this age old cycle of improving myself only to watch it all go down the drain from alcohol abuse. I wonder how many times can I survive the absolute devastation of letting myself down again. Can I survive it this time if I drink? I donโt know if I can.
Another thing I have written plenty about is that second round of urges that hit me after the 100 day mark of sobriety. I had stopped doing the Alcoholic Personality Method because I foolishly thought my urges to drink were gone forever. The one thing that stopped me from relapsing was the fear of what would happen if I relapsed. In the past, I had the freedom of ignorance. Iโd never tried to quit for good so I never really explored my addiction to alcohol. I didnโt want to know because I didnโt really want to quit. Now that I know why I drink, I also know that relapsing is essentially giving up.
My fear of failing by relapsing saved me from relapsingโฆ that time.
Strange, I just spoke to my therapist about this. I told him I am deathly afraid of failure, and he told me that sometimes that can be a good thing. For example, going to work for fear of not being able to pay your rent or mortgage. Or eating healthy for fear of getting diabetes. And of course, not drinking for fear of killing yourself because thatโs where I fear I am going to if I relapse. I fear it will be for the long haul. Either I literally kill myself, or I do it the slow way; drink until my organs fail.
So I guess I only really have two options here. On the one hand I drink and hope that I donโt kill myself, or I continue down this road to recovery and see what I find. Maybe I find failure, and maybe that failure brings upon relapse. I donโt know. But again, it has to be better than the other option, right? I certainly hope so.
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