I had mentioned this to my sponsor before and I'm not sure what brought up the topic again recently but I told her about my fear of drinking if I ever face a tragedy in my life.
Despite all the past crap I’ve been thru and my whining about it here on my blog, sobriety has not been the struggle for me that it has been for other people. I was lucky that the obsession to drink was lifted from me early. I now recognize that I had my slip in April 2010 because I wasn’t working my program properly (no sponsor, no step work, not much of a network).
I’m not saying it’s been a breeze, because there have been days when I wanted to drink. But for the most part, my life is pretty good. I don’t have the stress of my marriage anymore, I am earning enough money to pay my bills and then some. My kids are happy and healthy and doing well in school. I have friends for the first time in years.
But sometimes I worry how would I handle something bad. What if I lost my job or someone I loved got sick or even worse. Would I retreat back to my old escape? Would I be able to cope with it? My track record shows I have not dealt well with stress in the past and chose to numb myself instead of facing it.
My sponsor brought up a few good points. She told me that I have tools that I didn’t have last year. Oh yeah, the handy dandy tool box. And then she said maybe this is my path in life. Maybe I deserve to be happy and at peace. Maybe God only gives people what they can handle. Would He really do this for me despite all that I have done? It’s an amazing concept.
It's about the foundation you're building. Of making it strong and the awareness we aquire through the steps. This awareness should let us know when we're going off track, when we're not dealing with things in our lives. We should have warnings, when we're not doing meetings or steps etc.
ReplyDeleteIn the event of a crisis we should have built enough of a support network that we have the foundation to hold us.