Why I’m Happy When Other People Relapse
Need help? Call our 24/7 helpline. 855-933-3480

Why I’m Happy When Other People Relapse

0
Share.

when people relapseWhen I went all-in with the great gamble of sobriety, I just assumed I’d become a totally different person. Everything I didn’t like about myself would get instantly ironed out: I wouldn’t be so thin-skinned; getting defensive wouldn’t be a reflex; I’d stop living life as though I wasn’t sure I’d zipped my pants all the way up. Maybe I’d even discover how to behave like a normal human being.

Alas, getting sober didn’t flip all my switches. Not even close.

Even now, I still eat Swedish Fish like it’s my job and find myself unreasonably impatient behind slow people in grocery store lines. But here’s my worst confession of all: while I’m very happy for whatever fortune comes your way, it’s only up to a point.

You got a promotion? Fantastic! (I hope you’re not making more than me now.)

You’re going on vacation? Great! (It’d better not be somewhere I’ve never been—or care to go.)

You went back out after 10 months of sobriety? Oh no! (I’m so glad you did.)

Let me clarify: I’m not thrilled you abandoned your sobriety for that quarter-glass of wine one of your dinner guests left behind while you washed the dishes; still, I’m really happy you told me.

I’m not convinced this makes me a terrible person, but it certainly makes me a selfish one. I can’t get enough of hearing about the dark, slippery logic that went into you deciding to drink when no one was looking. Mainly, it’s because I understand it. I may as well be peeling sunburned skin; I’m as repulsed as I am transfixed by your stories. One of the reasons why is that I need to be reminded that sobriety isn’t limbo, that this isn’t all temporary; this isn’t some brief period of time while I simply fool everyone around me that I’ve got my shit together.

There’s a crazy insecure, easily bruised voice inside me that sobriety hasn’t managed to dry out yet. And, to be honest, I’m glad it hasn’t. I need to be insecure in sobriety. I have to know that it doesn’t end well. I’m fascinated—utterly fascinated—by stories of old-timers who have decades of sobriety, vanish and then come back into the rooms, broken. I’m equally fascinated by the stories of drunks who have just the faintest whispers of sobriety—weeks here and there—and go back out, over and over and over again. If you have a story that starts out with “When I picked up again,” I’m hanging on every word. I’m in, man. I bought the ticket and I’m taking the ride. I listen like you’re telling me the disarm code to an atomic bomb counting down to zero.

I respect your stories as much as I respect how vulnerable I am in sobriety. I have a pretty good imagination, but I still need to hear just how black relapses can get.

Maybe my character flaws can sometimes be my saving graces. I’m not particularly thrilled to hear that your car blew a tire on the highway, but I’m genuinely glad it didn’t happen to me. That’s what I constantly wrestle with in sobriety: hearing stories of how bad it gets when we go back out, yet never entirely believing it’ll be like that for me. The Really Bad Shit always happens to other people. My sponsor tells me that I need to think of alcoholism as if there’s some part of my brain that’s never going to stop trying to kill me.

In early sobriety, I saw everything as a competition in the same way I saw everything as a threat. I lived for each and every one of those month coins. I was also conditioned to celebrate everything. Everything’s a milestone when you’ve first stopped drinking: your first sober birthday, your first sober New Year’s, your first sober concert. Life wasn’t measured in hours or days—it was measured in applause in meetings. Three months? Cue for applause! Five months? Cue for applause! Now, all I want to applaud is when someone has the courage to talk about their third DUI.

I’m less interested in the trigger of relapse as I am how something cracked an otherwise bulletproof sobriety. I hear myself in these stories; I write myself into them because I know that a relapse of my own probably wouldn’t take me back into an AA room. That’s why I listen to relapse stories with the sort of reverence I imagine families had when they gathered around their giant radios in the 1930s. I’m amazed that people who relapse even make it back into the rooms. In some ways, I think that’s more courageous than setting foot into an AA meeting for the first time.

When someone disappears from the rooms and comes back in five months later, that doesn’t make me happy. That keeps me alive. I need to have a nonstop, healthy fear of relapse. I have to know alcohol can always sneak in sideways—a new boss ordering me a glass of scotch on a business trip; wine poured for me at a friend’s house—and I have to respect that it can hit people who are holding onto 30 days or 30 years.

Recently, one of the regulars in my meeting—a gentleman in his 60s, tall and crooked like a vanilla bean—sat down next to me with a sigh. We nodded at each other and shook hands. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d been gone for months. I’d just assumed he’d been sitting somewhere else in the room. Turns out, he’d slipped on some black ice in the winter, broke his leg and very quickly found himself guzzling vodka. This guy had been a fixture when I’d first entered the rooms, so I assumed he was some kind of Sober Gandalf. He had a gentle eloquence whenever he spoke and what seemed like an almost mythical amount of sobriety under his belt. When he admitted to going back out, I felt dizzy—almost like I’d gone back out. I couldn’t reconcile it. I suddenly had more sober time than him. Later, I realized that not only are we all vulnerable—beautifully, delicately so—but we’re always rising and falling in relation to each other.

I need to know there’s black ice out there. I need to hear how bleak and desperate it gets after that first drink. After all, if we’re not vulnerable, our sobriety means absolutely nothing.

Any Questions? Call Now To Speak to a Rehab Specialist
(855) 933-3480
Share.

About Author

Paul Fuhr is an addiction recovery writer whose work has appeared in The Literary Review, The Live Oak Review, The Sobriety Collective and InRecovery Magazine, among others. He is the author of the alcoholism memoir “Bottleneck.” He's also the creator and co-host of "Drop the Needle," a podcast about music and recovery. Fuhr lives in Columbus, Ohio with his family and their cats, Dr. No and Goldeneye.