Changes

Drunk off and on. Unable to cope without alcohol on a daily basis. Confused. Afraid. Frustrated. Unable to help others. Unable to help myself. Lonely. Depressed. Barely doing my job. Lots of conflict with other people.

That’s the way things were before recovery. Every once in a while it’s good to look back and remember how things were. It’s the “what I was like” or the “before recovery” me. There’s of course a lot more to my story than those few words above, but remembering even those feelings and some of the situations surrounding those feelings is therapeutic for me now. Especially when I feel those feelings in the here and now. And, yes. I still have those feelings from time to time.

Why remember those feelings? Mostly because they remind me that I didn’t know how to cope with those feelings. Things are different now. As I said, I still have many of those feelings (not all; I no longer think a drink will solve any problem). However, there are new ways – ways that actually work – to cope with the problems in my life. I’ve learned some things along this road to recovery. And looking back reminds me that I am no longer the same person in many ways than I was before 1999.

In the last month or so, I’ve been working on trying to put some structure into my days. I’ve learned in recovery that I’m a person who needs structure to live a good life. Without structure, I am left to thinking about things I shouldn’t think about or not thinking about the things I should be thinking about. For me, that usually leads to deepening depression. When I was first in recovery I needed someone to impose structure on my life. I needed other people to tell me what and when I should be doing something. When I would be discharged from the mental hospital, they would recommend some kind of “partial hospitalization” program for me so I would have structure in my life. Or I would have to call my AA sponsor everyday by a certain time to get my day started. I had checklists of things to get done in day, usually developed by someone else.

Now, however, I realize I’ve changed to a certain extent. I still need structure in my life, but I am capable of developing that structure without the structure having been determined for me. Don’t get me wrong. I still want help developing my weekly and daily schedules, but now I know how to get that help. And the people I go to for help usually ask me what I want to do when and then they just hold me accountable for doing it. That’s another change. In the past, schedules would be recommended for me and I’d rebel against keeping them. Now, I ask for help developing my own schedules and accept the accountability for keeping it.

That’s just one way I’ve changed. I have learned to cope with life on life’s terms as we say in AA. If I’m confused, afraid, lonely, depressed, frustrated, in conflict with other people, or struggling to do my responsibilities there’s people I can (and do) call for some help. And sometimes I just know what the next right thing to do is and I do it – without asking for help from someone else.