Life doesn't get easier just because we stop drinking and/or using.
Many people and myself at one time have been under the impression that when we stop drinking or using drugs life suddenly just gets easier. That is not a realistic assumption. We simply get better at handling life.
I don't know about the rest of you but I am a real alcoholic. For many, many years my life was all about where I was going to plant myself that evening in order to drink. All the way back to childhood as far back as I can remember, I ran from everything. I was afraid of life and the only thing I knew how to do was run from it. I learned early how to numb the pain of life by drinking myself to intoxication.
When I finally got sober I learned that one of the great truths in life is that life is tough. I didn't really know this because I had been missing in action. I came to understand that once I accepted the fact that life was tough, the fact that life was tough no longer mattered and I learned how to excel in life.
Sobriety promises us many rewards that we never had before but life does not give us any guarantees simply because we are now sober. I had to learn how to live all over again if I was going to stay sober.
One of the practices that I learned early on in my sobriety was to never put expectations on anything in life. When we put expectations on people or our plans we are setting ourselves up for great disappointment which could eventually result in us using all over again. And for me to drink is skating on thin ice.
Most of the time I do pretty good with not placing expectations on my life but sometimes I forget. Tonight was such a night. I'm a truck driver/auto transporter. I've been trying for a few weeks to get into a particular shop in a particular place but every week something happens that forces me to have to cancel. I was delivering to my last stop today in Louisville, Kentucky.
I got one of my cars unloaded and I had two more to go. When I slid one of my decks back which involves hydraulics I blew a hydraulic line. To make a long story short I sat for four and a half hours in vain because they didn't have the right parts in the service truck.
I am now sitting in a hotel writing about this great disappointment. Once again I will have to reschedule getting into that shop. When I drove away I was really angry and cussing about it all. Why was I angry? Because things weren't going my way. This resulted from me putting expectations on things like I just got done writing about. I took a hot shower and I've had some time to think about it and I realized that I set myself up for that disappointment by placing expectations on the whole situation.
Oh and just for the record, I never once thought about picking up a drink. That's just something that doesn't happen anymore. I relapsed in 2011 after almost 9yrs sober and it cost me 3 years of being out there and that is why I am always writing to other people about believing what I call the big lie.
So if you are thinking about drinking or you are struggling with something in your own life I hope that you can apply some of what I just wrote about and remember that you will get better as long as you stay in recovery and don't drink or use.
There is a slogan that reads:
Plan the action/Not the result.
I hope that I helped someone out with this post.