HOWTO Stay Sober

(This method worked just as well for abstaining from cocaine, and crack in particular. As of today, 6/30/08, it still is.)

To have a chance at staying sober a couple of things have had to happen to you, at least IMHO. First of all, you’ve had to have figured out that it’s the first drink that gets you drunk. I’d realized this by the time I was 19 and I’m not especially bright. I’m assuming you’ve come to the same conclusion if you’re a real alcoholic and have a desire to quit drinking. Second, you have to realize that hanging around the old people and places isn’t conducive to sustained sobriety. You don’t have to write them off. Just quit hanging around them.

Now this is where it gets tricky. A part of you has to want to stay sober. In fact, you have to want to stay sober more than you want to drink. Sobriety has to become the most important thing in your life. Period. More important than lovers, kids, family, jobs, hobbies — everything. You’re going to lose all that and more if you don’t stay sober. If you’re an alcoholic everything hinges on drinking or not drinking.

So then, what do you do to stay sober one day at a time? It’s very simple and relatively easy. It can be summed up in one sentence. Every morning before your feet hit the floor ask God to keep you sober for the day and every night after you’re bedded down thank God for keeping you sober that day.

“But I don’t believe in God” is almost certainly what many of you are saying about now. That’s totally irrelevant. If you want to stay sober and it’s your number one priority, those two simple prayers will do the trick. “But I can’t pray and/or don’t know how to pray!” No problem whatsoever. You can pretend to pray can’t you? Pretending to pray is every bit as effective as praying. I’m not sure what that says about the nature of God or the efficacy of prayer. That’s not what this is about. This about saving what’s left of your life. If you’re unwilling to pretend to pray for 2 seconds twice a day then you don’t want to stay sober very damn bad, now do you?

Now, if you want to enjoy your sobriety, you’ll need to do some other things. Find a good old fashioned AA group where they talk about alcoholism and the steps and not shame and inner-children. AA ain’t group therapy. It’s behavior modification plain and simple. So find said group, then a good AA sponsor who has been sober at least long enough to have worked the steps with his/her sponsor, start reading the Big Book, and most importantly start doing 12-step work.

In recovery, nothing, save perhaps sex with a pretty stranger, is as exciting as helping another drunk. And absolutely nothing is as rewarding. Do these simple things and before you know it you’ll have been sober for 90 days, six months, and years. Unless you are one of a very small minority you’ll be absolutely certain that God is indeed working in your life and keeping sober a day at at time. Your life will have meaning and purpose. You’ll have some wonderful friends. And you’ll live! Stop doing them for any extended period of time and in very short order you’ll forget who you are, forget the otherwise inexplicable miracle of your ever staying sober for a week, much less a year. You’ll become disillusioned. You’ll get drunk. The chaos will pick up where you left off if not further down the path to destruction.

All these things have played themselves out in my life over and over. If you really want to stay sober, they’ll work for you too unless you’re a sociopath, and maybe even then. Give it a try. Initially you have nothing to lose but four seconds out of every 24 hours. Even if you eventually get heavily involved in AA, it’ll cost only a fraction of the time and resources you once devoted to drinking.