Addiction Recovery: The Single Most Important Thing

I get this question from people all the time. That, or I get people thinking I have some magic answers. Like I have a specific addiction recovery method that I’m promoting. The short answer is, “I don’t”.

People may wonder, at this point, then how did I get off drugs? I must have the answer if I’m sober – right? The truth is – there is no “Answer”. I have a few people whom I refer to as mentors. These aren’t what’s commonly referred to in 12 step programs as sponsors. These mentors are people I have chosen to talk with about things. They are people who have a lot of time sober.

One of these told me how he asked one of his mentors this question, “What do I have to do to stay sober”? The answer he got was, “I don’t know”. None of us know. None of us know what a person needs to do to stay sober. There is always this: Don’t take anything to get high.

I guess that would be considered an answer, but nobody likes hearing it. Here is another question, “If I follow the suggestions laid out in the 12 steps, will I be able to stay sober”? Or, if I follow them “will” I stay sober? Well, what do you think? What do you think my answer would be? There is only one way to stay sober – don’t drink. True, but not really helpful to the newcomer. The question always remains, “How do I not drink”? The answer is always the same, “I don’t know”.

There are people who claim they know what needs to be done for the individual to remain sober. They might say something like, “Follow the 12 steps”, and you’ll be okay. Some say that if we give control of our lives to a power greater than ourselves – we’ll be okay. We’ll stay sober. These are just words.

There are few absolutes in life. Although – If you don’t drink, you won’t get drunk – is an absolute, it’s fairly worthless information (just words) to the struggling newcomer.

So what’s the answer? I guess this is what I suggest people remember – There is no answer, but there are things we can do. What are they? Of course that’s a great, and obvious, question. One answer is we can go someplace where other people are getting and staying sober and copy them. In fact this is probably the first step in the right direction.

It’s pretty basic right? Stop doing that and start do this. Stop going there and start going here. Stop finding fault and start listening. All of a sudden we are doing something different and we’ll discover we’ve been sober for hours – sometimes days.

You know, I’ve never written a complete page on this website? For example, I have a page titled honesty. It’s not complete. I don’t have all there is on honesty there. I could examine honesty and write about it until I filled an entire book. People do it, have done it. The website is written so that if a person starts at the beginning they get introduced to some ideas and given something to do as they go along. If you read everything here and did everything suggested you wouldn’t be done finding things out about staying sober.

I don’t know if there is an end to anything. I no longer work at staying sober. I don’t have to try and not take drugs. All that means is I did enough so I don’t have to deal with that. I’m not done studying. I’m not done learning. Obviously I’m not done finding out about addiction – or writing about addiction.

Anyway, back to that page on honesty, and doing things. I get to watch what visitors do when the come to the site. I can see that lots of people arrive at the page on honesty (from search engines). A large percentage of them leave immediately. I figure a lot of these people are looking for “The Answer”. Others read the whole page. I can tell because they stay for 5 or 6 minutes. Others read the page on honesty then read another, and another, watch some video or listen to some meditation audio and so on. Who has the best chance of getting something useful from the website? Which person would you say had the best chance of staying sober?

I’ll give my best advice – work at staying sober like your life depends on it. Work at it like your happiness depends on it. Work at it like it’s the single most important thing in the world. Will that keep you sober? I don’t know – do it and see what happens.