When I was first getting off the addiction ride I went a meeting everyday which was pretty much run by to guys (Bob & Al) with a lot of sober days under their belts. It was a morning meeting called ‘The Eye Opener’ in Portland, OR. I remember one of the regulars would often mention one of these senior members when he was speaking to the group. He’d tell of how Bob would respond when he’d want advice on some personal crisis he was having.

He’d kind of smile say, “No matter what I’d be going through Bob would say – Well, if you don’t drink and keep coming to meetings that stuff will just work right out”. I remember sitting there all sweaty and ringy thinking, “That’s what he came up with after 40 years sober?” I didn’t understand. I figured Bob might be some sort of group mascot or something. I figured after forty years you’d have a bunch of systems and practices to offer so when people were going through “A” you’d say, “Okay, for A, we do this and this and then….”. Not, don’t drink and keep coming to meetings.

That was then. What I’ve come to understand is about 90% of the things we go through when we start going to meetings and quit taking whatever it is we were taking “Works right out” if we stay sober and keep going to meetings. The big deals and crisis’s lose whatever emotional seriousness they had and most of the time we forget all about them. The girlfriend or boyfriend is replaced, the money gets made, the place to live comes along, we quit hanging around people that drive us nuts, we stop overreacting to every little emotional situation, and our lives become manageable.

One of the big reasons things get better “If we don’t drink and keep going to meetings” is our bodies (and brains) detoxify. We start to get more sleep and so on. One of the best skills we can develop is living in, or at least recognizing, the present moment. Most of the time what really drives us crazy are the thoughts of what might happen in the future, usually due to something we’ve done in the past.

What spurred me into writing this is I’ve been interacting with people who are new to getting clean. Virtually all of them vacillate between remorse over the past and fear of the future. Neither of which are at hand – so there is no reason to dwell on them. Living in the past or the future will kind of freeze us – we get stuck. There is only one place we can do things. That place is here and now.

I’d like to close remembering what Al used to say every time I saw him. He’d smile and say, “It’s a great day to be sober”.