“What’s the use of staying sober?”

Do I sometimes wonder; “What’s the use of staying sober?”

Sue de Bruyn a good friend asked me this question today. And it seems it one of those questions we know the answers to and even know we knew the question was there somewhere, but never really considered exactly what the answer would be unless the question is physically asked.

In the beginning of my sobriety this question haunted me probably every waking moment of every waking day. However as time went by I think there is somewhere in every drunks sobriety a fine line in time. A line where the idea of alcohol and planning your life around it, and being constantly conscious of the need for it is crossed in sobriety. It has certainly been for me a line that I was not consciously aware of crossing until I was confronted with this question. It was then that I realized within myself. How I used to be and how I am now with regards to that constant awareness of alcohol and the need for it that needs to be suppressed.

Looking back on the year of 2011 I can honestly say that every single reason to drink again was represented to me by life.

Things ranging from deaths of close friends, a struggling business, having to let go of people that has been loyal to me because of the necessity of cutting down on expenses due to a divorce, a wife that has had an affair before and disguised a second one with blaming me for everything that has gone wrong in her life while separating from me without having the decency to ask for a divorce. But rather chose to pursue a second relationship without honesty. Honesty that I had given her when I felt that need.

Those are but a few things, and if I had to start listing the individual events, it would most certainly take me along the route of considering drinking again, as has happened on numerous occasions.

However I think that line that gets crossed of being constantly aware of a craving or need for a drink becoming less prominent leads to another line, one where we become aware of the things we have gained by staying sober. And for me the value in my darkest hour of sobriety far surpasses the state of my life in its best hour while drinking.

Thinking back on a chaotic life where there was no direction no plan and no real friendship or relationship worthwhile and comparing that to what I have found in sobriety makes the choice so glaringly obvious that the action of drinking would equal having healthy legs amputated.

I have gained three years of a sexual relationship with my wife, as well as a relationship as a whole. I have also lost her through choices of both my own and hers but the time she gave me still remains precious. And that I still value daily.

I have gained a life shared with my son, one that was marred by drinking every day, the lack of respect from others because I was present but absent. And I managed to turn that around in sobriety. Becoming a man he can look up to because I am not constantly under the influence.

I went back to exercising, I lost my massive stomach (23 kg so far) and go to gym, because the drinking time is now gym time. This gave me an ability to do physical activities with my son that I would never have been able to while drinking.

I can go swimming with him sober and not drunk and incapable of looking after myself never mind a 5 year old.

My now separated wife agreed to joint custody. A trust I would never have deserved or gotten in a drinking life.

 The business decisions I make I can make with confidence and without regret.

I have gained a state of financial independence, I am not rich and there are still months that are rough. But I can manage to stay credit worthy. Pay my bills and even buy my kid a present every now and again. Even though I am now paying for a household on my own that used to be supported by a substantial second income. I am surviving, something that would not have happened while I was drinking.

Sobriety have given me so much that the days when I ask myself whether there is use in staying sober I only have to look at what I have gained in sobriety to prevent myself from amputating my legs while they are healthy and functioning. 

Spiritual Awakening.

I drove today. There was nothing different from usual. There was nothing strange, weird or wonderful. Actually to the contrary. It was a cold winter’s morning. It was really cold… Also the trees had no leaves. The sky seemed paler than usual, the grass next to the road seemed dried out more than it should be for the time of year. There was a dusty feeling from dry wind and cold and dreary winter as you can only feel at the tip of Africa.

In actual fact, what I saw this morning was no different from what I truly hate about winter. As an African, born and bred, raised and part of this continent in the deepest sense. The dust of the earth has formed part of my DNA through generations I am sure. The cold from the few months of winter is something that almost feels like it goes against the very nature of the dark hot sweaty continent.

But today I drove in silence, a diesel motor accompanying the hum of rubber on tar. Window open and the drive silence that can sometimes be so calming suddenly just swept over me. I realized that for close on two and a half years I have been sober. I realized that for two and a half years I have not had a drink or a hang over or that indescribable sense of loss, regret, self pity, pity for those who have to deal with me, insecurity, self loathing and most of all that sense of something lost that you can not put a name to until you have lived life. After a night of drinking.

I realized in that instant how beautiful this winters day was. I realized in that moment how some must feel when they have a spiritual awakening. I would love to have given it the same name. But I decide to not do that. Every day of my life, it is part of my sobriety and sanity. It is what works for me. And I have decided to leave the rest.

I realized this morning, how beautiful the earth we inhabit is. I stood in awe of the wonderful things that surround me everyday, the mere wonder at how far the human species must have come through millions of years of evolution. The grand scale of everything surrounding me made me realize how grand sobriety was. How it seemed like a massive accomplishment now looking back at time and then realizing that it was no gift… that it was not something achieved from allowing anyone to take my worries away, but that it seemed this beautiful on this ugly day because life and what surrounds us is beautiful. If we only open our eyes and look, look at nature’s accomplishments.

When we look at another living creature and that realization kicks in that through millions of years of evolution the magnificence of each of that animals forefathers’ fight for survival has culminated in what you look at. That is no small feat. That is no small thing. That is something some would like to attribute to a higher power. That is something some would like to believe was created. I believe that those who can not open their minds and see what has evolved around them can not evolve in themselves.

My evolution from drunken Christian to sober atheist has been nothing less than miraculous. It has been nothing short of a roller coaster ride and it has been no small feat. But in the grander scheme of things, hopefully my evolution will result in those after me having less to evolve from than I did.

It is a beautiful morning in Africa, and it feels like I am home.

Rock Bottom

Sometimes when we love, we love with everything we have; the person we place our trust in is the centre of our existence. That person becomes the reason for everything. You work, because you want to give them the absolute best you can.

You arrange your life for their convenience, you do things to try and win their love, their approval. I know this sounds unhealthy, and thinking that will not be wrong. It is. However when you are living it, it feels right.

The day I met my wife, she became my reason to live. I know now that in my alcoholic mind I did everything I could to win her approval. However we alcoholics do not do things like other “normal” people when we drink. In my case this meant that I tried to do everything I could in support. I made sure there were cooked meals for her. I made sure the house cleaning did not have to be done by her. I made sure washing was taken care of.

But what I failed to realize was that as long as I was drinking, it did not matter how much of myself I gave to her in other ways, because I was not truly giving all of myself it everything else could and would never be enough. I was not giving myself, not in the true sense of the word. Instead I gave her heartache and sorrow of a kind that would make her see the person that she fell in love with become a degenerate. And then the inevitable happened. She pushed me away. And in that I experienced rejection. Rejection that was evident in the way she talked to me and the way she made love.

Unfortunately I was not the one she was making love with. She had found another man that could give her what she truly needed. A man that could offer her a strong shoulder.

A man that could listen. A man that could give her advice. A man that would not necessarily always give her advice but also sometimes just listen. Where she could get rid of emotional baggage, where she found safety and understanding. Where she found sobriety in another human being away from the crazy world that I had led her into.

She had an affair, an affair of the worst kind. An affair where she found love.

No amount of love that I could offer in that time could have ever compared to the love that she must still have had for me, I was a weak and egocentric alcoholic. Yet she stayed. In some way I should be thankful that she found someone else to give her sober orgasms. Because that quite possibly saved my live.

When I found out about her affair. I had reached a rock bottom where my life did not just smash to pieces in seconds. I had reached a rock bottom where the one person that I had placed on a pedestal and whom in my eyes was above all suspicion in the world. In a few long soul wrecking days she became a slut to me, became human. This opened my eyes to see her human needs. This woke me out of a drunken stupor for long enough to realize that I needed help to end the insanity and self centered egotistical life I had been leading. I was confronted not only with her humanity and flaws, but also with her need for a sober man. A man that could be a man and not a bag of wind.

Thus when I sobered up I went to a place where I could find crazy people like me. People who would understand the emotional sewerage that my life had become. People who would see themselves in me.

That day my life began. That day I realized how much I did love my wife. That day that I thought everything I knew was gone.

I only now realize that I stood at the first day of the rest of my life then. The things that came after this has been utterly amazing and thrilling and life changing.

That is where my rock bottom was, where I began to become human again. The day she found honesty, was the day I found the small road to sobriety. And what a road its been.