Wisdom Of The Rooms - 2020

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October 19

Quote of the Week

"Quitting is easy; staying quit is a bit more tricky."

For the longest time, I didn’t think I had a problem with my drinking; I had quit many times. And at first the real problem didn’t appear to be staying quit either, because I had done that for over a year one time. No, the problem for me was that the period of staying quit got shorter and shorter. After a while, not drinking for two days in a row was out of the question, and toward the end, quitting was just as impossible as staying quit. I finally had to surrender.

When I entered recovery, I heard something that didn’t quite make sense. Someone told me that alcoholics didn’t have a problem with drinking, they had a problem with not drinking. He said that’s why quitting is easy, and he admitted he had done it hundreds of times. The trick, he said, is staying quit. And to do that, we need the Twelve Steps. As I began to work the Steps, I began to discover many of the reasons I struggled to stay quit, and I learned tools to help me figure out the tricky part of staying sober.

What I’ve learned in recovery is that I had a problem with living and that alcohol seemed to fix that problem. When I drank, I was suddenly confident, unafraid, good-looking, and hopeful. When I was sober, I was just the opposite. The gift I’ve found by working the Twelve Steps is that I’m finally that comfortable in my own skin. It is now easy to stay quit because life sober is no longer tricky. The answer, I have found, is that today I know how to live life on life’s terms.