Editor's Echo

Twenty-one years of sobriety and a lesson in gratitude

Sometimes sobriety is not about simply giving something up. It is about choosing life, one day at a time.

Mike and Lynette Spencer.

What does sobriety really mean? Is it simply giving up alcohol? Is it putting down the drugs? Is it making a decision one day that enough is enough and then never touching them again? For someone who has never experienced addiction, it is very easy to think that it is exactly that simple. I know because I once thought the same.

My husband, Mike, celebrated 21 years of sobriety this month. I can hear you cheer and congratulate him. Twenty-one years is an incredible achievement and he deserves every bit of recognition for the choice he made to change his life. Of those 21 years, I have known him for 19 and have been married to him for 14. Yet when I met him, I had absolutely no understanding of what alcoholism really meant.

Our paths first crossed when he and two friends walked into the Barberton Times office where I was working as editor. They wanted to start an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) group in Barberton. I helped them place an advertisement announcing the meeting.

When the group celebrated its first birthday, I attended the gathering. I remember being fascinated by these people who openly acknowledged that they were battling an addiction and had made the decision to stop. I had seen people stand up in movies and say, "My name is Sally and I am an alcoholic." Now, suddenly, I was sitting in a room where real people were doing exactly that.

At that stage, I thought I understood what I was witnessing. I didn't. It has taken the past two decades to begin to understand what sobriety really means, because sobriety is not simply about not having a drink.

I have watched my husband hold out a helping hand to people battling addiction. I have seen the tears when someone he sponsored relapsed. I have also seen the joy when someone managed to hold on, turn their life around and find a way forward.

I have seen the other side too. The funerals, the broken families, the devastation left behind when alcohol or drugs take control of a person's life. I have heard the late-night telephone calls when someone was drunk and he was desperately trying to reason with them or simply got in his car to go to them. There were times when it felt as though the problems of other people had taken over our lives.

Yet Mike never seemed able to simply walk away. When someone fell, he was there to help them get up. Sometimes they fell again and again. Sometimes he helped pull people out of places I would rather not imagine anyone having to be. Sometimes they eventually found their way to sobriety. Sometimes they didn't.

That, perhaps, is one of the hardest things about watching someone work a recovery programme. You learn that you cannot make the choice for another person. You can offer help and listen and encourage. You can stand beside them, but ultimately, the decision to change has to come from within.

I eventually joined Al-Anon because I wanted to understand what my husband and other families were going through. I wanted to understand what it was like to live alongside addiction and what it does to the people who love the person struggling with it. I am not sure I ever completely understood. Addiction was not something I had experienced in my own life. I had friends who drank heavily, but that was not the same as understanding the grip that addiction can have on a person and an entire family.

What I have come to understand, however, is that sobriety is work. It is a choice made again and again. It is facing another day without returning to the thing that once controlled your life. It is continuing to work the programme. It is reaching out to others when they need help. It is accepting that you cannot control everything around you.

For Mike, it has also meant holding on to his Higher Power and finding the strength to face whatever each new day brings. I don't think I will ever fully comprehend what that entails, but I have watched it and learned from it.

One of the things that has struck me most over these years is Mike's gratitude. He wakes up each morning grateful to be given another day. That may sound simple, but it is something I have come to admire enormously. Life is not always easy. We all have disappointments, frustrations, losses and struggles. Yet somehow, through everything, he has retained a positive outlook and an appreciation for simply being here.

He has also taught me that recovery is not only about saving yourself. Sometimes it is about reaching back and helping someone else climb out of the hole you once occupied. That is perhaps why the losses hurt so much. Every funeral is a reminder that not everyone makes it. Every relapse is a reminder that addiction is powerful. Every person who finds sobriety is a reminder that recovery is possible.

So when we congratulate someone on 21 years of sobriety, perhaps we should understand that we are not simply congratulating them for not drinking for 21 years. We are acknowledging 21 years of choices. Twenty-one years of facing temptation, pain, disappointment and other people's struggles. Twenty-one years of getting up every morning and choosing a different life.

Mike, I salute you.

You have shown me what gratitude really means. You have shown me that strength does not always mean being able to solve someone's problems. Sometimes it means simply being there when they fall. Your positive outlook on life, despite the setbacks, gives me strength to face another day knowing you are close by.

Despite knowing all your faults, as you know mine, you continue to accept me exactly as I am. You are one of a kind. Perhaps the words that best sum up what sobriety, recovery and life itself can teach us are found in the Serenity Prayer:

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

After 21 years, perhaps that is what sobriety ultimately means. Not perfection or an easy life, but the courage to keep choosing life, one day at a time.

𝓛𝔂𝓷𝓮𝓽𝓽𝓮.