If you want to keep it - Give it away

This is a concept that I have struggled with, and I know that many other people in recovery do as well, especially in the beginning. I remember feeling that my early sobriety was so fragile, so unsteady that I needed to build a fortress around it to protect it. In practice that meant being quite self centred. Recovery was my number one priority for a time. Ahead of everything else. I felt that I needed to prioritise meetings, phone calls and reading over time with my family. 

I do not regret that early behaviour, I knew that if I wanted to be the kind of person who could be the father my children deserved and if I wanted to be the husband that my wife deserved then I need to work on myself. I needed to make improvements. I needed to get sober. And that took some self centredness in the beginning.

But quite soon after amassing some stable sobriety I soon realised that I had been given a gift. I really felt like I had been shown the secret code to life. I really felt that I had a responsibility to share that with as many people as possible. Ultimately, not that too far into the past, I was in a place where I thought my life had no solution. And here I am living one. Believing that I am nothing special meant that there must be countless others living in hell with no idea on how life could be different. It quickly became much bigger than a feeling of responsibility and quickly became an obligation.

This is when outreach calls to fellows became a really important part of my program. It was something that took me a long while to get used to. I was not used to the idea of calling someone just for a chat. Up until this point all of my interactions on a phone have been massively transactional. Either one of us in the interaction was trying to get something, a favour, a lift, a confirmation of a fact etc.

But these calls were without an agenda. They were just to check in. To make sure someone was ok. Of course they quickly became a place to unload and to listen. A place to hold up a mirror, to challenge stuck thinking and to share lived experience. This truly became the first time I started to give my sobriety away. And in doing so my sobriety got even stronger. Each of those conversations helped to underpin the lessons I had been learning, helped me to see the flaws in my character. Helped me to continue working on myself.

This journey has made me realise that self improvement and sobriety are things that are impossible to quantify. That means that when you do ‘give it away’ what you have left is not any less than what you started with. And in a paradoxical way you actually end up with more.

The best way I can try and explain it is like a spider plant. Rather than setting seeds they grow this little miniature plants that hang off the original. You can take these ‘new’ plants off and the original stays exactly as it was before. No less, no more. Not damaged. Not affected. But you also have a new plant. Something that can go in its own pot and become a plant in its own right.

And that is how I see sobriety.

Having said all of this. I do think that what you give away, to who and when, is something that you should be careful about.

I remember, in my early stages of recovery, I felt that I was learning so much. I was gaining so many tools which were making my life better. I really did start to see the whole world in a completely different way. This meant that I thought I held the solutions to the problems that my children were facing. And with ego front and centre, I began to lecture my children. Tried to get them to see the error of their ways. Tried to get them to see that the way that I was choosing to live my life was better.

You have probably already realised that that was not going to end well, and it didn't. My children did not appreciate my interference. They did not appreciate my wisdom.

I think you even have to be careful with ‘giving it away’ to people who ask for it. Not everyone is ready to hear the whole journey. Not everyone is ready for the self reflection.

But where people are willing and are asking I really do feel that you should give away as much as you have capacity for. Because from my experience it will only make your sobriety stronger.

I felt that I had more capacity for giving than just through fellowship. That is why I started THERE IS ANOTHER WAY. It allows me to give away more, without forcing it onto people.

And THERE IS ANOTHER WAY is actively growing.

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