The Greatest Gift

Accept the challenge you are facing. It may become your greatest gift.

Yesterday was a nice, humming morning. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. and got my workout done early, I started outlining what I hope *fingers crossed* will be my book, paid my bills enjoyed my coffee and picked up Jax.

I just have to pause here and reflect on that. Because that alone is worlds away from where I started this journey. In my drinking days 5:30 a.m. was my cut-off to stop drinking before I tried to go into work. Working out wasn’t even a possibility and responsibilities like caring for another being or opening my mail… let alone paying my bills, would be impossible.

Having written and adulted rather effectively, I decided I’d add on another good decisions and instead of pumping another cup of coffee into my already over-caffeinated body, switch over to herbal tea.

Tea has been critical to my sobriety, and I don’t think I ever realized the true healing or centering powers of a good cup of hot tea until I gave up alcohol.

I remember one of the first times I ever thought that this whole sobriety thing might not be that impossible was actually while drinking tea. It was early, early on, shortly after my first in-patient detox but in the stage where I wasn’t quite ready to admit if I was an alcoholic or not. It was clear to everyone else, but I was still struggling, fighting to put days together, proudly reporting day counts throughout my support system one day, only to disappear on them into a bender the next.

It was a Saturday night and Blake and I had successfully made it through date night without me drinking. When we got back to my apartment he suggested tea and a movie, a concept, which to me, was a foreign as showing up at a wedding in a white gown. Nestled beside Blake clutching a cup of ginger tea and watching Sicario, I knew I was going to make it through that night without drinking. And for the first time ever, I thought maybe I could make it through life without it too.

Yogi tea has become a favorite for me, mostly because the crunchy warm and fuzzy brand makes me feel wholesome and like I’m actually becoming a better human. Also, because the tea bags come with their little fortunes, like this one I got today.

Accept the challenge you are facing. It may become your greatest gift.

Clearly whoever wrote this tea tag was talking about sobriety.

Getting sober has been the greatest challenge of my life, and it has given me the greatest gift I’ve ever received.

Have you ever met a “grateful alcoholic?” They’re all over the place. I see them most often at support groups, but there are a lot of people who are so happy to be sober that they’ll gladly tell you they’re grateful for their disease, because it gave them the life they have today.

When I was first getting sober I thought those people were fucking batshit crazy, not to mention obnoxiously annoying. Having to admit my alcoholism, at that point, was the worst thing I had ever had to do. It felt like a life sentence and those people pretending like it was some great opportunity didn’t compute to me. From where I stood there was nothing to be grateful for. My life was over.

The first time I ever went to an inpatient IOP, right around the same time as the aforementioned date night/tea time epiphany, was the first time anyone had ever pointed out to me the difference between quitting drinking and getting sober. It was all a matter of perspective: you could look at it as giving up drinking, never being able to have another drink again in your life, ever. Or you could look at it as gaining sobriety. Little did I know how much that small shift in thinking could completely turn this thing around.

Sitting here today, I can’t pinpoint for you exactly when I started thinking of my sobriety as a blessing opposed to fixating on my alcoholism as a death sentence. I just know that somewhere along the way, something flipped and today I’m so grateful for this life and my sobriety, that I wouldn’t trade my sobriety for anything, especially not another drink.

Before sobriety, I didn’t actually know if I had gifts, let alone what they were. Over the past 11 months I’ve learned more about myself than I had in the past 31 years and wow, have I been blessed. Sobriety has allowed me to see my life not as a victim who slogged through three decades, but as a survivor with the benefit of life experiences that have positioned me to have a whole bunch of meaningful life wisdom at this “young,” age.

God, just saying that demonstrates a shift in my thinking.

I was 27 when I first realized that my drinking was problematic and I remember wondering why I had to be the one to get sober at that age. I resented older people in my support programs who would tell me how lucky I was to have gotten sober so young, they’d wished for that opportunity. It took a lot of self-restraint to not punch them in the face. In the beginning I would gladly have traded my early arrival at the doors of abstinence for their added years of partying. I was too young to be an alcoholic. I thought. Surely I had a few more years on me?

From where I stand now, it’s hard to reconcile the years I wasted thinking that. Even when I was trying to get sober, there was always this sneaking suspicion that there was no way this could be it… I thought I had more time.

Now, I’m able to agree with those older folks who pointed out the blessing of my early entrance to sobriety. In fact, I now catch myself telling younger alcoholics how lucky they are for having made it to help so early in life, recognizing that look of “how do I not punch this person?” in their faces before moving on.

I know this shift of thinking took place sometime before this summer, because back in May I’d asked Blake to order me a copy of Laura McKowen’s We Are The Luckiest. I’d heard of it before, but I remember bristling at the title, unwilling to hear that being an alcoholic was any form of luck. My mom read it this spring and benefitted deeply form Laura’s fearless candor and brave honesty, suggesting I may find it helpful. As I devoured the book on our family vacation at Hilton Head Island, I did catch myself in a moment of reflection, realizing that I no longer questioned McKowen’s title or description of “the surprising magic of a sober life.” That’s the perfect way to describe sobriety, it’s surprisingly magical.

I thought sobriety was the end of my life as I knew it. It turned out it was only the beginning. Today I see that little tea tag and think of how wide open my world became when I got sober. For me, achieving sobriety was the challenge of a lifetime, but now I get to live the rest of my life in the best way possible. It truly has been the greatest gift I’ve ever received.