It’s relatively easy for one to take great pride in the number of years they’ve remained sober from an addiction. But, I’ve come to believe that the amount of time sober means absolutely nothing if a program of recovery isn’t being worked throughout one’s entire life. In other words, it’s about talking the talk, AND walking the walk.
I say this only because I’ve met a number of people over the years with a good amount of sober time who I wouldn’t ever suggest to a newcomer to follow in their footsteps. Just because an individual is showing up at plenty of meetings, sharing eloquently and inspirational at many of them, and even sponsoring others, doesn’t necessarily mean they have a great recovery program, because a recovery program runs throughout a person’s entire life, both inside and outside the rooms.
Sadly, I know all about this because my deception used to run very deep, even when I was being abundantly active in the rooms.
Case in point, I once was sponsoring five people at a time through the steps, going to meetings every single day, and doing quite a number of leads where people repeatedly felt moved by the message I had, yet behind the scenes, I was still resentful at much of the world, doing childish behaviors when I wasn’t getting my way, and having sex conduct that was growing more and more out of control and unhealthy by the day.
So, while I may be rapidly approaching twenty-two years of sobriety come June this year, I really see things extremely different now and realize that a healthy recovery is far more than someone’s length of sobriety and how they portray themselves in and around the rooms. In fact, it’s more about what’s going on behind the scenes, away from those rooms that really shows a person’s true recovery.
That’s why I frequently ask myself questions now such as:
How am I treating my friends?
Am I often attempting to control everyone and everything around me?
Do people feel uplifted or drained when they spend time with me?
Am I giving more than taking, and being selfless more than selfish on most days?
These are a just a few of the self-assessment questions I occasionally ask myself to make sure I’m not slipping back into any of my old deceptive ways, where I would fully convince myself that my long-term sobriety meant something, when it didn’t actually amount to much because of the way I was living outside the rooms of recovery.
That’s why I often tell newcomers these days to not be so in awe when they see someone accepting say a 40-year medallion, because the number of days sober truly means nothing if one is only talking the talk. To assess whether that’s true or not, it’s best to take some time and get to know a person outside the rooms, as it won’t take long to see whether they really are the healthy recovering person they claim to be. In most cases, within a few times of hanging out, you’ll usually be able to see the inherent truth.
Trust me, anyone who used to hang out with me back when I was being overly deceptive in the rooms, would instantly know how sick I still was by the number of sexual innuendos and judgments that habitually came out of my mouth.
But these days it’s even easier to asses this by randomly glancing at a recovering person’s Facebook page if they have one. As what they regularly post on either their timeline or others usually paints a pretty good picture of how their overall recovery life essentially is.
The bottom line is this. It’s easy to talk the talk, especially as one’s sober year’s grow. But that’s never a good benchmark to measure whether a person is actually walking the walk. Recovery from addiction is as much about what happens outside the rooms of recovery, as it is with inside of them as well. But ultimately, it’s important to never forget that the truest test of a healthy recovery can often be when in the presence of no one, where only God can fully see the real you…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
