A frequent topic of conversation amongst people in any 12 Step recovery program from addiction is the first 24 hours of sobriety. Pretty much everyone always seems to mention how bad it was and how they never want to go back to that moment in time again. But ironically, I would and often wish I had access to H.G. Wells time machine so that I could return to my first 24 hours of sobriety from alcohol and drugs on June 11th, 1995, as then I would do everything I could to convince my younger self to head in the right direction in recovery, because frankly, back then, I didn’t.
While most people in their first 24 hours of sobriety are usually facing the wreckage from their addiction for the first time sober, I wasn’t facing much of anything other than trying to figure out if my same-sex attraction was being caused by my drinking and drugging. I had no serious health crisis’s, impending divorces, loss of children, jail time, financial debt, homelessness, potential job loss or anything of the sort, like so many others have said they faced in those first 24 hours.
In addition, while many began to detox in those first 24 hours of sobriety with the aid of the rooms of recovery or some other getting-sober-based program, I opted to detox myself. And by the time it ended, which was three months later, I patted myself on the back, allowing my ego to convince me that I didn’t need any type of recovery program, seeing how I made it through the detox all on my own. Because of that, I then embarked upon a 17-year journey of recklessness, substitute addictions, selfishness, battling God’s will versus Andrew’s will, and going through things I never would have had to go through if I had just begun working my recovery program in those first 24 hours.
Sadly, this all led to me having to experience the hell of those first 24 hours over and over and over again through that 17-year period. Anxiety and depression became reoccurring friends of mine. All that wreckage I didn’t initially have, happened later, because my diseased progressed, even in my sober state. Why? Because I had no spiritual solution and was still living with all that poison inside me, the same poison that drove me to be that alcoholic and addict in the first place.
Even worse, while many people usually only end up enduring one bottom when they initially become sober in life from their addiction, I would go on to endure not just one bottom, but many more, each growing deeper and deeper, until finally in 2011, I hit my worst, when I actually attempted suicide.
Thank God, I’ve worked my recovery program solid since then. Through it, I’ve learned that life tends to get more stable after those first 24 hours, so long as one keeps working on their recovery. And while I may have gone through a lot in the past 5 years and suffered from a number of things, I’ve remained stable enough to never return to that terrible moment of weakness when I attempted to kill myself.
I must say though that those first 24 hours after that moment in time when I attempted to take my life are definitely a set of hours I never wish to return to. And although I still wish I could use a time machine to return to June 11th, 1995 in the hopes that I may convince my younger self to begin working on my recovery then, maybe it was all meant to happen this way?
Maybe I was meant to experience all those repeated 24 hours over and over and over again, after attempting one failed solution after another, so that I would not only be able to pass it on to others who may be in their first 24 hours and wondering what direction to head in, but also to become fully convinced that the only solution for a stable life from addiction is God and the 12 Steps…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
