Sobriety

I celebrated 30 years of sobriety yesterday. I was asked how I would celebrate and said I texted all I know and love that it was my 30th anniversary. I received many wonderful return texts. And when my sponsor gets back from Croatia, she and her boyfriend will take me out to eat. I feel blessed and fortunate to have the sobriety that I do.

Celebrating took me right back to my last drunk at ten years sober. It wasn’t pretty. I was suicidal and wanting to jump to my death. I knew I had to be good and drunk to do this. I went to the grocery store and bought all the booze I had not tried plus my favorite, Bacardi 151. There was much I hadn’t tried seeing as I had stopped drinking in 1983. I found wine coolers to be disgusting.

After purchasing my booze, I climbed to the top of a hill. Hill is the keyword here. It was no mountain. Had I have jumped, I believe I probably would have just broken a wrist or maybe a leg. I still proceeded to get good and drunk. I vomited all over myself. I wondered how I was going to walk home. It was a fifteen minute walk and I was staggering, barley able to stand up. That’s when a red Mustang pulled up in front of me. The gentleman in the car informed me that he was on the hill with his bible study group and that he had seen me from afar looking like I might need some help. He told me that being there was exactly what God wanted. He was meant to drive me home. I got in his car. He drove me home. I think I managed to thank him.

Waking up the next morning, of course I was upset that I had destroyed my ten years of sobriety and would be starting over. But the thing I really knew was that I wanted to be sober if alive and that I couldn’t exist without the loving support of other sober people. The fellowship of other alcoholics has raised me.

It’s been 25 or more years since I’ve been suicidal. I credit this miracle to God having performed a miracle with my state of mind. I believe in prayer. In the morning, I pray for my sobriety and desire to live. At night, I thank God for my sobriety and life. Psychiatric medication has also played apart.

Today, I feel the breeze and it does not knock me over. I stand strong even in the wind. The trees let go of their leaves. I rake them into piles remembering how my grandfather loved to do this. Two large trash bags later, the lawn is cleared. I smell the grass beneath my feet. I take my shoes off. The lawn is cool. These little things fire up my brain. I’m happy to be sober and not missing out.